Archive for the ‘Education Debates’ Category
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‘Class size is the biggest dead end in the world,’ writer tells provincial Liberal think-tank
Sunday, May 16th, 2010
May 16, 2010
Everything the world has learned about education shows that the quality of the teacher is the most important factor in a student’s success, Gladwell said. “Even if you were to cut every class in Ontario in half, you’d improve the performance of Ontario’s schoolchildren by about 5 percentile points,” Gladwell said. But changing teacher quality has a “massive impact” on student outcome, he said… Raising academic requirements isn’t the simple answer… The best thing we can do for teachers is to simply let them teach.
Tags: standard of living
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Reading and writing: the golden ticket
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
May 15, 2010
Pull the struggling readers out of their regular program, as early as Grade 7, when students in much of Canada are beginning the rotary system (moving from class to class), and teach them to read and write. Don’t just give a student an “intervention” that might or might not succeed. Intervene in any shape or form necessary until the student can read and write acceptably well. And don’t just try to reach the most promising of the struggling readers. Do it for all of them.
Tags: multiculturalism, participation
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Education system still failing natives
Saturday, May 1st, 2010
May 01 2010
…40 per cent of First Nations students living off reserve do not graduate from high school, let alone university. Second: that 40 per cent dropout rate becomes 60 per cent if they live on reserve. Think what that means in the City of Toronto where, unbeknownst to anyone here, lives the largest aboriginal population of any city in the country. Think of what it means in large parts of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where Statistics Canada projects that in seven short years aboriginal children will account for up to half the students entering school.
Tags: Indigenous, standard of living
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Fix aboriginal schools
Saturday, May 1st, 2010
Apr 30 2010
It was five years ago that Martin’s government forged agreement between Ottawa, the provinces and native groups for the $5 billion Kelowna Accord, which would have addressed educational issues. When the Conservatives took power in 2006, one of their first acts was to kill Kelowna. All these years later, Canada’s aboriginal youth cannot wait much longer for a coherent federal focus on education, backed by serious funding.
Tags: Indigenous, standard of living
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Ontario schools crack down on retirees who ‘double-dip’ with supply jobs
Monday, April 26th, 2010
Apr. 26, 2010
A 20-year-old policy meant to deal with teacher shortage that has since evaporated allows retirees to teach as much as half the school year, or 95 days, in the first three post-retirement working years and 20 days in following years… The government and the teachers’ federation have not indicated whether changes are coming to the self-policing system and loopholes that allow teachers to work beyond any allotted days without their pensions being affected.
Tags: budget, pensions
Posted in Education Debates | 6 Comments »
Sex education is too important to be left to parents
Monday, April 26th, 2010
Apr. 26, 2010
The scientists crunched the data from 83 published studies of sex-ed programs taught all over the world, including in Canada. They found that 42 per cent of these programs significantly delayed kids’ sexual debuts… if I had to choose, I’d take tolerance over ignorance. Granted, there is such a thing as too much information. But as any pregnant 15-year-old will tell you, it’s a whole lot better than no information at all.
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Hire more special ed teachers, Ontarians say
Friday, April 23rd, 2010
April 22, 2010
An annual survey, done by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, says while something like early childhood education is “broadly supported, it is viewed as less likely to improve elementary-level student achievement than an increase in the number of special education teachers or lower class size.”
Tags: participation
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Ontario, teachers vow to clamp down on cash spent rehiring retirees
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
Apr. 20, 2010
Through access-to-information requests and appeals to Ontario’s 10 largest school boards, representing half the student population, The Globe and Mail uncovered a system rife with loopholes that enable retired teachers to pad their pensions at a cost to taxpayers of millions of dollars a year. The loopholes were put in place 20 years ago to help the province cope with a teacher shortage.
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Ontario school boards squander $16.7-million by hanging on to retirees
Monday, April 19th, 2010
Apr. 19, 2010
Retired teachers working in 10 school boards, representing half the student population, collected $108.3-million in the 2008-09 school year from taxpayers on top of their government-subsidized pensions, taking advantage of a system rife with loopholes that leaves new teachers scrambling for crumbs. The investigation revealed widespread overspending, with boards favouring retirees over new teachers for supply assignments at a higher pay scale that, in some cases, doubled the cost to the taxpayer.
Tags: budget
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Ontario unveils full-day kindergarten curriculum
Thursday, April 15th, 2010
April 14, 2010
The program, which will be tweaked next year if problems arise, will ultimately replace the current kindergarten curriculum when full-day learning is fully rolled out in 2015. It introduces the basics of language, math, science, arts, physical activity and personal development — all through activity rooted in play.
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