Evaluating Teachers One Observation at a Time

PATRICIA MOORE SHAFFER, Vice President, Educational Policy Institute

We all know teacher quality matters. With copious evidence suggesting that the quality of a teacher trumps all other school-related factors in influencing student performance, numerous policy initiatives have been launched north and south of the border to improve teacher quality. Over the past few years, the Government of Ontario implemented a series of initiatives designed to improve teacher quality, including a new teacher induction program and a teacher performance appraisal system. South of the border, state- and federal-level initiatives to recruit, train, and retain highly qualified teachers complement efforts by private philanthropies to improve teacher quality. Just last week, for instance, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced $335 million in grants supporting the improvement of teacher quality—its largest expenditure on education reform in about a decade. READ MORE...

The 2009 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada, released by the national awareness group Campaign 2000, says the most recent figure is 637,000 Canadian children who live in a family where a majority of money is spent on necessities such as food, clothing and shelter. Despite what anti-poverty advocates call an unprecedented period of growth since 1998, Canada has failed to make advances to alleviate a problem which affects one in 10 children in this country. The report found that 40 per cent of low-income children live in families where at least one parent works full time all year, what the report calls "the working poor." The rate of child and family poverty has gone down only slightly over the past 20 years, to 9.5 per cent in 2007 from 11.9 per cent in 1989.

Source: Vancouver Sun 

THE NEWS

Look to Quebec on Early Childhood Education, Expert Urges
Rhéal Séguin, Globe and Mail
Experts say Canada needs to change its approach to early childhood education and look to Quebec's $7-a-day universal daycare system as a model if it wants to improve school performance and decrease dropouts. According to University of British Columbia psychology professor Adele Diamond, Quebec is way ahead of other provinces in its education of preschool children. "It's not perfect. It could be improved but ... you can see that poor kids in Quebec are doing much better in reading at age 5 then poor kids in any other province."

Teachers, Schools Oppose Anti-Bullying Legislation
Archie Lean, Edmonton Journal
Alberta school boards and teachers urged MLAs on Monday to vote against an anti-bullying bill that's before the legislature. While they applauded the intention of the bill, the boards are concerned it would create more bureaucratic paperwork and handcuff the ability of teachers and principals to deal with bullying in their own ways. Critics say the bill confuses criminal activity, which is dealt with under the criminal justice system, with non-criminal activity that can be dealt with at school. It also specifies that bullies be put through a special-educational program, but provides no funding for it or guidance as to what form it should take.

Speakers Queue to Save Schools
Joanne Laucius, Ottawa Citizen
More than 50 speakers ranging from school council members to business leaders lined up Monday night to state their cases as public school board trustees. In a review released last month, board staff recommended closing Rideau High School and two Merivale-area elementary schools next September. Trustees are to begin debating on Dec. 7 and are to make their decisions Dec. 15.

Skills, Knowledge Not Quantity Should Be Emphasis in Homework, Says Expert
Lauren La Rose, Canadian Press
Homework has been a longtime staple of the school curriculum, but it has also been a source of contention for those who question its necessity and the benefits for kids. Recently, the findings of various studies exploring whether homework truly makes the grade in helping to enhance a child's education have been mixed - much like opinions on homework itself.

Parents Desperate for Autism Strategy
CBC News

U of A Education Students Protest Potential Budget Cuts
Trish Audette, Edmonton Journal
A clutch of University of Alberta education students gathered on the steps of the legislature Tuesday to protest a potential $300M to the school system over the next two years. Sharon Armstrong, vice-president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, told the 15 gathered students that the time to speak out on potential cuts is now, before the budget is released next spring.

Calgary's Post-Secondary Schools Eager to Avoid Fee Hikes
Sarah McGinnis, Calgary Herald
The majority of Calgary post-secondary institutions say they don't intend to ask for permission to boost tuition for the coming school year. But choosing not to ask students for more money could lead to tough financial decisions for Calgary schools that still don't know how much the province will cut education grants next year.

Report Finds Educated Immigrants Are Underemployed
The Gazette (Montreal)
Two-thirds of university-educated recent immigrants to Canada are underemployed in jobs requiring at most a college education or apprenticeship, according to a Statistics Canada report released Monday. The report found that average weekly wages were $23.72 an hour for Canadian-born in the core working age group of 25 to 54, according to the report, $2.28 an hour more than that of immigrant workers. The wage gap was larger - about $5 per hour - among those who had arrived within the last five years and between immigrants and Canadian-born workers with university degrees.

An MBA Can Help You Work with Others
Vancouver Sun
North America has always had a love affair with its larger-than-life chief executives, the men and women whose names are synonymous with those of their companies, and whose leadership style can best be described as autocratic, if not downright dictatorial. But the age of the corporate strongman appears to be waning, giving way to a more consultative, team-oriented leadership style -- a trend that has not gone unnoticed at Canada's MBA business programs.

Report Urges National Standards for Colleges, Universities
Canada.com
Canada needs a national standard by which to judge the quality of its post-secondary education institutions, a report released Tuesday concludes. The Canadian Council on Learning study suggests Canadians don't understand what "quality post-secondary education" should be, due in part to the many jurisdictions into which colleges and universities in this country fall.

Trainee Teacher Targets Exceeded
BBC News
The number of people joining teacher training courses in England this year exceeded government targets for the first time. The Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) said it met or exceeded recruitment targets in every area. This year trainee math teachers came in 8% above the target. The TDA's rule of thumb is that even if it recruited every single university math graduate in any given year, it would not have enough trainee teachers. So this increase is particularly significant.

Afghan Schools Seek Survival Amid Attacks
Moni Basu, CNN
In Afghanistan, between January 2006 and December 2008, 1,153 education-related attacks or threats were reported, according to CARE, a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. Even though only 20 percent of Afghanistan’s schools are for girls, these institutions suffer 40 percent of these attacks. Now, the World Bank is partnering with CARE to investigate how education can succeed amid increasing violent attacks on Afghan schools.

College Requires Heavy Students to Take Fitness Class to Graduate
USA Today
In Philadelphia, historically black Lincoln University has mandated that obese undergraduate students complete a “Fitness for Life” course, which meets three hours a week, to receive their degree. Lincoln requires students get tested for their Body Mass Index (BMI), a measure of weight to height with a normal range between 18.5 and 24.9, and any students weighing in at 30 or above are required to take the course and complete it to graduate.

Cash Crisis University Criticized
BBC News
London Metropolitan University (LMU) was ordered to repay £36.5m after issuing false data on student numbers. The problem arose because the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE ) only provides universities with money for a student who sits all their exams at the end of the year. LMU admitted it counted students as having completed the period if they moved into the next year, regardless of whether they had sat all exams. Under the LMU's definition, just 3% of students failed to complete the year. Under the real definition the non-completion rate was 30%.

Australia 'Regressive' on Indigenous Education
ABC News- Australia
A national conference has heard how the education system in Australia is failing Indigenous children and forcing many to drop out with little or no skills. More than 600 delegates are attending the fifth National Indigenous Education Conference in Hobart. Teachers, students, policy makers and members of Aboriginal communities and organizations have come together to discuss an unacceptable standard of learning and training for Indigenous people. International expert Lorna Williams says the problem stems from schools ignoring Aboriginal history in the classroom and not helping Indigenous students enough. The three-day conference aims to discuss where changes can be made and how.

Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress releases Eighth Annual Report
While the impact of the recent recession has been devastating, the Task Force, like all Ontarians, is hopeful that the worst is behind us and that Ontario is on the road to recovery. Our challenge is to navigate through this recovery, whenever it occurs; ensuring that the recession’s damage is short lived while keeping our eye on a long-term Prosperity Agenda for Ontario.  This is the key conclusion of the Eighth Annual Report, Navigating through the recovery, released today by the Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress.