POSTED RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIOAL IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
The Board should be required to post on an Internet site detailed stats of performance in each school for which it is responsible.
This is something we are slowly approaching in parts of medical care, but it is an essential tool for the future of all publicly supported institutions. The people being served and paying the bills have a right to know.
We do not need a study to tell us our public schools are a mess. There is all kind of evidence, easily discovered.
The basic problem is a system in which no one is responsible for anything. Literally no one.
Once a teacher is hired, no one ever examines his/her work.
And the principals of our schools are just teachers, in many cases people tired of teaching.
And the Board Superintendents are generally, too, just old teachers.
Teacher education is almost a joke: the details of classes at our teachers' colleges would not stand public scrutiny. It is that intellectually poor.
Students today are subjected to a ridiculously complicated curriculum while important skills are ignored. The schools are full of kids in grade five who do not know their times tables. And we have kids in grade eight who cannot read. School libraries are, many of them, a mess and outdated.
We have ongoing frauds like the “literacy test,” something with which I am quite familiar having served as the “home-stay” for a very bright Chinese student now studying a branch of applied mathematics at University College.
That test tests nothing, and those failing it only have to attend a bird course with a bored teacher next term to get a pass. The teachers write and mark the silly thing, and may easily make results rise, giving an empty blowhard like McGuinty something to talk about in speeches.
We seriously need new blood and new ways of doing things if our schools are to improve.
