Blog Posts

By Angela Gillis and Molly Hurd

Published Jan.10 2023 in the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Education magazine Our Schools/Our Selves

December 29, 2022 is the 5th anniversary of Dr. Glaze’s report, “Raise the Bar” which dramatically overhauled the governance of Nova Scotia’s education system. The “Education Reform Act” (Bill 72) became law just over two months later in early 2018 and effectively dissolved all the province’s English language school boards. It also removed principals from the Nova Scotia Teachers Union (NSTU). 

Canada has been described as a superpower in public education on the international stage. It has achieved good results on international comparison studies as well as high levels of equity in academic performance. One of the contributors to these results is the generally constructivist attitude towards education – teaching students to think and problem-solve rather than merely absorb knowledge.   

Education is a provincial responsibility and most provinces have public education goals that use language encouraging democracy, fairness, equity, and citizenship. (Nova Scotia’s public education system “aims to develop well-rounded, independent, critical thinkers who take initiative and responsibility for their learning.”)  In the early days of public education in Canada, “success” meant mastery of the 3 R’s, but as society has become more diverse and complex, the definition of success has expanded to include the 21^st Century competencies of critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration, among others.

As this evolution in education was happening, forces have been trying to counter it – initially through  the “back to basics” movement which emphasized knowledge and skills that can be easily measured on standardized tests. This corresponds with the increasing marketization of education – the idea that education is a business which can be better handled by the private sector. This dual challenge to progressive education has gained steam recently in the United States, where publicly-funded charter and private schools flourish and “culture wars” are seriously threatening public education.  

These “culture wars” are pitting those who believe in democracy, inclusion, and equity against those who claim that schools are indoctrinating children in socialism, openly questioning the premise of equity and inclusion. Disinformation, conspiracy theories and religious fundamentalism are fueling the self-described “anti-woke” lobby. Proponents use inflammatory language such as “pedophilia” and “grooming” to describe curricula and books which educate children about sexuality and gender issues or make disparaging accusations about “critical race theory” to describe teaching about racial issues and history. In the U.S., so-called anti-woke forces have succeeded in getting anti-trans laws passed, in suppressing the instruction of race, history, and 2SLGBTQAI+ issues, and in banning certain books in schools or libraries. “Parental choice” and “parents’ rights” have become code for the increasing privatization of what was conceived of as a public good.

Here in Canada, recent school board elections in Ontario and BC – among others – have seen scores of “anti-woke” candidates openly expressing anti-2SLGBTQIA+ and racist views, some receiving training  from  the well-funded American right-wing think tank, the Leadership Institute . Fortunately, only a small percentage of these individuals were elected, so their influence through school boards – so far – is minimal. 

However, the disturbing issue is that we are no longer merely emulating anti-democratic trends from the U.S.; there is now an organized, concerted effort to train people to infiltrate boards, lobby, propagandize and, eventually, change legislation Left unconfronted and unchecked, this could ultimately result in a population that will be less prepared for the challenges of our increasingly complex world. 

Given these threats to democratic education, how is Nova Scotia positioned – and what steps are being taken – for it to hold on to its aims of developing “ well-rounded, independent, critical thinkers”? 

Unfortunately, we are not optimistic. Since the elimination of English language school boards in Nova Scotia, communication with the “Regional Centres for Education” (RCEs – their unelected replacement) has become a one-way street with communities having no formal channels to express concerns or advocate on issues important to them. The removal of that  mechanism for democratic engagement and feedback has made  it easier for a government to impose top-down curricula and directives.  Another major repercussion is the loss of voices from the African Nova Scotian and Mi’kmaq communities, as identified by Adam Davies, a former school board member. Under the old system, each board had dedicated seats for a member from each group, voted on by self-identified members of that population. This was incredibly important when considering educational initiatives on Indigenous issues or anti-racist education – all important for teaching the critical thinking so essential for citizenship. 

There are already indications of where Nova Scotia is potentially headed, with regard to undermining many of the progressive gains of the past decades. One only has to look at the Alberta UCP government’s attempt at curriculum rewriting, to correct a “schooling system where many students have been hard-wired with collectivist ideas,” according to then-Premier Jason Kenney. School trustees in Alberta were at the forefront of opposition to the government’s anti-collectivist curriculum revamp; without trustees,  Nova Scotia will be in a much weaker position to counter such attempts. 

Along with removing school boards, denying principals the protection of a union, may eliminate another obstacle to education reforms in line with neoliberal goals. Prior to Bill 72, principals acted as curriculum leaders, whose main role was to support the teachers;  being in the union was an important part of this purpose. The Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union (NSTU) was established in1895 to,  “…exert an influence in gaining better salary and aid teachers in securing better results in their school work.” The protective nature of a union allowed both teachers and principals to contribute to reforming education in the best interests of the students without fear of retribution. When Bill 72 removed administrators from NSTU, and created  the Public School Administrators Association of Nova Scotia (PSAANS), its members were not able to organise their own union or take labour action. They remain affiliated with, but are not members of, the NSTU. The affiliation, reaffirmed by a vote in 2022, allows them to leave administration and return to the classroom and the union.

Without union support, administrators may feel vulnerable when challenging situations arise, such as being directed to impose new programs that may have been developed with minimal teacher consultation. Further, their position has been refocused, moving away from curriculum leadership and towards management.  .  Finally, with many administrators choosing to return to teaching roles or retiring, recruitment is becoming an issue. Experienced teachers are often not interested in leaving the protection of the NSTU or in being managers, so in order to attract candidates RCEs are dropping some of the requirements. This means at least some aspiring administrators will have far less experience and, potentially, education than the teachers they will be leading. Will they be well-positioned to push back against government decisions that may not be pedagogically sound?

Before Bill 72, back in 2017 the then-Liberal government had, through Bill 75, imposed a contract on teachers which removed negotiated benefits. Though the NSTU successfully challenged this in the courts, to date, no reparations have been made. BIll 75 was a galvanising event for teachers, who, with parents, protested and were at least partially responsible for the much reduced majority the Liberals were given in the election shortly after. 

Unfortunately, the combined impact of these two bills has contributed to the demoralisation of educators who  saw their autonomy undermined and their working conditions worsened (documented in Teachers’ Voices: An Independent Survey of Nova Scotia’s Teachers ).  This demoralization was no doubt exacerbated by the province’s sudden and unilateral decision to  legislate school psychologists, speech pathologists, and other specialists out of the NSTU (reinstated  as a result of another court challenge).  In addition, some NSTU work is being done by other employees : counselling, substitute teaching, and hallway monitoring are positions that are now sometimes filled by non-teachers. 

The Liberals were voted out in the 2021 election, perhaps partially because of promises made by the incoming Progressive Conservatives to  revisit educational governance, and reinstate school boards. However, to date, they have shown no sign of doing so. In fact, it appears that the trajectory of introducing more programs that further the marketization of education will continue. 

For teachers to exercise their professionalism, and provide students with the critical thinking and media literacy skills that they need right across the curriculum, they need to be supported and respected. Many Nova Scotian teachers have been looking to the U.S. teachers’ unions which have become more militant recently after years of being marginalized and underpaid. Local grassroots organization, Educators for Social Justice-Nova Scotia (ESJ-NS), is promoting union learning opportunities such as Jane McAlevey’s Organizing for Power to increase engagement and awareness of benefits of unionism. Strong education unions, teacher awareness of union protection and advocacy, an educated electorate and  strong, transparent, functioning elected school boards are essential for democracy to survive.   

With the contradictory- named, anti-democratic “Keeping Students in Class” Act, Ontario is facing a showdown with workers that will be watched with interest by everyone in the country, especially in Nova Scotia where many education workers are currently striking. When our democracy is threatened by the very people we elected it is time for the people and their unions to mobilize!

Angela teaches elementary school and has been a member of the Nova Scotia Teachers Union for 25 years. She has Master of Education degrees in Curriculum and Instruction as well as Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. In her spare time, she is trying to regain elements of her culture, virtually lost through generations of English immersion, by studying Cape Breton Step Dance and Gàidhlig.

Molly has had a wide variety of teaching experiences in northern Quebec, rural Nova Scotia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Britain. She was teacher and Headteacher at Halifax Independent School for 20 years and is the author of  “Best School in the World: How students, teachers and parents have created a model that can transform Canada’s public schools”.

Angela and Molly are both longstanding members of Educators for Social Justice – NS.

References

Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union (2001). Landmarks and Challenges: A short history of the NSTU. Halifax. https://nstu.blob.core.windows.net/nstuwebsite/images/Documents/Full_History.pdf

Canadian Association of Principals and the Alberta Teachers Association (2014). The Future of the Principalship in Canada: A national research study. Alberta. https://legacy.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/Publications/Research/The%20Future%20of%20the%20Principalship%20in%20Canada.pdf 

Educators for Social Justice. 2019. Teachers’ Voices: An Independent Survey of Nova Scotia’s Teachers. Halifax.  

Click to access final-version-teachers-voices8_2_19-2.pdf

Commentary in the Chronicle Herald, Saturday December 17 2022

Following a recent spate of letters and op-eds (Andrew Rankin, Nov. 22 et al) regarding the “failure” of Nova Scotia schools to teach all our children to read, I would like to add another perspective to what are now called the “Reading Wars” in education circles.  These new reading wars pit proponents of the “Science of Reading” (whole class systematic phonics instruction in early elementary) against the current “Balanced Approach” to literacy.

As an elementary teacher and researcher of over 30 years, I have taught many children to read, using many different methodologies, and a couple of things have stood out to me. One is that all children learn and develop differently and at different rates. Some children learn to read seemingly effortlessly before they even reach school, others learn in Grade 1 (where the curriculum dictates all should learn) and some need more targeted attention and learn to read in grade 2 and later. A small percentage of children don’t respond well to whole class instruction and will struggle with reading in early elementary, and some of these will fall through the cracks and be labeled dyslexic. 

The second thing that stands out is that after researching for years, I have never found an academic study that has definitively proved that early reading leads to better academic outcomes in high school and beyond. In fact, my observation is that there is no correlation at all – some early readers become bored with school and give up on it; other children who learn to read at 7 or 8 become academic superstars.

I have, however, read lots of research about the value of play in the early years, including in elementary school. Dramatic play, unstructured play and sensory play all have been shown to improve children’s creativity, communication skills, literacy, physical health, and cognitive and socio-emotional development – all important foundations for reading. In fact, prominent educational thinker Pasi Sahlberg and his co-author Bill Doyle, have written a book entitled “Let the Children Play: Why more play will save our schools and help children thrive”.

The “failure” of schools to teach all our children to read is not the fault of a particular methodology, but is instead a failure of our schools to provide the type of solid early basis for literacy (I would recommend 2 or 3 years of literacy-rich play-based learning} as well as a failure to provide the type of individualized reading help in later elementary to those children who need it (not just in Grade 1). At ages 6 and 7, when most children are developmentally ready to tackle the code that is written English, give them interesting books to read and exciting activities to write about as well as the phonetic knowledge to do those things. Most children will begin reading fluently and joyously in those years. For those that don’t, many just need more time, and a smaller subset will need small group or individual focus on phonemic awareness.

The Science of Reading lobby proposes whole class systematic phonics teaching in Primary and early elementary to make sure that those children who may be later diagnosed with dyslexia get the “early interventions” they will need. The problem with this approach is that the vast majority who are NOT dyslexic (95-98% of children), who are taught phonics intensely in Primary, may become bored with or worse, anxious, about reading, as well as being deprived of an opportunity for literacy-rich play. The UK, where systematic phonics has been taught at ever earlier ages for several decades now, has not substantially improved reading scores on national and international tests, and studies are showing a drop in numbers of children reading for pleasure.

Rather than thrusting a whole different approach to teaching reading on already overburdened teachers, let’s first deal with the underlying failures mentioned above. One way that could help would be to reorganize early elementary into multi-age groups, thus lessening the pressure on teachers (and children) to achieve grade level outcomes. Reading Recovery programs have not been completely successful because they are aimed at 6-year-olds, under the assumption that all children are ready to learn by then. If children are not ready, the program is wasted on them, even though a year later they may be ready to take in what it has to offer.

What if we thought of early elementary as a 5 or 6-year block?  Children would spend 2-3 years in the “pre-literacy” class – a mixed group of no more than 20 4 and 5-year-olds. Ideally, they would spend that 2-3 years with the same teacher and group of children, and the program would consist of enriched play-based literacy activities. When they are deemed ready, they would move on to the next stage, “Focus on Literacy”, where literacy is introduced formally (keeping in mind that a certain percentage of children will have already learned to read, either on their own, at school or at home). Again these classes should be no more than 20 children, and ideally they should stay with the same teacher for 2-3 years. The flexibility allowed here would eliminate many of the problems associated with “social promotion” and would address the cultural/socio-economic gap in later educational outcomes caused by lack of exposure to standard English or traumatic early experiences. As well many children start school at the age of 3 ½ and may benefit from an extra year of play just because they are so young. Teachers get to know the children well, and with smaller classes can make sure that each child gets what they need when they need it. 

When children are reading independently and are mature enough, they can move on to upper elementary, where they continue to build on their literacy skills and deepen their understanding of the English language and a whole world of knowledge that will unfold for them.

I am happy to learn from the developments in neurological research that are informing the “Science of Reading” and feel that used in a targeted way, it can be very helpful. But I know that phonics is only one skill in the vast array of skills necessary for good readers. Most children will learn to read when they are given the time and teaching that is developmentally appropriate, individualized and allows them to experience the joy of good literature. It seems self-evident that children who read a lot and read well will do better academically – but they have to want to read. Forcing them when they are not ready is a sure-fire way of discouraging them.

A few weeks ago, just after in-person learning resumed in Nova Scotia schools, this column appeared in the Halifax Chronicle Herald. It was written by Paul Bennett, and demonstrated such a complete lack of knowledge and empathy for what actually goes on in public schools that two members of Educators for Social Justice – NS independently wrote letters refuting it – Ben Sichel and I. They were both published on the same day (February 9, 2022) and I am reproducing them here for those that do not subscribe to the CH. Immediately below is the link to the original column:

https://www.saltwire.com/nova-scotia/opinion/paul-bennett-covid-hype-breeds-hypervigilance-on-school-cases-in-nova-scotia-100684723/

My letter: Teachers, Parents not irrational

Paul Bennett’s op-ed “COVID hype breeds school hypervigilance” Saturday January 29 2022. characterizes a large proportion of teachers and about 57% of parents of young children as being “excessively anxious” and suffering from “cave syndrome” with “psychological fears, real and imagined”. Really? Are the majority of Nova Scotia parents and teachers actually irrational? After 2 years of a pandemic, and 6 weeks of omicron, many classrooms still do not have adequate ventilation, social distancing is a joke, the 3-ply masks promised turn out to be inadequate, contact tracing which parents relied on has been discontinued, classes are still too big – and all this in spite of a mostly unspent $40 million in federal government funds designated to make schools safe for in-person learning. Bennett doesn’t mention the fact that only about half of the children under 12 had received one dose of vaccine by Jan. 17 when in-person learning resumed, and none had received two. No 4 year-olds were vaccinated at all, and many teachers had not received their booster shots. All of these are real safety fears, and to treat them as imagined is belittling and arrogant.

Teachers taught successfully online for the week of Jan. 10-15. The issue is how long that should have continued. Just about everyone, teachers, parents, students and pediatricians, agrees that in-person learning is best for students – not just for mental health, but for actual learning. So when teachers and parents of the not-yet fully vaccinated under 12 children express reservations about going back to in-person learning so soon, especially when the 3 other Atlantic provinces decided to do one or two extra weeks of online learning to get past the peak of omicron, one would have hoped that the government might listen. Teachers warned about high rates of sickness and absences among staff that would impact the quality of the in-person learning, and the strain on those left to carry the burden. Parents worried about their children bringing omicron home to vulnerable family members. These worries were not irrational – all of these things have happened, and we are not finished with omicron yet.

Bennett claims that the parent Facebook group Nova Scotia Parents for Public Education, built its membership by “creating an early-warning system for school-level exposures”. This group has existed since the teachers’ labour dispute with the government 4 years ago when it was created to support the teachers. At its peak it had almost 40,000 members. Its case reporting tool relies on anonymous reporting by parents whose children tested positive, with the name of the school involved. To date it has recorded 780 cases (most likely there are many more) and has served its purpose of filling the gap left by the government, giving parents information that lets them make informed decisions about their children attending school. 

Educators and many parents had rational reasons for suggesting delaying the return to in-person schooling by one or two weeks. Their legitimate safety fears were ignored, and even the modest request by teachers that they be prioritized for booster shots, as other frontline workers were, was denied. No wonder they feel disrespected and demoralized, a situation left over from the previous government’s lockouts and forced contract. And for what? 2 weeks of what has been a chaotic, dangerous return to in-person school. 

Ben Sichel’s letter: Armchair Edu-critic insulated from COVID

Yesterday I spoke to an elementary school teacher who contracted COVID-19 from her class. The infection happened months ago, but the teacher is still off work due to long-term health complications. 

Earlier that morning I had read Paul Bennett’s latest column, in which he calls concerns about COVID in schools a “moral panic.” 

The so-called polarized debate about keeping schools open during Omicron is, like many such debates, over-simplified. On one side, the story goes, are those concerned about the virus spreading in schools; on the other are those who insist we need to “learn to live” with it. 

Reality is of course more nuanced. Nearly everyone wants schools to open. Many of us who spend our days in them, however, have been sorely disappointed by the lack of imagination (and more importantly, investment) in keeping students and staff truly safe — physically, mentally and emotionally. 

Even those who voice concern about schools opening would likely feel better if governments implemented any of the many reasonable precautions suggested throughout the past two years to make schools as safe as possible. During the current wave staff and students have not been provided with N95 masks; school staff were not prioritized for boosters; school reopenings were not delayed to allow children to get second doses of vaccines. Structural changes such as sending older students to school every second day in order to reduce contacts were never considered. There has never been any plan for equity for immunocompromised students and staff, for whom it is simply too dangerous to attend school in person. 

The province has still not legislated adequate paid sick days, which would allow parents to stay home with sick children rather than send them to school. Overcrowded classes, which made for poor learning conditions before the pandemic, make social distancing impossible.

Of course, none of these issues has ever registered for commentators like Mr. Bennett, who hasn’t worked in a classroom in decades and writes from the comfort of his home office. “Learning to live with COVID” means something different when you’re the one being told to put yourself at potential long-term risk. 

Our society has the means for us to take care of each other. We should make sure we do whatever we can to keep kids, school staff and other essential workers safe — and that’s a long way from what we’re doing. 

My last blog post was written on the eve of the August provincial election where I was extolling the virtues of minority governments and the progressive change that collaboration can bring about. When the “Progressive” Conservatives squeaked out a tiny majority in NS, mostly on the basis of their platform of “fixing” healthcare, initially things looked a bit promising. The new government seemed to be continuing the previous government’s cautious approach to COVID, and there were even some positive initiatives (Owl’s Head, new training initiatives for nurses and long-term care workers). I even heard people suggesting that these Conservatives were more progressive than the Liberals!

Then we learned that Premier Tim Houston believes that there is no housing crisis – just increasing the housing supply will increase housing affordability (eventually perhaps – it hasn’t worked very well over the past 20 years). Now comes the Omicron variant. When cases exploded before Christmas, the government took the sensible step and closed school a few days before the holidays when they realized it was spreading in schools (all the while declaring that “COVID doesn’t spread in schools”). At the end of December, daily case counts were in the thousands and overloading the province’s testing capacity, so PCR tests were severely restricted (thus rendering daily case counts vastly underreported) and the government decided to delay the return to school for students for a week. By the end of that week, cases were through the roof, hospitalizations were starting to rise, and the government wisely declared the next week an “on-line learning week”. 

Nova Scotia had the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of other provinces who went back to in-person learning on January 10 – just reading the headlines should have been enough warning. Both Saskatchewan and Alberta experienced high rates of teacher absences, and had to scramble to cover classes – what is the educational (and safety) value of in-person learning when it means combining classes or having unqualified people teaching? On Thursday Jan. 13, all the other Atlantic provinces announced delaying their return to in-person classes until at least Jan 24 or 31  to safeguard  the teachers and students. 

Unfortunately, Nova Scotia did not follow suit. In the middle of the biggest outbreak of COVID we’ve seen so far in this 3^rd year of the pandemic the government decided to open schools for in-person learning on Jan. 17. Although teachers (and their union) agree that in-person learning is important for mental health (and many other reasons) many teachers and students  have not been able to be fully vaccinated yet.  An extra week or two of online learning would allow more to be fully vaccinated, and perhaps flatten the curve of hospitalizations and deaths.  The messaging from the government has  claimed upgraded ventilation, 3 ply masks for all students, and cohorting  were in place, which often turned out not to be true. However, the coup de grace was the government’s decision to stop contact tracing in schools, while telling educators they are not at liberty to tell parents when there has been a confirmed case in their class. Parents are not to be told if a child has been exposed at school and thus have no way of protecting the rest of their families.

So, school went back on Monday this week. Many parents were very conflicted about sending their children back (about 56% according to an unofficial poll taken by the Facebook group Nova Scotia Parents for Public Education). Teachers were and are scared – some that I talked to had tears in their eyes as they described the probable outcome – colleagues “going down”, children getting very sick, vulnerable family members dying. Unspoken was the fear that a child could die as a result (and this week’s news reported an otherwise healthy child in Calgary dying of COVID).  Some teachers cited safety conditions (lack of ventilation or crowded classrooms) in refusing to work – and were reassigned to other duties or other schools. A few teachers are protesting the lack of contact tracing in front of their MLA’s office after school. 

Meanwhile, the Nova Scotia Parents for Public Education has reactivated their “cases in schools” reporting tool, which by this morning reported 192 cases, mostly in HRM, a number that is vastly underrepresenting the true number of cases as it relies on self-reporting of members of the group. Official reported daily cases are hovering around the 500-700 mark in the province (because of the lack of PCR testing, the real number could be as much as 5 times higher), hospitalizations are rising and there have been 3 deaths a day for the past couple of days. It’s still too early to tell where this will lead, but I am fearful we will see another spike.

But one thing is clear – there has been nothing this new government has done to send a message to teachers that they will be respected or listened to anymore than the last government. Remember the Glaze Report, Bill 75 and the lockout of teachers? See  https://progressiveeducationnovascotia.com/2018/02/  The “Progressive” Conservatives had the opportunity to prioritize teachers for booster shots back at the beginning of the Omicron surge and they didn’t. They could have shortened the waiting time between doses for kids aged 5-11 (as other provinces did) so they could get their two doses by the start of in-person learning, and they didn’t. They’ve had 6 months to use some of the $40 million in federal funds to make schools safer – installing ventilation in schools that don’t have it, upgrading ventilation in schools that have old systems, giving proper PPE to staff, making smaller classes – and they didn’t. Instead, there were confusing press conferences in which teacher and parent groups were accused of fostering fear and anxiety and spreading misinformation. We were told that there needs to be in-person learning right now because as Houston said, “the brutal reality is that for some kids, school is the place where they are safest…it’s sad but true. It’s the place where they are most warm…and they get food” – implying that child poverty (1 in 4 children in NS) is something that in addition to everything else, it’s teachers’ job to fix (but not his job to do something about in the provincial budget). When they object to unsafe learning conditions, teachers are derelict in their duty to these children.

The bottom line is: educators had legitimate requests and concerns about going back to in-person learning in the middle of the fifth wave, and they were disregarded. This doesn’t bode well for the future. Although I’m hoping that Houston and his colleagues can learn from this, and in future, no matter what the issue is, listen to the people most intimately involved in it (usually the workers) while making their difficult decisions, so far they are not living up to their “Progressive” name. Respect educators (and all other frontline workers), Mr. Houston!

August 16 2021

As I sit here on the eve of one unwanted summertime election, and anticipating the beginnings of another, I am reflecting on some of the rhetoric I keep hearing about the necessity of voting for one or other of the two major parties. The story goes that we have to vote Conservative because they are only ones who have a hope of forming government and stopping the Liberals (and vice versa). And in particular, as I watch the federal Liberals call a totally unnecessary election solely in order to go for a majority so “they can get things done”, I wonder what happened to the “partnership” they had with the NDP and the “deals” they made early in the pandemic  to pass CERB and other pandemic benefits. https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/liberals-secure-covid-19-aid-deal-with-ndp-avoiding-election-1.5120095 . This includes paid sick leave, pushed for by the NDP, which otherwise would not have been part of that bill. The Liberals can’t work with the NDP because they don’t want to, it’s as simple as that. And they think they can ride the coat-tails of the pandemic to a majority.

In NS, our Liberal party has made the same calculation – they are hoping that by listening to public health advice about the pandemic and keeping our COVID numbers down, we will forget about everything that has happened in the previous 7 years of their rule. But it may not work – polls tell us that we may be going into minority territory, and that possibility makes me happy. Just this morning, in an excellent column in our local newspaper, Leo J. Deveau writes about this week in 1927 when “In this year, after considerable pressure from J.S. Woodsworth, Leader of the Labour Party (1921-1932) – and later the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (1932 – 1942), PM Mackenzie King was persuaded to introduce an old age pension plan in exchange for Woodsworth party support of King’s minority government. It was Canada’s  first social welfare legislation – the Old Age Pension Act.” https://www.saltwire.com/halifax/lifestyles/leo-j-deveau-this-week-in-nova-scotia-history-aug-16-to-22-100622568/ . The CCF was the precursor  to the NDP, which later under Tommy Douglas and various minority governments brought us medicare and other social programs. Without minority governments, I might not be anticipating collecting my old age pension in a year or two and we certainly wouldn’t be debating about the best way to fix our public healthcare because we wouldn’t have one. **

Although I’d love to see the NDP form a government, a balance of power (or opposition) situation could also be an excellent thing as the party under Gary Burrill exerts pressure to achieve many of its progressive goals (including tackling climate change, healthcare, affordable housing etc). In previous posts on this blog, I have documented the disasters wreaked on the education system under the ever so slim majority government of the Liberals. Throughout it all, Gary and education critic, Claudia Chender have supported teachers, parents and children. The NDP platform vows to “Work(ing) in partnership with teachers and parents to improve schools, instead of continuously picking fights with stakeholders, as the Liberals have done.” That would be a huge improvement on what we have been living with for the past 8 years. Collaboration is the future.

**Did you know that Nova Scotia’s pension plan was paid for initially by the profits from liquor sales after the ending of prohibition? Neither did I.

The Day After 

On November 2 2016, I woke up in a London hotel room on a dreary day to the TV blaring “President Trump” at the world. I had gone to bed the previous night, before many polls in the States had closed, secure in the knowledge that the world under Hillary would bump along in its usual fashion – a few victories for social and environmental justice, a few setbacks, but overall moving along towards a better world. And then Trump.

The depression that hit me over the next few days, as I plodded around rainy London, was not helped by listening to academics studying economic inequality. Their research was telling them that one consequence of the runaway inequality many countries were experiencing could be fascism. The “most powerful man in the world” was a fascist – how good was that?  But almost immediately, we started to tell ourselves that it might not be so bad – there is a strong American commitment to democracy with so many checks and balances within the system, and Trump might even rise to fill the role with some dignity and learn to govern. But then, with increasing rapidity, Trump began to overturn all those hopes, and worse. The past 4 years have been a nightmare of watching a narcissistic conman bamboozle his supporters and trash everyone else.

At that time, I blamed the American education system for Trump. Decades of whittling away at the public school system under Republicans and Democrats alike, undermining teachers, focusing on exams and “standards” unconnected to real learning, and encouraging school choice (vouchers, Charter Schools) have created an unequal system where most learning is about how to best raise exam marks. The poorest schools have the furthest to go, so they have the least time and capacity to teach critical thinking, a nuanced view of history or real scientific literacy. And forget about the 21^st century skills that have been acknowledged as essential for living in this world – “collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and creativity” (National Education Association). So many Trump voters were incapable of separating truth from fiction, and were taken in. Once they accepted the “fake news” narrative, all else followed. COVID is fake news, experts are fake news etc.

But then, 4 years ago, I was persuaded that many voted for Trump for good reasons – they distrusted Hillary (because she is a woman?), their manufacturing jobs were gone, inequality had left them behind etc. So I waited, thinking that these people would soon have the scales ripped from their eyes – but then last night happened.

And now it’s the day after, 2020. I know it’s not over yet; there’s still hope. But why wasn’t it a landslide for Biden? Why did so many Latinx voters support Trump in Florida? Why did people believe him over Dr. Fauci? How did he manage to equate socialism with the devil? How did outlandish conspiracies, formerly the stuff of the National Enquirer, get to be swallowed by so many?

So I come back to the American education system, which trails most other OECD countries on international education comparisons, including PISA. One of the interesting findings of PISA, which I expand on elsewhere in this blog, is that the best education systems in the world value both excellence and equity – in other words,  it is not enough to have excellent schools (the US has some of the best public and progressive schools in the world), that excellence needs to be shared.  And that is where the US falls down – their public education system has been under attack for decades, and the inequality within it has widened under Trump and Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education. The charter schools, which she promotes, have contributed to this, and have further undermined the public system (while lining the pockets of many). 

Last night, looking at the vote breakdown on the maps of the swing states, it was a perfect illustration of Trump’s strength with rural voters (where schools, I’m guessing, may be a tad less resourced than urban ones). Pennsylvania, where all eyes are fixed today, has vast areas that are all red, and only a few small blue dots – which happen to be the urban areas with the largest population density.

That the divide in the States is not just rural/urban, red/blue etc but reflects the inequality in the education system became clearer to me over the past few days. I watched and listened as the Canadian media, in its quest for balance, interviewed numerous Trump supporters, many of whom are quite articulate. I’m not talking about the career Republicans or the evangelical/corporate types who support him because he is doing their bidding. I’m talking about the regular Josephines…the 18 year old first time voter or the granny who thinks the economy is doing great with Trump. When I hear them repeat some of Trump’s lies and insults – like Biden is a socialist, Obamacare is bad, COVID is overrated, etc and then go on to build their world view based on this, I realize that they are not applying what should be one of the basic 21^st C skills – critical thinking, and  in particular, weighing the relative believability of your sources. We can thank under-resourced inner city and rural public schools who have had to focus on raising test scores to the detriment of teaching 21^st C skills for this.

And if Trump wins, he has promised to protect “America’s Founding Ideals by promoting patriotic education” – whatever that means. Heaven help them. And us.

• 

Educators for Social Justice – NS and Nova Scotia Parents for Public Education

January 2020

Definition of Progressive Public Education: 

We live in a society where socio-economic disparity is increasing. While our province’s prosperity has increased over the last fifty years, and the rich get richer, wages for most people have fallen. Intergenerational socio-economic mobility is decreasing or stagnant. 

Our society has inherited and still experiences the effects of over 400 years of colonialism, slavery, and racial segregation. These factors have contributed to Nova Scotia having one of the highest rates of child poverty in the country, which has become one of the biggest challenges faced by our education system. 

Progressive public education has traditionally been one of the most powerful social programs directed at resisting these trends. Canada has one of the best public education systems in the world, and we believe that we must strengthen it as a program for social justice for every student.

Public education has been under attack recently in Nova Scotia. The notion of teacher professionalism has been a prime target. Not so long ago, teachers with their specialized training, entrusted with the care and development of children, were respected, and fully involved in the setting of the rules and curricula that governed their work. Another aspect of this was the involvement of parents and other citizens through locally-elected school boards. In P-12 education, the assault against teachers’ collective bargaining, the removal of principals and educational specialists from the bargaining unit and the elimination of school boards is part of a not-so-hidden strategy of taking control of education away from citizens and placing it within the hands of the current government and its bureaucrats, many of whom are not educators.

Progressive public education is education that helps every child attain the skills and knowledge they need to be lifelong learners and socially responsible citizens in an ever-changing world.  These include problem solving, critical thinking, communication, ability to collaborate, and empathy. It is predicated on the assumption that every child is unique, and has unique needs and capabilities  – physical, emotional, developmental, social, spiritual, and intellectual. In addition, each child has a cultural, racial, economic, and gender identity, and progressive public education is designed to prepare them to succeed economically and socially, regardless of their background. 

Progressive education requires collaboration and respect on the part of all stakeholders, especially educators, both administrators and teachers. It promotes active engagement in their communities by students as well as collaboration between educators, families, and government services.  

ESJ-NS and NS Parents for Public Education  are working together to promote progressive public education in this province. We have identified several challenges to it: the weakening of community engagement, the impact of austerity, the weakening of the Nova Scotia Teachers Union, and right wing think tanks feeding into a hostile media.

1. Weakening of Community Engagement

Given the importance of community engagement, it is disappointing that the Nova Scotia Liberal government has, in the past six years, weakened or destroyed opportunities for public engagement in the education system, concentrating power in the hands of government officials and diminishing or eliminating the institutions of citizen involvement. 

It has wiped out elected school boards, left the role of School Advisory Councils (SACs) undefined, and changed education policy in an arbitrary and high-handed fashion. It has centralized curriculum development and decision-making in the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, and this has resulted in a lack of local input from the regions. 

We believe the following action items could strengthen community engagement in education:

• Government should restore regional, elected councils or boards which would have decision-making power over some aspects of curriculum and other matters.
• Government should support and augment the role of the School Advisory Councils.
• The education system should strengthen relationships with parents and community, and take steps to support equitable representation within and between SACs. 

2. The Impact of Austerity

Austerity is a political program that aims to reduce the size and impact of government and governmental institutions by cutting revenues (mostly taxes) and subsequently cutting expenditures (mostly social programs), asserting that it can no longer afford to provide those services.

Education is part of the Nova Scotia government’s austerity agenda. This has meant cuts to education, resulting in the inadequate implementation of the inclusion policy, insufficient staff hiring and less funding for professional development. This has led to the triage of kids with special needs, and long wait times for assessment, which has  forced those with the means to pursue private sector solutions while those without means forego attention. It has also meant dwindling supports within the classroom, and larger class sizes. 

With the erosion of public education due to austerity, creeping privatization occurs as parents with means choose private schools, and parents who have children with disabilities get vouchers for private schools. The centralization of power, a byproduct of austerity, also results in more standardized curriculum materials and tests, which tends to favour corporations such as Pearson and Nelson over locally produced materials. 

We believe the following action items will combat the erosion of our public education by austerity measures:

• Government should provide adequate funding for inclusion, more funding for professional development, adequate maintenance funds for school buildings and salaries that keep up with the NS cost of living and the median salary for employees across Canada. 
• Education funding should keep class sizes to manageable levels which allow more opportunities for individual and small group support, and allow for more preparation/collaboration time for teachers.
• Government should invest meaningfully in poverty reduction (raise the minimum wage, increase social assistance, affordable housing initiatives, and other, similar social programmes).
• Citizens should resist privatization where it occurs e.g. private tutoring firms, charter schools, government funding for private schools. 
• Local curriculum development should be supported. 

3. Weakening of the Nova Scotia Teachers Union

This government has attacked the teachers union and eroded collective bargaining. The government has restricted the right to strike, restricted the scope of what can be negotiated, and taken principals, vice-principals, and some specialists (psychologists and speech/language therapists) out of the union, even effectively ignoring a recent arbitrator’s ruling demanding that the specialists be reinstated. The goal has been to divide and conquer, and has made it more difficult for the necessary collaboration among administrators, specialists, and teachers for progressive education to happen. 

It has also rendered those positions outside the union less desirable, with fewer protections in place, and less bargaining power to those in the union.. This will eventually have an impact on the education system’s ability to attract the best people to these positions.

We believe the following action items will resist the wilful damage to collective bargaining rights for teachers:

• Government should return to respectful collective bargaining in which employees’ charter rights and past agreements are respected.  
• Administrators and specialists (above) should be allowed to return to the NSTU.
• Advocate collaboration  in teacher evaluation – not top down evaluation.
• Advocate collaboration  in planning, curriculum development etc., creating an environment in which teachers are free to speak out without fear of repercussions. 
• More focus on teacher-centred evaluation of students i.e. less standardized testing.
• Include class size as a working condition in collective bargaining.
• Citizens should make education an election issue ie taking Individual and collective action – letter writing, political lobbying, becoming a special interest group – as well as lobbying all parties and endorsing one. 
• The NSTU and others with an interest in free and fair collective bargaining should support all unions in their negotiations and campaigns.
• The NSTU and its allies should take a lead role in educating the public about the role of unions and collective action.

4. Right wing think tanks and an often hostile media

Think tanks such as AIMS, the Fraser Institute, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and the CD Howe Institute, many of them funded by rich business people and business foundations, have been producing “research” that supports a neo-liberal agenda – the concept that market forces lead to competition that leads to success. The Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) emerged from  this neo-liberal agenda. The McNeil government has implemented many of the recommendations of these think tanks and the media tends to promote these points of view (including the idea that the education system is failing and it’s the teachers’ fault). Anti-teacher rhetoric is rife in the media, thanks to these organizations.

We believe the following action Items will reduce the influence of right-wing think tanks:

• Citizens and the media should promote evidence-based practices and research produced by more moderate outlets such as the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Ontario’s People for Education, the Broadbent Institute, and internationally recognized experts.
• Media should publish more good news education stories, e.g. a regular education columnist 
• Citizens should counteract negative portrayals of educators and misinformation in the media and from government
• All stakeholders should forward positive messaging about education, e.g. “Teachers are helping to raise your kids,” “Public education needs to be great for everyone, not just the rich”. 

As we see the effects the austerity agenda of the current Liberal government is having on public education in this province, we are also very cognizant of the attacks by newly formed Conservative governments in other provinces. In many cases labour strife has already started, pitting teachers and parents, who are trying to defend the quality public education they enjoy against the so-called austerity measures of their governments. Privatization is already occurring and many of the other trends we’ve identified in this document are already happening. This makes it all the more urgent that those of us who care about progressive public education in Nova Scotia identify the threats to it, and work to combat them.

If the goal of all these Nova Scotia Parents for Public Education (NSPPE) Town Halls is to reach consensus about what schools need, and as Trish Keeping said, take the information, go to the government with it and “make sure that reforms that are done in the future have some foresight”, there is a challenge awaiting us. As we have seen in other provinces, and in our recent history in Nova Scotia, there are organizations, often funded by business interests, that are advocating for a return to a more standardized form of education that most educators thought was in our past. Sometimes these interests are taken up by small groups of vocal citizens who manage to change the agenda – I’m thinking of Ontario where a few years ago a small group of people started advocating for an end to “discovery” math (something that actually has never existed there). The previous Ontario government conceded that perhaps elementary teachers needed more training, and could put more emphasis on learning basic facts (ie multiplication tables) and some changes were made. Then, the new government jumped wholeheartedly on the bandwagon, and now all teachers in Ontario have to pass a math test – even if they are not math teachers. This measure will have no impact on student learning and will just add to the stress teachers already experience. And all of this is based on the mistaken belief that teachers were allowing children to “discover” math concepts on their own with no guidance, were not teaching basic facts, and did not have any knowledge about teaching math. 

It turns out that some of the comments I heard at that first Town Hall about dyslexic children not getting the help they need have turned up since then, over and over again, in letters to the editor, in Facebook groups (Everyone Reads Nova Scotia), and now in a letter writing campaign to the provincial government. I sympathize with the difficulties these parents have experienced, and I believe we all share similar goals – we would like children’s reading difficulties dealt with within the public school system in a timely manner (so that parents do not have to resort to the private system), and we would like to see more equity between communities, so that academic achievement is not dependent on the community/class you belong to. 

But, on investigating some of the concerns suggested in the letter-writing campaign, I have some questions. First, a final report on the Commission of Inclusive Education has come out, and has not yet been adopted by the NS government. It calls for a three-tier model of support where the first tier is universal, whole class instruction, the second tier is targeted small group instruction and the third tier is intensive, individual instruction. I’ve heard calls for it to be adopted (both at the Town Hall, and from various teacher organizations), yet there is no call for adoption of the report in the list of concerns by this campaign other than “Fully funded individual (Tier 3) interventions for students with the greatest and most persistent reading difficulties” . Does this mean that the group does not advocate for the first and second tier interventions?

It seems that this group does believe in the first tier, universal classroom teaching since their first demand is that “explicit, systematic, code-based reading instruction” be part of the Nova Scotia curriculum, and that it form part of the outcomes. I find that the NS curriculum does include outcomes that deal with “word study”, and as a guideline, I find them quite helpful (as grade specific outcomes, I have reservations, but that’s another discussion). My questions: Does the group advocate for this explicit instruction in every grade for all children in the elementary school? What about the children that have already learned to read – do they need it too? What is wrong with the Tier 2 interventions – targeted, small group instruction – for those who because of their different rates of development did not benefit from it the first time?

Another demand is for “appropriate screenings and assessments for students at risk in Grades Primary and Grade 1”.  My questions: How do you know which students in those very early years are at risk? Educational psychologists and reading experts (and my own experience) tell me that the variability among what is considered normal at those ages is huge, so those assessments have limited validity.  Is there a new assessment (MRIs perhaps?) that can predict those students who will have difficulty with reading in the future better than the teachers that teach them?

Another demand is that “Practices not in line with the science of reading, such as three-cueing system and the widespread use of leveled readers in reading instruction should be phased out”. My questions: What is wrong with asking children to predict new words based on semantic (does that make sense?), syntactic (does that sound right?) or graphophonetic (does that look right?) clues? What is wrong with leveled books so that children can pick out books to read that they can read comfortably and feel confident while doing it?

Again, I have no questions about the second part of the demand for “Resources (in the form of a coherent program) and professional development for teachers in Grades Primary – 3 classrooms”. Teachers are generally eager for more professional development to help them do their job better. But I do have some questions about the “resources in the form of a coherent program” – What is this program? How is it better than what teachers already do? How much will it cost? Will it come with a standardized testing component?

I have written elsewhere on this blog about how a one-size-fits-all education system can kill the joy in learning. https://progressiveeducationnovascotia.com/2018/02/22/joy-in-learning-good-for-students-and-teachers/ I have seen at firsthand (in England) what a school system that teaches systematic phonics at ever earlier ages in a rigid outcomes-based, standardized test-heavy curriculum does to children, and incidentally to equity in education. My big question: The NSPPE can be a powerful voice to lobby the government on its tone-deaf approach to education, so how can we reach a consensus on what to advocate for that will benefit all children, but at the same time is based on both evidence and the experience of those that work in the system?

On a stormy Saturday afternoon in April, around 40 or 50 citizens braved nasty weather to attend the first “Town Hall on Public Education” at Mount Saint Vincent University. It was hosted by the Nova Scotia Parents for Public Education (NSPPE)and chaired by Trish Keeping with a panel consisting of Adam Davies, a former Chignecto School Board member, Paul Wozney, President of the NS Teachers Union, and Angela Gillis, union representative and Gr. 5 teacher. Trish kicked things off by reminding the audience of the events in the education world of the last year since the adoption of the Glaze report and the imposition of a contract on the teachers – the abolition of English school boards, the empty promise of School Advisory Committees and the appointed, non-accountable Provincial Advisory Council on Education. Trish laid out the purpose of the town halls, which the group plans to take to communities around the province: to hear from parents about how their children are faring in the public school system and from educators about their teaching conditions. The hope is that the NSPPE will help create a consensus of views about what schools need and use it to inform the government.

Angela said she sees more and more students falling through the cracks, and more frustrated parents. Paul reminded us that “the best education systems have vibrant relationships between stakeholders” and that the failure of the government to negotiate fairly with teachers has threatened one of the most fundamental relationships in the system. Adam talked of the loss of the community voice with the abolition of school boards, with communication now going in only one direction – from the top down. 

Once the floor was opened to the audience, the level of emotion in the room was palpable. Parents choked up while relating stories about children with learning differences waiting inordinate lengths of time for testing and missing out on crucial learning opportunities in the meantime. A gym teacher’s voice cracked as he told how a 20-year old program that helped children with special needs was cancelled without consultation, supposedly because of the cost, (which was largely due to the inordinate expense of renting buses from Stock). A grandparent talked about the dense bureaucracy at HRCE which resulted in a 2-week search to find the right person to talk to about an open window in a school basement. Other parents talked about the centralization of power, where principals have been turned into site managers, responsible for doing the departments’ bidding rather than their former role as leader teachers. We heard about world class literacy and teen mental health programs, developed here in Nova Scotia, that have been overlooked by the DEEC in favour of imported ones. 

But there was one concern which really caught my attention, largely because it was repeated several times, and because it was very compelling – that of parents of “dyslexic” children. Over and over, we heard about children who had had difficulties learning to read which persisted in spite of various levels of “remedial” help throughout their elementary education until the parents were forced to enrol them in some form of private tutoring or in some cases private schools. We heard how parents’ pleas for testing went unheard, how children struggled and wasted precious years of learning before getting minimal help if any, and how there was exciting new science about reading acquisition that recommends that systematic phonics instruction be taught to all children. The parents speaking had obviously had an incredibly difficult time, and my sympathies were aroused.

There are serious issues with education in this province, as this Town Hall, shows – and the frustration on the part of many parents was obvious. But it’s not just parents who are fed up; teachers too, are frustrated with the lack of trust and respect they have been getting from the government, with their workload and with the lack of student support. A follow up to the Educators for Social Justice Teachers’ Voices survey asked 3 quick questions in early April, and the results were immediate and clear. In one week, the survey, which was distributed to teachers on social media, got 578 responses. Over 98% of the respondents did not agree (88% strongly), as the Education Minister stated earlier this year, that teaching conditions had improved since the imposition of a contract in January 2018. 96% of respondents disagreed (78% strongly) that they are seeing “demonstrable impacts” from “the hiring of nearly 200 support staff”.

I am looking forward to another Town Hall on education in the Halifax area, and other ones in rural communities. I’m also looking forward to a government that takes its promises seriously, treats its employees respectfully and is willing to invest in excellence and equity in education.

Next post: Reaching for consensus: Part 2