If you haven't read it, read my first blog on the topic for some back story.

Teachers are influential people.  Just ask Ric McIver.

After an impromptu twitter campaign to blast Ric McIver and Jim Prentice for not showing up to the Alberta Teachers' Association Summer Conference for a PC Leadership Forum, McIver caved in.  That's the best way I can describe it.

Prentice didn't.  He held strong in his unspoken position that he doesn't value education.  With Jeff Johnson in his court, the writing was already on the wall.

On the last possible day of the best opportunity to engage with teachers, McIver snuck out to have breakfast.  Great timing, you know, because then teachers have their mouths full and can't berate him for not showing up.

Now context is important here.  The forum on the Monday night was attended by every teacher at the Summer Conference.  Every.  Teacher.  These are the most influential teachers in the profession, the hyper-engaged, the extremely well-informed, the movers and shakers.

The Friday morning breakfast was held in the on-campus restaurant.  8 people at a time, and only if they stayed on campus.

Unless of course you're ridiculously hyper-engaged like me, and even if you stay off campus and stay up enjoying life with teachers until 2 AM, you still come in to eat the $20 breakfast just to see what this McIver fellow has to offer.

I inserted myself into the first table McIver was at in the morning.  McIver got to 4 tables.

For those of you who are good at the basics, 8 people per table, times 4 tables, less the seat taken by your staffer at each table ...

Yup, less than 10% of the teachers there who were ready to be engaged.  10% of the most influential of the most influential in Alberta Education.  That's not even 1/1000th of the teachers in Alberta.

And he didn't even have a good showing.  He didn't even offer platitudes.  He made himself look like he was listening, using the Stephen Covey "seek to understand before being understood" approach, but he never approached depth of discussion.  Not once.

A friend asked if I'd live-tweet the conversation.  I tried, I really did, but in order to tweet effectively, one must have some substance, some form of content, to tweet.

And the iPad in one's hands as opposed to a fork and knife.

Sigh.

There was, however, a pretty telling moment in the conversation.  Another new friend of mine who I sat with numerous times throughout the week asked a lovely question, "what is your take on curriculum changes in Alberta".

Ric McIver's response: "Well, I'll to you what, I'm not going to tell you how to teach, and that is what the taskforce got wrong ..."

Lost?  So was I, although I could have been confused for having just taken a bite of particularly grissly sausage.

It was like he didn't know what talking points to use.

Mr. McIver, first of all, curriculum has nothing to do with how to teach.  Read my blog on that.

Secondly, the Taskforce on Teaching Excellence had nothing to do with either item.  To learn more about the taskforce, read my blog on that.

I know he won't read them.  He admitted to us at the table that he doesn't read everything that he should with regards to education.

Again, the second largest, and arguably the most tumultuous, portfolio in the Alberta Government is the one he doesn't care about.

Education is not an afterthought.  It is the cornerstone of our future.

And if Ric McIver thinks that coffee is going to cut it, he's dead wrong.  As for not making promises one can't keep, that does not justify making no promises at all.

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.