Fraser Institute Needs an Education
Tuesday, June 07, 2005 03:45 AM
It has been rather silent when it comes to comment on the Fraser Institute's report card on how pupils are doing in B.C. schools. The Think Tank has invariably given the pupils in our region bad grades.
Now if it were a perfect world and all of the students attended a handful of special lower mainland schools, we then could say we have been doing a poor job of educating our children in this area. That however is simply not the case.
The criteria for the evaluation is;
(1) Average diploma examination mark
(2) Percentage of diploma examinations failed
(3) Difference between school mark and examination mark in diploma courses
(4) Difference in performance between males and females
(5) Difference between female and male in pure math
(6) Diploma courses taken per student
(7) Diploma completion rate
(8) Delayed advancement rate
The criteria reminds one of a Barbie doll world in that it is based upon everything being perfect.
Well the Think Tank hasn’t been thinking a great deal. Unfortunately, life is not perfect, more over the surroundings from which children originate, the kind of opportunity afforded them either by circumstances such as family or region, never gets addressed, and that make the Fraser Report on Education no more than great bathroom paper.
The Fraser Institute works under the premise that money makes the world go round, but talk to most teachers and it is anything but.
Oh to be sure, money may play an important part as to why the kid gets to go to a certain school, on the other hand it may play a large part in why he or she doesn’t.
When you open the door to a classroom in this region, you will discover many kids who don't have the benefit of being dropped off by their mother. We can (and do) instead find ourselves trying desperately to have the child attend classes from a home that perhaps doesn’t really place education as a priority in life.
In the Fraser Institute's perfect world, little Johnny comes to school, stomach full of breakfast, ready to meet the day. There is no guarantee of that taking place if you are accepting everyone who passes through the school door and that is exactly what the public school system does.
Very often the only home upbringing, the only encouragement to attend the class, and the only person who will listen to their problems is that dedicated public school teacher. Using 1 to 8 simply doesn’t tell us anything about where the vast majority of our children fit into an education system.
When a young man or woman finally graduates from school, in spite of the hardships they have had to endure in the process of growing up, that is an accomplishment, of which they and their teachers can be proud.
That folks, is the best report card any teacher will ever get
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The Blueberry Story: The Teacher Gives the Businessman a Lesson
by Jamie Robert Vollmer
"If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn't be in business very long!" I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of in-service. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.
I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in the middle 1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry as the "Best Ice Cream in America."
I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging "knowledge society".
Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly.
They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement! In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced - equal parts ignorance and arrogance.
As soon as I finished, a woman's hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant-- she was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.
She began quietly, "We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream."
I smugly replied, "Best ice cream in America, Ma'am."
"How nice," she said. "Is it rich and smooth?"
"Sixteen percent butterfat," I crowed.
"Premium ingredients?" she inquired.
"Super-premium! Nothing but triple A." I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.
"Mr. Vollmer," she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, "when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?"
In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I was dead meat, but I wasn't going to lie.
"I send them back."
"That's right!" she barked, "and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all!
Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it's not a business. It's school!"
In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, "Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!"
And so began my long transformation. Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.
None of this negates the need for change We must change what, when, and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a post-industrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community.
For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.