The Alt Ed Debate - Extended Version

 

Executive Summary

 

This column seeks to distil a very complex discussion. Interested readers should refer themselves to www.ocdsbzone9.ca.ca for an expanded version of this argument. A brief update as to the final disposition of the elementary alt ed question will figure in a future column.

 

The 25-year old alt ed program was groundbreaking re best educational practices. It grew and then stagnated with inconsistent program quality and inequitable access to it. The alt ed and regular programs have become similar to each other over time. Some argue this was due to lack of Ministry or Board support for the program. Over time the Board has adopted more of a community schools focus.

 

The above resulted in a Program Review of Alt Ed the results of which the Board is debating now as at the time of writing. The key question de facto is what the strategic value of the program is and is not a cost question. The Review was unfortunately limited in nature. The Review report noted that Alt Ed and the official School Effectiveness Framework were very similar and recommended phase out of designated Alt Ed centres. Some Alt Ed tenets were not reported as significant for student learning but some dispute that student well-being may not have been considered enough in this assessment.

 

Several notwithstanding arguments for keeping the program also have been advanced. Choice-for-choice concern is unprincipled and at variance with the community schools focus. Market share argument is highly speculative and also unprincipled. Sorting motivated parents into these programs is another way of creating better education for some. I am attracted though to an incubator model argument though it may be impractical to expect at this time. I'm especially concerned that there may be special learners who might non-trivially benefit from the Alt Ed package. I'm also concerned about removing the last safe haven offerings now that we have tightened up the transfer policy.  

 

I support the idea of a community schools focus in general terms however concern over special learners and safe haven and maybe incubator for new innovation means I cannot agree to completely close down the program. I also cannot see it expanded to compromise yet more community schools. Solving the program quality consistency problem and equity of access problem is key for me. Keeping a reduced program will be awkward but there is no strong reason to get rid of it either and there may be risks in doing so.

 

My main focus is on getting as much alt ed into regular schools and programs as practical. The literature review confirmed my thinking that by and large alt ed is best ed for most if not all students and this creates a duty for us with respect to all students therefore. The idea of demonstration schools is attractive therefore but this idea currently does not have large support at Board. I have moved some amendments seeking to encourage the dissemination of Alt Ed tenets more generally as we can.

 

The equity of access problem re designated locations can be solved with no alt ed locations, bussed system access to a few remaining ones, new additional ones, or redistributing existing centres. I can support system bussed access to a reduced number, or second best redistribution of existing ones and third best the existing problematic status quo.

 

This thinking has guided, and will continue to guide, my votes and my attempted amendments.

 

Background

 

Many readers will already have heard or read that the Board has been deciding what it wants to do with its alternative elementary program. This is a complicated matter, involving principles and practicalities, and has resulted in extended debate. At the time of writing we are headed towards a second Board meeting on top of two Education Committee meetings largely devoted to the issue, and it still looks unresolved.

 

The elementary alternative program (alt ed) was established first at Lady Evelyn about 25 years ago. The program has several 'tenets' such as non-competition (avoiding marks, testing, no competitive sports), expected parent involvement and team teaching, teaching each student as an individual, multi-age classrooms created on purpose (most classes are split grade by design), a holistic approach to the curriculum, a premium on innovative practices, etc.  Back in the 1970's it was groundbreaking.

 

It grew in its heyday to six schools, all located towards the downtown, and then stagnated in both numbers of school locations and quality of alt ed practice. Student numbers have dwindled but seem to be more or less steady now at about 1,200 or so. In my view, three relatively strong centres remain in terms of both alt ed practices and student numbers: Lady Evelyn, Churchill and, to a lesser extent Summit (but the only alt ed Intermediate or Grade 7-8 centre). Only former Ottawa Board of Education students have had bussed access to the six centres since the Carleton and Ottawa Boards amalgamation in 1998, creating a longstanding equity of access issue. For these two reasons, inconsistent program quality and inequity of access, the status quo is not attractive. 

 

Many also have argued that the need for the alt ed program has dissipated due to the alt ed program becoming more like regular programs and regular programs becoming more like the alt ed programs. Staff note that the School Effectiveness Framework (SEF), which seeks to instil differentiated instruction for individual students, a more integrated curriculum across school subjects, and ongoing informal assessment and evaluation, is now expected of all schools at the OCDSB, and what might once have been groundbreaking is universally expected today.

 

Alt ed proponents argue that the Ministry (requiring extensive testing and strict per grade curriculum expectations) and the Board (colocating alt ed programs with other programs and lack of advertising, targeted training and support for innovation) have variously held back the alt ed program or diminished it. All parties agree however that, however we got here, we do have a weakened alt ed program at present. 

 

In addition, over time, the Board has generally adopted more of a community schools focus at both the elementary and secondary school levels, in part to ensure equity of service in schools but also to avoid siloing of students by ability unless there are valid reasons for it. The focus instead has been on making every school a good school, guaranteeing best teaching practices and supports in each school, and sending turnaround teams into schools needing extra help. The past 2-3 years especially we have seen OCDSB achievement shoot upwards and instead of being below the provincial average we are now above it in most measures (and the provincial average has been going up also). All things being equal, this community schools focus also values smaller neighbourhood schools especially at the elementary level, rather than larger collector schools.

 

The Program Review

 

As a result of all of the above, the Board approved a staff proposal to conduct a program review of the alt ed program aimed at determining if it was sufficiently distinctive from the regular program to warrant continuation as a distinct program with designated schools with large catchments, bussing provided, etc. Alt ed proponents had long argued for a review themselves in order to rejuvenate the program though this perhaps was not exactly the sort of review they had had in mind. 

 

The review was conducted at this time in part as it had been put off for some years and because knowing where we are or are not heading with alt ed will help define school accommodation review options going forward. However, there are not big cost savings to closing down the program. This is more about questioning the continued strategic value of the program to the OCDSB and alignment with vision and principles than anything else.

 

The whole review was conducted in a very few months with little opportunity to dialogue about options or to collect data and conduct analysis needed for informed decision-making. I tried to amend the review timeline to add more months to it so that it could be done more fully but this did not gain majority agreement. Too bad, as readers may agree as they read on below.

 

The program review found that what staff saw as the important alt ed tenets (perhaps 4 out of 7) were largely captured in the School Effectiveness Framework (SEF) and that over all quality variability across alt ed schools re SEF implementation was uneven and so that these schools were very much like any other random sample of schools in that respect. The report recommended that the program designation of these schools should be phased out in time as regular school accommodation reviews get conducted in various parts of the downtown. Whether the report sufficiently valued some alt ed tenets is disputed and other arguments have been brought to bear.

 

Staff do not see the multi-age tenet as very important relative to other tenets, do not see non-competition beyond Grade 3 as very important, staff believe that report cards are needed for all, that some innovation can be found everywhere and too much latitude in innovation can be disruptive. In short, staff have been prepared to champion those alt ed tenets enjoying good overlap with SEF tenets but not others. Certainly there are arguments with respect to whether the program review has properly evaluated the worth of all of the tenets as a result. Some amendments at Committee have been made in this area (see below). 

 

The Six Notwithstanding Arguments

 

Six arguments for continuing the program seem to have been advanced notwithstanding the program review comparison with the SEF and which I have dubbed:

1. Choice-for-Choice-Sake,

2. Market Share,

3. Beneficial Parent Sorting,

4. Incubator Model,

5. Special Learner and

6. Safe Haven.

The first three do not resonate with me and the last three do to varying degree. 

 

Choice-for-choice-sake is a problem for me. Each extra program or special school we have necessarily comes with extra direct cost, extra administrative complexity, segregates students (naturally contrary to public education in my view), and can have indirect negative effects on those schools or students left behind. Not that a special program or service cannot be justified, they can be, but they need an argument and, in my view, should not be handed out like candy because a few want it.

 

Market Share is something all Boards worry about to a degree as more students equals more provincial funding. However, for every student attracted to the Board from home schooling or Montessori by the alt ed program, it is quite possible we have been losing students to other Boards from community schools made less attractive in a variety of ways due to insufficient student numbers. The debate on both sides is very speculative to me. However, more than this, I do not believe that public education should seek to put private schools out of business by establishing a bunch of such schools ourselves. Public education is not about corporate growth for growth sake or a bottom line but about providing high quality free access education we believe in to all comers based on a knowledge of what works best pedagogically and its is about trying to do the right thing, not the profitable thing.

 

With respect to Beneficial Parent Sorting, the argument has been made that alt ed schools are an effective means to sort more involved parents into certain schools and that that critical mass creates a special collaborative dynamic. This is possible as all special programs tend to attract the more motivated by definition and parent volunteerism and engagement certainly is an alt ed focus. Lots of schools have good involvement though while many do not and typically it varies with socioeconomics more than anything else, and the more successful OCDSB alt ed schools have higher socioeconomics. However, if we accept that this pooling effect is real, again, while that may be great for those happy to be at those schools, it necessarily impoverishes other school communities. I cannot support creaming the crop of either students or parents to create better quality education for some - not my vision of public education at all.

 

The Incubator Model argument in a nutshell is that alt ed has been a vanguard program for the OCDSB for 25 years and can be that again for the next several years also if given the chance to spread its wings. It is generally recognized, and indeed the literature review component of the staff's program review report makes it quite clear that, for most if not all students, alt ed precepts and practices are simply best education and not simply a different flavour of the month sort of program. That makes this program potentially uniquely important. What new best practices might be trialed is not clear but it does seem clear that the program has been held back and it might be unfair to ask in advance what new ideas will be devised in future. Also, under the recent Bill 177, school boards now are made responsible not only for student achievement but also, notably, for student well-being. Alt ed schools have made a specialty of making sure all students feel welcome, part of a family and supported. If kept as a model for current best practices implementation in the wider system (demonstration schools) or as an incubator of new best practices (research focus) there could be some value to a limited number of such schools. How many such schools would have to be counterbalanced against a focus on community schools and the various 'costs' of having specially designated schools noted earlier. I see possible mild value over all in having a limited number of such schools, bearing in mind that we also have other schools which are joyful, high achieving and diverse potential system models as well.

 

Special Learners, of some kind, it is argue, may uniquely or especially benefit from a package of alt ed tenets and practices. These learners have not been well-defined but generally seem to be characterized as those who have  experienced challenges and may need a more supportive or cooperative program. These students may be official special education students (indeed the program has significantly more per capita than other programs) or not. It is argued that the program is well adapted to ensure good outcomes for such students. In particular, de facto refugees from French Immersion programs are noted, though also students coming to the program not well supported re spec ed or who may have been bullied without enough intervention and so forth. It is possible that this general sort of learner exists, and that this sort of program is particularly good at helping them. We have no objective data in this regard unfortunately and the Program Review was an opportunity missed to have got it so that we could have tested for this (i.e. control for English as second language, census tract socioeconomics, spec ed exceptionality and look at comparative credit accumulation, suspension rates, literacy test in secondary school, etc.). The conduct of such a study was informally requested but never actually directed and it did not happen. It should be noted however that we are making strides to make Immersion more equitable and supporting and the regular English program also, to put bullying prevention in schools and in providing better embedded special education supports for all students. We have expectations for all of our schools in these areas and have come a long way in just the past 2-3 years and which many seem not to recognize. I will not claim that we are 'there' yet in all ways in all schools however and it must be admitted that having expectations is potentially very different from lived reality. Trustees have heard too many stories and adjudicated too many appeals to think otherwise. In fact, figuring out how close we are to being 'there' in all of our schools has been and likely will be the subject of other amendments to the alt ed review motion as well. The Special Learner argument is close in nature to the Safe Haven argument discussed next, and which also resonates for me. I am in general especially concerned for those who may be marginalized or who are at risk of falling between the cracks.

 

The Safe Haven argument doesn't claim that the alt ed program offers something especially useful for certain learners but rather that it presents a decent schooling option or failsafe when all else has failed and school for one reason or another is not working out for the student. The Board recently decided to tighten up its open transfer policy somewhat in order again to bolster community schools, though it is still somewhat liberal by most school board standards. The fact remains that it has been tightened up somewhat and parents can't as easily hop to the next school. This is not a bad thing over all as the new policy means that, rather than restricting legitimate transfer requests, the parent will need to set out an argument why this should be allowed in the interests of the student and valuable dialogue with the school administration should ensue. If the administration and the parent cannot agree, and usually it is expected they will, then a transfer appeal certainly can be launched. However, sometimes, inevitably, a real problem may not be seen as being a real problem by the system, or a parent may really believe that the designated school is not appropriate and not because they are simply school shopping, and they may find the system not to be responsive. Its always possible that for those students the parent is wrong or that alt ed is not specially indicated for the student involved, and in some ways the student or the parent may not actually buy in to the tenets of the program. In a sense, if not buying in to the program, they hurt the program. However some will buy in sufficiently certainly. In any event, the safe haven aspect of an alternative school may be important for some in our large District.  

 

My Decision to Support Keeping the Program

 

Largely on the basis of the last two notwithstanding arguments, especially the special learner one, but also influenced by the incubator model argument, I have decided that I cannot agree to eliminate the program entirely at this point. The risks of losing something important are too high and the gains of eliminating the centres are undemonstrated or too weakly speculative, and indeed there is no 'burning house' argument why we need all of a sudden to do away with this program. Generally, I am conservative with respect to doing away with special programs where meeting need may be at stake, including also specifically our special education programs. 

 

As well, I think that the non-competitive tenet and multi-age tenet are worthy of protection and modelling for implementation elsewhere, whether they are or are not recognized by the Ministry as of key importance at this time or not, or whether most parents would buy into them or not. In fact the barriers to implementation of both may be more a matter of practical politics than whether they are worthwhile or not, and the alt ed review's literature review component  showed positive benefits to both.

 

By the same token however, I cannot agree to greatly expand the number of program locations as I am not convinced the true need, as I value it (see above), is large enough to justify more and also as I do value community schools and can see the genuine strides we are making in all of our schools. What do to in this context, and one with inconsistent current alt ed school program quality and persistent inequity of access as well, is the question for me.

 

Keeping the program will add a constraint to accommodation reviews, will add some small cost, will continue to act to segregate some students. Those indirectly affected students and families have been more or less silent in this debate to date but I need to try to balance their unvoiced interests and indeed the interests of the whole system also.

 

Alt Ed for All

 

Almost all of the focus above has been on whether to keep designated alt ed program schools or not and what the reasons for that may or may not be. In fact however my main focus in not on the 1,200 or so students currently in our alt ed schools so much but rather on the great mass of the rest of the 70,000 or so students in our District.

 

I state this as I have long ago accepted that alt ed is best ed for most if not all students. If one truly believes this, as I do, the focus must be on getting these tenets implemented in our schools in as authentic and universal a manner as practical. My consideration of the fate of the alt ed program has largely been framed by this concern. How does the program best serve not only its denizens but the District as a whole? What measures should we put in place to help the whole system re alt ed tenets notwithstanding what changes we may or may not wish to institute with respect to the designated alt ed program? Finally, of course, what is politically feasible to do this way and what sorts of directions might realistically garner a majority of Trustee votes?

 

I can most clearly see the alt ed centres serving the District as a whole in a demonstration or model or research hotbed capacity. Teacher training in certain practices could be done at these schools. Teams of staff and parents from these schools could be regularly organized to visit other schools and to provide public information evenings. Real research data could be collected controlling for socioeconomic factors and so forth. Liaison with the University of Ottawa Faculty of Education could be encouraged and potential new best leading edge practices in education piloted and rolled out to the benefit of the whole District.

 

I have long believed that it would be generally strategic for our District to develop a research reputation which might attract the best and the brightest leading edge educators, and also some pilot study money. This option appeals to me and I proposed it at Committee but it failed 4-6-0.

 

In part this idea did not garner enough votes as staff and many trustees want to focus in a laser like way on a thorough implementation of the School Effectiveness Framework goals in all of our schools. I can support this in general terms but am concerned with too much of a monomania this way also and with the exclusion of new innovative ideas not perfectly aligned with the SEF but which may have real value.

 

I can't see reviving this option unless the Board exhausts all other attractive and feasible options. I have not forgotten it and would consider reviving the idea in time were the existing Board dynamic with respect to this matter changed. Continuing to opportunistically nudge in this direction as I reasonably can will be ongoing. However, the lack of success of this idea to date is not in and of itself a reason to close down the program.

 

In the scoping motion which set out the mandate for the Alt Ed Review last June I also successfully got some amendments in place which sought, whether the program was to continue or not, to ensure that a gap analysis was done and alt ed best practices were rolled out to the benefit of the whole system regardless.

 

This analysis has not yet been done and we actually have no idea of how much alt ed tenets are or are not genuinely implemented in OCDSB schools, never mind how much the subset of SEF tenets are or are not so implemented. This work remains to be done and amendments may come forward here also.

 

Some of my amendments at Committee on receipt of the Review report tried to move us somewhat in this direction. At the time of writing, these clauses remain in what the Board is now debating and may approve. One calls for drawing on alt ed expertise in terms of running multi-grade classrooms (one method they use is team teaching). Currently, each year we reorganize many elementary schools in October in order to meet primary class size caps and to address split grades. If we dealt better with split grades and even encouraged them then we would need somewhat fewer teacher resources to make the schools work, fewer reorgs, potentially larger grade cohorts in joint classrooms and so forth. The other amendment put in place called for the introduction along with the SEF tenets of non-competition in our schools. This was largely based on the research component of the Review which shows that almost all students (part form arguably a minority population of gifted students) thrive and learn best in non-competitive environments.  This amendment was watered down by majority vote to promoting cooperation and teamwork but still is worthwhile.

 

At the time of writing there are other amendments I have circulated and project putting on the table to ensure the development of objective standards for tracking the implementation of SEF and alt ed tenets in all of our schools. Other Trustees seem set to propose variants of these and other ideas as well.

 

Equity of Access Options for Alt Ed

 

If we are to keep the alt ed program in some genuine form, and not a ghost of itself somehow or as a diluted program in name only, then there a limited number of options available to us. Options need to address the equity of access issue especially if we believe that access to designated program locations may be a true benefit for some. Options which would create equity include: eliminating the designation or making it meaningless (ie. equitably no one gets access to it), promoting the establishment of a number of new centres across the District for equity of access, making some number of the existing centres available for bussed District-wide access, redistributing some number of existing centres across the District, some acceptable combination of the foregoing.

 

Eliminating the designation or rendering it essentially meaningless would provide equity but only be transforming the program into a shadow of itself. This is a politically convenient position as one can de facto agree to kill the program without being seen to kill the program. Personally, if we want to close it down we should say so and if we want to keep the program we should make it meaningful. This option may find favour by those who would prefer to see the end of the program. I can't support this option.

 

Establishing additional new centres in the suburban and rural areas of the District would achieve equity. However the cost of doing so would be to convert even more community schools to alt ed schools, or to impact even more community schools than at present by drawing from their numbers. Also, its not clear that sufficient demand for the program actually exists in dense enough numbers elsewhere to make a new program location worthwhile elsewhere, at least until a demand analysis were done and we have not done that. Putting in such programs would be very disruptive elsewhere by impacting on existing school space by necessity and many schools in the suburbs are crowded meaning some real disruptive impact potentially. Finally, as I have noted elsewhere, it is not clear to me that there is a large demand over all for these specialized centres. In sum, the impacts are not desirable and the idea may not be practical. I cannot support this option. I would be interested in exploring unique new options such as an alt ed Immersion or alt ed secondary school program (perhaps within the body of an existing school) but any expansion would have to come with its own  important value-added argument for it in my view. 

 

Currently we bus-entitle students from within the pre-amalgamation Ottawa Board of Education only: the basic equity of access problem. However we have high school programs of various sorts and both high school and elementary special education congregated classes of various sorts to which we bus across the District, even if there is only one location or a limited number of them for an exceptionality. Certainly enough precedence exists for this. Very long bus rides might be a problem and might be an argument for some satellite sites, however setting up new satellites might be problematic as noted, existing healthy sites function well, and we do engage in this sort of bussing for other programming. It does seem silly to have all six centres downtown and to bus to them as system programs however. That is why I see a strong argument for letting the three weakest program locations go (see my notes elsewhere to this effect) and retaining two strong JK-6 and an Intermediate school or potentially two schools both with JK-8 or some such combination. Arguably, in closing the three weakest centres we actually lose very little alt ed to the system as a whole. Bussing students from across the District who might specially benefit from the program would act to strengthen the program, especially if there was an equitable application component to attendance. Moving down to three centers would allow more schools to return to community school status but would preserve the essential option. Indeed, as noted, we really arguably only have three healthy centres performing this function now. The savings in bussing to the three closed centres would largely offset increased District-wide busing costs to the three remaining, newly strengthened, centres. This is my preferred solution to the equity of access issue (and a demonstration schools aspect to a very few remaining schools lends itself naturally to this option - see elsewhere). Unfortunately, as noted, to date, this particular vision and solution has failed to garner majority Board support and many seem to be leery to even discuss real variation between our exiting alt ed schools.

 

The less desirable general equity of access solution is to redistribute existing centres to some extent. This would strike a balance between equity of access and limited community school impact as the number of centers, though perhaps not the number of students, would be roughly the same as now. I could support this option as a second best option to the one above. It is more disruptive than the option above both to existing schools and new schools, would be hard to coordinate and achieve practically speaking, and might overestimate the actual need or legitimate demand for this program based on special learning or safe haven arguments (see elsewhere). This might be a compromise between those who would expand the program and those who would reduce it however and achieve equity without too much disruption.   

 

As of the time of writing, it does not appear that there is an obvious out and out majority for any single option described above. It is possible that some acceptable combination solution can be devised. Each new combination option can be evaluated on its merits. However, as I cannot accept the first two equity resolutions above, as the third has failed to interest a majority and as the political will for the fourth seems at present to be absent as well, falling back to the status quo does seem to be a distinct possibility. If the status quo threatens, and as the status quo is also not attractive - see elsewhere, the best solution will be to see this as an interim state of affairs, close no centers for now and establish a new committee or process to continue to look at and then recommend options to the Board. Addressing the equity of access issue simply must be done some how or other. I also have a proposed amendment to the Alt Ed review motion to start up such a committee if all else fails and if we cannot collectively find an equitable way forward together. Increasingly, at this time, it looks to me as if this is the direction we may have to head in.

 

We could decide to just drop it all but then we will have made no progress of any sort. The process to date did not include dedicated dialogue on options development, nor did it include some needed analyses (see elsewhere). Getting better information, exploring partnerships and deliberately dialoguing on options might be the best way forward. This is largely policy work the Board must direct and own. The status quo is not the end of the world by any means but will represent a failure for alt ed advocates as well as those concerned with strategic alignment of Board programming or with equity of access concerns. Largely it will represent a failure to dialogue and indeed the Trustee-Trustee or Trustee-stakeholder dialogue to date has been rather stilted and formalized and rather limited. We can do better.

 

Final Note

 

The thinking in all of the above is what has guided my votes to date and will likely guide my votes in future. A much reduced and very highly summarized form of this statement will be provided to the seven area community newspapers that I write for. I remain open to dialogue and possible evolution of thinking but this is where I find myself now.

 

If you have a suggestion or a concern then please contact me via rob@ocdsbzone9.ca or at 323-7803. Meeting and document info available at www.ocdsb.ca