Alberta Curriculum Challenges: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

In Alberta, our UCP ideologically driven government has appointed a panel of people who have not been inside a classroom in this millennium to review the proposed school curriculum over the next twelve to sixteen weeks. Not one current classroom teacher, student, specialist in students with disabilities, unemployed graduate of media studies, LGTBQ2+ advocate, entrepreneur, expert in literacy, champion of non-profits or person with experience of online learning is on the panel. Naturally, many teachers and school-based administrators are upset.

We should not expect any better from the UCP. This is their modus operandi – create a panel or task force to provide cover for what they are going to do anyway.  Their theory of change is that anything started by the UCP is a mistake that needs to be revised and corrected and that they need “cover to do it”.

But this misunderstands this curriculum change journey. In 2009 the former conservative government engaged a very significant number of Albertan’s in a conversation about schools and curriculum – the largest ever public consultation about education in the province’s history. This led to the publication of Inspiring Education, championed by then Minister of Education Dave Hancock (later Premier) and widely welcomed by teachers, educators and industry. One outcome of this work was the recognition that the province needed a major investment in curriculum redesign.

Former conservative Minister of Education, Jeff Johnson, signed a Ministerial order on 6^th May 2013 which essentially set the curriculum change journey in motion. The next step in 2014 was a series of competitive bids by school jurisdictions to prototype the curriculum indicated explicitly in this Ministerial order. Significant funds were allocated to teams across Alberta to prototype the curriculum and to engage with industry and community partners in doing so. Amongst those asked to be involved in this work were Syncrude, Suncor, Cenovus, Microsoft, Apple, PCL, Safeway and Stantec (some later withdrew after a public uproar over their involvement).

Materials were developed, tested and shared. It is important to note that it was not just teachers engaged in this work – it involved significant consultation. The 203-15 process was estimated to have cost $30 million.

Prototyping took time, but substantial resources were collaboratively developed. And shared Meantime, a change of government occurred but the curriculum work continued. In 2017 the Guiding Framework for Curriculum Redesign K-12 was published and made widely available (drafts of this were circulated to stakeholders throughout 2016). This followed significant new consultation with the public – part of the 2016 announcement of the $64 million, six-year curriculum change journey. An additional $4 million was provided for consultation and engagement with indigenous people focused on ensuring that indigenous ways of knowing and truth and reconciliation were represented across the curriculum in appropriate ways.

In 2016 a major survey focused on specifics of curriculum redesign was launched by the Ministry of Education. 32,391 people answered this – 47% parents, 10% general public, 31% teachers, 9% K-12 students and 3% post-secondary students. The results are available for all to see.

The new NDP government announced in 2016 a six-year time-table for curriculum development and engaged in an active partnership with the Alberta Teachers’ Association, the professional body for teachers, and seconded a great many teachers to work on the new curriculum building on past work (including the prototyping).  This is how curriculum is normally developed around the world: professionals design, test and deploy.

As a result of PISA 2015, some parents expressed concern about mathematics education and began a campaign, supported by some in the media, to “return to basics” in mathematics. The argument is basically this: (a) students are not doing as well on tests of mathematics such as the provincial achievement tests (PATs) or PISA – app. one third of students failed Grade 9 PAT’s in 2018; (b) many students cannot complete simple mathematical problems.  This is the “crisis”. To blame, according to the critics, is the mathematics curriculum which gives emphasis to mathematical ways of thinking and problem solving rather than memorizing times-tables and learning math routines. It is worth noting that, on PISA 2015, Alberta scored 511 in mathematics – the OECD average was 490 and the Canadian average 516.

In both Ontario and Alberta, conservative politicians have vowed to “fix math” by returning to “common sense” and basic math education. Yet many countries who practice this kind of mathematics learning do worse than Alberta on PISA. Part of the concern of the new UCP government in Alberta is to live-up to its election promises with respect to this particular issue.

The pause in implementing the curriculum change – the K-4 new curriculum was to be field tested in the 2019-2020 school year (which starts in September) – is not necessarily a bad thing. Teachers need professional development and support to launch a new program of study and the time between now and the 2020-2021 new school year could be wisely used to support this work if it becomes clear just what the curriculum might be. But after announcing the pause and the flawed review panel, Minister of Education Adriana LeGrange cannot be certain either what the curriculum will be or when it will be available. Given that there is no budget for the education system until October, school boards also have no idea what resources will be available for professional development and needed materials to support the “new” “new” curriculum.

One beam of light came out of Ontario, which did something similar. Premier Ford huffed and puffed about the Health and Physical Education curriculum for elementary students. Ford paused the curriculum change because of its “ideological” bias from the former Liberal government, especially as it related to sex ed. The curriculum then in use was written in 1998 before changes in our understanding and acceptance of gender identity, LGBTQ2+ and sexual orientation. Ford’s team spent over $1 million on consultation and released the new, revised curriculum this week which is largely unchanged from that developed by the Liberal government. While Ford claims that the ability of parents to remove their children from sex ed classes is new, in fact this has been the practice in a great many school boards in Ontario for some time.

Maybe patience is the lesson here. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Jason Kenny and the Test of Time

The early signs from Jason Kenny are clear. He has an agenda. The agenda is a list of classical neo-liberal moves which have yet to produce the outcomes promised anywhere in the world. These agenda items include, but are not limited to:

• Tax cuts for corporations and high wealth individuals. The claim: this will stimulate job growth and economic investments. The facts: this leads to higher pay for executives, share-buybacks, cash hoarding and the movement of money offshore.
• The laying off of teachers, nurses and others in health, education and social service professionals. The claim: this will have no impact on front-line services and is necessary to bring government spending into line with revenues so as to balance the budget. The facts: this has a major impact on health, education and social wellbeing outcomes, creates unemployment and damages the long-term future of the Province.
• The ending of certain taxes, like the Carbon tax. The claim: this is necessary to stimulate the economy and, in any case, there is no evidence that a carbon tax is good for the environment. The facts: (a) this reduces government revenues and increases deficits; (b) it has a direct negative impact on emerging sectors of the economy (so-called green jobs), and (c) the evidence is clear that a CO2 tax is good for the environment. Further, in our case in Alberta, this will lead to the imposition of a worse tax from the Federal Government which, though Jason will challenge, the courts will support. 
• The increased use of public-private partnerships for public works -  building schools, roads, hospitals, etc. The claim: the public sector is “better” and “more efficient” at managing such projects and this will save money. The facts: There is no foundation to the claim that the private sector is better at managing risk than the public sector. Virtually all P3s in Canada have been justified on the basis that they transfer large amounts of risk to the private sector. But a growing list shows that P3s are both riskier and more costly for the public, as the auditors general of Ontario and Quebec has shown. In general, P3’s are more expensive both directly and in the long term for the public than if the public sector built them.

What we will see, as we saw with Harper as PM, is increased debt, higher levels of unemployment and the growth of Government “managerialism” and intervention (we are already seeing this in Ontario) and a lot of nonsense talk ("bringing back the Alberta advantage" and "being open for business" as if we were ever not open for business and as if the advantage was about taxation rather than the abilities of our people and world-class education and health systems).

Deficits are no bad thing if they are within reason and Alberta's debt-deficit is within reason - indeed, many jurisdictions are envious of our strong position. The "blue-ribbon" panel appointed to find opportunities for spending reduction (never a good thing when we go "outside" for this kind of advice - they have little local context) will suggest significant savings so as to bring down the per capita costs of Alberta's public service nearer to that in BC (e,g a cut of app. $1.2 billion in K-12 school spending) without seeing the nuanced differences between BC and Alberta (look at taxation, for example). 

So, after just a few days in office, Kenny is off to the races - largesse everywhere (you can now drink beer and wine in public parks), but favours for a few and misery for the masses. 

“School Choice” and the Myth of Improved Educational Outcomes

Jason Kenny is promoting the idea of school choice – code for the expansion of charter and private schools. The UCP policy platform commits to equal funding for students, whether they attend public, Catholic, private or charter schools. Alberta already has has the highest per-capita funding of private schools in the country at 70 percent of public school students, compared to 60 percent in Quebec, 50 percent in B.C. and Manitoba and zero percent in Ontario.

Yet the evidence is clear that charter and private schools do not increase the overall performance of the education system in a jurisdiction. The World Bank says so:

“There is no consistent evidence that private schools
deliver better learning outcomes than public schools.
Numerous risks, such as the exclusion of disadvantaged
or less able or desirable students, social segregation,
exploitation of families for profit and the undermining of
public education.” –World Bank Development Report on Education, 2017

And the OECD also says so:

“School choice advocates often argue that the
introduction of market mechanisms in education allows
equal access to high quality schooling for all…However
evidence does not support these perceptions, as choice
and associated market mechanisms can enhance
segregation.” –OECD Equity and Quality in Education – Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools, 2012

A 2019 study of the charter schools in Ohio conducted by Stanford University shows that the “typical charter school student in Ohio makes similar progress in reading and weaker growth in math compared to the educational gains that the student would have made in a traditional public school” and further shows “that enrollment in online charter schools is associated with substantially negative learning gains in both reading and math, which drags down the overall charter school impact on student progress”. Similar results were found in Idaho and slightly better results were found for some Charter schools, but not all, in Washington State. Similar findings are reported for academies (charter schools) in England.

But there are also significant examples of failure. A recent report from the Network for Public Education in the US shows that some 40% of US Government-funded charter schools either never opened or closed shortly after receiving government funding, wasting one-third of the $4.1 billion allocated by the Federal Government.

What private and charter schools do to a school system is to change the composition of public schools, reduce overall available funding for public schools and put at risk the equity of school systems. In a major study of the privatization of public education, Sam Abrams demonstrates the negative impacts of the explosion of charter schools in the US and other countries.

Sweden is an interesting case. The country privatized much of its K-12 system only to find that the private providers could not function effectively and produce results. Some went bankrupt. Much like any corporate entity, they cut corners by employing cheaper teachers that were not qualified while spending lavishly on outside consultants. They also employed a competitive scheme where teachers were financially rewarded for garnering better test scores, leading the school to focus more on test preparation than on education and learning.

In England, the transfer of public resources to private firms continues apace. Charter schools (known as academies or free schools in England) have supplanted schools which were formerly public schools supervised by skilled educational oversight teams and local education authorities. More than 7,000 schools have become academies. Academies don’t have to follow the national curriculum and can set their own term times. Funded directly by Government, the only oversight they receive is from their own managing board and from a national inspection service. Many academies are part of “chains” or network of like-minded schools bonded by common ownership. Some of these chains have collapsed in scandal. There is no evidence that academies perform better than public schools, once adjustments are made for intake.

What is more, academies are not efficient. In 2018 six of the 10 largest academy trusts issued warnings over pay, short-staffing, building safety, and financial risks. The trusts cover hundreds of English schools. One of the largest chains, the Ark Schools, posted a £4.1 million loss in 2017-18 even though it had over 50,000 students enrolled. A recent report suggests that eight out of ten academies are in deficit.

So why the interest in charter schools? One answer is money. While the organizations that run them pay themselves handsomely, secure significant assets (in England this includes land, buildings, and infrastructure) that were previously publicly owned and can award their own partner businesses lucrative consulting, technology and management contracts. While the academy or charter school may not be financially viable, the State is always there to “bail” out schools at risk of closure.

A second reason is ideological. Charter schools can pursue their own versions of teaching and learning somewhat independent of oversight by others. In Canada, Charter schools still have to offer the Provincial curriculum and be subject to Provincial education regulations, but have a degree of independence not found in many school districts.  Alberta adopted charter schools in 1994 to encourage innovation and permit parental choice. The thirteen charter schools that remain (three closed due to poor registrations, poor management or some combination of both) are largely located in Calgary and Southern Alberta.

Alberta also has a significant number of private registered or accredited private schools which serve app. 4% of Alberta’s school students. Most of these schools reflect a commitment to a particular religion. The key difference between Charter and Private schools relate to the ability to determine who can be admitted – private schools can select students, Charter schools cannot.  The Alberta government provides app. $13,000 in funding for every child who goes to public school but just $5,200 for everyone in a private school. The funding for private school students amounts to app. $162 million per year out of a $9-billion education budget. Five other Provinces in Canada provide no funds to private schools, yet they persist in these jurisdictions.

Albertan’s have a great deal of choice between types of publicly funded schools. Alberta is one of only three provinces that provide fully-funded Catholic education, and one of only two provinces that provide fully-funded French Catholic education, within the public system.

Would increasing the number of private or charter schools and increasing the level of public funding available improve the performance of the system overall? There is no compelling evidence that it would.