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Ottawa’s French public school board has for years been doing the things that the provincial government is making all school boards do to improve our dismal math education. Good news: it seems to work.
The Education Quality and Accountability Office, which administers standard tests to Ontario public-school students, released board-by-board results from its latest exams Wednesday, adding depth and detail to provincewide stats it put out in midsummer. We already knew that literacy-test results would be pretty good and math-test results would be pretty bad, with a particularly alarming plunge in scores for students in Grade 6.
Overall, only half of those Grade 6s are meeting the provincial standard for math, down from 58 per cent five years ago. That wasn’t great and it’s getting worse.
Education Minister Mitzie Hunter trooped out to a Toronto school Wednesday morning to do some prophylaxis.
“Improving our math scores is a priority of our government because in order for our graduates to tackle real-world issues outside of the classroom, they need to know the basics of math and how they can succeed,” Hunter said, flanked by administrators and trustees from the Toronto District School Board.
She touted a new policy requiring a minimum of 60 minutes of math instruction each day for elementary students, homework-help programs, outreach to parents so they can be sure to understand what their kids are learning, and a commitment to improving teachers’ own math skills so they can teach the subject better.
The education ministry declared this new and detailed commitment to math instruction last spring and it’s just taking effect now. But there is reason to believe its plan will work.
The board-by-board numbers released Wednesday show a distinct gap between Ottawa’s English and French school boards, especially in that Grade 6 math result.
In five years, the percentage of Grade 6s in the English public school board meeting the math standard fell from 61 to 53. In the English Catholic board, it fell from 64 to 54. Both a little better than the provincial average, but neither very good and both headed in the wrong direction.
But in the French public school board here, the number rose from 84 to 86. In the French Catholic school board, it rose from 81 per cent to 85 per cent. Both much better than the provincial average, both headed in the right direction.
“We’re the only school board in Ontario that has what we call a student-success teacher in elementary schools,” said Christian-Charle Bouchard, the superintendent of education for the Conseil des écoles publiques de l’est de l’Ontario (CEPEO). “Most boards have that in high schools, as do we, but we have that in elementary schools in literacy and in math.”
Those are lead teachers, in essence, subject-matter experts who get a period or two a day to gather and devise classroom materials, study the latest curriculum advances, and disseminate them to their fellow teachers. The board has similar experts who go from school to school to coach. His board produces “video capsules” for parents to brush up on the material their children are expected to grasp.
“We do a lot of individual work with students. So we do a lot of one-on-one to see where they are, what we can do to help them improve… We do analysis at the board level, but then we go physically to the schools and meet with student-success teams and see what we can do to help them out and what their needs are,” Bouchard said.
One thing the French public board has not done is retreat to drill instruction, as some parents demand when they see poor math results and reminisce about times tables and rote learning. The CEPEO teaches the same curriculum as other Ontario schools, “discovery math” and all.
“There’s an emphasis on collaborative learning, where students are confronted with a problem and they will be challenged to solve that problem. The teacher in that situation can help, but isn’t the source of all the knowledge,” Bouchard says. Letting students find their own ways to math solutions works, he says. “Problem-solving, for math, is a crucial component. We’re developing critical thinkers, and creative thinkers. A student that’s not motivated will have more trouble succeeding in school.”
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board’s superintendent of curriculum, Dorothy Baker, said she isn’t familiar with what the French boards have been doing, which is a little worrying. Her board is focused on its own students and its own results, she said. But she’s keen on the province’s plans.
“We’re looking forward very much to the renewed math strategy. We know the ministry is providing mathematics support to all schools, which is fantastic. And looking at particular schools that may need intensive support,” Baker said. Getting central help with teaching skills will be useful; there are techniques that work very well with “vulnerable” learners — experiential learning, visual aids — that will be useful for other students, too.
Can CEPEO’s methods scale, from a relatively small board to very large ones? Is there a cultural distinction between English and French-speaking Ontarians that makes a difference? We’ll find out. But copying what seems to work well for some students in Ottawa is a good place to start.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
The Education Quality and Accountability Office, which administers standard tests to Ontario public-school students, released board-by-board results from its latest exams Wednesday, adding depth and detail to provincewide stats it put out in midsummer. We already knew that literacy-test results would be pretty good and math-test results would be pretty bad, with a particularly alarming plunge in scores for students in Grade 6.
Overall, only half of those Grade 6s are meeting the provincial standard for math, down from 58 per cent five years ago. That wasn’t great and it’s getting worse.
Education Minister Mitzie Hunter trooped out to a Toronto school Wednesday morning to do some prophylaxis.
“Improving our math scores is a priority of our government because in order for our graduates to tackle real-world issues outside of the classroom, they need to know the basics of math and how they can succeed,” Hunter said, flanked by administrators and trustees from the Toronto District School Board.
She touted a new policy requiring a minimum of 60 minutes of math instruction each day for elementary students, homework-help programs, outreach to parents so they can be sure to understand what their kids are learning, and a commitment to improving teachers’ own math skills so they can teach the subject better.
The education ministry declared this new and detailed commitment to math instruction last spring and it’s just taking effect now. But there is reason to believe its plan will work.
The board-by-board numbers released Wednesday show a distinct gap between Ottawa’s English and French school boards, especially in that Grade 6 math result.
In five years, the percentage of Grade 6s in the English public school board meeting the math standard fell from 61 to 53. In the English Catholic board, it fell from 64 to 54. Both a little better than the provincial average, but neither very good and both headed in the wrong direction.
But in the French public school board here, the number rose from 84 to 86. In the French Catholic school board, it rose from 81 per cent to 85 per cent. Both much better than the provincial average, both headed in the right direction.
“We’re the only school board in Ontario that has what we call a student-success teacher in elementary schools,” said Christian-Charle Bouchard, the superintendent of education for the Conseil des écoles publiques de l’est de l’Ontario (CEPEO). “Most boards have that in high schools, as do we, but we have that in elementary schools in literacy and in math.”
Those are lead teachers, in essence, subject-matter experts who get a period or two a day to gather and devise classroom materials, study the latest curriculum advances, and disseminate them to their fellow teachers. The board has similar experts who go from school to school to coach. His board produces “video capsules” for parents to brush up on the material their children are expected to grasp.
“We do a lot of individual work with students. So we do a lot of one-on-one to see where they are, what we can do to help them improve… We do analysis at the board level, but then we go physically to the schools and meet with student-success teams and see what we can do to help them out and what their needs are,” Bouchard said.
One thing the French public board has not done is retreat to drill instruction, as some parents demand when they see poor math results and reminisce about times tables and rote learning. The CEPEO teaches the same curriculum as other Ontario schools, “discovery math” and all.
“There’s an emphasis on collaborative learning, where students are confronted with a problem and they will be challenged to solve that problem. The teacher in that situation can help, but isn’t the source of all the knowledge,” Bouchard says. Letting students find their own ways to math solutions works, he says. “Problem-solving, for math, is a crucial component. We’re developing critical thinkers, and creative thinkers. A student that’s not motivated will have more trouble succeeding in school.”
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board’s superintendent of curriculum, Dorothy Baker, said she isn’t familiar with what the French boards have been doing, which is a little worrying. Her board is focused on its own students and its own results, she said. But she’s keen on the province’s plans.
“We’re looking forward very much to the renewed math strategy. We know the ministry is providing mathematics support to all schools, which is fantastic. And looking at particular schools that may need intensive support,” Baker said. Getting central help with teaching skills will be useful; there are techniques that work very well with “vulnerable” learners — experiential learning, visual aids — that will be useful for other students, too.
Can CEPEO’s methods scale, from a relatively small board to very large ones? Is there a cultural distinction between English and French-speaking Ontarians that makes a difference? We’ll find out. But copying what seems to work well for some students in Ottawa is a good place to start.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
