Everyone should consider the best needs and outcomes of the child and everyone rich or poor has the option to move thier children out of a bad school and move into the cachement of a better one.

The FSA provides proof that the school is either teaching foundation skills or it isn’t. Bright children are being crippled ( as I found out personally) by schools and school districts that are not teaching basic academic skills. When I got my kid out of a bad school and into a proven good one he went scholarship all the way and hasn’t stopped since. I didn’t move to a rich are, I’m not rich, I saw that a particular school had a better attitude and it showed up in the better FSA results.

Taking that further, why was our second high school St.Georges, ( which my son attended on a full scholarship) achieving 100% graduation and 99% Uni entrance? There were a lot of rich kids for sure but if all the kids are the same then why should all of this group be so successful? Shouldn’t there have been an average number of failures such as there is in the public system. It would seem that the provincial curiculum when properly taught gives every kid a shot, rich or poor. The public system does not provide the kids willing teachers who are interested in producing excellance.

My conclusion was that the school district was purposefully dumbing down the expectations of the students by not pushing excellence and instead handing out green ribbons for all. I shudder to think how many other bright kids in that school have had thier potential downgraded by not taught basic skills.

The proof is in the pudding, Surrey has the highest drop out rate and the lowest FSA scores, hence only 1.7% of grads can go to University. These are the flotsam and jetsam of the future union movement.

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I don’t believe that. Name the trade and branch of government and hourly rate.

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Agree for sure. The micro reality is the system will slap you around unless you figure it out and look out for #1. I totally get that. The consequences of this is the question. I believe there needs to be a mechanism to enable class mobility and how the school system is set up is an integral part of this. “Social engineering” still exists by doing nothing and letting schools self-select; it’s a conscious choice of the government to let that happen in the first place.

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You need to abstract it to the next level. Stratification is a sort of self-fulfilling meritocracy — those with means percolate to the best schools and perform at a high level, those without means perform below. This is what the BCTF argues is wrong with the FSA system. The issue is do we cripple a bright child without the economic means or do we give him/her a fighting chance? If you think there is any hint of genius being born, not taught, there must be a method of allowing these children the means to succeed regardless of lot in life: a meritocracy. FSA, so the argument goes, acts counter to this and is not in the best interests of maximising the province’s long term potential.

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http://vancouver.en.craigslist.....10784.html

Browntown/SATV/Nutslapper? Is that you?

“beautiful vew, 2 years new jim parking locker.”

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http://greenboroughapartments.com/

IIRC that may have been a City requirement for approval of the larger Windsor Gate development.

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I really enjoy reading your posts, intelligent, often some of the best, but I think you are really off base on this.

The textbooks I had ( I will refer to MATH specifically )were works of art insofar as breaking down a topic, creating clarity and understanding for the student. If one didn’t understand a question…one could refer back to the background material.

The text books now are pure junk…they look like coloured comic books and leave serious gaps of logic and continuity.

Teachers send home “One of ” photocopied sheets that have no background to refer to. ie what IS the question asking ?

One year a given school had a ” fine arts” focus. Math homework consisted of bizarre geometric designs I had never seen before… and I have seen other examples of this same BS foisted onto students deemed weak in math skills, (ie it fills the “math” void and counts for math ??)

Please don’t blame the home environment… it can be as frustrating for the concerned pro-active parent as the student.

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As a victim of a hundred thousand PAC meetings and various info sessions I can affirm that it was always the same parents showing up.

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Sorry, I don’t buy that. I grew up in a small town where everyone went to the same schools. It’s the kids. Some kids are just smarter and better motivated than others. That’s all there is too it.

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They can be only one answer – the parents don’t care. There can be only one explanation for the difference in schools between Richmond and Surrey – the parents in Richmond care enough to elect a school board that takes education seriously, and the parents in Surrey don’t.

In a democracy ultimate responsibility rests with the voters.

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Then how do you explain how an entire school district only gets 2 out of 100 kids into University? It’s not the kids , it’s the schools, for sure. They are teaching a very differant education to the kids in Surrey. And not to rag on Surrey alone, there are many schools in affluent areas which do very poorly. The entire enviornment is tainted by a lack of excellence in some schools and that causes kids to seek the lowest common denominator to fit in.

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It was my experiance that certain schools are deliberatly not teaching kids to add and subtract.

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Really it’s a group of students who would have done well no matter what school they went to.

The reason why students at the “top” schools do better is that the “top” schools get the best students. It’s that simple.

If you bused the students from the FI’s “top-rated” school across town to the bottom-rated school, and vice versa, the students would not achieve any differently.

So maybe you can get an idea why public school teachers don’t like those ratings? Why should teachers be judged on the quality of the students in the local area of their school?

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You’re quite right on the nature nuture argument. It does take parenting, for sure. When two cars and a second set of golf clubs is more important than the kids focus thats where the cracks appear in the who what where of individual achievement department.

Yes they are all BCTF, thats what makes it so bizarre. I found the Surrey schools were not teaching scholastics and left and when I went to the Richmond school ( I had pinpointed this school using the Fraser Institute numbers and bought a house in the cachement) they understood right away without testing or asking.

They set about right away and began re-educating my child in a completly differant way with emphasis on scholastics. Private tutor, the whole nine yards. It really was an eye opener.

I can only suggest that it was a well known fact that the Richmond people knew exactly what a Cloverdale pupil was not being taught. Go figure.

My suggested bottom line, find a house or an accomadation in the best school district witht he highest test scores, thats where you’ve got the best chance of finding success for your children. Letting yourself get caught up in that social engineering nonsense and if your child fails you only have yourself to blame. Thats a heavy price to pay for supporting the politically correct dogma and experimentation of the BCTF.

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Who give a rat’s ass what parameters the system has? It’s the duty of every parent to evaluate their child’s own educational progress. The reason schools aren’t frank with parents is because the parents don’t want them to be frank.

Want to know if your kid can add? Why not sit them down and ask them to do some addition? Just how hard is that?

Children from families where education is valued do well at school.

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Hi Jesse, isn’t what you describe the very opposite of a meritocracy?

“Whether you agree or not, we need a meritocracy and that involves helping and advocating for underperforming districts.”

I thought that a meritocracy allows for the recognition of the best performers. No?

It was my experiance that some schools have an ability to engender excellence and some don’t. These are the numbers that show up on the FSA. These are the numbers the BCTF hates to have made public. It’s all in the Fraser Institutes annual reports.

The focus on excellence at the private school I was involved in was the raison d’etre of the school and they persued it vigourously. Why not such attention on quality in the public system? When you have an entire district producing only 1.7% of graduates able to enter University and another 1000% more doesn’t that cut across all social strata. The data suggests that it is the school district not the kids who come from a variety of backgrounds. The private school had excellent art and sport and social oriented programs but they did it along side a focus on what will get you into University ie your actual marks.

They didn’t sacrifice one to the exclusion of the other. The sports teams were Provincial Champs, The artists also recognized etc etc. Public schools, not so much. Why? It’s not funding, it’s willpower.

I really thought that it ( the public schools with zero emphasis on academics) was an experiment in social engineering the numbers varied so widely, what explanation can there be? It’s not as if there isn’t affluence in Surrey.

Yes of course I did the right thing by being ’selfish and selective’, but I did manage to navigate the maggot soup of the educational system in BC and got my son away with a full resident scholarship at a top flight University and not into short order cooking or auto shop which was all that was available to the kids of the poor braindead smhucks who traded cheap real estate for thier childrens future.

Thats not selectivity as you suggest, thats just good parenting on my part.

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Sorry but the system does not have clear and definitive parametes for the parents to assess how Johnny and Suzy are doing. parents are told all is well and all sorts of subjective rhetoric.

That’s why the BCTF dislkes the FSA.

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jesse…

Starving the system ?

BCTF ? Theres’ your rhetoric.
If they want to play politics run for office or STFU !

About 92% of the school district budgets goes to salaries.
School Districts are not starved for funds. That’s the rhetoric . It’s how they determine priorities that’s the problem.

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“I’ve been there , done that … have you ?”

[slaps head, moves on, is now thinking about butterflies]

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Ok, obviously we have struck a chord…
I’ve been there , done that … have you ?

I’m not blaming teachers,per se , its the system and environment that has evolved in which they pursue their profession and cannot do their jobs properly.

IMHO, many children get passed along like a bucket brigade from K – 7.

Seen too many examples of ” write-offs ” that left the public system then prospered outside it.

Care to share some insight and experience ?

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Save the rhetoric. An attitude like that will not accomplish anything. The unions are here so might as well find some common ground and work from there. Starving the school system then turning around claiming it’s not adequate and blaming the unions for getting in the way of the public’s wishes is an old yarn and still I have yet to see it a successful gambit.

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But the teachers in both Richmond and Cloverdale are all BCTF, aren’t they?

Isn’t it obvious what really matters about public education? What really matters is the attitude and motivation toward education in the pupil’s homes. If kids come from homes where the parents don’t really care about education, the game is lost from the word go.

That’s the real problem – not the BCTF, not the Ministry of Education, not the school boards, but a popular culture that does not value intellectual achievement and is hostile to the fact that some kids just happen to be smarter than others.

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Yup. Or blame the teachers. We’ve talked a lot here about blaming teachers. Not so much about resources. And you wonder why teachers would be less than thrilled.

Your model for reform is a Michelle Pfeiffer movie?

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This is what I said earlier:

“If there is curriculum , why does the BCTF fear for FSA ? If they are following the curriculum, should each district have approx. the same bell curve? If not, then perhaps this requires closer scrutiny.”

Of course the results would show a difference between say Point Grey versus East Side. Are we afraid to identify that?

One you identify a school that has problems, shouldn’t that be one to focus the resources on?

Hollywood has made several movies on how the shittiest “real life” inner city ghettos school have had a few determined Principals and Staff turn them into top achieving schools.

Unfortunately here in BC…militant unions would kibbosh that progressive move at REAL Social Justice and TRUE Self Esteem

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