Getting to Better Schools | Literary Review of Canada http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/06/getting-...

L I T E R A RY R E V I E W O F C A N A D A
MAGAZINE EVENTS SUBSCRIBE D O N AT E SEARCH

Getting to Better Schools

The promise—and pitfalls—of educational reform
BEN LEVIN

A lthough many Canadians do not believe

it, the international evidence shows that
Canada has one of the most effective public
Share This Essay

(http://twitter.com/intent
/tweet?url=http%3A%2F
%2Freviewcanada.ca%2Fmagazine%2F2
education systems in the world. In various
to-better-schools%2F&
international studies, Canadian students rank text=Getting+to+Better+Schools&
well compared to most other countries. Just as via=LRCmag)
importantly, the gap between our best and (http://www.facebook.com
/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F
weakest students is smaller than in most other
%2Freviewcanada.ca%2Fmagazine%2F2
countries. This excellent performance, to-better-schools%2F&
especially given Canada’s diverse population, is t=Getting+to+Better+Schools)

a main reason that so many delegations from (https://plus.google.com

/share?url=http%3A%2F
other countries come to look at our education
%2Freviewcanada.ca%2Fmagazine%2F2
system with a view to learning what they could to-better-schools%2F)
do differently. As someone who meets with
many visitors, I know that outsiders are More from This Issue

impressed with the consistent quality of our June 2013

schools. In short, there are no grounds for

thinking that there is some kind of education crisis in public
education in this country.
That we have much to be proud of in public education does not
mean improvement is impossible. Although good, our system is far
1 de 14 from perfect. Too many children still do not get the benefits we wish 16-12-17 02:34
 from public education,
Getting to Better Schools | Literary Review of Canada
http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/06/getting-...

and those who do not

are disproportionately
from some groups
—particularly the poor,
certain minorities,
aboriginal people and
those with disabilities.
Moreover, because the
world is changing, what
brought success in the
past will not necessarily
do so in the future.
Continuous adaptation
is necessary to meet new
challenges and take
Illustration by Dmitry Bondarenko
advantage of new
opportunities.
The success of our education system is not just a matter of what
schools do. Student outcomes in education are deeply affected by
factors outside the school, such as good health care for children and
supports for parents that allow them to help their children grow and
develop. Access to good jobs with decent pay and benefits for
parents, and to adequate housing, are important for children.
Environments that respect diversity and support different kinds of
students (and families) are also helpful in ensuring that all young
people have the possibility of a good outcome from their schooling.
So the growing income inequality in Canada, especially when it is
linked to such things as immigrant status, is clearly a threat to the
quality of our schools.
2 de 14 Other features of the Canadian school system are also important 16-12-17 02:34
 to our success. These include well-educated
Getting to Better Schools | Literary Review of Canada and committed
http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/06/getting-...

teachers, equitable financing levels for schools, and a good

combination of local and provincial governance with balanced lay
and professional input. In order to attract and retain talented and
committed teachers, schools have to pay decently, but even more
importantly must provide working conditions that are attractive to
educators, notably good leadership and opportunities to grow and
develop on the job. It will be important to maintain financing
systems that provide additional resources—not just money, but also
talented and committed people—to the highest-need schools and
communities, and to retain governance systems that balance local
input with system-wide direction.

***
The public discussion of schooling is full of calls for the
“transformation” of schools, whether through greater use of
technology, new forms of learning or other means. Yet it is hard to
see a convincing rationale for throwing out what has worked quite
well on the basis of guesses about the future. So far, Canada has
avoided some of the simplistic and counterproductive approaches to
education policy that have dominated in other English-speaking
countries. We have not, for example, adopted the logic of the
marketplace in education. Charter schools in the United States,
supposedly freed from the restraints of bureaucracy and collective
agreements, do not perform better on average than do public
schools. Sweden, which adopted massive decentralization and
privatization of its schools, has seen its school outcomes decline and
inequalities worsen. We have not gone for a heavy-handed
accountability that assumes that if people are punished for lack of
success, they will work harder and more effectively. Systems that
3 de 14
have adopted such punitive approaches, notably in the United States 16-12-17 02:34
but also in England, have not shown greater success.
 Instead of punishing people for failure,
Getting to Better Schools | Literary Review of Canada Canada has embraced an
http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/06/getting-...

approach similar to other high-performing countries, taking the

view that individuals are most likely to improve their performance
when encouraged and helped to do so. We have focused on a
positive approach to building a high-quality system for all
students—for example, by helping non-English speaking students
learn English (or French) as well as their native languages, by trying
to include as wide a range of students as possible in neighbourhood
schools, or by providing extra supports to train hundreds of
aboriginal professionals (as my home province of Manitoba has done
for many years now).
However, just maintaining the
status quo will also, obviously, not Sweden, which adopted
yield improvement. In the remainder massive decentralization and
of this essay I want to urge two privatization of its schools,
further developments that are has seen its school outcomes
essential to strong public education decline and inequalities
but that are less discussed and worsen.
developed in Canada right now:
stronger relationships with communities and a more robust approach
to research, development and innovation. In each of these areas
there is also a particularly important role for what is sometimes
called civil society to help make our education system stronger and
more effective. Civil society includes ethnic organizations, religious
communities, arts groups, sports teams and clubs, unions,
employers, other education providers (whether early childhood,
adult or post-secondary), foundations and so on.

Schools and Their Communities

A few years ago I worked with a school in a Canadian city on
4 de 14 improving graduation rates. Part of the work involved surveying 16-12-17 02:34
 students on their backgrounds and experience
Getting to Better Schools | Literary Review of Canada in the school. The
http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/06/getting-...

school staff was surprised, and not happily, to discover that they did
not know how many minority students they had in the school, nor
that those students felt that they were often seen as deficient by the
school. They realized that they did not really know their students or
the community around the school, and as a result were not providing
the right programs and supports to help students succeed.
Consider, on the other hand, another school in the same city,
whose students were mostly aboriginal and poor. This school was
deeply engaged with the community, organizing a food co-op so
that families could eat better, providing adult literacy to mothers and
looking for ways to generate more employment for parents in that
community.
The first example is common, the second one unusual in
Canadian schools. At one level, everyone in education recognizes
that links to parents, families and communities are essential to
school success. Children who grow up without family supports, such
as children in care, have some of the worst outcomes in our system.
A consistent research finding in education is that teachers often
think parents are uninterested in their children’s education, while
parents (and students) have the opposite view—that schools are not
very interested in them. Many minority families feel that the schools
see them as problems while not focusing on unfair school practices.
Each side tends to blame the other, and the result is a missed
opportunity to build the strong partnerships that will truly benefit
students.
While widely seen as important, the work of creating and
maintaining these connections is typically a low priority for school
boards. To say this is not to cast blame on anybody. Teachers and
principals are busy. They are responsible for many children, often
5 de 14 with very diverse backgrounds and views. Finding the time to do the 16-12-17 02:34
 work of building these relationships ishttp://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/06/getting-...
a real challenge, especially
Getting to Better Schools | Literary Review of Canada

when that work is seen as something one does on top of everything

else that is part of an educator’s job. But the same is true for parents.
Rather than not being interested, many are struggling just to make
ends meet, or have their own unhappy memories of school that
make them reluctant to engage. In fact, virtually all parents care
about their children’s education, even if their ability to turn that
caring into effective action may vary a lot.
Many groups and organizations have an interest in working with
schools to support students. For example, ethnic associations can be
powerful allies in helping schools recognize the particular needs of
students with diverse backgrounds, whether recent immigrants or
Canada’s first peoples, and in helping educators learn about cultures,
histories and languages. Schools with a focus on aboriginal or Afro-
Canadian or other cultural heritages (of which there are quite a few
across Canada) often have these connections, but other schools
could as well. These groups can also help schools build connections
with more parents, as happens where schools engage aboriginal
elders.
To take another example, the arts are increasingly recognized as
an important vehicle for student expression, with potentially
powerful links to students’ sense of worth and engagement. Many
community groups work with schools to offer such programs as hip
hop music or street theatre that offer students opportunities to shine
in new ways. For some aboriginal students, art has been an
important vehicle for self-expression and positive development.
Then there is getting students involved in community issues. For
example, students work with an environmental organization to
extend their knowledge and engage in public action on local issues.
Or a partnership with a food co-op and an adult education program
6 de 14 creates engagement for poor families around both literacy and 16-12-17 02:34
 improved nutrition. Or a community centre
Getting to Better Schools | Literary Review of Canada uses local college
http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/06/getting-...

students to provide tutoring as part of an after-school program.

In none of these areas is it reasonable to expect schools to have
full knowledge or provide all the services students might want, but
working with community groups can make all parties stronger and
benefit students.
Many such partnerships already exist in Canadian schools, but
they are not yet an organic part of the way we conduct schooling.
Typically they depend on the extra energy and commitment of
people in and out of the school, and anything that depends on
special commitment is unlikely to be sustained over long periods of
time or to be extended to all the people and places who could
benefit. And they can be made more difficult by various rules with
good intentions but sometimes bad consequences, such as the
requirement that all adults working with students must undergo
criminal record checks.
Still, with some modest effort, more can be done. Since 2005,
tens of thousands of Ontario students are now taking college courses
or exploring workplaces through co-op education or the Specialist
High Skills Majors program now, that the province is supporting
these initiatives. A huge amount of human effort and goodwill,
leading to many more successful students, can be generated by a
small amount of investment, a few million dollars in a system that
spends billions each year, if the money is carefully allotted to support
lasting partnerships. Ontario generates each year a significant
amount of activity for parent engagement by giving parent councils
grants of $1,000 or less.
Because these ideas are broadly accepted by educators and the
public, making progress depends primarily on putting in place the
systems and habits required to make this kind of work a standard
7 de 14 part of what schools do. Provincial governments, local districts and 16-12-17 02:34
 community groups can work together http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/06/getting-...
to this end, and the leadership
Getting to Better Schools | Literary Review of Canada

could come from any one of those sectors.

Innovation, Research and Development

The second area I propose for further development has to do with a
stronger and more disciplined approach to educational research and
development. In Canadian education, innovation has consisted of
the adoption, typically in one or a few schools, of some new
program or approach that is trumpeted as answering some critical
need. Often these programs garner significant public attention when
first launched. However, most of the time they lack supporting
evidence, are not effective, or do not last or spread. Indeed, it is
quite possible to see schooling as having been subject to far too
much innovation, to too many ideas that arrive, occupy the stage
briefly and then vanish leaving no lasting value but having consumed
time, energy and money.
Let’s take an example out of many that could be chosen—the
development of middle schools. About 25 years ago a movement
began to advocate that students from ages 11 to 15 needed a
different form of schooling and should be housed in separate
schools. Children in that age bracket had distinct developmental
needs, it was claimed. Associations were set up to promote the idea;
books were written, conferences organized. And many school
districts adopted the approach. They changed their school
configurations, reorganized schools, built new schools, created new
programs. Yet it gradually became clear that none of this made much
discernible difference to student outcomes. Indeed, it is clear from
research that changing school organizational practices such as
timetables or grade configurations does not produce much in the
way of results, especially considering the cost in time and money.
8 de 14 Or take a second example—schools’ ongoing fascination with 16-12-17 02:34
 technology. For 30 years we have beenhttp://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/06/getting-...
hearing that computers
Getting to Better Schools | Literary Review of Canada

would transform education (the same was said even earlier about
radio and television). But after all the effort and expenditure, the
research shows no real effect of computer use on student learning.
And yet we continue to hear calls for more technology in schools,
and many school systems continue to invest in laptops or tablets.
Many more examples could be cited. Schools are urged to take
up these projects only to find that they either do not have any value
or cannot be sustained. Parents rightly worry that their children are
being subjected to someone’s pet idea. Indeed, schools are not
resistant to innovation; they are inundated with it.
The problem with innovation in any field is that most
innovations are failures. Most new businesses fail, most new
products do not generate much return, most inventions are never put
into production. One common estimate is that it may take
3,000 ideas to generate one really valuable outcome. But with
children’s futures involved, some caution is surely advisable.
The answer is not to have less
innovation, but to be more thoughtful Schools are not resistant to
and careful about how we approach innovation; they are
innovation in education. If new ideas inundated with it.
were less a matter of someone’s
enthusiasm and more strongly related to the evidence on what really
makes a difference to students, there would be a stronger basis for
assessing potential innovations. If we evaluated new approaches
carefully and then ensured that those with strong support were
spread across the entire system, we would get more benefit from our
efforts.
Look at the business model. In successful companies new
products typically come from intensive research and development
9 de 14 and then are subject to careful testing of effects and value. The many 16-12-17 02:34
 that do not measure up are quickly dropped;
Getting to Better Schools | Literary Review of Canada the few that truly add
http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/06/getting-...

value are spread rapidly throughout the entire organization—and

usually taken up as well by competitors. These systems are not, of
course, perfect. But the basic approach is much more thoughtful
than is the case in education, where there seems to be a willingness
to consider seriously whatever ideas are put forward regardless of
history or evidence.
The obverse point is that schools are not strongly linked to the
increasing body of solid research evidence about good practice, so
that we lose the opportunity to take advantage of the kind of reliable
knowledge that guides other professions. Education systems would
benefit from stronger connections with research, and from research
that was strongly focused on important problems of practice. In
their absence, existing research is not necessarily broadly known or
well used. For example, practices with strong empirical support, such
as finding ways to engage students in their own learning, or helping
students develop higher expectations for their own skills, or focusing
on formative assessment that helps students improve rather than
giving grades, are still far from ubiquitous in Canadian schools. Yet
small increases in the application of knowledge can yield very large
dividends in terms of better outcomes for students, just as
knowledge of prevention or diagnosis in health can yield huge
benefits.
In other areas, the challenge is the lack of evidence. For example,
special education is a huge concern in our schools and absorbs
increasing shares of education budgets. Yet there is virtually no
research on which to base policies and programs in special
education; billions of dollars are spent every year without any
significant effort to determine if they are making a difference, or if
there are ways of doing better.
10 de 14 This is partly a matter of money; spending on education research 16-12-17 02:34
 and development in Canada is a tiny fraction
Getting to Better Schools | Literary Review of Canada of spending on
http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/06/getting-...

education—a far smaller share than is the case in health or in various

industries. But money is not the only, or even the most important,
issue. In reality, Canada has neither enough skilled researchers nor
the necessary systems to connect research knowledge to the daily
work of schools.
Making more effective use of research is another area where
organizations outside the school can play a vital role. In fact, most of
us, including professionals, learn about research primarily from the
efforts of such third parties, including lobby groups, professional
development providers and the mass media, to name just a few.
These “knowledge brokers” play a critical role in linking people to
relevant knowledge.
Consider the powerful work done in Canada in the last decade
or so on early childhood development. Important research on this
issue was mobilized by a group of impressive advocates, including
Fraser Mustard and Margaret McCain in Ontario, and Clyde
Hertzman and his team in British Columbia, and also many others.
Through persistent effort in working with governments, community
groups and the media, and enlisting influential individuals, such as
David Dodge when he was governor of the Bank of Canada,
research evidence was brought into the mainstream to the point that
several provincial governments have made significant investments in
strengthening early childhood development in Canada (although we
still lag behind many other countries in this area).
This example illustrates the potential power of research, but also
the need for strong and persistent advocacy so that evidence
gradually influences public policy. Inevitably, some organizations
will be more interested in research that supports their positions than
they will in more balanced portrayals, but even then the contest of
11 de 14 competing ideas can be valuable to educators and the public in 16-12-17 02:34
 sharpening points of agreement and disagreement.
Getting to Better Schools | Literary Review of Canada Even in areas of
http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/06/getting-...

strong conflict, consensus will gradually emerge even over hotly

contested topics, such as the role of phonics in teaching reading
(important but not sufficient in itself ), or the effect of failing on
later performance (mostly negative).
Making progress on this goal is somewhat more complicated
than the community involvement issue. It requires concerted effort
on the part of quite a few organizations. There is a potential role
here for the federal government as a major supporter of R&D in
Canada, but only in partnership with provinces, universities and the
many other actors who share this interest. And producing research is
not enough; most school systems in Canada have virtually no
capacity to find, evaluate and make use of research even where
strong evidence exists.
Resource requirements to do better would be modest; it is more a
matter of creating the models and systems that would lead to a
stronger, more focused research effort with a much stronger
connection to school practice. Canada is an international leader in
this area in health, and we could do the same in education.

***
These two ideas are not new. So why rehash them again here? First,
because they represent areas where modest efforts could yield
relatively large benefits. They are not highly disruptive, would not
engender strong resistance, can be done with current knowledge and
are not expensive. That seems to me a good list of favourable points.
A small step in the right direction seems better than a big and
expensive step that is unlikely to produce positive outcomes,
whatever the rhetoric.
What would it actually take to generate these improvements?
12 de 14
Education is a large and complex enterprise. Lasting change rarely16-12-17 02:34
happens through the issuing of orders or adoption of policies
 because practice is so much controlledhttp://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/06/getting-...
Getting to Better Schools | Literary Review of Canadaby individual schools and
even individual teachers. So even though the ideas being put
forward here are not particularly remarkable, achieving them
consistently across the whole country presents a large challenge.
Space does not permit a full discussion of these issues. However, it
can be said that effective adoption of new practices requires political
leadership at multiple levels, public support or at least tolerance,
consistency of policy over time and ongoing efforts, over years, to
help people learn to do things in new ways and then make those
practices habitual. Making progress is by no means beyond our
intellectual and financial capacities, even at a time of intense
pressures on the public purse.
I hope that readers take away from this essay a sense of optimism
about what schools in Canada currently are and about what they
could be. Our education system does not require revolution, which
often leaves a trail of disappointment and destruction. It does need
the thoughtful application of ideas for improvement grounded in
evidence. Many people and organizations outside the school stand
ready to help in this work.

***
This essay was written with the generous support of Max Bell
Foundation (http://www.maxbell.org), as part of The 40th Anniversary
Max Bell Essays and Lectures (/mbforty).

Want to share your thoughts?

We welcome letters (mailto:editor@reviewcanada.ca), which we
reserve the right to publish after editing for length, clarity and
accuracy.

13 de 14 16-12-17 02:34
Ben Levin is a professor and Canada Research Chair at the Ontario Institute for Studies
 in Education.
Getting to Better Schools He previously
| Literary served
Review as deputy
of Canada minister of education in Manitoba and in
http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2013/06/getting-...
Ontario. This essay was written with the generous support of Max Bell Foundation, as
part of the 40th Anniversary Max Bell Essays and Lectures.

Related Letters and Responses

Assessing the state of Canadian educational reform is much like trying to nail jelly
to the wall. In a country like Canada where education is a jealously guarded
provincial responsibility and, since the 2011 demise of the Canadian Council on
Learning, without any overarching federal presence, it has become a next-to-
impossible challenge. That may explain why Ben Levin’s essay conveyed the
distinct impression that Canadian education can be accurately viewed through an
Ontario lens and educational reform treated as a projection of what amounts to the
imperilled Dalton McGuinty reform legacy.

Our top-performing provinces on international tests, Alberta and Quebec, do not

conform...
Read More

14 de 14 16-12-17 02:34