It is becoming obvious we have an Education Minister that is running amock.  Parents should be freaking out right about now; any and all conversation about their child's education has come to a screeching halt.

Just over a week ago, Jeff Johnson, our self-righteous Education Minister, ordered all 62 school boards in our province to send him details about teachers whose discipline didn't make it to the Alberta Teachers' Association.

In a nutshell, he's asked for any complaint registered against any teacher, and every action taken afterward, over the past 10 years.

And he gave school boards 2 weeks to get it done.  Just as many staff members take an earned summer break, and all remaining are busy trying to compile final examination and enrolment data.

If I had to cook supper in 5 minutes, unless I have leftovers, I wouldn't do it.  I'd go get fast food instead, regardless of its diminished nutritional value.

So, Minister Johnson, if you're really wanting a decent amount of data to chew on, are you going to settle for leftovers, or be okay with fast food?

No?  Then why are you giving your chefs such a short timeline to cook something up?

When it comes to fast food, I have no idea what goes into it.  Does my hot dog include bone dust swept up off the factory floor?  How much sugar is in my ketchup?  How much of that seasoning is MSG and how much of it is salt?  Did someone spit in my burger for making such a ridiculous request?

How much irrelevant yet personal and private employment data is going to get swept up off the factory floor and mixed into this hot dog of a report that Johnson is supposed to get?  Oh, and he's supposed to eat, then digest, 62 hot dogs.  Something's going to get regurgitated that shouldn't be.

This is a most valid concern, considering the Privacy Commissioner just laid the smack down on Johnson for doing exactly that; regurgitating something he was not even supposed to have access to; teachers' private emails.  Johnson's complete lack of an apology, rationalized by saying "next time I'll get permission", shows to the ATA there is no intention of ever protecting their private information.  So it makes sense that the ATA has again asked the Privacy Commissioner to get involved and tell Johnson to back down on this most recent order.

These concerns were echoed by the Alberta School Boards Association, so when you have multiple Educational partners expressing concern, shouldn't that give the Minister pause?

The other concern that the ATA has expressed is that none of the hot dog is Jeff Johnson's to demand, bone dust and all.  School boards employ teachers, not the Minister.  His response is somewhat troublesome;

"School boards serve at the pleasure of the minister and the minister can dissolve a school board."

So now the school boards, whether they agree with him or not, know what the expectation is in the future.  Give Johnson your homework, or he'll smack you around.

By the way, did you know most schools have an anti-bullying policy of some sort?

Funny thing is, Johnson is suggesting the ATA told him to get this information, when in fact, the ATA said in effect "not you, anybody but you".  What the ATA said was that stories Johnson has heard about teachers not getting disciplined were unsubstantiated, and that evidence was needed, but that Johnson should remain impartial and not be in charge of it himself.

He should have listened to them.  What he has now done by ordering the boards to get this information for him is tacitly suggested that his baby, the Taskforce on Teaching Excellence, didn't do their research.  If they had, he wouldn't need to ask for this information, he'd already have it.

So why laud the Taskforce so much when he was just going to debunk it by his own actions anyway?  Because it's never actually been about Education, it's been about Jeff Johnson.

Three episodes ago I was asked in comments what I thought the end game for Johnson was.  Why would he do all this?

Firstly, it's very possible that the process for intervention in teacher conduct or practice could be tweaked to make the system even better.  In my discussions recently with a school division leader, I would say there is an appetite for an improvement to the process.

But the end does not justify the means.  You cannot justify making an adversary out of the ATA by saying "it's just to improve process".  In discussions with ATA spokespeople, I'd say the ATA would have been open to improving process, had they just been included in it.

Besides that, the ATA aren't the only teachers in the province (despite their best efforts).  So where is Johnson's efforts to measure process in charter or private schools?

No, this is not why Johnson is doing all this.  Johnson is looking out for numero uno.  And to be clear, the students have not been numero uno from the start.

It only makes sense that Johnson was, at one time, hoping his gall would land him a high-ranking spot under the next leadership.  It's obvious that Johnson thinks that will be under Jim Prentice's leadership.  That's why even after Prentice rebuked Johnson, Johnson stuck to flying the Prentice banner.  He's hoping there's another portfolio of equal or greater importance waiting for his heavy-hand.  And with current Premier David Hancock doing nothing to stop the bleeding, Johnson is getting tacit approval, if not encouragement.

And what if Prentice doesn't reward Johnson for his bull-headed approach?  Well there is always another party flag to wave, instead.  So what party would sympathize with such anti-union activities?

Danielle Smith and I crossed paths at Canada Day celebrations once again.  She asked me the exact same question; why would Johnson do all this.  After going through option 1 as I already have here, I suggested that he's prepping himself to cross the floor.  "To who?" she asked.

My smirk was my response.  She laughed, and her aide told me that my "outside view" was bizarre.  I asked why it was so bizarre when their colleague Rob Anderson has already endorsed Johnson publicly.  Smith was surprised, almost to the point of disbelief, until I told her I could forward her the link.  She shrugged, and conceded the fact that Anderson and Johnson were "friends" at one point in time.

It would be a significant surprise if Johnson hasn't at least looked up the Wildrose Party's Member Approved Policy.  He has been posturing himself perfectly to support it's Education Policy (Section III, Subsection B, Clause 6).  Interestingly, this clause shows just as much research into teacher accountability as the Taskforce on Teaching Excellence - you know, the one Johnson himself just debunked.

It's clear Johnson is setting himself up to go to wherever the winning party is.  And right now, students aren't it.

What's worse, is that while we have 2 more months of waiting to find out what the new PC leader will do, that party has already had a chance to muzzle it's dog.  Even if the PC party were to get someone more amicable and constructive in the Education Ministry, it'll take them at least 2 years to dig themselves out of this mess.  And then we'll be into a provincial election.  Students will have not been the focal point for this government's entire term.

Yup, parents should be freaking out right about now.  Until there is a party with a strong Education Policy, supported by consultation with the public, backed by research, that will work with all stakeholders as opposed to against, with their primary focus on students, governing our province, parents should continue to be freaking out.

Spoiler alert.

According to Random House, a “task force” is a group or committee, usually of experts or specialists, formed for analyzing, investigating, or solving a specific problem.

It’s no wonder the public thinks there’s an excellence-deficit in teaching in Alberta.  There’s a task force on it, so it must be a problem!  Again, parents should be freaking out right about now.

But that’s not what Minister of Education Jeff Johnson says.  When asked why he made the task force at all, he explains that we don’t have an excellence-deficit in teaching.  He says the task force was to come up with recommendations to keep it that way.

So he put together a panel he calls experts in Education.  Strange, then, that the organization considered a global leader in Educational Policy and Research, the Alberta Teachers’ Association, was not included in this panel.  You know, that organization that Ministers of Education and Presidents of the world’s leading countries in Education like Finland, Singapore and more come to for advice?  Yeah, that group.

When asked about this, he balks at the suggestion he didn’t include teachers on the panel, and reaffirms his belief that the panel is a “blue ribbon” expert panel.

Alright, let’s go with that.  Of the people on the committee, it can be said that each one of them clearly value Education, but are they experts?

Four of them are MLAs, but simply being elected does not an expert make.  Three people from post-secondary institutions, including the Chair of the Task Force, are experts, but not in K-12 Education (one of them not even in Education at all, but rather in Forestry).  Only one post-secondary representative can be considered an expert in Education.  One individual on the committee has a deep history rooted in Xerox Canada, just as the Minister of Education has, but sneaks onto the panel because she’s involved in a post-secondary institution.  One person on the panel is a human resources expert.  One person on the panel is a student, and while a great representative, not an expert in Education (the “I’m an expert because I’ve gone through school” argument doesn’t work).  One is a past school board trustee and Alberta School Boards’ Association President, but again simply being elected does not an expert make.  Rounding off the panel are two very passionate Principals, and certainly Educational leaders, but do they accurately represent all teachers in Alberta when they both come from the same school division, and were not elected nor appointed by elected members of the profession?

So of the members of this task force, only one is an expert in Educational research, and the rest, well, even one of the appointments smacks of cronyism.

It makes you wonder again why some of these people, including a Forestry expert’s and Xerox manager’s participation precluded inviting any of the ATA’s experts who are recognized around the world as leaders in Education and Educational research.  Is it because forestry produces pulpwood, used to produce textbooks, possibly through Xerox machines?

So let’s go back to the concept of the excellence-deficit.  What is “excellence”?  Let’s go to the “Task Force’s” report.

Um.

Er.

Oh.

We don’t know.  But whatever it is, we want it in front of every student.

How can Johnson's Task Force provide recommendations on excellence if it doesn't even know what it looks like? That would be like me offering advice on how to rebuild a 1985 Pontiac Bonneville; just because I've driven one doesn't mean I know a thing about making it better.

In my teaching preparation program at the University of Lethbridge, this was one of the first discussions we would have in our Curriculum and Instruction class; what does an excellent teacher look like?  Through a standard Think-Pair-Share activity, we discovered that everyone’s view of an excellent teacher depended upon our own individual needs, and yet a teacher had to try to meet every one of them.  I recall my professor telling me “it’s hard, but if you’re passionate about it, you’ll make it happen.”

Now that we've decoded what constitutes a "blue-ribbon" panel according to Jeff Johnson, as well as what "excellence" is, let’s have a look at these recommendations.  Some of the recommendations are awesome, but the fact that they show up in this report is redundant; they are the same things the ATA has been asking for years.  Some of the recommendations are great considerations, poorly executed.  Some of the recommendations undermine not only the profession, but the entire system of Education.  It should be noted that I have summarized recommendations significantly, so to read the exact language, I recommend actually reading the report.

Let’s start with recommendations 1 and 6, which basically ask us to align everything with Inspiring Education.  This makes sense, however when we get to the point where government tells post-secondary institutions how to prepare teachers, we might be looking at trouble.

Now to recommendations 2, 3, 22, 23 and 24 which all discuss the roles of school leaders, namely Principals.  They also discuss the standards to which these school leaders should be held.  This is dangerous territory, discussing holding school leaders to different standards than other teachers.  The Task Force even states that teachers are all expected to share their expertise, regardless of any leadership designation.  So if that is their belief, should they not all be held to the same gold standard?  Any suggestion to hold Principals to a different standard suggests that Principals should not be considered teachers, but rather business managers.  The truth is, in Alberta, Principals are teachers, they are roles that cannot be separated.

Now to recommendations 4, 11, 12, 18, 22 and 23, all of which have to do with practice review and teacher/school leader competency.  First and foremost, teachers are not afraid of regular review.  If anything, they should be pleased with the idea, so long as there are supports to enable professional development, and that the review process helps them advance their abilities in their profession, and advance the quality of education students receive.  The problems come with the lack of research the Task Force seems to have actually undertaken, making recommendations on things they know little about.  For example, they suggested that standards should receive regular review when they already do.  They also suggest that teachers professional growth plans are whimsical documents with no relevance, when they produced no research to back that assertion up.  They suggested that encouraging teachers through a sort of merit system would help, when research has shown time and time again that it doesn’t because education works best under a professional model, not an industrial model.  They suggest a return to cyclical evaluations, a system we moved away from almost two decades ago, and a system that Ontario tried and failed at, showing how ineffective such a system would be in actually improving or assurance excellence in education.  Frankly, I say bring on practice review, but in collaboration with the professional body.  Teachers would love to become better at their job, if nothing else but to advance the profession and education on the whole.  But doing it in such a way that undermines professional courtesy will also undermine the profession, and so you should not be surprised when teachers get defensive.  My recommendation; start from scratch on practice review, involve the teachers, and you’ll get an even better system that is more accountable but still honours the profession.  The fact that six of the report’s recommendations are built upon faulty, incomplete information, and attempt to make changes to teachers, not with teachers, should give people pause about the entire report.

Recommendation 5 gets a paragraph to itself.  This recommendation asks teacher prep programs to look not only at marks, but other attributes of potential teachers. Does this mean universities will then be afforded the opportunity to refuse admission to a potential teacher because their Facebook profile happens to include a photo of their rendition of "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy"? Or their race, sexual orientation, etc.?  Hopefully that wasn’t the recommendation’s intent, but poor wording leaves open the opportunity.

Recommendation 7 also gets its own paragraph, but it gets its own title, too.  I dub this recommendation the “Anybody Can Teach” recommendation.  Basically, you don’t have to be trained in Education to become a teacher.  This is hugely problematic.  This could suggest that a busker could simply get a letter of authority and start teaching choir. They have no training in classroom management, assessment, instructional pedagogy, and in some cases don't even have the theoretical knowledge to properly support student learning.  I didn't go to university for 6 years just to have a busker take my job.

Recommendations 8, 9, 10, 16 and 17 are among my favourite recommendations.  They aren’t new, various organizations have been recommending it for years.  Basically it amounts to mentorship.  Give student teachers more experience time.  Give first-year and struggling teachers mentorship opportunities.  Give school leaders mentorship as well.  I love these recommendations if implemented properly.  Mentorship is useless without appropriate supports.  If asked to mentor, a teacher or school leader needs to be afforded the time to be able to appropriately support their mentee.  The mentee must also have the time available to interact with their mentor.  There is a cost factor with this, but in my opinion, the quality of teaching that would result would far outweigh the costs of implementing.  I’m worried, however, about Recommendation 9 which discusses part-time paid internships for first-year teachers, which would see tonnes of part-time positions, but no full-time positions, and this could be a killer for any profession; just look at the Nurses of Alberta for evidence on that.

Recommendations 13 and 14 are two more of my favourites, but again they are nothing new.  Basically it suggests giving teachers the professional supports they need to get their jobs done spectacularly.  If this means giving every teacher the professional development they need to operate current technology to its most efficient usage, I’m in.  If this means giving every teacher some extra training on supporting the various special needs in the school, I’m in.  If this means reducing the red tape to getting a student the support they need, I’m in (I have a student who might just be gifted, but because she moved to Canada after she turned 14, she is not “eligible” for the appropriate assessments to give her a gifted designation … so we limit her potential).  If it means giving teachers time to collaborate and find best practices in delivering Education, then I’m in.  However, this is not simply going to happen by batting our eyes at the issues; we must fund these solutions.  While this recommendation is a great one, it misses addressing some far more significant issues, including ensuring excessive class size, poverty, foster care, or hunger aren’t the reasons why we need extra supports.

A slight concern about a framework for choosing school leaders in recommendation 15.  At the outset this sounds like a good idea, but then we forget about the diversity of schools in the province.  We have schools with 30 students, and other schools with 3000.  Being an educational leader in Oyen is far different than being an educational leader in Edmonton.  I suggest dropping this recommendation in favor of giving school boards the autonomy to make their own decisions to fill their own needs.

Recommendations 19 and 20 show to me one more time how little research the Task Force completed, or rather how much it ignored.  First, the term “conduct” and “practice review” (a synonym in this case for measuring competence) are used interchangeably by the Task Force, yet are significantly different.  They said separate the conduct and practice review systems, even though they are already separated.  Secondly, the recommendations kill the Board of Reference, which basically would result in the ability for an employer to remove any teacher in any capacity without cause.  I’m a squeaky wheel in my school because I value the education my students receive and expect my school to meet the highest educational standards; if I get too squeaky, will I get fired?  There would be no protection for me, so I would be better off simply becoming a drone.  This does not protect teachers, and holds students’ education at ransom.  These are by far the worst recommendations in the Task Force’s report, but to be fair the confusion surrounding “conduct” and “practice review” is definitely worth clarifying.

Recommendation 21 rubbed me the wrong way, but not because of the idea of review or recertification, although I disagree with it, too (recertification wouldn’t be necessary with a strengthened practice review process as discussed before).  As I said before, teachers should not be afraid of practice review, and strengthening the process should not be an idea demonized.  However, to suggest the current system is flatly ineffective because the ATA “gets in the way” is a gross mischaracterization.  Firstly, the preamble to this recommendation was far too emotional for my taste; it is the only section where the Task Force intentionally inserted emphasis by boldfacing “no” when describing how many teachers have had their certificate removed for incompetence in the past 10 years.  The Task Force ignored the fact that the ATA has only had control of the review for 5 of those years, and can’t do anything unless a superintendent sends a particular case their way.  This is because teachers’ competency is under a system of supervision called the Teacher Growth, Supervision and Evaluation Policy, another fact ignored by the Task Force.  This policy ensures that only the teachers who are found through the regular supervision of their school leadership are not meeting the Teaching Quality Standards are either supported or removed, and the Task Force patently wrote it off as ineffective without explanation but then later asked us to follow it.  The Task Force further erred by not including the fact that the ATA, in the past 3 years, has counselled over 200 teachers out of the profession because they shouldn’t be there (I know one of them); a fact the Task Force couldn’t possibly have known because they never consulted with the ATA.  Now the ATA suggests that if there are bad teachers still out there, its superintendents’ fault for not reporting them to the ATA, however I’d rather suggest that superintendents must be doing a great job of finding those poor teachers and getting them the help they need to become better teachers without having to escalate to the ATA.  The fact that “the Task Force found this statistic (no teachers losing their certificate for incompetence) almost inconceivable” makes sense, they didn’t even conceive of how practice review was happening in the first place.  As for recertification, the Task Force reported other jurisdictions doing it already, but many of those jurisdictions are not considered among the best in the world for Education, as Alberta is.  It makes little sense to model teacher certification after systems with lower results when a system already works here in a jurisdiction that has an enviable education system.  Should practice review happen?  Absolutely, and it’s a good thing too, because it already does.  The Task Force’s only problem is that the review happens under a professional model, not under an industrial model.

Last but not least, the proverbial gun-to-the-head, recommendation 25.  Basically it says “change everything, and if you can’t, split the ATA”.  The idea that an organization cannot separate its self-interest (union) and public interest (professional) roles is ludicrous.  Many organizations in Alberta do this already.  More importantly, the self-interest teachers have is the public interest; we aren’t asking for huge lumps of money, we’re asking for better classroom conditions; we aren’t asking for diamond-studded pensions, we’re asking for supports so that we can do our job.  The insinuation that teachers would not work to better the education system, but only to make our lives easier, is insulting.  If we were interested in making our lives easier, we wouldn’t be teachers.

So let’s put this in context.  Your child’s education is under the charge of professionals known as teachers.  When those professionals are not given the supports they need to do their job well, it’s your child’s education that suffers.  When those professionals are not given the autonomy they require to improve themselves, and by extension their schools and the education system, it’s your child’s education that suffers.  When changes to an education system are dictated by a poorly informed, heavily biased task force without regard for the professional body of educators, it’s your child’s education that suffers.

When you take your Lamborghini in for maintenance, you take it into a Lamborghini-certified mechanic.  Imagine if the mechanic hasn’t had any training for the past 5 years, so doesn’t really understand the latest technological developments.  Imagine they have to try and maintain your car’s computer system with software that is obsolete.  Imagine that mechanic being given only 2 hours to do a complete inspection of this high-performance vehicle.  Imagine that mechanic doesn’t even get the opportunity to consult with other mechanics on how to better do his/her job.  Imagine instead they have to complete evaluation after evaluation with no time or money afforded to them to develop their skills.  Do you really think your mechanic has been valued?  Wouldn’t you want your mechanic to have the tools and resources needed to maintain and improve your amazing little Aventador?

Assuming your answer is yes, why would we discuss measuring the excellence of the mechanic when the mechanic doesn’t even have the resources to do their job?

By the way, I’m not suggesting a Lamborghini is as valuable as your child, because it certainly isn’t, but it’s among the closest representations I could get.

So once again, parents should be freaking out right about now.  If Jeff Johnson’s attack on teachers doesn’t freak you out, the devaluing of the people who spend hours with your kids every day should.


A reminder, the deadline for submitting your feedback on the recommendations is June 15, 2014.  Alberta needs you to respond, please take the time to do so.

But not for the reason Jeff Johnson is selling.

A public school teacher does something against the Alberta Teachers’ Association Professional Code of Conduct.  It’s bad enough to earn that teacher disciplinary action; a recommendation to have their teacher’s certificate suspended, let’s say for six years.  What does this mean for students in classrooms six years from now?

Not much, because that teacher will likely never be back in the classroom.

Jeff Johnson, the Education Minister of Alberta, would have you believe that he’s the reason why.  This is far from the truth.

Let’s take the Education Minister out of the equation (which is not abnormal because that’s how professional discipline has been taking place for 78 years).

Let’s say that teacher, who after six years has not been teaching in public schools, wants to go back into the classroom.  They’d have to apply to the ATA to get their certificate back.  They’d have to prove that there is no chance, beyond a shadow of a doubt, they will relapse into their previous inappropriate behavior.  He or she would have to convince a panel of professionals who are under constant public scrutiny that he/she has rehabilitated him/herself so much so that he/she is worthy of that very same public scrutiny.

I can count on my index finger the number of times that someone has actually been able to convince the ATA they are worthy of that scrutiny in the 78 years the ATA has been doing this.  The ATA doesn’t want unprofessional individuals in their midst, because where the media is involved, one bad apple rots the whole bunch.

There are some caveats here; that teacher simply is suspended from teaching in public schools.  That means the teacher, who still holds a valid teacher certificate, can be hired to teach in a private school or charter school in Alberta, because the ATA holds no jurisdiction there.  They can also apply for a teaching certificate in any other province or territory because, again, the ATA holds no jurisdiction there.

But really, who would hire that potential bombshell?  The ATA sends details of their disciplinary actions to all other professional bodies in the country, just as those other professional bodies send their disciplinary action details to the ATA.  This makes that person virtually unhireable, but if a private school were to actually be insane enough to hire that person, they’d have to justify that decision to the people who pay tuition to that school – parents (oh, and the people of Alberta who fund those schools to 70% of student instructional grants).

This is the way professional conduct issues have been dealt with for decades.  The people of Alberta must recognize that it works as well, as we have one of the most enviable Education systems in the world, and that other top-notch education systems, including Finland, Singapore, and another leader in Canada in Ontario, come to the Alberta Teachers’ Association for advice and input.  The professional conduct issues are dealt with not only adequately, but in such a way that the profession in Alberta can self-advance to the top of the world.

Government interference would completely inhibit that self-advancement.  It’s why government doesn’t get involved in issues of professional discipline in the medical field, engineering field, legal field and other professions, so that they can self-govern, ensure every member adheres to a certain code of conduct, and therefore have the ability to advance themselves as well.  Further to that, the only people who can appropriately self-regulate are the ones with the expertise and knowledge in the profession.  It would be a scary scenario if people with no expertise in accounting started regulating what products chartered accountants can suggest to their clients.

The desire to advance the profession to the betterment of the public trumps any desire to represent poor professionals.  We call this “enlightened self-interest”, recognizing that serving the public good also serves our own interests.  In a self-serving way we could say “why would we want to keep around the bad, they could easily just drag us down”.  For teachers, that has been the reason we self-regulate, to get rid of the bad apples that would cast a pall over the whole bunch, such that we do indeed serve the public good, namely our students.

Insert Jeff Johnson.  Or rather, Jeff Johnson, insert yourself.

Recently he overturned 4 recommendations of disciplinary action by the ATA, saying they weren’t harsh enough.  Rather than a suspension, that as previously discussed would make the person unhireable, Johnson nominates himself judge and jury and gives these 4 a life sentence, suggesting the ATA is unwilling to do so themselves.

He never mentions the fact that the ATA has already recommended numerous other life sentences on its own.  Something about these four very serious cases, with public hearings and legal counsel present, gave the ATA the impression that rehabilitation might be possible if the offenders so chose.  History has reflected that the offenders would not choose to return to the profession, so it would be a non-issue, but in our society, even in the legal system, we allow the opportunity for rehabilitation.  However, Johnson isn’t interested in opportunities to improve one’s behavior, nor is he interested in precedent.  Just in opportunities for him to be judge and jury.  So judge he does.

The offenders are never going to teach again.  Johnson just used red ink instead of black ink on the death certificate of those individuals’ teaching careers.

The only other thing that Johnson’s decision has done is ensure the offenders can’t teach at private or charter schools in Alberta.  As many who have decried the ATA’s “soft” approach suggest, this is probably a good thing.  However there is another way of dealing with that.

Don’t have private or charter schools in Alberta.

Not only would you ensure that anyone who the ATA disciplines can’t get a job in Alberta, but every dollar of public education money would actually be spent on – get this – public education.  This has been the position of the ATA for many moons.

So, as this seems to be the latest battle in a war Johnson has declared against the ATA, one must ask themselves the question “which is more likely, that a disciplinary process that has been in place for 78 years has been defunct that entire time and that the quality of our Education system is simply a 78-year-old fluke, or that the Education Minister has a particular agenda against the Alberta Teachers’ Association.”  For the answer to this question, we must surveil the activities between the two thus far.

Johnson has gone out of his way to make the Alberta Teachers’ Association his adversary.  Had he spent even an iota of this warring time on reducing child poverty, reducing student inequality, correcting infrastructure issues, enabling the professional development of teachers, improving classroom conditions, developing a balanced curriculum, or any other issue that actually exists in education as opposed to fabricating issues, we would be looking at a vastly improved Education system.

However, Johnson seems adamant about living up to the designation he earned as no longer having the confidence of the ATA.  Here’s how to earn such a designation.

• Insert yourself into negotiations when you don’t even sign the contracts.
• Breach teacher privacy by collecting private emails and using them for governmental purposes.
• Make significant cuts to distance education programs.
• Commission a taskforce on teaching excellence without talking to the professional body of teachers.
• Handpick the members.  Make sure one of the individuals on the “blue-ribbon panel” is someone you worked with before with Xerox, and another person isn’t even in Education, but rather in Forestry.
• Ensure a large portion of the panel includes PC MLAs, but don’t commit them to doing much work with it until towards the end of the process, where they can insert party ideals.
• Don’t announce the existence of the group until months after it has already started, so that the professional body of teachers has no opportunity to get involved.
• Make sure it is not based in research, but only in the collection of opinions.  The opinions can be collected by a sole-sourced contractor.
• Call it a “fiercely independent” panel, but in as discreet a manner possible meet with the chair of the panel regularly to ensure the accomplishment of certain objectives.
• Early in the process, have the panel meet with the professional body of the teachers, promise meetings for consultation to get them to stop whining about not being involved, but then never meet.
• Do not consult the professional body of teachers about recommendations to split the professional body of teachers.
• Do not consult the professional body of teachers about recommendations that suggest the professional body of teachers cannot regulate itself.
• When you release it, release it to the media under the strict instruction that the media not get input from teachers.  Don’t tell the professional body of teachers about the details of the report until the last possible second to ensure they are caught unprepared.
• Force contracts on teachers and Boards in such a way that Boards choose not to bargain at all, opting to do nothing and simply let an arbitrator decide, ruining local relationships between trustees and teachers.
• Include a Freudian slip at a meeting of teachers by saying “the taskforce, which seemed to be an attack on teachers was never meant to be anything but.    ... I mean, uh ..."
• Suggest that while the professional body of teachers represents only teachers, you represent students, even though students can’t vote, and you’ve never taught a class.
• Overrule a disciplinary decision by the professional body of teachers that effectively cancels the offender’s ability to teach by making a spectacle of canceling that offender’s ability to teach.  Suggest the professional body of teachers were not being transparent enough, downplaying the facts that the process is open to the public, involves legal counsel, and that decisions are shared amongst the profession.

After reviewing all this, it becomes pretty obvious which is more likely.  Johnson has a vendetta.  No wonder the Alberta Teachers’ Association has lost confidence in him.  While Johnson says "we have to stop pointing the fingers at individuals and start talking about the issues," he has shown no interest in discussing class sizes, classroom conditions, bullying or student inequality, which are true issues in Alberta Education, not a fabrication of a non-existent problem in teacher discipline.

Parents should be freaking out right about now.  The people who interact with their children every day are having their profession attacked on a daily basis by someone in power who seems to have a vendetta.  That profession is under threats of being dismantled, and the powers that be are not talking about the things that truly affect their children.  Yup, parents should be freaking out right about now.