CBC News (follow the link for data on each province & territory) reports that:

• The teacher student ratio is going down, with a current average of about 1:16
• Expenditures on public education have increased by almost 25% in the past six years

Outwardly, these are positive signs, as there are more teachers per student and we are spending more. Add the fact of falling school drop-out rates and things look fairly positive.

However, literacy rates are down; homeschooling is on this rise in NB; and many parents are dissatisfied with what they see in school. Have we become too critical or are there systemic issues with public education that cannot be solved with better teacher-student ratios and more money? If the status quo is desirable, isn’t there enough money in the system already?

Given the CBC figures, I would say that we are probably spending adequately on public education, and that the teacher ratio, on average, is reasonable. With declining school-age demographics, we will probably see these ratios get lower and per capita expenditures increase. Any perceived woes of public education in our country don’t seem to be a result of insufficient money. The cash is there and the teachers are available. How money is spent and how teachers are employed may be more pertinent questions to ask.

Michael Feldstein has been examining Desire2Learn’s competency model that is supposed to make e-learning that much more aligned with education. The D2L model is one that starts with a Competency, from which there are certain Learning Outcomes and from these, Assessments can be developed. Michael shows some of the inherent difficulties with such an approach:

This is the root of one of the most intractable problems in the outcomes debate: What should we be assessing? Which of the questions listed in the previous paragraph is the most important to answer? What is the most important possible outcome of an education? These are cultural, political, philosophical, practical, and ideological questions all tangled up into one big hairball. There isn’t one universally best answer. Some of where you come down depends on why you’re asking the question in the first place. Are concerned with training the next generation of literary scholars? Are you looking to maximize students’ likely economic benefit from their education, regardless of career path? Are you trying to create better citizens? Or do you care most about helping the student cultivate a rich and fulfilling life of the mind? The answers to these questions have a strong impact on whether it makes more sense to look at test scores or portfolios, whether assessment instruments should be the same across courses or even across states, and lots of other critical implementation questions. Without widespread agreement on goals and priorities, there will be no widespread agreement about what to assess or how to assess it.

Given all of these questions, I would say – stop. You cannot create a neat and clean system of competence, outcomes and assessment unless you place everything in a specific context. When you add that context, it is called TRAINING. Within a given context, training works. The military Systems Approach to Training (SAT) which I implemented for many years, includes a competence tool, called a Performance Objective (PO):

• Performance Statement (that which must be done to show competence)
• Conditions (how, when and where a person would be required to do this)
• Standard (to what measurable and observable level of performance must this be done)

Each PO includes Enabling Objectives (EO’s) which describe the Skills, Knowledge & Attitudes that should be learned in order to achieve the PO. Again, all of this is about doing something of value to the organisation in a specific context. It is not about education, self-actualisation or learning how to learn.

Training methods work when you have clear performance objectives, like driving a car or repairing an aircraft. Training methods do not work for education. I previously noted in Training vs Education:

I think that one of the problems with our education system is that there is too much of a focus on getting quantitative data, like testing. These functions are more suited to a “training” system, where the performance requirements are clear, measurable and observable. In education, the performance requirements are fuzzy. There is nothing wrong with either a training focus or an education focus; each one has its merits. The problem is when you try to mix the two. The arguments that I hear over testing or the adoption of blogs in the classroom seem to be the result of mixing a training systems design approach with a general educational approach. Water and oil.

If your organisation, be it a school or a company, has clear performance expectations, then you should use proven performance technologies, such as drill & feedback, performance support, or a wide variety of other interventions. On the other hand, if your objectives are educational in the broad sense, then forget about testing and controlling, and allow learners to explore and construct their own knowledge.

Learning Management Systems purport to manage learning. By definition, they cannot. An LMS can manage administration and perhaps some functions of training, that’s it. Using training tools to manage learning is like using a spreadsheet to grow your garden. A waste of time and energy.

When you have a state-run education system it seems that all education is political, n’est-ce pas? The French Immersion debate has once again reared its head in the Province of New Brunswick, the same place that gave birth to the COR party. The Confederation of Regions party’s main platform was to reverse official bilingualism in the province.

The Minister has commissioned another review of the system which has opened up the debate, especially from Canadian Parents for French. I have not had time to examine, once again, all factors at play, but here are some of my personal observations. Both of our sons are in the French Immersion program (Grades 8 & 10) and my wife and I, both bilingual, have been fairly active in their education.

The Early Immersion program starts in Grade 1 and all of the research that I have read on the subject shows that earlier is better. Given that information, it would be better if French Immersion began in kindergarten. Actually, I would prefer that it was the ONLY program, with no opting out. Second language skills are one of the few long-term cognitive skills taught in the system which are useful in a broad sense and easily transported beyond school.

The critical factor in second-language immersion is the teacher’s ability in that language. With only one person to emulate, the students need an excellent example. The Berlitz method is based on this understanding. Our experience has included several teachers with very poor French language skills.

The Immersion program in our schools also lacks adequate resources, so that students with any special needs must transfer out of the program in order to get the attention they require. This results in fewer children with behavioural challenges in French Immersion, and of course more with challenges in what’s known as the Core program. Over the years, a self-selection process has developed, with the many of the more actively involved parents opting for French Immersion, as this seems to be a “better” program for their children. Add to this the “my kids don’t need no French” factor plus real advantages for government employment as a bilingual individual and French Immersion becomes highly politicized.

This separation of French and English not only occurs at school, where the immersion students are known as “French kids”. It also happens at the Departmental level with two separate educational systems (Organization Chart, PDF) and curricula. For example, we have French-speaking schools within a 30 minute drive, yet not once have I heard of an exchange program in the past decade. The kids don’t get a chance to talk with each other. Indeed, two solitudes.