All day K? Strong Start? What do we know?

Here’s an article from Margaret Wente in The Globe and Mail. We need to pay close attention to what data tells us and then be responsible and accountable for what we then use tax payer dollars after examining the data.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/margaret-wente/is-all-day-kindergarten-really-a-leg-up/article2337095/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=Referrer%3A+Social+Network+%2F+Media&utm_content=2337095&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links

MARGARET WENTE
Is all-day kindergarten really a leg up?
MARGARET WENTE |
From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2012 2:00AM EST

Everyone loves all-day kindergarten. In Ontario, where it was introduced in 2010, it’s wildly popular with parents. Grade 1 teachers like it because the students arrive better prepared. All-day K is the signature social initiative of Dalton McGuinty, who wants to go down in history as the Education Premier. The only drawback is the cost – $1.5-billion a year by the time it’s fully implemented. Although monster deficits have forced the Education Premier to morph into the Austerity Premier, he promises he won’t put his favourite baby on the chopping block.

Not entirely in harmony
According to its advocates, all-day kindergarten is much more than a perk for young families. It offers a crucial leg up for disadvantaged children. For this reason alone, it’s essential to our economic prosperity.

“We can’t afford not to do it,” argues Charles Pascal, the Premier’s early learning adviser. Twenty-eight per cent of kids who enter Grade 1 are “vulnerable,” meaning they arrive with learning, social or behavioural problems. Without an early learning boost, they’ll never catch up. In the long run, Mr. Pascal told CBC Radio, early learning will pay off in better human capital and higher graduation rates. Every 1-per-cent decline in the number of vulnerable kids, he says, will add 1 per cent to GDP. “It’s a no-brainer.”

Actually, it’s a brainer. Here’s why. The world’s biggest early learning program, involving millions of children and billions of dollars of public investment, has now been exhaustively evaluated. The results are unequivocal: It doesn’t work.

The program is Head Start, an iconic preschool program launched in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty.” Today, it includes nearly a million children. These are the ones who need help the most – the poor and minority kids who are at high risk of dropping out and winding up jobless or in jail. The rationale for the program, which offers not only preschool education but also family support, health and dental services and social and mental health services, is that it saves money in the long run. Since its inception, it has cost more than $100-billion.

In 2002, the U.S. government launched the massive Head Start Impact Study to determine how well the program worked. The final report, released in 2010, was devastating. It found that the modest gains achieved by Head Start students wore off by the end of Grade 1 – they wound up no further ahead than those who weren’t in the program.

You’d think these findings – involving one of the most ambitious social programs in U.S. history –would have been widely publicized. They got almost no coverage at all. Head Start is a classic example of a giant public program that doesn’t produce results but creates so many jobs and has so many defenders that no one can get rid of it.

There are big differences between Head Start and all-day kindergarten in Canada, of course. Head Start is aimed at disadvantaged three- and four-year-olds; kindergarten reaches all four- and five-year-olds. It may be that Canadian teachers are so much better that they can achieve results that have eluded the Americans for decades. Maybe Head Start is just a bad program. Or maybe disadvantaged U.S. children are so much worse off that nothing works.

But what we can conclude, from this and other studies, is that the benefits of early childhood education have been vastly overstated. It’s not a magic bullet. Which isn’t to say that all-day K has no value. It’s fabulous for working parents, and a whole lot cheaper than daycare. Mothers who might otherwise stay home may choose to work, and it creates extra jobs for teachers. But they aren’t the benefits we’ve been sold. And in a world of excruciatingly tough choices, that matters.

12-13-2011 BCSTA Expenses

After being re-elected the first order of the official business was to attend the BCSTA weekend at the Hyatt Regency Vancouver.
Last night at our first board meeting as a new board, one of the questions from the floor was, how could the public learn what it cost to attend this event. In the interest of transparency, here’s what I submitted as my expenses for this weekend event.

108 kms x2 @ .52 per km = $112.32
1 dinner $24.50
parking $68.00
hotel $129 per night
x 2 plus taxes $298.62

Total $503.44

We also had a contingency of four parents come to us and make a “presentation” using the public participation time of 5 minutes each on Early French Immersion. They gave us lots of good information and had obviously done their homework.

Words to live and work by

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” Steve Jobs

Press Release

September 7, 2011

It is my intention to run for a second term as a trustee on the Chilliwack Board of Education. A Board of Education’s number one priority should be keeping students and their accomplishments at the forefront of everything we do. Unfortunately one of the things I have learned in my first term is that there is too much attention paid to the minutia in politics and not enough to the students, their parents and the education community that trustees are elected to serve. The school act tells us that trustees top two responsibilities are students and finances. We do that when we hold the people we hire accountable for student results and making sure the resources are going to the right places. Ultimately it is a school trustee’s duty to stand with the community and hold accountable those we hire to accomplish student success. While we have a large number of successes in this district, we also have a large number of students who are not making it. This is unacceptable. We can and must do more for those students.

I’m asking voters to give me their support to address student needs throughout the community.

Heather Maahs

Abdicating?

Look, let’s face it, if our students were showing improvement and doing well on reading assessments, there would be no reason to be concerned about a proportionately large number of senior staff members leaving. However, that is not the case. Our FSA scores and local reading assessments have not only not improved as is evidenced this past February, but they have declined!

As the school act states in item 1.1 of a boards job description, the bottom line must be student achievement and what we are doing to constantly improve those rates. It is our responsibility to make sure that bottom line is always at the forefront of everything we do. Senior staff, principals and vice principals play a vital role in that bottom line. Considering we are the eyes and ears of the district, it is incumbent upon us to be involved in all aspects of the education process.

Until we get our students back on track and showing improvement across the district, we must do everything we can, as trustees and parents and take a more active role.

There really isn’t any question in my mind as to what the school act says in the following. To not take action in this would be an abdication of our responsibility, and I’m just not willing to do that.

Heather

(1.1) A board is responsible for the improvement of student achievement in the school
district.

Final tally

I just needed to post the final results from The Chilliwack Times poll. It’s ironic too actually because I am in fact in Hawaii for a week. What a coincidence!
For the record, my vote was against the new policy as I wanted it to read, “in extenuating circumstances.” I’ll leave it at that for today…..

LAST WEEK’S QUESTION

Should school board trustees, unable to attend meetings in person, be allowed to debate and vote on subjects electronically?

YES 12%

NO 88%

Read more: http://www.chilliwacktimes.com/Your+view/4223509/story.html#ixzz1D0uAuAd1

“Folded like a cheap tent”

At our board meeting tonight, there was talk of the FSA testing taking place. I think I’ll just paste my email I sent to the Principal and Vice Principal association and his response to me. After listening to Christy Clark respond to Aziz (see my headline) when she was here in Chilliwack, I decided to send my thoughts on to Mr. Aziz myself.
On Jan 20, 2011, at 5:55 PM, “Heather Maahs” <maahs@shaw.ca> wrote:

Mr. Aziz,

As a school trustee I would like to voice my extreme disappointment

with your stand on the FSA issue. I understand your concerns, however

if you believe that a different standardized measure is a solution,

you are deluding yourself because no kind of measure will please the

BCTF.

Some have said you folded like a cheap tent. This is the perception.

I am speaking personally as a trustee, not for the board I sit on.

Heather Maahs

Chilliwack Board of Education

604-792-4999

And he responded:

Perhaps this should be directed to the President of your association not one you are not a member of.  Thank you.

Jameel Aziz
President, BCPVPA
200-525 West 10th Ave.
Vancouver, BC
V5Z 1K9
1-800-663-0432

I didn’t think I was a member of any principal’s association, however I did forward my email to the local principal association’s president.

I’m so sick of this debate. I want to know how the students are reading, writing and doing math and I want to compare results with other schools in my district and even the province. It tells us how we’re doing in relation to others doing the exact same test. Why is school A doing better than school B. Are there ways as a Board we can help them? Etc etc etc. Student achievement is a Board’s number one objective and if we don’t have a measuring stick, we can’t assess the job we’re doing. It’s that simple.

It was “Christmas” holidays

First came this article and the rest is history. The story went viral and was picked up nationally. But first a bit of a preamble:

I think what was interesting to me was the fact that this issue seemed to be the tipping point for people in terms of political correctness. It also lead me to wonder who it was the PC police seemed to think they were championing. It wasn’t any of the multicultural people I heard from or who blogged at the numerous sites that carried stories on this.

I certainly enjoyed hearing from the hundreds of people that contacted me by email and phone to let me know how much they appreciated the “Christmas” motion.

I’m going to try to attach the CTV News clip.

In the meantime, because I’m playing catch up, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas holiday with friends and family, and let’s work towards great achievements for the students in this New Year of 2011.

Chilliwack school board puts the Christ back in Christmas

BY CORNELIA NAYLOR, CHILLIWACK TIMESNOVEMBER 24, 2010

The Chilliwack school district stirred up controversy this week by officially passing a motion to call the winter break the Christmas holidays.

Photograph by: File, PNG

Chilliwack school trustees stirred up controversy at Tuesday’s board meeting when they unanimously passed a motion to call the school vacation in December the Christmas holidays.

The break is currently referred to as the winter vacation on the school district calendar, but trustee Martha Wiens said that’s not what the holiday is about.

“We’re not having a holiday because it’s winter,” she said.

“We are having a holiday because it’s Christmas, so why not just say what it is.”

The school district has used the religiously neutral “winter vacation” because that is what’s used on the Ministry of Education calendar, according to superintendent Corrine McCabe, but it was unclear at the meeting whether that meant the district was legally required to use the name for the break.

Trustee Heather Maahs, who introduced the motion, favoured changing the name first and asking questions later.

“I say let’s take a walk on the wild side, and unless the legislation says we’re not allowed to call it Christmas, let’s call it Christmas,” she said.

Trustee Doug McKay said he personally preferred to call the break Christmas, but added his vote only after expressing reservations about the inclusiveness of the name.

“Christmas is a Christian holiday,” he said, “and we are more than just a Christian school district.

“We are a public school district and provide education for all religions and groups.”

As for the legal implications, McKay said the board would know soon enough if it had taken a misstep.

“There will be people out there that will very quickly share with us that we cannot do it,” he said.

Those people were close at hand.

Before the end of the meeting, the board was blasted for its decision by both Chilliwack Teachers’ Association president Katharin Midzain and District Parent Advisory Council president Kirsten Brandreth.

“I feel that we are going backward versus forwards,” said Brandreth.

“You’re recognizing that people get a couple of weeks off for the birth of Christ, and I think that we have to be very sensitive that within our community there are many other beliefs . . . so I feel that it has been a very insensitive decision.”

Midzain said the board’s decision slams anyone in the community who doesn’t celebrate Christmas, and she dismissed an argument by Wiens that businesses have no problem using the word Christmas in their advertising.

“It doesn’t really matter that the stores are advertising Christmas sales and everything else, because we are supposed to uphold a higher degree of tolerance than a merchant in our community,” she said.

Maahs was undeterred.

“I say we sacrifice too much as a society when we bend to political correctness,” she said after the meeting, “and I think the vast majority of people are just fine with it being Christmas as opposed to winter vacation.”

Trustee John-Henry Harter was absent and did not take part in the vote.

© Copyright (c) Chilliwack Times

And this one too by John Martin

http://www.chilliwacktimes.com/life/political+correctness/3905256/story.html

Oh, that last board meeting….

As many people read in the papers recently, there was a lot of shall we say, action in the last meeting. Personally, I’d like to clarify two items specifically.

The paper reported we voted to change meetings to the board office, instead of every other meeting at one of our schools. What wasn’t quoted were other reasons apart from Trustee McKay’s, including mine for agreeing which were; as a parent, I used to attend board meetings periodically and I remember arriving at the board office only to find no meeting! I remember being so frustrated because I had no idea where it was being held. In the spirit of accessibility and continuity I voted in favour.

And lastly, not completing our agenda, thusly no public participation for the long suffering people who had sat through that whole long meeting not having an opportunity to say their piece, speak their mind was a terrible oversight. May I just say for my part in that, I’m sorry. Although I did vote for the extensions, at one point I also wanted only to complete my motion and walk out the door. My tunnel vision was self serving. Democracy was not served that night, and for my part in that episode, I deeply regret that omission.

Next up, FSAs, our district achievement contract and what the paper reported.

New Blog

Welcome to my new blog!

This site was originally set up for the election, so I’ve left that information because it tells you about me and why I wanted to be elected. Now, however, I’m going to use this blog to update information regarding items taking place in and around the Chilliwack Board of Education. It may be things I consider important from my liaison schools or just items that don’t make the paper. I’ll also include links to articles and if I get really inspired, perhaps video clips.

So stay tuned to this work in progress. And feel free to comment.