What is the problem that Alberta Education
Minister Jeff Johnson is trying to solve with the report of the Task Force for
Teacher Excellence?
The task force - which did not
involve the profession or the professional body established in law to be
responsible for the profession – reported today at a showcase event stage
managed by the Minister, who also spent the week-end briefing the media (but
not the profession). The suggestion is that this task force is “arms length”
from government is about as serious as the suggestion that Mayor Rob Ford is an
arms length from a few drinks or crack cocaine.
There are around 35,000 teachers in Alberta
and Alberta is amongst the highest performing education systems in the world. Recently,
our Minister was celebrating teacher excellence. So what is the problem?
The fiction is that, with 35,000 teachers
we must have some “dud” teachers – yet no teacher has been dismissed for poor
performance in the last decade. Therefore we must have a problem and that
education in Alberta could be improved if we changed how we assess and reward teachers.
Jeff Johnson, a Xerox salesman, has been floating this thinking for years.
The problem, this mystical thinking goes,
is that those who supervise teachers – Principals – are members of the same
organization as the teachers themselves. Worse. Once certified, teachers do not
have to be recertified as teachers and are not paid by merit but by length of
service. Therefore, if you are following this line of thought, teachers should
be evaluated frequently (every 3-5 years) by Principals and to do this,
Principals should not be part of the same professional body as teachers. What
is more, merit should be recognized by merit pay. These two things will improve
education in Alberta – already among one of the best systems in the world.
Since the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) will likely oppose these changes,
the thinking goes, we will need to change the ATA.
These major changes to the profession
require considerable thought, so thirty days should do for feedback.
Where to start? First, who gave this
Minister a mandate to so misunderstand what teachers do and how they do it that
he feels able to undertake this work without truly engaging the profession in
this conversation? Imagine a task force on medical competence and effectiveness
in which doctors were not engaged or a task force on policing efficiency and
effectiveness in which active officers were not engaged? Difficult to imagine
isn’t it. Yet that happened in this case.
Second, what is the evidential base on
which these recommendations are being made? Where is the evidence of the need
for this enhanced bureaucracy – which is where this will lead – so as to deal
with a problem we don’t really have? Principals currently do supervise and assess,
teachers are highly engaged in professional development, the system performance
is strong. The ATA doesn’t have to deal with performance issues – they are
dealt with locally.
Third, what evidence was reviewed about the
impact of merit pay on professional workers? There are no compelling examples
of merit pay for teachers having an impact on pupil performance. Worse, there
is evidence that such schemes generally distort the work of teachers and
distract school systems from their work.
Fourth, what is the Government of Alberta
in the year if three Premiers doing alienating in the most deliberate way one
of the largest professional bodies in the Province? Is it systematically trying
to lose the next election and make it impossible for the major changes in education,
which Premier Hancock championed as Minister of Education and on which all
involved in the system were aligned, to take place? Minister Johnson has,
during his tenure, ensured that this critical work is now on life support. The
Government were given opportunities to meet with the ATA and side-step these
issues, but the response of the government was silence.
Finally, the major curriculum changes now
underway are now most unlikely to receive the support of teachers if teachers
are in such fundamental opposition to the work of the Minister. This is
unfortunate. There is a great deal of support for change and for the direction
of these changes, though there are also concerns at the speed at which these
changes could occur. The Minister is not the ministry and a genuine and honest
attempt is being made to ensure that Alberta’s emerging curriculum meets the
need of the Alberta the world needs to see. It would be unfortunate for this
important work to be impossible to progress, but this is now likely to be the
case.
It is a sad day for innovative spirits,
committed teachers and professionals in Alberta. A smart Premier would act to
stop the nonsense.