The BCEd plan...who's responsible for this anyways?

Recently there was an article written by Marc Tucker in Ed Week about Rod Allen, Superintendent of the Cowichan Valley School District, and main architect in the creation of the BCEd plan.  Tucker is a huge proponent of 21st century learning, and consequently a huge fan of Allen and the work he's done on ensuring BC's students will be prepared for the work environment of the 21st century.

I'll be examining some of Allen's claims in today's blog post, and will pry apart truth from fiction, in the ongoing saga of BCEd. The article begins with the earth shattering proclamation that gave way to ed gurus such as Ted Robinson, who received his fame and glory on the TED X circuit, even though no shred of evidence exists to support his notion that schools need to be reinvented to accommodate today's learner. Feeding off these blatant inaccuracies gave way for even more outrageous fads in our education system, leading to the creation of our new curriculum:

"BC decided it needed to revise its approach to learning in 2009. John Abbott - author of Overschooled but Undereducated and head of the 21st Century Learning Initiative - was an influential thought leader at the time.  Convinced by Abbott and their own experience that, as Abbott put it, "they were doing a wonderful job of preparing students for a world that no longer exists," they sensed a groundswell of support to "modernize" their approach to learning."  

This is the usual trope trotted out to support groundbreaking reforms, meant to prepare our children for jobs that haven't been invented yet.  But here's how employers in the 21st century see it:

David was kind enough to then provide an illustration about some of the basic requirements of the job

Too many of today's graduates are poorly equipped for on the job training. If kids aren't able to perform basic math functions upon graduation, how are they supposed to compete against our global competitors for other types of careers?

So let's move on:  "Rod pointed out that the students' smartphones provide ready access to all the knowledge they would ever need.  The issue is whether they understand what they know and whether they can use what they understand."

Ok. We now have the main architect behind the creation of the groundbreaking BC curriculum, just admit that we shouldn't be bothered with ensuring kids master basic facts because what's the point when they can just google the answer? There are so many fundamental flaws with that line of thinking its defies logic.  But it does provide a glimpse about today's line of thinking for Superintendents, School Administrators, and then down to classroom strategies concerning our child's learning.   Never mind those pesky facts...who needs to learn about Shakespeare anyways, when kids can just watch a movie on their Smartphone in English class?

The next point I'd like to raise are concerns regarding the development of the new curriculum.  

Here's what Tucker has to say in the article:

 "The planners had a problem.  They did not want the curriculum to be highly prescriptive.  It was in the very essence of the idea that teachers needed to be creative and to have the scope they would need to work not to the letter of the law but in the spirit of the reforms the planners were trying to bring about.  But what they wanted to bring about was very different from what teachers were doing.  The answer, they thought, was to have teachers develop the new curriculum working under the auspices of the ministry.  Neither the ministry nor the teachers would develop the curriculum.  It would be co-developed by both.  That way, both would own it.  

And that is exactly what happened. It wasn't easy. It turns out that, when this work began, the relationship between the BC government and the teachers union was more or less one of open warfare.  But, when the planners in the ministry went to the union and said that they did not want to consult with the union, but intended instead to co-construct the new curriculum with the teachers and work in collaboration with the teachers to do it, the union accepted the offer, and a lot of trust was built, even as the tension between the government as a whole and the union got increasingly intense, eventually culminating in an extended job action.  Even then, the work on the curriculum progressed."

But that's not how Glen Hansman, BCTF President sees it;

Clearly there's a disagreement on who did what but, one thing is clear - teachers aren't impressed either...A December 2017 BCTF survey suggests only 15% fully support it. 

In response to these and other changes, a group of BC high school teachers have become so concerned, they have circulated a letter provincewide, along with submitting a letter both to the Ministry, and to the BCTF Executive. Their concerns continue to be ignored. 

It's not only teachers which are upset and concerned over these changes. This letter appeared in the Nanaimo Bulletin last week - the School District over from where Rod Allen resides as Superintendent. Interestingly, this 14 year old student articulated her experience more accurately, than what most of our education leaders could ever elucidate:  

"I understand the point the school board is trying to get across which is making students critical thinkers, but it seems like we’re learning less and less and having therapy classes more and more. I will never understand this way of teaching and I hope I won’t have to and it’ll be changed back to normal. More and more kids are skipping school and doing drugs or drinking. How is our future going to look with badly educated students as the leaders?"

Okay so now we're at the part where Allen insists many of the graduation changes were made AFTER consultation with post secondary institutions. He insists these changes were modeled after what THEY wanted:

"In most countries, the high school curriculum and high school testing policy is very heavily influenced by the admissions policies and practices of the higher education institutions.  We asked Rod whether that was true in this case, and, if so, whether that had been a problem." 

"We made this decision with higher education," he said. "They thought that the graduation exams were not useful in measuring what they needed to know about students.  We see this as a pause, not necessarily the end of assessment.  Right now higher education relies on students' GPA and grades and some faculties have their own assessments."

So here's the facts. In speaking with the admissions office at Vancouver Island University (VIU), again, just up the road from Allen's office, it was noted they have adopted a "wait and see" approach to the changes, given that they weren't ever consulted, nor advised of the graduation changes.  Ditto for the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, and multiple colleges across British Columbia.  In fact, when a letter was sent by the teachers to the UBC Department, here's a summary of what they had to say on the matter:

• While students are showing significantly higher grades in secondary school, the performance is not translating into increased success in university. 
• Our studies show that roughly one in eight first-year UBC students from BC secondary schools presented a discrepancy of at least twenty percentage points between their English 12 course grade and their English 12 provincial exam.  In many cases, students admitted with high English 12 scores and poor English 12 provincial examination performance, lose their offers of admission in the summer.
• We have very spotty data on Distributed Learning....What little empirical data we have does suggest that the grades in online courses are much higher than the mean and have less correlation with first-year performance.

 "Unfortunately, there is not much we can do about the situation. Solving the issue of increasing grades is not as simple as introducing a standardized assessment...All our data suggests that standardized assessments within curricula (e.g. provincial exams in Alberta, the IB curriculum) are much better predictors of success in university. But the data has to be available in a timely manner. Standardized assessments within the curriculum that come at the end of the year (such as the old provincial exams) are of limited use, as universities are increasingly pressured to make earlier and earlier admission decisions...As for the English 12 provincial exam, once it goes away, we will lose a lot of our ability to better understand English 12 course grades. We will use the literacy assessment as best we can to validate (i.e. the flag will go up when we see a student with a 90% in English 11 but “approaching expectations” (or something similar) on their literacy assessment). But without detailed, quantitative assessments on the literacy assessment that are tied to English 12, making fair and    merit-based admission decisions will get harder."

Another aspect of this article suggests BC Teachers undergo the same specialization and training that Finnish teachers do in their training program...this is debatable, considering in Finland, specialization of subject matter is much more rigorous than in British Columbia. Claims like this are unwarranted, and deserve better scrutiny. 

Another point Allen makes concerns how stellar our PISA performance has been for our BC students. What he fails to acknowledge, is the significant downward trend - most notably in mathematics, that has occurred in this province over the past 15 years...and it's not improving.  PISA is a measurable tool that determines academic trends of performance.  The placement of jurisdictions isn't relevant. What is, however, is understanding what the trends mean.  BC's rate of functional innumeracy (below level 2) increased by 3.9% and those at the other end of the spectrum, Level 5+6, decreased by 5.1% - a statistically significant decline.  This decrease is larger than the Canadian average and a significant percentage of the STEM group vanished both nationally and provincially during this same time frame.

It's a parent's prerogative to try and support their children the best they can while they're in school, and they can only do that by trying to discern the information being given to them, by our education leaders, and by the reporting that goes on surrounding their publicly funded education system. It's expected that unbiased, fair reporting be allowed, so that parents can assess what their tax dollars are funding, as well as what type of education their child is receiving. This article does none of that. It's shoddy journalism, made worse by glorifying mistruths, and supporting those who perpetuate the myths of change, to promote their own self interest, using our children, and teachers as guinea pigs to achieve their objectives.  

Please share this with those who might be interested in knowing what's going on in BCEd. We need to put an end to this experimentation, and demand better for our kids, and for our frontline teachers. Nonsense like this has stop. Thanks for listening.