Prince George has a serious epidemic of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Effects. This shouldn’t come as any suprise to those who work in the educational system. I am a retired teacher who worked in Special Education. No parent wanted to see FAS or FAE on an Individualized Education Plan for their struggling child. So the labels such as ADHD and vague references to socio-economic factors are so much more acceptable.
Our children did well in the public system in PG. Yes, he had to deal with a number of peers who were not in the right class. I think the schools are of good quality and the best thing that can be done to bring academic achievement up in PG is to develop stronger pre-natal programs for young parents.

Please remember the source of the rankings. The author has gone on record to say he wants to completely privatize the education system, and the manner by which the rankings are created reflects that. Do you think that the rankings are done by test averages? If memory serves, I think the scores are only counted for about 50% of the rankings (if I’m wrong, I apologize, but I really don’t want to waste my time looking on the FI site-makes me feel dirty).

But ask anyone who studies statistics about the rankings. They are not the “only objective, reliable tool” available. Want to know how a school is doing? Go visit the school.

Typical teacher…blame the kid. Then ask for a raise

I was once taught (not by a teacher) that a tradesman never blame his tools for poor workmanship, as to blame himself.

Maybe these teachers be held accountable for their work and not blame it on something else. After all they are teachers, so teach.

Teachers used to teach because it was what they wanted to do. They felt they had something to give to the kids and society that not everyone is capable of doing. They made a decent wage and were always held in high regard by a community. Years of complaining about low wages, large classrooms, extracurricular activities has turned the average teacher into a bellyacher in most peoples eyes and makes it very clear that teaching is no longer a calling, but rather a job to be attained for it’s security, pensions and perks. I have known younger people who were just starting out in university for a teaching degree, and thier reasons weren’t because they felt they had a calling, but rather they didn’t know too many jobs that gave them the option to have fulltime employment for 9 months and get paid for 12.

The Fraser Institute is a freaking gov’t funded joke!

Teacher bashing! WOW! you’re all very sad people.

Yes, lets not bash teachers who allow students to graduate who can’t ever do basic math or read at a grade 8 level. They certainly do thier jobs to the best of thier ability. I tend to think this report is probably very accurate based on the majority of graduates I have met over the years. Coincidently, the ones who I do know that went through a private system after being home schooled up until high school, have all gone onto university and have almost completed thier degrees. Those I know that went through PGSS are working as servers for 9 bucks an hour. Proof is in the pudding as far as I am concerned.

I gradiated frum Kelly raod shcool an have lernt everything by teechers

Teacher bashing huh? well stupid is as stupid does. If teachers don`t want to get bashed they should start by doing a better job.As far as I`m concerned some of our teachers are making way too much for the job they do.I`v seen the pay scale for teachers in BC and for what we are paying them the bar should be set a lot higher than what we are getting, in fact I think some of our so called educators wouldn`t even qualify as a food server…maybe a drive through at Mac D`s..

And if we are paying teacher for 12 months a year they should be working 12 months a year…I don`t get summers off and if I do I don`t get paid for it…

To all you teachers bashers, you have just as much credibility as the fraser institute, none, nada, zip.

Here is a question for ya, what is the difference between a private school and a public school? Parental support and how many special needs students are in private schools? Lets see a comparison of pupils in a public school and a private school?
Hey fraser institute and teacher bashers, why don’t you do a comparison like that? Do a comparison between Ron Brent and Cedars for example.

Here is a thought, I bet all you teacher bashers were star pupils, right?

I think culturevulture is on the right track. I do volunteer work that brings me in contact with FAS teens, and they are a handful to deal with. It’s like they have no conscience. We have a larger percentage first nations population – who thanks to colonialization have a history of alcohol abuse, and consequently producing a higher percentage of FAS children. Kerrisdale doesn’t have that issue – and neither do private schools – which is one reason why private schools are growing – because parents want an option to keep their kids from the FAS kids. This is horribly politically incorrect, but when I went to school – the “special kids” were segregated from the “regular kids” and it seemed to make life easier on the teachers. Maybe we have to look at using highly specialized teachers for FAS kids, with lower teacher to student ratios, and regular kids with higher ratios and forget this idea of everyone is the same.

It`s never the teacher`s fault is what you are saying ski50?

Vulgarsage.. yes they have the option of being paid throught the year..but all that did was average their 10 month salary over 12 months instead.. So they didnt make more money, just have it so they are paid all year. It actually is cheaper for the government to do this as they have that extra cash making interest for a few extra months a year.

Dragon, the government dosen’t fund the fraser institute. The idea of using consistant data to compare schools is very relevant. I recall that the Fraser people even asked the Teachers union what they would like included to make their data relevant to them. They got no reply. Why? The bctf does not want to be accountable. Data showing weaker schools to them is irrelevant. To the rest of the planet, its very usefull.

Vulgur and But,

Teachers are not paid for 12 months, they are paid for 10 and have the OPTION of taking less per pay period and having their checks year round. Kinda like banking overtime, get your facts straight.

I haveto agree with ski50. There are many social problems that are dumped onto our schools and the teachers have to worh with.

FSA is not sonmething that a teacher should have to deal with. It is a failure of our social network that is none existant.

Our natives , the poor are ignored by our governments. And unless we start to provide social support to the unfortunate our schools will suffer.

Just imagine what our schools would look like if we took the advice of the Fraser Institute and our schools were build for profit.
Cheers

If the choice is to get less money per month over 12 months as opposed to more money per month over 10 months. Why wouldnt they take more money for 10 months and go on EI for 2 months in the summer? The only reason I can see is they don’t qualify because they are paid on a yearly contract.

Don’t muddle the issues with wage averaging blah blah. They are paid to do a job. Period. Its salary not hourly so the hourly people will never understand. The average salary is $80K per year. If they can do that job in ten months great. I know a lot of salespeople that work 60 hour weeks all year long to increase their pay. You cannot work it out hourly. I’m not a fan of the BCTF at all but I hate it when people confuse salary with hourly and start doing the math backwards

I think we need to stay on topic here…..
This thread is about the poor rankings PG schools have in the Fraser Institutes report. I disagree with an earlier comment that there is a political agenda in the report.
FAS is a real problem in schools. There are 2 main elements of the cognition of an FAS child:
1)The IQ is skewed 20% lower. This makes a real problem for MOST FAS children. I have had the opportunity of working with FAS kids with high IQs. This is very unusual. If you take a person with a normal IQ (100) and stun them down to 80, the regular curriculum of a school is irrelevant. There is no ability to understand the workings of the quadratic formula. Instead, a more appropriate curriculum for such a person is how to make change for a dollar. While the parents are considering what medical school the kid will be going to, they need to face up to the fact that the only way this kid will see the inside of a medical school is as a dissection cadaver.
2) Lower impulse control. This is a bigger problem than the skewed IQ distribution. It isn’t uncommon for such children to have inappropriate outbursts in the classroom. I guess if the parents themselves are FAS, they probably don’t see the problem in their child.
Anyhow… as I stated in my previous posting… I am a retired teacher. I did my time in the classroom and then some. For what its worth…
-It took me 2 weeks in July to come down from the intense life I’d been living for the previous 10 months.
-The average worker puts in 2000 hours a year. If a teacher stopped at 2000 hours, they would be done in 9 months.

But.. the reason is they would have to pay back all the EI they would make over the summer so not worth it.

the Fraser institute does not recommend for profit education in the k-12 setting. This is a union myth to justify ignoring any of their findings. What is the BCTF so afraid of?

You’re right dow they’re not gov’t funded. At least not directly. 31 % of Fraser Institute’s revenue come from corporations and 57 % from “business-oriented charitable foundations”.

Good points culturevulture – that’s exactly what I’m seeing on the ski hill – but I’m glad to see them out there having fun and getting good and tired. You know, maybe the next time their’s a big disaster elsewhere in the world, instead of us trucking money over to help out some corrupt government, maybe we should just keep it here and pay for some quality people to help Canadian kids who through no fault of their own are mentally challenged. Seems the current strategy is to transition them through the school system ASAP and right into the new jails we’re building. What a waste of human life. The same policy in the third world is known as genocide.

Oh, and yes tractor – sometimes it’s the teacher’s fault – but more often than not, it’s what we give them to work with that’s to blame.

My point is that the ranking system itself is very poorly done. But as for the other comments…

The debate about “Do teachers get paid over 12 months?” Who cares? I work very hard, and I work long hours. I probably work as many hours as anyone else, but in a shorter time frame. I know full well that many people work long, hard hours, and I don’t believe I have the right to say they don’t deserve their wages. I pay the going rate for quality work, and the tradespeople I have hired to help me get paid for doing quality work. The deserve it. As for the quality of work I do, I am proud of the results my students achieve in the classroom setting and on provincial exams. As well, in international testing, BC students rank near the top of the world rankings.

Does Peter Cowley, the Fraser Institute’s expert on education, want a private system rather than a publicly funded system? Dow7500 says no. See http://www.torontosun.com/2011/09/22/value-of-public-education-debated

Which brings me back to the original point. The rankings system of the Fraser Institute is very poorly designed. If you don’t believe me (and why should you-you don’t know me), check with people who study statistics. They feel that system used by the FI is a joke.

Finally, the rankings aside, I know that we teachers still have work to do to help our students. We are not perfect. But, despite the negative press we tend to get, we are always trying to do more.

The FI anual rankings are not terribly useful unless someone wants to make the point that parents with wealth tend to favour the acqusition of education. We have rankings – big deal. After all, if schools in West Van and Point Grey come out better than schools in the VLA, are you going to pluck your earnest little learner out of the ‘Hood and move to South Granville? Not bloody likely, so what’s the point of ranking schools?
Simplistic, I know, but there you have it.

Nothing new here, PG schools always score low.

If it was all about wealth, why doesn’t Southridge score higher provincially? You can’t tell me that Southridge is in the 361st weathiest subdivision in BC.

If the teachers don’t like FSA tests or the Fraser Institute ranking methodology, why don’t they propose a better one? Probably because no matter what system you choose, someone is going to finish last.

I’ll bet if PG schools scored higher, the local teachers and school board officials would be trumpeting the results from the rooftops. Maybe instead of dismissing the results every year, we try to see what the successful schools are doing and move up the list? Nah, it’s easier just to dismiss the findings. Carry on.

I believe that the teachers should be ranked and paid accordingly.

Again, just check the FI’d methodology. That’s the issue. I have no problems being accountable for the work I do, but FI’s ranking system is not about accountability. It’s based on ideology, not anything even remotely resembling science. If you want to know about the local schools, visit them.

Ah yes, teacher bashing. One of BC’s greatest sports. I’ll throw this into the mix.

http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/no-dentist.html

Flash…Math is not an ideology. Where your school scored, relative to your Provincial peers is not an Ideology. How you interpret the data can be ideological, but the BCTF wants to hide the math, always has. I guess you could call them statistical deniers.

Dow7500-if you want to rank me, no problems. Again, I have no problems with being accountable for the job I do. But do so using reliable and acceptable methods. No one who studies statistics agrees with the validity of the FI rankings. Absolutely no one. What if I chose to rank you against your fellow workers according to your height? Does that make any sense at all? The FI rankings are done just as poorly. Again, if you don’t believe me, check with a who studies statistics.

They are not allowed to go on EI becuase they are not laid offf. They have continuing contracts. They don’t average $80K a year, that is the top out if you have a masters. Anyone with a Masters Degree deserves AT LEAST $80K a year. Also remember they don’t get overtime so they are paid what they are paid thats it thats all. Their pension is funded by themselves (they are forced to have a deduction from their pay for it).

I don’t know who said it higher up, but, someone was talking about better scores for home schooled kids, yep, they get significantly more one on one time. One of the big issues teachers are fighting for is smaller class sizes. Teachers also don’t set the learning outcomes, they teach what the ministry tells them to teach.

Having said that, my hat is off to any and all teachers, no way in hell I would put up with what they do for the wage they get and on top of that have everyone with a “perfect” child tell them they aren’t doing enough.

Flash, I have taken way more than my share of statistic courses . There is nothing wrong with there methodology. FI uses many metrics. The statistical issue is are they the same for everyone. If you rank me on my height against everyone of my peers height and find out I am below the average, then I am stitistically below average. Nothing more or less. Dosen’t mean Im stupid, or had a rough life. How this data is interpreted is the big issue. When a area consistantly scores below the average based on the same criteria, it would lead an open mind to investigate. FI does not say PG teachers are slackers or the students are dumb. The ideological skew is clearly the BCTF not FI.