News Story Teasers....

THRONE SPEECH TURNS A BLIND EYE

Ignoring the painful reality of school closures, oversized classes, dwindling support for students with special needs, and boards of education struggling to manage, the throne speech contained vague statements with no detail or mention of any monetary commitment. The list includes:

- a new Master Teacher program
- public/private partnerships to provide preschools for three- and four-year olds
- greater parent involvement in shaping the education to a child's needs and passions
- new forms of schooling for greater choice and diversity
- voluntary Kindergarten for this September and full day for all by September 2011
- greater focus on resources for students and less on administrative costs
- neighbourhood learning centres to meet the needs of families seven days a week.

The BCTF contacted the deputy minister of education following these announcements to get further details and was told that the ministry knew nothing about them and had not been involved in their development.

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BRACING FOR THE BUDGET

The provincial budget is to be announced [today]. Teachers and parents need and expect an increase in education funding to deal with overcrowded classrooms, reduced student services, depleted district resources, and overdue school maintenance.

This developing funding crisis was not caused by boards of education but by a government downloading costs that are not taken into account in the funding formula, such as:

- loss of annual facilities grant
- teacher salary and benefit increases that were provincially negotiated
- new carbon tax and carbon-offset charges
- increased MSP and WCB premiums
- new costs for implementing full-day Kindergarten
- additional costs of provincially legislated class-size limits.

The Association of School Board Officials (formerly secretary-treasurers) has said that the education system desperately needs an immediate injection of $300 million in 2010-11 to offset a funding shortfall.

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12,000 CLASSES EXCEEDING THE CLASS-COMPOSITION LIMITS

The government's own legislation sets the limit at three students with an Individual Education Plan per class. In 2010 there are close to 12,000 class-composition violations. That is up from 11,000 in 2009 and 10,000 in 2008. The data presented by the minister of education also shows 3,229 class-size violations with more than 30 students for the 2009-10 school year. That is down a mere 100 classes from 2008-09, but still higher than in 2007-08 when there were 3,179 violations. It has been more than four years since BC's teachers went on strike to improve classroom conditions, and in that time no progress has been made and government has refused to fund its own legislation.

The full report can be found in Overview of class size and composition in British Columbia Public Schools for 2005-10, at the Ministry of Education website http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/reporting/district_data_summary.php.

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FRASER INSTITUTE TURNS TO BLACK

In an unexpected move, CanWest announced that the Vancouver Sun and The Province would not be publishing the annual Fraser Institute ratings of BC's elementary schools this year. Various reasons have been given for this decision, including financial woes, Olympic coverage, and dwindling parental interest and support.

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ALBERTA TEACHERS TO GET 5.99% INCREASE

In a decision handed down [in February], an arbitrator ruled that teachers working in the province's public, separate, and francophone schools, should receive an increase in salaries and allowances amounting to 5.99% in the 2009-10 school year. The increase is consistent with the average growth in the earnings of Albertans from 2008 to 2009 as reported by Statistics Canada. The arbitration decision upholds the Alberta Teachers' Association's (ATA) position concerning the application of a formula linking teacher salary increases with annual changes in Alberta average weekly earnings. The formula is embedded in the Memorandum of Agreement between the province and the ATA and the resulting five-year collective agreements that came into effect in the 2007-08 school year in all 62 public, separate, and francophone school districts across the province.

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LET'S TEST EVERYONE

Michael Smith of Tennessee, writing in the latest issue of Kappan, proposes that everyone- students, teachers, parents, and citizens-take national tests. Such a test, he says, could be computer-adaptive, based on standards that span preschool to the PhD. Using mathematics as an example, everyone could have a personal national mathematics score. With this in hand, students could compare their scores to their teachers and parents; workers could compare their scores to other workers and supervisors and to every other citizen in the United States. Ultimately, of course, such results could be used for employment decisions and continued screening throughout a person's career.

Go to http://pdkintl.org/ for the full story, Kappan, February 2010.