Response: Factors Behind The Success Of Ontario's Schools -- Part Two
LINK: Education Week
"Michael Fullan is professor emeritus at the Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, and is currently
special advisor to the premier and minister of education in Ontario."
In addressing improvements to education, Professor Fullan wrote, "Unfortunately some countries in a hurry to address the issues get
the solutions wrong. I call these mistake 'wrong drivers for whole
system reform'. Drivers are policy and strategy instruments designed to
'cause' improvement in the system. A wrong driver is one that does not
work; a right driver is one that does produce improvement. In our work
on system reform we have been sorting out what drivers work and which
ones do not. This is our conclusion: excessive accountability,
individualistic strategies designed to increase human capital,
technology and ad hoc policy solutions waste valuable time and resources
and often make matters worse. By contract emphasizing capacity building, collaboration and teamwork, instruction or pedagogy, and systemic
coherent policies do work. The key is which policies end up 'motivating'
teachers and others to put in the effort to get better results, while
at the same time serving the public accountability requirement that
practices and results are getting better, and that interventions are
occurring that actually address the problems in a productive way...
"But our approach and results as well as progress in other countries
using similar policies raises the direct question of how can the US
re-configure its approach at the state and Federal levels in order to
increase performance on a wide scale. The good news is that this can be
done, and that in can be done in a relatively short time --5 or 6 years
to make substantial progress. Time is of the essence in getting started
down this more productive path...
"Ontario public schools follow a model embraced by top-performing
hospitals, businesses, and organizations worldwide. Specifically, they
do five things in concert -- focus, build relationships, persist,
develop capacity, and spread quality implementation...
"By focusing on teacher development, Ontario was also able to raise
teacher accountability. Decades of experience have taught Canadian
educators that you can't get greater accountability through direct
measures of rewards and punishments. Instead, what Ontario did was to
establish transparency of results and practice (anyone can find out what
any school's results are, and what they are doing to get those results)
while combining this with what we call non-judgmentalism..."
Much more was written. And there are responses from some Canadian teachers.
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