COMMENTARY

Stand and Deliver

April 2, 2010

WATSON SCOTT SWAIL, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute

This week saw the passing of a giant in the teaching field—Jaime Escalante. Escalante was made famous, in part, by Washington Post writer Jay Mathews in the book Escalante: The Best Teacher in America. But more famous through the movie version of the book, Stand and Deliver, in 1988 featuring Edward James Olmos and Lou Diamond Phillips.

For the uninitiated, Stand and Deliver is about an East LA teacher, Escalante, who was able to get his students to pass the Calculus AP course, against all odds, by working them hard and having them come in every Saturday morning to study. If my memory serves me well, every Escalante student passed the AP exam. And the College Board, my former employer, balked at the results, accused the students of cheating, and required them to re-take the exam because they couldn’t possibly have passed.

In 2001, no other OECD nation had a higher proportion of its population aged 25 to 64 with either a college or university credential than Canada. However, in terms of the population with a university degree, Canada ranked fifth overall.

Source: StatsCan

THE NEWS

School board elections could be shelved
By Brenda Branswell, The Montréal Gazette
The province's French-language school board federation has received its strongest indication to date that Quebec's Education Department wants to postpone the next school board elections scheduled for 2011. Education Minister Michelle Courchesne confirmed that the government's intention is to postpone the elections, said Josée Bouchard, head of the Fédération des commissions scolaires du Québec, which represents 61 school boards. The decision still has to be discussed and approved in cabinet, Bouchard said.

Toronto schools are falling apart, board warned
By Kristin Rushowy, The Toronto Star
Some Toronto public schools are in such bad shape they’re accidents waiting to happen, warns the head of the maintenance and construction union. From rusted-out staircases to crumbling walls to concerns about water and air quality, Jimmy Hazel said trustees must stop robbing money from of the board’s maintenance and repair budget to cover shortfalls in other areas, as they have for the past several years—to the tune of about $40 million a year.

Ont. Pledges $245-million ahead of next phase of full-day kindergarten
By Kate Hammer, Globe and Mail
With kindergarteners set to pass a full day in the classroom, schools are going to need a little more room, and the Ontario government will be pumping millions of dollars into school additions and renovations to make sure they get it.  Over two years, $245-million will be distributed to school boards across the province in preparation for the next rollout phases of full-day kindergarten. This is beyond the McGuinty government’s initial commitment of $200-million for the first year, and $300-million for the second year of the rollout, and as part of a cost-cutting provincial budget that included a public-sector wage freeze.

First Nations University still in crisis despite new government funds
By Elizabeth Church, Globe and Mail
The financial situation at First Nations University is so dire the school is facing the prospect of major layoffs and campus closings in spite of last-minute government funding, internal documents obtained by The Globe and Mail show. The documents, prepared for the board of governors of the troubled Regina school, paint a grim financial picture, estimating that it will require a major cash infusion to keep the country’s only aboriginal-run university operating.

Engineering competition promotes advances in building with wood
By Graeme Wood, Vancouver Sun
The challenge was to design the best wooden structure that would launch a two-pound object at a target -- and students responded with a variety of crossbows, catapults and trebuchets. But the object of Saturday's competition at the University of B.C. was not to see who could toss the object the farthest, but to get people thinking about how to use wood in an applied manner. "It builds awareness of the capabilities of wood when designed and engineered properly," said Mary Tracey, B.C.'s executive director of the Canadian Wood Council, which sponsored the competition as a way of promoting the use of wood in construction and engineering.

Dependence on public purse limits U of A growth
By Elise Stolte, Edmonton Journal
The University of Alberta can't continue to grow, even if the economy improves, without finding much more funding from sources beyond the public purse, university president Indira Samarasekera said in her "state of the union" address on Monday. She countered critics who, in the wake of the most difficult institutional budget negotiations of the decade, question whether the university needs to grow at all.

Chancellor’s pre-hustings STEM largesse steals the Conservatives’ thunder
By Melanie Newman, The Times Higher Education
 Universities in England have welcomed a Budget pledge to fund up to 20,000 additional student places in science and technology subjects next year, but the move has reignited debate about the government's policy of favouring so-called STEM subjects over others. Alistair Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer, pledged £305 million for universities in his Budget speech last week. The sum includes £250 million for the extra places in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, including 5,000 on part-time degrees and 5,000 on foundation courses.

Indian students wield tests for college spots
By Jim Yardley, The New York Times
India has one of the world’s youngest populations, often called its “demographic dividend,” yet as the middle class has steadily grown, so has the cutthroat competition for the limited slots in the country’s system of higher education. High school seniors must pass national board exams to graduate from high school. But those same board exams also serve as the rough equivalent of SATs for students applying to most programs in many universities, especially in the humanities. However, students applying to some universities, especially those with technical programs like engineering, must also take separate entrance exams.

Across the globe, colleges struggle to keep up with employers’ needs
By Aisha Labi, The Chronicle of Higher Education
Equipping graduates with the skills that employers want is one of the central roles of higher education, but how effectively universities around the world are meeting that challenge is a matter of strenuous debate. Several of the sessions here at Going Global, a two-day higher-education conference organized by the British Council, Britain's international organization for educational and cultural relations, were devoted to subjects related to the role of international universities in educating and training the work force of the future.

Engaging Faculty and Staff: An Imperative for Fostering Retention, Advising, and Smart Borrowing (February 2008)

Watson Scott Swail with Rebecca Mullen, Hyniea Gardner, and Jeremy Reed