SNOBELEN: Being schooled and correcting the business of education
· Toronto Sun
They say that when you have one dog, you have a dog, but when you have two dogs, you have half a dog and when you have three dogs, you have no dog at all.
It’s like that with purpose. If an organization’s purpose is to diffuse, it has no purpose at all. A classic case of fuzzy purpose is the education system. Education is a lifelong endeavour that has a limitless number of potential inputs, often to no clearly defined purpose or outcome. It serves both immediate need and innate curiosity.
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Schooling, on the other hand, is more easily defined. It’s the business of providing young people with the skills, knowledge, habits and discipline necessary to pursue their lives.
Words matter. This is why Ontario Minister of Education Paul Calandra used some very clear language in the recently introduced Putting Student Achievement First Act .
The name of the act is purposeful. It’s a reminder that the quality measure that matters most in any successful school system isn’t some vague notion of local autonomy or the comfort of teacher union leaders. What really matters is the quantifiable achievement of students, and, sadly, the current achievement metrics are not great.
A straightforward governance model for public education is complicated by history and constitutional rights. Calandra has wisely avoided the pitfalls of prolonged legal battles by maintaining school trustees with a significantly reduced role in school administration. It’s not a perfect model. Ideally, school trustees would be eliminated and local input built up from enhanced parent councils. But Calandra’s offering is a heck of a lot better than the current mess.
More significantly, Calandra has definitively answered a question long debated by educrats: Is the school board director of education the lead teacher or a business leader?
That debate spins around whether the director needs to be a certified teacher to fulfil the role. The Toronto District School Board has a budget of over $3.7 billion. Trust me, it needs a leader with significant business acumen.
Calandra has extinguished this foolishness by replacing the director of education role with a chief executive officer, charged with administering a complex service business and supported by a chief education officer responsible for pedagogy. It’s a creative solution that respects constitutional constraints and the realities of running a successful organization.
Calandra has also taken school trustees out of the business of negotiating labour contracts. Henceforth, the (I assume soon to be renamed) Council of Ontario Directors of Education (CODE) will serve as bargaining agents. This is such a good idea that teacher unions are bound to hate it.
Heck, right on cue, Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Union president Martha Hradowy provided all the evidence required to know that Calandra is on the right path. She said, “This is the corporatization of public education — putting CEOs in place, using it as a business model.”
Martha, I’ve got some sad news for you. This ain’t the Cub Scouts and y’all ain’t volunteers.
Which brings us back to words matter. A business is a commercial or professional organization designed to achieve a specific outcome. Calandra is doing his part to root out some foolishness at the school board level and build a better professional organization to achieve his clear objective — lifting the level of student achievement in Ontario.
Gosh, maybe even Martha Hradowy will have to admit that Calandra has a whole lotta education (and a fair bit of schooling).