Fault Line: Educational Discourse and Teachers' Work

Gloria Lee

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIESIN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

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•+• Canada Fault Line: Educational Discourse and Teachers' Work

By Gloria Lee

a thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of York University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF EDUCATION

©2010

Permission has been granted to the LIBRARY OF YORK UNIVERSITY to lend or sell copies of this thesis, to the NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA to microfilm this thesis and to lend or sell copies of the film, and to UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS to publish an abstract of this thesis.

The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the thesis nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's written permission. Abstract

This dissertation probes the fault line between institutional discourses and the lived classroom realities of teachers' work. Using Institutional

Ethnography, a method of inquiry pioneered by Dorothy Smith (1987

1999), I examined through the fault line how teachers' work was ensnared in, and circumscribed by the assumptions and contradictions embedded in institutional discourses and practices, and exposed the disjunctures therein. I examined, described and analyzed the taken- for-granted, often invisible complex of social relations that "organize, coordinate, regulate, guide and control contemporary society" (D.

Smith 1987, p. 152).

Data from interviews of a Student Achievement Officer, teachers (19) and administrators (3) in three schools in a large metropolitan area in southern Ontario reveal the technologies of control and the curriculum reforms in the flesh. The practitioners' voices inform us not only of their ambivalences, frustrations, anxieties and despair but also of the myriad ways institutional procedures, routines and priorities impact their work and classrooms, and of their own ways of coping with the new demands and realities.

iv This dissertation places the change in educational discourse in its social, economic and political contexts. It will be shown that it was the social-economic maelstrom that had Ontario in its grip that provided the milieu for the radical changes spawned by the three macro forces of neo-liberalism, globalization and managerialism. The changes affected not only the educational discourses, but also directly teachers' professional confidence and professionalism which in turn impact on the classroom experiences for students. I examined how the discourse of blame that managed to convert an economic problem into an educational one prepared the ground for a frontal assault on teachers and schools in the subsequent discourse of derision. These discourses combined to provide the background for the current focus on standardization, assessment and accountability.

Conclusion and implications: The educational discourse of assessment, accountability and continuous Improvement is not value-neutral nor is it the engineering solution it is dressed up to be. It has changed the nature of teachers' work and transformed their status to that of a managed professional whose work is subject to surveillance, control, continual display and audit.

v Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I offer my heart-felt thanks to all my informants whom for reasons of confidentiality I cannot name. Nonetheless, I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to them. I thank them for their candour, their generosity and their confidence in me and my project, and for believing in the importance of this kind of inquiry and critique in advancing a just and caring education for our children. I must also pay tribute to their professionalism and their dedication to duty even under very trying circumstances. As a group, they have given me cause for optimism and hope.

I owe an immense debt of gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Alison Griffith who, in the manner of great teachers since Socrates, knew just exactly when to proffer tea and sympathy and when to turn the thumb-screw. Her influence on me has been incalculable, and my indebtedness is clearly evident throughout the pages of this dissertation. It is no exaggeration to say that without her scholarship, generosity, guidance, patience and encouragement, this dissertation would not have come to fruition.

To my committee members, Drs. Didi Khayatt and Karen Krasny, a sincere thank you. I have benefited from their helpful comments, insights and encouragement. I am especially grateful for the respect shown me, my ideas and project right from the start—respect I had not yet quite earned.

vi I wish to acknowledge the excellent services rendered me by the

Library Services at York University. From Resource Sharing to Disability

Services, I have received professional, expert, courteous and efficient services for which I am very grateful.

I thank my sons, Ian and Warren, not only for their technical wizardry but also for the joy they and their family have given me. The thought of them and my pride in them have sustained me in all my undertakings through the years. To Heidi, my daughter-in-law, who has been working on her own dissertation, my thanks for the sympathy, understanding and support only a fellow sufferer could offer.

To my long-suffering husband, Chyang, who despite his own grave misgivings about my peculiar ideas of retirement in general, and my project in particular, has been unstinting in his support, thank you. Through all my travails, from late-night runs to the library to countless digital search- and- rescue missions, he has been my staff and my rock.

Vll Table of Contents

List of Tables xii Preface ,...xiii

Chapter 1 1 Introduction 1 Structure of the dissertation 13

Chapter 2 Methodology 18 The Conceptual Framework 18 Data Sources 20 Text 21 Webcasts 22 Interviews 22 Informants 24 Data Collection 24 Situating the Inquiry: About the author 28 The Researcher's Stance 31 The Research Experience 33

Chapter 3 A Tale of Three Schools 37 School A 38 The Principal 40 The Staff 42 School B 43 The Principal 44 The Staff 44 School C 47 The Principal 49 The Staff 50

Chapter 4 Disjuncture: What teachers say 53 School A 55 School B in contrast to School A 63 School C 76 Distance Diagnosis and Prescription 90 , Discussion 97 Chapter 5 Teachers' Work in historical context: Disjuncture and Changing Expectations 106 Chapter Overview 106 The Formative years in Ontario's School System 106 Where did the teacher stand? 110 Curriculum 112 Accountability and control 113 Growth and expansion 115 A Breath of Fresh Air: Restructuring the schools and teachers 115 Progressive Stirrings 116 The Restructuring of education: Hall and Dennis Report and Child-centred Education 119 Official Knowledge: Child-centred education 119 The Discourse of Natural Development 123 • The role of the teacher 127 Child-centred education on the ground 128 Accountability and control 131 Middle- class mothers and schooling: The Mothering Discourse 132 Summary and Implications 137

Chapter 6: Teachers under siege: The Changed context of Education 139 Chapter Overview 139 Socio-economic upheaval 140 Macro Forces of Neo-liberalism, globalization and New Public Management (NPM) and their impact on teacher professionalism.... 144 Neoliberalism, globalization 144 New Public Management 151

Chapter 7: Teachers under siege: The Political and cultural context for the change in discourses in education 154 The political milieu 154 Shaping the context of standardization 159 The Radwanski Report 161 Consequences and implications 165 Context of standardization:The NDP and the Conservatives in power 166 Social and educational context 168 ix The Common Sense Revolution 172 The Financing of public education 172 The Common Sense Revolution and the Discourse of Derision 173 Concluding Comments :...178

Chapter 8: The Present Terrain: Control and Surveillance 180 v Chapter Overview 180 Accountability and Assessment 182 History and Context 186 Summary and Implications 192

Chapter 9: The Technologies of ControhThe Making of the Managed Professional Chapter Overview 194 A professional and a "managed" professional 194 Technologies of Control 196 Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8 Language 2006 199 Standard evaluation criteria and standard language in Evaluation 201 The Provincial Report Card 204 Agency of Control: The Literacy & Numeracy Secretariat 206 The School Effectiveness (SEM) and School Improvement Movements (SIM) 207 The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat (LNS) 209 Managed Professionals in the flesh 215 Constant Comparison and Display as a technology of surveillance and control 218 Running Records 218 Critique of decontextualized, evidence-based skills practice 225 Summary and Implications 235

Chapter 10: The Heart of the Matter 237 What is at stake? 237 Unintended Consequences 240 Summary and Conclusions 250

References 255 •

Appendices 289 Appendix A: Informed Consent 290 Appendix B: Table 1 List of Informants 293 x Appendix C: Profile of a select group of informants „ 294 Appendix D: Interview Guide 302 Appendix E: EQAO Tutoring Agency Storefront 308 Appendix F: Cafe Menu 309 Appendix G: Excerpts from Ontario Curriculum Exemplar Grade 1 Mathematics 312 Appendix H: Table 2 The Evolution of Standardized Testing in Ontario 318 Appendix I: Table 3 Contrasts between Behavioural/Reductionist and Holistic Constructionistic Teaching and Learning processes 320

xi List of Tables

Table 1 List of Informants 292

Table 2 Evolution of Standardized Testing in Ontario 317

Table 3 Contrasts between Behavioural/Reductionist and Holistic

Constructionistic Teaching and Learning Processes 319

xii Preface

Research Background

In the course of researching for another piece of work, the Doctoral

Comprehensive Paper on the differential achievement patterns of boys (Lee.

2006), I discovered a body of literature on educating the Other (Paechter,

1998; Walkerdine, 1983).

Briefly, in recent years, amid the serious concerns in the UK, the USA.

Australia and Canada on the apparent underachievement of boys. (Delamont,

1999; Weiner, 1997; Yates, 1997), there emerged a discourse of crisis and loss, a discourse of blame all conveying the sense that somehow the world had gone awry and that girls' achievement was problematic. The discourse on the "boys' problem" was actually an anti-feminist attempt at recuperative masculinity (Arnot, David, & Weiner, 1999; Kenway & Willis, 1998; Lingard &

Douglas, 1999; Lee. 2006). Because girls' success was seen as a "lack", while boys' apparent less successful performance (in language) was considered "natural brilliance", girls' success was not always celebrated as such, but was often problematized (Walkerdine, 1994). In the same way, the achievement of minority boys was also problematized (Francis, 2005).

xiii This seemingly universal moral panic over the "underachievement of boys" made its way to Canada, prompting the Ontario Ministry of Education to convene a symposium in 2004. Me Read? No Way?, the official position paper did not problematize boys themselves, but implied that the cause of such underachievement was mostly a matter of lack of motivation, appropriate reading materials, and male role models. In other words, the fault lay at the doors of female teachers (MOE, 2005).

It was against this backdrop that I embarked on this project to examine the contradictions and ambivalences that underpin the discourse of the achievement of girls and minorities (Leung, 2006). I wanted to examine just what it is in the institutional discourse that so shaped and molded the education's perspectives and practices that girls' achievement was viewed as problematic while the less than stellar achievement of boys was regarded as

"brilliance". After some preliminary research, I had a notion that the teacher's ambivalent view of educating the Other (girls and minority males) was informed by the image of the mythical North American ideal male pupil who is held up as the ideal and gold standard against which all others are measured and found deviant or at least, wanting. With such an implicit theory (Elliott,

1996), teachers approach the teaching of girls and minorities.

After starting my fieldwork for this dissertation, I realized rather quickly

xiv that I had not found what I thought I would. The contradictions, ambivalences and tensions implicit in the discourse of praise and pathology were undoubtedly there, but in rather different places than anticipated. Apparently the high achievers now constitute the "undemanding" group, and as such have acquired a value in the classroom by becoming a resource. They free the teacher to work with needier students. From my experience and from the literature, (for example Archer, 2005; Pollard, 1985), this change represents a recent departure, specifically since the wide-spread acceptance of standardized testing and the concomitant obsession with the EQAO rankings.

I found instead that teachers' contradictions, tensions and ambivalences are much more generalized. The teachers, for the most part, are beleaguered.

Their sentiments range from disquietude, passive disappointment, resignation to embittered outrage. I suspected that tension, contradictions and ambivalences were the presenting symptoms of the fault line between the decontextualized, extra-local ruling and managerial relations of the state and the embodied and situated lives of teachers. What follows is an account of the investigation of that chasm.

XV Chapter 1

Introduction

It's the best of times.

The past two decades have been a tumultuous time for public education in Ontario; the last six or so years, however, have been a time of stability for teachers. No longer are we afraid to look at the morning paper for fear of headlines such as "Province to test teachers' skills by next summer ....but no teacher has anything to fear unless they are incompetent"

(Mallan, September 3, 1999), regular fare in the decade before. Salaries have kept up with inflation; class sizes in the primary grades are capped at twenty- three, theoretically anyway. The boosterism emanating from the Literacy and

Numeracy Secretariat (LNS), formed with the specific purpose to improve student achievement1, is unprecedented. It seems, at times, embarrassingly excessive. Furthermore, teachers are being applauded for the linear progress students have made. We are told that since 2002-2003, students have shown gains in achievement in all assessment areas.

Grade 3 reading and math: increased by 12 percentage points

Grade 3 writing: increased by 9 percentage points

Grade 6 reading: increased by 8 percentage points

1 Unless specified otherwise, "student" in this dissertation refers to one from Kindergarten to grade 8. The LNS's focus is K-6. 1 Grade 6 math: increased by 6 percentage points

Grade 6 writing: increased by 7 percentage points.

(LNS, 2007a, p. 6)

Additionally, the LNS reports that the percentage of schools achieving 75% or

higher in grade 6 reading has doubled from 13 to 25 per cent of schools while

the percentage of schools at the lower end, where less than a third of students

reach provincial standard in grade 3 reading dropped to 5 from 19 per cent.2

(LNS, 2007a)

Why then, do my informants (mostly teachers) feel beleaguered, under

siege, overworked and under-valued? What IS the problem ? For my

informants, their disenchantment has many roots.

With so much to cover, I can't do the kind of things I want to do...[the]

Math [program], I hate it...[it's] Language based. When you get

kids...who don't speak English well [it's hard]... To tell the truth

sometimes I don't get it. I don't know what they're asking me to do.

They don't even tell you what the right answer is. It's guessing. I try to

follow the program as best I can using the material they give us. But for

some, I go back to what I used...different things I made up to

supplement. I dreaded teaching it the way they are asking us to do it. I

2 David Johnson (2005) states at the conclusion of an analysis of EQAO assessment results that the rising EQAO scores probably, not necessarily, mean continuous improvement. They could just as easily be due to other factors such as a more lenient marking scheme or an easier test. don't feel successful. I have to do the follow up... [the program has

been in place for] at least four years... [Even though] there's resource

support... Workshops I went to. They don't deal with real

situations...how it's supposed to go...preparations for the lessons is

ridiculous...so time-consuming. I find it very difficult...People who made

these things up don't work in classrooms. (Carol, grade 1 teacher,

School A)

Nothing changes now because...even if they change...we just do our

thing...fulfill the paper requirements. Forget it. It's not possible... [the

expectations]. They want you to teach 5 units [in math]... no time.

Accountability ...we have to be better than them... 10% better. What

happens when we pass 100%. As grade 1 teacher, I was asked to

predict how [my students] will do in grade 3.1 had no idea...When I

gave an honest answer 67% [likely to pass, that is, attain Level 3 on

EQAO]. I was told it's not good enough...so I say put it down as 85% then...I don't care. Can't compare kids year to year [the way EQAO

does in their reports]. It's a different group... Can't make silk purse out of sow's ear. (Tina, grade 1 teacher, School B)

3 ...High pressure...because [EQAO] results are published. Too many

people look at results as an indication of the quality of the school.

There's also the administration, not the school level, higher ups [who]

look at the results and make value judgments as to how well the school

is doing...[so there's] pressure for decent results...even though we

know we're dealing with demographics ...Numbers...so much can be

misconstrued. The year by year display...unless school is showing

improvement year after year, [people think] there's something wrong.

But not the same kids, we're dealing with.

(Larry, Grade 5/6 teacher, School C)

While the teachers' distress has many roots, the most immediate and urgent one from the narratives in this dissertation is the impossible position in which teachers find themselves. In their exhortation to teachers to " raise the bar and close the gap" (Campbell & Fullan, 2006, p. 9), the Ministry and the LNS seem not to have heeded L. Cuban's observation that "No one knows how to grow effective schools" (1983, p.4), and that while there might be many points of correlation between high scores and certain specific school attributes, correlation does not equate with causality. As Thrupp (1999) argues, high scores might well be school-based but not necessarily school-caused. The current simplistic discourse of school improvement has served to marginalize a great deal of teacher's work, and made invisible and rendered valueless her

4 expertise and professional knowledge. In the present discourse, the specificity with which the Ministry and School Boards lay out what is to be learned and when, and how; and when and how the accountability apparatus will track and hold teachers and students accountable for such learning, has the effect of wresting autonomy from teachers and transferring it to the hands of off-site auditors and managers. No longer are teachers regarded as socially responsible professionals rendering a public service. Instead, they are looked upon with suspicion as a group whose motives are questionable, and whose productivity-requires scrutiny and control. Trust has been displaced by a document-mode of accountability (Ranson, 2003).

This dissertation then is about the painful passage of teachers from the status of a professional with de facto, if not licensed autonomy, as parents were expected to trust that decisions made by teachers are in the best interest of the child (Dale, 1989), to that of a "managed professional"3 (Furlong, 2005, p. 123), whose work can then be treated as countable and observable

(Kostogriz, 2009), and therefore can become an auditable commodity (Bell,

2003).

3 F. Inglis (1989) posits that to be managed means "...to be persuaded of something against your better judgment (p.39)

5 Using Institutional Ethnography (IE), I peered through the fault line between official discourse and teacher realities and probed the various points of disjuncture. I examined and analysed institutional practices and procedures.

From the teacher's standpoint, I examined how the seemingly innocuous and purely technical institutional practices have wrought changes in almost every facet of teacher's work, from planning, pedagogical practices, assessment to reporting to parents and in the process transformed teachers into managed professionals. I interviewed nineteen teachers, three administrators and one

Student Achievement Officer. Narratives from my informants together with textual materials, reports, and curriculum binders, official publications from the

Ministry and Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat form the data pool for this inquiry. In this chapter I will lay out major pieces of inquiry as well as the different threads of the argument.

I argue that the distress of the educators I interviewed shows that the current discourse in education is not the engineering problem that it is dressed up to be. It is not simply a matter of looking for a prototype of the quality school, not a case of extracting from evidence what works and applying it to other schools. It is not even just about raising scores. It is about control, surveillance and centralization. It is "...the neo-liberal conditions of reification, in which teachers, their practices and students are treated as measurable, instrumentalised objects of scrutiny". It steers attention away from "... ethics

6 in education and from moral dilemmas that teachers face" (Kostogriz, 2009). It is about the conflict between the neo-liberal ideology that underpins Ministry of

Education and LNS policies and the liberal-humanist conceptions of education - held by most of the teachers; it is about the chasm between the official discourse and teacher realities. I argue that embedded in present discourse of school effectiveness and continuous improvement which undergirds the LNS mandate is a changed purpose of schooling.

I take issue with the institutional technologies LNS employs to brush aside deep ideological differences between the current neo-liberal discourses in education and the ethical liberalism espoused by most of my informants: transforming an issue of equity of student achievement into a technical problem of raising scores. This transformation involves a clever sleight of hand.

In the following chapters, we will see that an economic problem of job loss that has spooked the middle-class deftly converted into an educational problem; one of students lacking in skills, and teachers lacking in skills, knowledge or rigour. The potentially explosive political problem of the low academic attainment of certain segments of the student population is transformed, with the aid of "pseudo-scientific" language such as "research and evidence-based inquiry" (Campbell & Fullan, 2006, p.6) and "capacity building with a focus of results" ( Campbell & Fullan, 2006, p. 9), into a technical and managerial problem of raising test scores. Thus a purely technical solution of "raising the

7 bar and closing the gap", became the battle cry for the Ministry and specifically theLNS.

I argue that the present discourses of accountability, evidence-based practice, excellence and equity are underpinned by the conflicting imperatives of "technological liberalism" or neo-liberalism (Manzer, 1994, p. 266) and the

"ethical liberalism" (Manzer, 1994, p. 14)4 espoused by my informants. I further argue:

1. that the policies of the Ministry and the LNS are not value-neutral, nor are they simply about technical practices they are dressed up to be. Instead they are suffused in ideology and neo-liberal ideals of accountability, competition and efficiency.

2. Public policies are made within time and space, and therefore are circumscribed by the political, social and economic pre-occupations of larger society at a particular juncture.

3. Neo-liberalism has dominated the public sphere and public discourse for the last couple of decades and is now reflected in educational policies.

4 Technological liberals subscribe to the idea that individual and collective futures in a global economy are dependent on our creativity, ingenuity, technological innovation and economic productivity, they believe the product of education is to enable the students to compete successfully, hence their focus on a uniform education for all, "mastery learning" and achieving "excellence" in the context of a global economy. Ethical liberals, on the other hand, believe that learning is individualistic and holistic and that complex skills and problems do not always lend themselves to be rendered into tiny bits. To them, the overriding criterion for evaluating the success of the system is not in the production of a competitive labour force but in provision of opportunities for students to acquire an education of equal value. In other words, we have in the present discourse a conflict between two opposing camps with very different ideas about the purposes of the enterprise (Manzer, 1994)

8 4. My informants (most of whom are late career teachers), for the most part,

still hold on to their liberal- humanist ideals and therefore have very different

conceptions of the ends of education. They came of age at a time in which

schools were looked upon as agents of social change, a place where the

marginalized would find voice, a place that would provide avenues out of

poverty and discrimination. Our eyes were directed to a vision of a just society.

In the present neo-liberal regime, not only have we lost that vision, we have

lost even the language with which those dreams were articulated (Sinclair,

1996). As the focus of education has increasingly narrowed, the language

used is now replete with terms of business and rationality such as: "evidence-

based high yield strategies" (LNS, ND, p. 4); "positive pressure" (Campbell &

Fullan, 2006, p. 3); "accountability and capacity-building with focus on results"

(Campbell & Fullan, 2006, p. 8), just to name a few. Now an effective school is

one that shows continuous improvement in EQAO scores, with a staff that ask

no troublesome questions, and parents that do not bother the superintendent

(Fieldnotes, September, 2008).

Herein lies the bone of contention, the disjuncture in terms of purpose.

Many of my informants have lived through the educational changes emanating

from "the language experience", "active learning", the "child-centred approach",

"reader response", and "whole language". Those were debates or disagreements on methods, the means, not the ends of schooling. Good

9 teachers have always, always taken a writerly5 stance to edicts from on high.

Every time a new pedagogical method came by, teachers looked, assessed

and partook whatever was suitable and adaptable for their particular group of

students. With the autonomy afforded them by the closed door (Lortie, 2002), •,

teachers, for the most part, have soldiered on; doing what in their judgment

was in the students' best interest. In so doing, the teachers took what Bowe

and Ball (1992), citing the work of Barthes termed a "writerly" stance to policy

text which allows readers some room for interpretation, and hence, the

possibility of choice and adaptation.

By narrowly defining the goals of schooling in terms of the attainment

of basic procedural skills, the ministry has been able to relate a story of linear

progress. However, it is at this point that the LNS and most of my informants

part company. While my informants see basic literacy acquisition as an

incremental, instrumental and a necessary first step, the ministry describes it

as the goal of primary schooling. "Literacy is THE focus", loudly and proudly

proclaimed in a report show-casing a successful district by the LNS.

(Maggisano, 2006, p. 44. Emphasis in the original).

The difference now is one of purpose. My informants feel themselves put in an impossible position of having to argue the unarguable. True, the derisive tone of a previous government is absent. But even when the

5 A "readerly" policy text, on the other hand affords no room for interpretation at all. The teacher, when taking a "readerly" stance will just act as directed by the text. 10 magisterial tone has been sugar-coated, there is still no escaping the coercion.

Nothing has been left to chance. The very language of the LNS's framework

has marginalized conscientious objectors — dedicated, informed teachers who

have a strong sense of their professional obligations. The LNS seems to be

employing the tactics of Madison Avenue; inundating the terrain with slogans,

repeated like a mantra so often with such urgency, certainty, and authority that

they seem almost "natural". The LNS' mantra of "evidence-based high yield

strategies" (LNS, ND, p. 4), "positive pressure" (Campbell & Fullan, 2006, p. 3),

"accountability and capacity-building with focus on results" (Campbell & Fullan,

2006, p. 8), allows no questions, no alternative narratives and broaches no

dissent. Teachers' objections to the LNS propensity for handing out

decontextualized one-size-fits-all, evidence-based, result-oriented strategies,

are characterized as "excuses for poor performance" for which there is "low

tolerance" (Campbell & Fullan, 2006, p. 18).

The exhortation to teachers:" Let's-just-get-on-with-the job " has the

effect of controlling, deskilling and proletarianizing teachers. In a pluralistic

democracy, even line workers like teachers, have the right, and in the case of teachers, the responsibility to ask the hard question: What are schools for?

Teachers, unlike workers in industries and commerce, have two masters

(Salter & Tapper, 1981). Yes, we work for the school board that pays us, but we also work for the larger society for ours is a moral enterprise. Politicians

11 come and go. For those of us dedicated to our profession, the goal of education is a question that must be asked and answered.

I further argue that the disjuncture between the embodied and situated lives of teachers and the decontextualized, extra-local ruling and managerial relations of the state has produced a host of unintended consequences which are not conducive to the production of the type of students the ministry claims the country requires for the new millennium. These ruling relations, "the objectified forms of consciousness and organization" (Smith, 2005, p. 227), through the use of text, have become the "organizers and regulators of our contemporary world, supplanting particularized and territorially based forms of social organization" (D. Smith, 1996, p. 171). In education, particular ruling relations have sought to control and standardize teaching and learning, and have so coordinated, regulated and circumscribed the teacher's classroom activities and possibilities that the nature of the teacher's job has changed.

From a dynamic professional who uses her experiential knowledge and judgment to reach and teach the children in her class, the teacher has increasingly become a filler of prescribed orders, an implementer of teaching strategies that claim universality (Woods & Jeffrey, 2002), and a "managed professional" (Furlong, 2005; Kostogriz, 2009) with not "licensed" but

"regulated autonomy" (Whitty, 2002, p. 66-67)

12 This dissertation records teachers' voices - their unease, uncertainties, ambivalence, disappointment, disillusionment, and for some, despair. I explore how institutional processes and procedures have not only failed to deliver what they were designed to do but also often exacerbate the conditions and ailments they were designed to alleviate or cure, and in the process changed the very heart of the teacher's job and ultimately what happens in the classroom. I argue that under the veneer of a liberal rhetoric is a neo-liberal discourse that has transformed the teacher from a socially responsible professional to a managed professional whose every move has to be regimented and monitored in the name of accountability.

If as a society, we believe that schools are sites where students learn the knowledge and skills not just to battle for a place in the labour markets, but more importantly, to learn to live in a democracy, then "... teacher's work

[should be viewed as] practices in the performance of an important public service" (H. Giroux, 1988, p. xxxii). Therefore as professionals and as citizens in a democracy, we have a right, and indeed an obligation, to raise our voices to question, to warn, when we see that things are not what they seem, and that despite the best of intentions and large outlay of public funds, the ideals of social justice and putting education to work in laying the foundations for an informed, critical citizenry (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993), are being jettisoned.

The structure of this dissertation

13 The first chapter of this dissertation gives an overview of some of the issues that will be examined. It sketches in broad strokes my argument that the present discourse of school effectiveness and school improvement (SESI) is not the value-neutral technical fix it is dressed up to be. Embedded in the

SESI discourse are the neo-liberal ideals of accountability and efficiency and a changed purpose of education which is at odds with my informants' own implicit theory (Elliott, 1996) of what schools and schooling should be.

Chapter Two on methodology deals with Institutional Ethnography (IE), the conceptual framework, used to probe the disjuncture between the official discourse and teachers' realities. The chapter also describes the sources of data as well as data collection. Because the data is gathered and filtered through my eyes and ears, I have included sections about myself, my stance and the research experience itself.

Chapter Three introduces the three schools, School A, B and C starting with their respective places in the larger community. Included are also short profiles of the school principals and staffs.

Chapter Four pokes through the fault line to expose the technologies of control and the curriculum reforms in the flesh through the voices of teachers in Schools A, B and C. We hear the ambivalences, frustrations, anxieties and despair in the teachers' voices. We hear how institutional procedures, routines and priorities impact their work and classrooms, and their own ways of coping

14 with the new demands and realities. Because one can hardly talk or examine the present issues without a sense of history, I present the historical trajectory of schooling in Ontario in Chapter Five. It is important to note that I will not be presenting a comprehensive history of education in Ontario but rather a number of historical snapshots, the purpose of which is to provide a historical context for the issues under discussion in this dissertation. My aim is to show that the issues of today, from debates regarding the curriculum, purposes, quality versus access and testing to funding, have all had a long history. As schools accommodated to changes in societal values over time, the saliency of the various strands have waxed and waned. This chapter traces the teacher's status from the pre-professional stage to the high water-mark of teacher autonomy as progressivism took hold in Ontario. Since the child- centred approach to education remains still the implicit theory of a large contingent of the profession, its history, its origins and its recent past are presented in this chapter.

Chapters Six and Seven place the recent change in discourse in education in its social, economic and political contexts because public policies are developed within a social and political framework. Chapter Six deals with the very significant changes in the tone, tenor and substance of educational discourse brought about by the macro forces of neo-liberalism, globalization and managerialism against a backdrop of socio-economic turmoil. In Chapter

15 Seven, I sketch the unusual turbulence on the domestic scene and the

political milieu that spawned the discourses of blame and derision which in

turn paved the way for the new regime of control, surveillance and .

accountability.

Chapter Eight traces the evolution of standardized testing in Ontario

and describes the current culture of accountability and assessment.

Chapter Nine deals with the theoretical and ideological underpinnings

of technologies of control—The School Effectiveness (SE) and School

Improvement Movements (SI). It also details how that control is exercised by

the Ministry of Education through the mandated use of a uniform curriculum, a

standard evaluation rubric as well as the standard provincial report card. The

chapter also details the myriad of statutory and non-statutory devices used by

the LNS (sometimes indirectly through the school boards) in the making of

managed professionals of teachers.

In Chapter Ten, I delve into the heart of the matter, the fact that

education is first and foremost, a moral enterprise. Its problems are enduring

and cannot be expected to be solved once and for all. At the heart of the

endeavour are teachers, who as managed professionals have sustained such

an erosion of their autonomy and status that the nature of the job has changed; their capacity to even the odds for the disadvantaged curtailed; and their

16 hopes for a small part as change agents for a better world dimmed. The dissertation concludes with some implications for teachers and for us all. Chapter 2

Methodology

Conceptual Framework

Institutional Ethnography (IE), pioneered by Dorothy Smith (1987), is a method of inquiry that is grounded in the subjective experiences of people in local sites as they go about their ordinary everyday activities. IE does not start with structures or concepts that constrain an inquiry according to a particular theoretical paradigm. Rather IE is concerned with learning from people's experience and with "...tracing how their everyday lives and doings are caught up in social relations and organizations concerting the doings of others".

(Smith 2004, p. 61), and how an individual's doings are caught up with what has been going on and what others are doing. Thus IE looks at each experience as a historical process (Bakhtin, 1981), each act being

"dialogically" engaged with the past. (D. Smith, 2005 p. 65-66).

An IE inquiry gains entry at the fault line (D. Smith, 1987, 1999) between personal experience and institutional discourses and procedures.

Thus IE seeks to examine, describe and analyze the taken-for-granted, often invisible complex of social relations that "organize, coordinate, regulate, guide and control contemporary society" (D. Smith 1987, p. 152), and expose the disjuncture between the discourse of the bureaucratic, legal and professional networks, as in institutional discourses and our everyday worlds, as in the

18 realities of the teacher's work and world. It is just the conceptual framework needed to study and critique Official Knowledge which represents "the characteristic relevancies and conceptual organization in the context of an apparatus, consisting of the varieties of administration, management and professional organization, interwoven by the multiple forms of textually mediated discourse" (D. Smith, 1987, p. 152). The dissertation will show just how a teacher's work is ensnared in, and circumscribed by the contradictions embedded in institutional discourses and practices. As will become clear in the dissertation, a teacher's labour, the outcomes of her labour, her gaze are all coordinated and regulated by institutional processes not within her control, and most of the time, not even in her consciousness. IE lays bare the fault line between the policy mandates and the everyday world of teaching and teachers, revealing the ruling relations which "impose monologic objectified perspectives operating in a particular discourse" (D. Smith, 2004, p. 123) to marginalize, subordinate and silence the diverse viewpoints of the participants, in this case, teachers. IE will be used to examine the institutional processes such as objectification of the actualities of real people until the people disappear from view, leaving uniform and bloodless categories and the discursive construction of privileged experts whose "objective knowledge" was deemed unassailable under a patina of scientific claim to truth. (Burman, 1994; Walkerdine, 1993).

But teachers are not disembodied beings. They go to work with their bodies,

19 experiences, worldviews and implicit theories (Elliott, 1996). However, their

struggles, disillusionment, anxieties and frustration, important as they are, do

not constitute the subject of this dissertation. They provide the points of entry

so that the taken-for-granted complex of ruling relations (D. Smith 1987, p. 160)

can be scrutinized and critiqued.

It will be shown that official knowledge in educational discourses,

policies and curriculum "...exist as properties of the relations in and through

which society is ruled" (D. Smith, 1987, p. 152). Official knowledge wields

power over the individual pupil and teacher. For instance, by using distilled

norms to set arbitrary benchmarks and standards, the normalization of the

preferences and behaviours of the dominant group is represented as neutral,

normal and natural (Lamont & Lareau, 1988), but masks its "claim to the

monopoly on legitimacy" and its "power of symbolic imposition" (Bourdieu &

Passeron, 1977/1990, p. 18).

IE is eminently suited to show how an abstracted form of knowledge, constituted in terms of relevancies and priorities of a ruling apparatus such as the schools (for example in constituting categories the main purpose of which is to rank and differentiate pupils), marginalizes if not obliterates the knowledge and practices of real people (D. Smith, 1987, 152-153).

Data Sources:

20 Textual: Texts, including digital texts have played an increasingly large role in

regulating, controlling, coordinating and judging work processes. As a matter

of fact, a central role of ruling relations is in the production of administrative

texts and specialized knowledge that facilitate the ruling apparatus. Ministry

documents from the late 60s and 70s, such as The Hall and Dennis Report,

Education in the Primary and Junior Divisions (P1 J1), The Formative Years,

to recent publications and resource materials for teachers such as Balanced

Literacy, Comprehensive Literacy, The Ontario Curriculum, Me Read? No Way,

as well as publications from the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat such as

The School Effectiveness Framework: A Collegial Process for continued

growth in the effectiveness of Ontario Elementary schools, The Unlocking

Potential for Learning series, what Works? Research into Practice series, and

Capacity Building Series, were examined for their unspoken assumptions,

conflicting messages, as well as for the directives, suggestions and

prescriptions to teachers. Electronic texts such as the Provincial Reports from

Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), Exemplars were also

examined as they provide concrete examples of the pitfalls and fallacies of

ruling relations that seek to standardize observations across different sites within the relevancies of managing the large school system.

21 Webcasts: from the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat (LNS) Webcast

Professional Learning series were analyzed for their assumptions, implicit and

explicit messages and directives to teachers.

Interviews:

I interviewed a total of twenty- three practitioners, of whom nineteen are

teachers from three elementary schools K-8, three principals and one School

Achievement Officer (SAO), in a large metropolis in southwestern Ontario, I

will call Perth.6 The three schools were chosen because of their different

Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) rankings. School A is

located near the top of the top quartile in terms of EQAO assessment results.

Although School B has results in the second quartile, because of the transient

nature of the student body, its EQAO results are characterized as being

"inconsistent" (Lee, field notes Nov. 2007). School C is in the bottom quartile,

officially designated as an OFIP school7, and is considered one of the thirty

neediest schools within its school board.

All names of persons, streets and towns have been changed to ensure anonymity. Identifying characteristics of institutions and persons have also been changed for the same reason. 7 OFIP (Ontario Focused Intervention Partnership) schools are those deemed to require special assistance to bring about improvement in student achievement. In 2006-07, $25 million was used to provide supports to almost 800 schools having difficulty achieving continuous improvement. There are three categories within the OFIP category. An OFIP 1 school is one in which less than 34% of students achieve Levels 3 or 4 in reading in two of the past three years; OFIP 2 denotes a school in which 34%-50% of students meet the provincial standard in reading and results are declining or static; Access to two schools was negotiated with the principal who cleared it with the

superintendent. For school C, teachers were interviewed outside of school

hours with the expressed consent of the principal but permission was not

routed through the superintendent. In all three schools, the researcher

approached the principal with the research idea and asked to be invited to a

staff meeting during which the staff would be apprised of the research project,

its rationale and methodology, and invited to participate. It was explained to the staff that participation was voluntary and could be withdrawn at any time.

The informed consent form was explained at length during the staff meeting.

Whenever possible, the form was transmitted electronically to the participant in advance of their interview. Their voluntary, fully-informed consent (see

Appendix A) was secured in writing before any interviewing commenced.

Interviewing, for the most part, took place outside of school hours. Most interviews were conducted in the schools, using a conference room, library or the teacher's own room. A number (5) were conducted in my home while two took place in teachers' homes. Informants were assured of anonymity. Hence all schools and participants have pseudonyms in the dissertation. For the same reason, identifying characteristics of the participants, schools, and

OFIP 3 school is one in which 50%-74% students meet the provincial standard (Levels 3 and 4) but results are declining or static.

23 school board have been removed. An executive summary of the dissertation will be made available to the informants upon request.

Informants:

The data generated from all the interviews was used in the analysis. Table 1 with all the informants with their relevant experiences can be found in

Appendix B. A short profile of a selected number of informants appears in

Appendix C.

Data Collection:

To collect data, I used the semi-structured questions to obtain background

information and open-ended questions with "an active follow-up strategy, questions, prompts, probes statements and other interventions...constantly

improvised and invented...during the interview" (Wengraf, 2001, p. p. 159) for the rest. Wengraf posits that "many of the assumptions and purposes, feelings and knowledge, that have organized, and organize a person's life are difficult to access directly" (2001, p. 116). Although I did not limit myself to the "single- question" strategy (Wengraf, 2001, p. 113), for the most part, I used a

"narrative-seeking" question as an opener (Wengraf, 2001, p.113). Narratives are useful in that they present to the researcher "...embedded and tacit assumptions, meanings, reasonings and patterns of action and inaction"

(Wengraf, 2001, p. 116). With nonverbal cues of interest and support, in most cases, I elicited long narrative answers to my opening question. Teachers told

24 me their own stories of their work day, their trials and triumphs in the

classroom, the changes in their work lives, autonomy, and relations with

administration, parents and students, their own experience with institutional

procedures and constraints, their perspectives and definitions of goals of

schooling. I reaped a rich harvest of "multi-layered and many stranded"

(Clandinin, 2000, p. p. xviii) narratives from the informants, narratives of

professional practices shaped by their professionalism and rich landscape of

professional knowledge, not only in the abstract but in their lived experiences

with its contradictions, ambiguities, anxieties and puzzles. In this dissertation, I

will use the informants' account not as windows on their inner experiences but

as markers on the fault line between the institutional discourse and their

realities and thus enabling me to open windows on the "relations of ruling" (D.

Smith, 2005, p. p. 10) that shape their experiences which in turn mold their

practices in the classroom.

The interview questions (see Appendix D) were used mainly as memory

aids (Frosh, Phoenix, & Pattman, 2002) to remind me of the areas that I

wished to cover. Occasional questions were posed to either clarify the

narrative or to guide the participant to a particular area. Each interview was

recorded and parts transcribed. After each session with the informant, the transcript was merged with my field notes. This was an important step in that markers such as pauses, stuttering, a search for words, a marked change in

25 tempo and demeanor, or a knowing rolling of the eyes to signal to the researcher their real meaning was not in the words, were all noted when they were still fresh in my memory. I take these markers often to be indicative of the dissonance between their experience and the official policy talk. These provided me with cues or access points in the fault line from which further investigation can proceed. There were also raised voices, crackling with emotions, (two informants wept at some point during the interview). A number rose from their seats to make a point, one stormed out of the room only to return with a text she wanted to use in support of her claim; another gestured so violently that the microphone became detached from his shirt. I note also the marked change in body language and the incongruence between it and the words. I note, for instance, the abrupt change in tone and in body language of an unusually exuberant informant. All through the interview, this informant, with her heart on her sleeve, was expansive in words and gestures, and was at times in danger of falling off her chair until the subject of race came up. The subject had come up spontaneously as she described the achievement of her school of high flyers. Not only were these students high achievers, they were also appropriately deferential to authority, being raised in homes in which "academic achievement is prized" (Elizabeth, School A). But there is now in the school a small group of ethnically different students who do not have the same values. As she spoke of this small group of students and

26 their parents, she sat still with her hands grasped in front of her on her desk.

She was focused on her words, choosing them carefully and gingerly. The impression I got was that she was most uncomfortable with the subject

(although she had raised it herself). "I sound racial, but I don't mean to" she added. Another teacher, at the same school, asked that the recording device be turned off before she spoke on the same topic..

Almost everyone who was not interviewed in her/his classroom invited me back to show me either the physical setup of the room or the texts they had been referring to. The recordings, my field notes, reflective notes together with any textual holdings such as curriculum binders, memos, teacher's own records made available to me, and official publications from the ministry form the data pool from which I extract translocal social relations that carry and accomplish organization and control as "relations of ruling" are used for analysis and reflection.

The initial interviews ranged from 60 to 90 minutes. Since answers were in the form of a narrative, the interview often ran longer if the participant so chose, and in some cases, the participant volunteered for a follow-up face- to-face interview.

After the data of each interview has been studied and analyzed, a follow-up session was usually needed for clarification or elaboration. The follow-up sessions were conducted on the phone or a face-to-face meeting, depending on the amount of information required and the availability of the participant.

Situating the inquiry: About the author

I do not believe that research in social science can be entirely value- free, neutral or objective simply because the researcher is not entirely free from his/her standpoint. What we see also determines what we do not see.

Thus there is no way of escaping our subjectivities (Tyack, 1976). So it is just as well to recognize from the start that our findings will be influenced by who we are, where we stand and our meaning system, and that knowledge is always partial, interested and situated. It arises from our past, shaped by our race, gender, class, different theoretical, institutional, ideological, geographic and time locations (Kenway & Willis, 1998) as well as by our visions of the future. Furthermore, researchers are located within a complex web of discourses. They have many ways of "...seeing and being themselves and many positions to occupy—some more powerful than others. They will draw both consciously and unconsciously on the discursive repertoire which resides within them, and in differing ways, either take up or reject the positions offered" (Kenway & Willis, 1997, p. xvii). And since this dissertation passes through the filter of my eyes, not to mention the sensibilities and ideology of a hybrid identity, I should start with some self-disclosure. I came to Canada as a teenager. So even though I have called Canada home most of my life, my formative years were spent in a crown colony. I am a teacher by profession and have taught in Toronto schools for years before taking early retirement to pursue graduate work.

In the matter of schooling, I found out as a young mother about to send my first-born off to junior kindergarten that "East is East and West is

West...and never the twain shall meet." First and foremost, there was the difference in our conceptions of the purposes of schooling. Most Chinese parents, even hyphenated ones, see schools having one over-arching purpose, that is the child's intellectual development and academic achievement. The rest, the emotional and social development, the parents see as primarily, though not exclusively, the family's responsibility and domain, one that caring parents of my generation, regardless of their individual circumstances, will be loath to relinquish to the school (Li, 2001). Thus our (Canadian) schools' insistence on teaching the whole child, focusing on his social attitudes or emotional growth sounds definitely presumptuous, if not suspect, to most

Chinese-Canadians (of my generation). Furthermore, most parents find the ethic of individualism espoused by schools somewhat disingenuous. They feel, not without some justification, that individuals are individuals in a society, just as a child is an individual in a classroom (Popkewitz, 1983). Furthermore, they

29 feel that even for the white child, there exist real and strict constraints on what

is possible for any given individual (Wotherspoon, 1998).

My involvement with Canadian schools as a parent did not have an

auspicious start. Now with perfect hindsight, I see that sorry experience as an

unfortunate convergence of my own ignorance, naivete, cultural differences,

human frailty as well as the confused state of the Ontario school system at

that juncture of its history. Some thirty odd years ago, I took Canada at her

word regarding equity and tolerance. It really had not occurred to me that

public school principals or teachers were not kindly disposed to being

'interviewed" by a parent of colour before a child's admission to kindergarten.

(Now, of course, a pre-registration conference is de rigueur among middle

class parents)8. The arrogance and the not- even- thinly-veiled racism

displayed were so shocking and insulting that I decided that my children would

not avail themselves of the kind of education on offer. Consequently, my sons

never darkened the doorway of a publicly-funded school. Years later, after I

rejoined the ranks of public educators, and even after mostly positive

experience with many caring and colour-sensitive colleagues, the experience

of that first encounter with educational officialdom has never left me. I would

To illustrate how much things have changed, I offer the following personal anecdote. When my first grandchild was only four months old, my son was surprised and amused to receive a call from the local public school principal inviting him in for a tour of the school and a meeting !

30 like to think that it has sensitized me to the plight of the Other, and guided me in my dealings with my students and their parents.

The researcher's stance

I start with the premise that knowledge is always situated and partial and that the researcher is not, and cannot be disembodied. She is situated in the world, in a complex of social relations and has a particular biography that includes race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and class. Furthermore, my past is implicated in many ways in the very processes this dissertation seeks to dissect and analyze. One chief concern of mine from the start is the duality of my stance, that of an insider or outsider. A great deal of the teachers' narratives resonated with me. How can it be otherwise? I, too, spent many years in the classroom and know well the strains and tensions of coping in the classroom with ever-shifting goalposts, conflicting and intensifying expectations. As an insider, I am indeed very familiar with the workings of the school and the classroom at a micro-level and also the workings of the

Regional office at the meso-level. Additionally, I know a number of the informants well, having worked shoulder to shoulder with some of them through a most painful and turbulent epoch in Ontario's educational history— the Harris years. In protesting Bill 1609, we walked the picket lines together,

9 Bill 160, The Education Quality Improvement Act 1997 changed the structure of educational funding and many other important aspects of the teachers' work. In the name of fairness and equity, the province removed funding from municipalities. The Act also removed principals

31 carried placards and engaged in the kind of activism and were on the receiving

end of verbal abuse that had previously never figured even in my worst

nightmares. So I have intimate knowledge of the ruling relations in practice,

not just in the abstract.

I must admit that try as I might, I had, and continue to have great

difficulty claiming "the possibility of scientific transcendence through

intellectual discipline and technical competence" (Merton 1972, cited in Griffith

1998, p. 364). Luckily, in IE, I do not use the informants' experiential

knowledge filtered through my ears, to make statements or generalizations

about them. Rather, the informants' experience provides me with a point of

entry only from which the institutional regime can be scrutinized or explicated.

My role is that of a thoughtful and probing listener.

But I should make plain now that a teacher's psyche and identity are

such an inextricable part of me that even if it were desirable, I would not be

able to step out of my skin and view my informants from a totally detached

position. So an insider, I definitely am. But as Alison Griffith (1998) remarks, it should only be the starting position of the researcher. So, that is how I began—as an insider. That status gave me from the start privileged access. and vice-principals from the unions, and issues such as class size, the use of non-certified staff, instructional hours, preparation time. What followed was chaos and acrimony, culminating in a ten-day strike in the fall (Gidney, 1999). I should add that from my perspective on the picket line, the public was overwhelmingly and solidly behind the government. My colleagues and I were subjected to all manners of abuse from passing motorists on a busy arterial road.

32 Because of shared experiences, my informants were willing, able and many

even eager, to tell me just how things were—not the company line, not what

they thought would look good on them, but things as they were, the social

organizations that regulated their subjectivities and coordinated their work and

the resultant frustrations and anger. Alison Griffith recounts the crossing of

boundaries in her research with Dorothy Smith on the work of mothers of how, from their positions as mothers, they consciously or unconsciously take on

perspectives of the school - an outsider stance (1998). Theirs are the footsteps, in boundary crossing, I follow. As a minority mother who has raised two boys in a large urban centre jn Ontario, and who has seen the face of officialdom as it presented itself to the Other, I often find myself viewing the scene as an outsider. So I was not entirely taken by surprise when I found myself often unconsciously crossing the boundaries too. If I cannot view schooling with complete detachment, I definitely view it with a jaundiced, if affectionate, eye. As a matter of fact, I cross boundaries so unselfconsciously, and so often, that I have often been asked in conversation, "Just whose side are you on?" Ultimately, I hope I have used my status in both camps to render a rich and faithful account of the unseen hand that shapes the teachers' practices and perspectives.

The Research Experience

33 From preliminary talks with teachers, I knew from the start some of

what I subsequently found. But what surprised me were the range and the

intensity of the passion. Emotions ranged from a disquietude, passive

disillusionment, simmering anger and frustration to vociferous outrage. In

talking about the unsuitability of the mandated textbooks and pedagogy, one

informant became angrier and angrier until she stormed out of the room,

without any preliminaries, to retrieve textbooks and workbooks to back up her

assertions. Another answered with ferocious vehemence to the question as

what aspect of her work takes up most of her time, with, "NOT THE

ACADEMICS!" Two informants wept as they railed against the injustices and

indignities (marginalization of their skills and experiential knowledge) heaped

upon them as they neared the end of their careers. The voice-recorder was

not able to pick up the silences, the hesitation, and the extreme care three

participants skirted around particular issues such as group work that has

become a central part of the primary pedagogical orthodoxy. Two participants

motioned for me to turn off the recorder when they spoke on a sensitive topic, having to do with different cultural practices of parenting and parental values with which they took exception. The voice-recorder was also unable to pick up the many instances of dissonance, as manifested in long pauses, a search for words, looks of ambivalence and frustration, the rolling of the eyes that conveyed to me that the real meaning was not conveyed in the words. The

34 recorder was also unable to pick up the look of the efficient career ladder climber who spouted all the right words to narrate how she had followed all the institutionally-sanctioned pedagogy. I must state that was the most difficult interview for me. It was during that interview that I really understood what

Dorothy Smith had meant about the interviewing experience being "dialogic".

Needless to say, I made no comment. It was all I could do to maintain a pleasant, neutral and professional countenance while many very rude words were dancing in my head. The recorder was also unable to capture the look of tenderness and pride on a teacher's countenance as she spoke of her grade 1 students' written accounts of their school year.

Interviews with administrators were, with one notable exception, challenging in the sense that I felt very keenly their feelings of tension and constraint. There were topics that I would have liked to pursue such as the disjuncture between the ministry's demand for capacity building and continuous improvement and the realities of the overwhelmed and in some cases, intransigent teachers, but could not, partly out of respect for the very difficult position administrators find themselves, and also partly out of a real fear that opening such a sensitive and contentious topic might cause the interviewee to withdraw her consent to participate.

On some days, the interviews were so draining and so disturbing that I could not bear to replay the recording on the same day. On those days, I wrote

35 in my journal instead to ensure that I record my impressions and spontaneous reactions.

After the careful coding of cues and markers on the fault line, the issue of ruling relations emerged as a sizable fissure as it recurred in so many of the narratives. It is through this fissure that we can scrutinize the ruling relations embedded in the present discourse of continuous improvement, the discourse of blame and possibility of redemption. The ruling relations wield power in a number of ways chief of which is the power to define the problem, offer an

"informed prescription' (LNS 2007C), usually a quick fix with the accompaniment of a timeline. But worst of all, the ruling relations obliterate the context in which teachers teach and students learn, thus the "problem" becomes sanitized, routinized, generalizable and made amenable to a systemic fix. The same ruling relations make no allowance for apparent contradictions, entertains neither questions nor contestations. Invoking research, evidence of "what works", the new discourse is cloaked in a scientific infallibility and legitimacy (LNS, 2007b) that baffles, frustrates, disillusions and outrages teachers who have to make sense between the visions and possibilities in the institutional discourse and procedures and what they face on Monday mornings.

36 Chapter 3

A Tale of three schools

I will begin the analysis of the disjuncture between the decontextualized

official discourse of continuous improvement, the ruling relations that impact

on teachers' work and the teachers in the flesh and their work by presenting a

tale of three schools.

With all the talk of building capacity, best practices, and high yield

strategies (Campbell & Fullan, 2006) one needs to be reminded that in

learning and teaching, one cannot talk in universalizing terms. Neither the

learner nor the teacher can be a universal subject. As Michael Apple put it,

"There are no abstract learners in the classroom....instead we see specific

classed, raced and gendered subjects, people whose biographies are

intimately linked to the economic, political and ideological trajectories of their families, communities and political economies of their neighborhoods" (1986,

p. 5). We will see how the curriculum is seen and delivered by the teachers;

how children are positioned differently so that essentially the same type of behaviour is viewed quite differently in different contexts, and when viewed through varying evaluative lenses, and how institutional practices affect teachers' work and hence students' school experience differently. We will also see how teachers under the present regime as managed professionals have had to make decisions against their better judgment. I will also examine how seemingly benign and well-meaning procedures or practices, such as the

Provincial Report Card10 and The Running Records 11 have produced

altogether unintended consequences.

School A

School A is situated in a fairly new suburb of a large metropolitan city in

Southern Ontario, Perth12. The attendance area, with a mix of large single

family homes and condominiums can be characterized as comfortably middle-

class, with a number of small business owners, professionals, white collar workers as well as skilled workers. The streetscape presents a picture of the

kind of serene suburban lifestyle reminiscent of an earlier era. Urban poverty,

strife or violence does not seem to have come to this area.

The school opened in the 1980s during which period came an influx of affluent

immigrants, mostly from Hong Kong.13 Since then, there has been a fair bit of

Since 1998-1999, the Provincial Report Card has been the standardized reporting instrument. It will be dealt with at length on pp 202-204 of this dissertation. 11 Running Records (RR) is an individual reading assessment tool that allows the teacher to assess the child's reading as she reads from a benchmark book. The object of the individual assessment is to pinpoint the reading level of the child so that instruction can be customized. For a full description and discussion of RR, see pp 216-217 of this dissertation. 12 All names, people, places and schools, in this dissertation have been changed to ensure anonymity 13 The Business Immigration Program was set up by Citizenship and Immigration Canada to attract experienced business people to Canada. To qualify for the "Investor" category, one must have a minimum networth of $800,000 and must make an investment of $400,000. The Entrepreneur Immigrant is expected to own and actively manage a business that creates jobs. The minimum networth for this category is $300,000. Under The Self-employed persons program , the applicant has to have the ability to be self-employed. There is no networth requirement, just the relevant experience. Ontario and other provinces too have a Provincial Nominee Program to facilitate the process and to ensure the money flows into their

38 movement in the area as a number of the newcomers basically stayed in the neighbourhood only until they could acquire better and permanent homes in an even more affluent area. Hence, there has been a gradual but perceptible change in the student body as the more affluent families left. It is the only dark cloud on the school's horizon. Both the principal and the grade 6 teacher, Pam, spoke of the changing demographics.

The school has a sterling reputation in the community as a school of high achievers. It is regularly showcased and featured in the board's outreach literature and has received awards for outstanding academic achievement.

The school is very pro-active and not at all shy promoting itself either. Its

EQAO results are posted on a large sign outside the school for all the community to see. The principal, Elizabeth readily admits that EQAO scores are definitely what draw parents to the school. She spoke, not without a touch of pride, that while surrounding schools are experiencing declining enrolment, the enrolment at the school has held steady.

The student body of just over 300 is composed of 75% Chinese from

Hong Kong, the rest is made up of Egyptians, Caucasians from the East Block and African Canadians. Elizabeth admitted that the various cultural groups do exhibit very different achievement patterns

jurisdiction. (Citizenship and Immigration Canada @ http://www.cic.qc.ca/enqlish/business/index.html retrieved on January 13, 2007)

39 Most of the kids come from homes in which education is highly

prized...parents enroll their kids here because of high EQAO

scores....Parents will come in totally distraught if their kid gets a Level

2 ,14 ( Elizabeth, Principal, School A)

In terms of behaviour, the principal also mentioned, apologetically, a difference,

" ...Chinese boys and girls are very respectful of authority, and are hard workers...but the ...Egyptian and Black kids require more intervention...! sound racial, but I don't mean to be".

As one walks through the school, one gets a sense of purposefulness in the children, a light-hearted conviviality and collegiality in the staff. On every occasion I have visited the staffroom (at least 20 times over a two month period), there was always food that someone or another had brought in. Staff congregates for lunch and coffee and often the room filled to capacity rocked with friendly banter and laughter. The staff in general seems to bask in the reflected glory of the children's achievement. In the recent past, two former principals have become superintendents. If there was pressure on, or discord among the staff, it was certainly very well-hidden from this observer.

The Principal

Elizabeth is an exuberant vivacious woman who wears her heart on her sleeve.

Her love for her job and the children in her charge is ever evident, as is the

14 Level 2 on EQAO denotes performance that does not meet the provincial standard.

40 pride in the standing of the school and the achievement of her staff. She has the confidence of the parent community, the admiration of her colleagues, and the loyalty and support of her staff. Indeed, she admits that hers is a dream job, and that she is the object of envy. On the day of the first interview, she had just returned from having purchased air-conditioners for the portable classrooms, confident that she would have the support of the parent council

(which has to foot the bill), and the gratitude of teachers and students alike.

For all the pleasantness and light in her manner, she takes her job extremely seriously and definitely cannot be accused of resting on her laurels or coasting on the coat-tails of a most advantageous intake.

What does she think the EQAO scores that have been the source of so much pride and prestige? In a school, renowned for academic achievement, whose parent community has chosen the school for just that reason, and who value academic achievement as the sole goal of education, Elizabeth strikes now and again a surprisingly ambivalent and a discordant note. "The EQAO is only one measure. The present emphasis is putting too much pressure on kids...they are not receiving the kind of well-rounded education that they did fifteen years ago...now we don't have Family Studies, woodwork, art classes.

The Phys. Ed teacher is gone, so is the librarian. We have a library technician only for 2.5 days a week". What disturbed and baffled her even more was the parents' very narrow conception of success and the purposes of schooling.

41 She mentioned, with more than a tinge of regret and disapproval, that the parents of the lead characters of the musical the school had just produced, chose not to attend because they seemed to be interested exclusively in academic achievement.

The staff

This is also the school that yielded the greatest number of volunteer informants. This is a very happy lot of teachers. Although as will be described later, there is some dissonance and ambivalence, it is, nonetheless, very mild relative to the enormous satisfaction they expressed about their work, their students, and the support from most parents. As a result, this seems to be the school in which the gap between institutional discourse and teacher practices is the narrowest, or non-existent. Because the present focus on scores is consonant with the wishes of the parent community and the goals they have for their children, and the fact that these parents are firm believers and practitioners of Lareau's concerted cultivation (2003), these children take to school like, in Bourdieu's words "fish in water" ( Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. p. 127). The children for the most part are engaged in piano lessons, art lessons, math classes, language classes, karate, gymnastics as well as

Chinese school. The kindergarten teacher, Diane, says that the children are

"highly, highly enthusiastic...all active participants...four boys came in reading at a grade 3 level."

42 Although the discourse of achievement ran through every teacher

interview, EQAO did not emerge as an issue at ail.

School B

School B is geographically not far from school A, but in almost every

aspect it is a world apart. It is on a street with semi-detached homes, and

rental apartment buildings. Although there are few signs of affluence, there

are also no signs of the distress associated with urban poverty. This is, in the

words of a teacher, "a lower middle class and working class neighborhood" in which residents keep perhaps two jobs a person to make ends meet. Hence it

is hard to get parents to attend parent-teacher interviews, never mind as school volunteers. Making a living takes up most of their time. Filipino families, typically arrange it so one parent works days, the other nights, to provide supervision for the children (Barb, principal School B).

There are under 200 children here, two-thirds the number of school A, but the school seems a much less settled place, and very much busier, partly due to the physical layout, I think. As one enters, there is a central foyer with the office on the left, the staffroom and library on the right, and straight ahead are four doors on an arc leading to four different classrooms. Always there seems to be a steady stream of children heading to the office to see either the secretary or principal throughout the day. The student body is predominantly

43 Asian, with Filipinos being the largest group, and a sizable group from the

Caribbean.

The Principal

The principal is an experienced administrator who is friendly, approachable

and soft-spoken with the refined manner reminiscent of that of a head prefect

of a grammar school. When I first approached her about the project, she was

most supportive but made it clear that a meeting with the staff would have to

take place during the lunch hour as the staff did not want any meetings after

school. The convivial collegiality in school A is nowhere to be found here. As

will be described later, one gets the feeling that the staff seems to be under

siege and the strain shows on the principal.

The attendance area for the school used to be solidly middle-class. But

in the last decade with the construction of a cluster of low- rent apartments

and social housing, it has attracted a rather more transient population. Many

newcomers use the area only as a springboard until they establish themselves.

The staff

Most teachers in the school are late career teachers. For the most part they

seem tired, beleaguered and conflicted. Given that the school's ranking on the

unofficial league tables has had almost a meteoric rise in recent years, I was surprised to find such a groundswell of tension, anxiety, and disenchantment

44 among those who volunteered to be interviewed. I would have liked to have had a larger number of interviewees, but only five teachers came forward.

Most of the teachers have been at the school for a number of years, bought homes in the area, and bemoan the change in the composition, attributes and disposition of this new crop of students and parents. Additionally, because there is a great deal of movement in the student body, their EQAO results are

"inconsistent" (Barb, principal). Barb mentioned that the year before the school did so well that the media took notice and arranged to interview the principal.

But this year, through a combination of factors, chief of which is the small number of grade 3 students, the reading scores plummeted. Fortunately, because of the small sample, results were not reported publicly. What was telling was that the Parent Advisory Council looked at the results with equanimity. The staff, at least the ones who volunteered to be interviewed, seemed a great deal less sanguine. They spoke with nostalgia of the parents and students of yore, and gave the impression that they somehow feel diminished by the change in the demographics of the school. It is also telling that one of coping mechanisms is a very strident unionism.

The staff gave the impression that they never came to terms with the change in their clientele and that the staff-parent relations leaves something to be desired. S. M. Abbey (1996) in "Systemic barriers between home and school" studies the interactions between mothers, mother-teachers and the

45 schools. She found that middle class mothers were almost afraid to intervene when things were amiss or to confront school problems directly for fear of reprisals. In general, they felt that the best course was to try to manipulate teachers (1996). She quoted a mother-teacher, Anna, "When my daughter has bad teacher, I told them how wonderful they were...I've done all these dishonest things because I wanted the best for my child." (p.74). Sally Power

(2003) and her colleagues, in Education and the Middle Class detail how carefully and judiciously middle class parents manage their relationship with the school, even when things went wrong. The parents at School B, a lower middle, working class community, do not feel the same need to please the teachers. These parents, probably hardened by difficult circumstances, life's vicissitudes and past injuries, are quick to detect signs of discrimination which may or may not be there. As will be described later, when they do, a confrontation, without any finesse, ensues.

Furthermore, there is tension too in labour relations.

I was standing in the foyer chatting with the principal as she started

divvying up pizzas for the various grades. As her work progressed, the

boxes piled up waiting to be delivered. Right across the hall was the

kindergarten room. The teacher (on her prep time) came out of her

room, looked around her and took a pile of boxes surreptitiously to aid

Barb with delivery. She came and went five times, without so much as exchanging a look or a word with Barb or me. I got the distinct

impression that she knew she was breaking rank in taking on tasks not

in her job description as defined by her union and that she would be

censured (A. Hargreaves, 1994, P. 165) if she had been observed.

(Field notes, October, 2008)

School C

School C is in an area of Perth that in the last couple of decades has gone from a hamlet of farmers and artisans to a bedroom community with aspirations of a metropolis. The once little hamlet now has its own city centre and a cultural centre. It is also the home of a number of large multinationals.

Depending on one's point of view, this area could strike one as either in the process of becoming or in the process of dying. After even a cursory glance, one cannot help but notice that the area is not a picture of a harmonious whole.

On the contrary, it is the sharp and stark contrasts that come into focus, regardless of one's vantage point. Although the intersection of Main and

Queen15, noted for its luxury condominiums and majestic office towers, and the intersection of King and Main flanked by old grimy rental apartments and dismal-looking plazas, provide the sharpest contrast, it is by no means the only example. The same contrast is seen on Main Avenue itself, with the original one storey saltboxes on the south side and brand-new luxury

15 Street names, as all identifying characteristics, have been changed.

47 townhouses on the north. Walk down any side street and the same picture of contrast is being replayed. One can expect to see large luxury homes, once pejoratively referred to as "monster homes", right next to fifty-year old

"saltboxes", a term used by realtors and carries no pejorative connotations, so

I was told.

Up until ten years ago, the school had a solid reputation as being a middle class school in a stable middle-class neighborhood. But as the area matured and residents aged, enrolment declined and the school began busing in more and more of its students from King and Main. The school population is now about 90% Filipino. In the league tables, it stands in the bottom quartile. Two years ago it was designated an OFIP school, that is a school needing Ministry sanctioned intervention. The parents for the most part are fairly recent immigrants who stay with family while they establish themselves in the city.

Challenges are many, chief of which are language and poverty. Despite the challenges usually associated with so radical a transformation, the staff impress as being enthusiastic, very caring, almost messianic in their desire to make the school a place of nurturant love for their students. The stress of being an OFIP school, however, is never far from the surface.

Because my informants are all volunteers, I did not get the full range that I had hoped. Nonetheless, the grade 1, grade 3, grade 6, kindergarten &

48 Literacy, and ESL and the principal produce a rich narrative of the school, its students and their needs.

The Principal

Bonnie is a picture of perfect decorum. She was very careful and deliberate with her words. Her focus is on joy, the joy of children. "...What privilege it is to work with these lovely children." Every day for her is "full of thankfulness" to be with these children. She was not concerned about academic attainment, just joy. She never said so in so many words, but she has very low expectations of the children, and is focused really on nurturant love and pastoral care. All was sweetness and light, until she was asked about the challenging aspects of her job. She mentioned very quickly the "harassment from parents" but declined to elaborate beyond saying that they (a group of 10) go beyond the mandate of Catholic Schools Advisory Council (CSAC) and are taking a bit too much upon themselves and make "unreasonable demands" that are not even good for the children.

Herein lies the tale. The school is about 90% Filipino, composing of parents who have just a toehold in the country and are too busy and distracted to be involved in the schools. They are also inordinately grateful for the schooling their children are getting, and for free too. But there is a small minority of parents who are affluent, educated and articulate who are not satisfied with the pastoral care, and are worried about the low ranking of the school on the

49 Leagues Table. Being an OFIP school may not please the middle class parents but it has meant additional resources to the school because the majority of the children scored level 2 (below provincial standard). Bonnie presents herself as being a pro-active, "joyful and thankful" school administrator, singularly blessed with a group of happy children, and for the most part happy parents. I should mention that it is important for that image to dominate in her trek up the career ladder. She has done time in secondary schools and needs the primary experience to round out her profile to qualify for the next stage up the career ladder, field superintendency. The key to a quick ascent is super boosterism 16which she exudes.

When asked how she would measure success in her students, she replied,

"Willing to come to school, ready to listen. Marks don't matter". Perhaps reflecting the values of the parent community, for Bonnie, schooling serves just one purpose—to enable the students "to make enough to take care of the family".

The Staff

Despite the challenges and stress being an OFIP school, and the stresses usually associated from such a radical transformation, the staff exudes a missionary zeal. My informants impress as being very caring, perhaps to the

16 In Solidifying Our Leadership Alliance, Leadership Support Letter #1 (ND), The LNS stressed the importance of the effective leadership role of superintendents. Among other things, the superintendent is exhorted to be "an optimizer—foster[ing] a positive climate and celebrate[ing] success", (p. 4) 50 extent that "happiness" and "pedagogy of joy" outrank intellectual demand.

This is unfortunate, especially in the present regime of testing and audit.

Lingard (2005) deals with exactly this point. While he found, as I did, the

caring and concern of the staff, the social support given the students,

admirable, he posits that the lack of intellectual demand on the disadvantaged

children is a social justice issue in that the school is about the only site in

which these children can acquire the linguistic and cultural repertoire valued in

our credentialed society. "By doing away with giving explicitly to everyone

what it implicitly demands of everyone, the educational system demands of

everyone alike that they have what it does not give" ( Bourdieu, 1977, p. 494),

despite the best of intentions, is unjust. Thus the focus on nurturant love and

pastoral care combined with the current EQAO demands, inspired emphasis

on free-floating skills without content, and on "covering" what is likely to be on

the tests, tend to further disadvantage this already disadvantaged group

(Lingard, 2005).

I am not arguing against the virtues of care and social support, quite on the contrary, I argue that social supports are a necessary condition for academic learning. But I also argue that academic learning or what Lingard terms "a more equitable distribution of cultural capital through explicitness"

(2005, p. 179) cannot be eclipsed in a primary school. This topic will be taken up again in the last chapter.

51 52 Chapter 4

Disjuncture: What teachers say

To those in the trenches, the standard curriculum has meant that their work has been increasingly circumscribed by issues of accountability and tight control by outsiders, with scores on the EQAO seemingly the sole arbiter of competence and performance, and improvement in student scores and school ranking, the only objective that counts. In practical terms, it means that teacher's work has become more routinized, proletarianized and subjected to discourses and practices of managerialism (Giroux, 1988 ; Helsby, 1995).

We will hear in this chapter what my respondents have to say about having to suspend their own professional judgment and do others' bidding, be it in the form of board-issued curriculum binders; formal and uniform reading tests administered at least every three months (whether the child needs it or not), rigid timetable, and relentless pressure to produce "improvement".

The teachers' voices remind us that a curriculum is only a wish list. For those who auger for a tight control on our schools, a perennial problem is that there really is no way of ensuring that the planned curriculum is the same as the delivered or the attained one. In the days before Hall and Dennis, the

Ministry had an inspectorate that monitored compliance, and an exit exam to render a measure of quality assurance. But the years after Hall and Dennis

53 were years of decentralization. Embracing the holistic and constructivist theories of learning embedded in child-centred approach to education, the

Ministry decided that curricula would be most effective, when site-based and context-specific (Annual Report, 1976-7). Curriculum was left to the school boards, the schools or to the teachers. But when the school system came under fire in the 1980s and even more so in the 1990s under Mike Harris'

Conservative government, there emerged a view that the very liberal laissez- faire, experiment in decentralization in education had not worked; that teachers had abused the autonomy they had to the detriment of the children; and that measures had to be taken to shape up the profession. It was the

Begin-Caplan Commission17 recommendation that a uniform curriculum be determined centrally and standardized testing be implemented province-wide.

In this chapter we will find out from teacher's narratives how the centralized, standard and uniform curriculum work on the ground among non-standard children and under vastly different material conditions. We will also see how ostensibly benign or beneficial processes such as Running Records results in

The Royal Commission on Learning chaired by Monique Begin and Gerald Caplan made 167 recommendations covering all aspects of their mandate. Recommendations include: a centrally designed curriculum expressed in terms of learner outcomes; province-wide testing in Language at the end of grade 3, elimination of grade 13, early childhood education to be provided starting age 3, establishment of a College of Teachers, mandatory professional development for teachers as a condition of license renewal every five years, extensive use of technology in schools,.the establishment of an arms-length agency to administer province- wide testing,.These recommendations echoed Radwanski's (1987)made just seven years earlier.

54 actually decreasing learning opportunities for the very segment of the student body it is supposed to help.

School A

Recall that school A is the most favoured of schools with its staff enjoying the prestige and respect withheld from the teachers in Schools B and C. As such they also wield a great deal of professional autonomy and authority. To them, a curriculum is only a guide to which they add their own professional judgment, and leave their own imprints. If what is demanded of them collides with what they think is in the best interest of their students, they have no hesitation in shaping, sculpting the ends and means to fit that particular context.

The curriculum [is] so onerous. I cover a lot, not all. When I first got it, I

made myself crazy... Grades 1s have trouble staying at their desks. So

much is telling how they understood things... [I must] try the curriculum

my own way, so I can survive in the classroom... [What is] most

important is my rapport with kids. Want them to have fun. If [they have]

fun, they'll learn. I try to gear the curriculum towards things they like

and I like. If I like it, I can teach it better. I know I can't do it all. I pick

what I can do well. [I spend] lots of time on language arts. Spent a lot of

time on drama. Every child loved it. This year everyone loved it...

I try to follow the program as best I can using the material they give us.

But for some, I go back to what I used...different things I made up to

55 supplement. I dread teaching it the way they are asking us to do it. I

don't feel successful.

(Carol, grade 1 School A)

Another teacher in the same school takes the same liberty with the curriculum. In speaking of the Math text that most teachers find unsuitable and difficult for their clientele, George, the special education teacher echoes

Carol's sentiments and also insists on exercising his own professional judgment. He eschews the step-by-step prescribed procedures laid down in the mandated system-wide math text.

Take the math program...[it is] loaded with language and problem

solving. When I have kids who can't read and lack the logic, I remove

those texts and do my own program. Mechanical work first and then

teach problem solving. I want them to concentrate on the problem and

strategies... [I] allow the use of a calculator [especially] with

multiplication and long division...or they give up before they start. I use

Math Quest, Journeys..A use what works best with the child. It works...I

can juggle things around a bit...There are some teachers who have

difficulties solving the math problems...in talking to other teachers,

some are under the impression the ministry dictates how to do

things...[they worry about] EQAO ...if students do well, it reflects on

my teaching...but one textbook is not going to fit everyone. I disagree with it totally... I do it my own way. Teachers are artists...can't be

static...you might be able to reach half the class [following the

prescribed text]... how about the other half?

(George, Special Ed. School A)

One has to be reminded that teachers in School A have the degree of confidence and autonomy they do mainly because they are exalted for their students' achievement and are not scrutinized nor questioned the way the teachers in Schools B and C are. After all, one does not question nor argue with success. The technologies of control and surveillance barely touch them, and when they do impinge on the teachers' practice, they do just what is required to satisfy the bureaucratic demands their own way, then carry on.

They have the professional confidence (Helsby, 1995 ; Woods era/, 1997) not to let the bureaucratic norms and requirements affect their job performance or self-regard (Woods & Jeffrey, 2002).

Another institutional demand is the production of administrative texts, documentation for evidence and exactitude. Not only must the teacher generate a grade for student products, but she must also be able to present

(upon request) three pieces of evidence in support of that grade (Marie, grade

3 teacher, School C). Carol of School A objects to the idea that every product of a grade 1 class has to be measurable and that primary children be given letter grades as indications of performance. I find it difficult to give letter grades to this age-group... A's B's...[rm]

not comfortable giving it. I'd like to say they're progressing...this is what

they need...or they're satisfactory, good, or very good. Too much

testing...[but those are the] new requirement for primary grades. When I

look at their writing. I don't feel comfortable grading it. [But there's] no

way out. That's a requirement.

People who made these things up don't work in classrooms. [The focus]

is on a lot of testing...In science, social studies and health [for

instance]...we do a lot of work together...but I'm supposed to give them

individual marks... [so I] Make up tests, make up study notes...Go

through the whole test together in class... How else do I give marks?

Participation? Some kids don't participate at all.

So we see even in School A in which the teachers have a great deal more autonomy and professional confidence, Carol still has to be mindful of institutional demands to produce "auditable commodities" ( Shore & Wright,

1999, p. 570).

In Carol, the discourse of effectiveness and continuous improvement has not quite produced "new subjects who identify with it and incorporate it in their practice" (Clarke & Newman, 1997, p. 54). Instead Carol has been able to hold on to her humanist and child-centred approach and has done what she

58 wants to do in ways she wants to do it while at the same time acknowledging the new rules of the game. Her work process is definitely determined at least in part, by the demands for administrative texts. Carol has to produce a letter grade for each child, what is she to do? At the time of the interview, her class was engaged in open inquiry at the beginning of a new science unit. Children working in pairs were discovering the objects that float or sink in water. Carol sees no connection at all between the active learning that is going on and the testing she will have to do at the end. So she made up notes for the children and went through the whole test with the class before giving the test that would generate the individual grade demanded. I see Carol's acquiescence as compliance in form, an entirely legitimate and reasonable response (Thrupp,

1999) from a teacher who puts her students' best interest first and has the professional confidence to act on it.

Once again, part of that confidence comes from the advantageous intake of the school. Her students come in not only school- ready in terms of speaking the language of the school, knowledgeable in how "to do" school, but also possessing a rich repertoire of general knowledge and some with well above- grade level literacy and numeracy skills. From Diane, the kindergarten teacher, we get a glimpse of the next grade 1 class

59 "[ the kids are] all highly, highly enthusiastic...all active participants...a

few boys [are] very good readers, up to grade 3 [level]. About 4 of them

[are] below grade".

And because it is a school of high achievers, for those "below-grade" children,

Diane has already approached the parents for client-paid individual assessment or testing in the community because "...[it]takes too long to wait for assessment by the school board".

Apparently there is nothing unusual about her present class.

Definitely some are not ready to write ... we don't push them. [We]

facilitate. They need time. [It's an] activity- centred curriculum. We have

to push harder. Because of phonics program and Balanced Literacy , a

lot of time [is] spent on language. They are learning faster to read. In

Math 95% [of the kids are] on track. Language is the main challenge.

We emphasize so much on comprehension, retelling and then being

able to write. Writing is a challenge, but [I don't insist on] correct

spelling...They have to be able to read it back to me...[but]one of the

blocks of Balanced literacy is writing...so writing is necessary.

(Diane, Kindergarten teacher, School A)

Despite the province-wide curriculum with uniform expectations, in the classrooms, the expectations, and realities are very different. Here we see, in full throttle, the "engines of inequality" that Alison Griffith and Dorothy Smith write about (Griffith & Smith, 2005). Some children start kindergarten reading at grade 3 level, with the ability to listen, follow instructions and engage in academic work.

...[they are] all highly, highly enthusiastic. All active participants...a few

[are] very good readers, up to grade 3. About 4 of them. There are 3 or

4 below grade level. One of them has a second language component.

They [are] English speakers. Just can't read. [The children are] high

achievers...families have trained them, [they] have grown up with

books." (Diane, kindergarten, school A)

All these are just taken for granted by the teachers. Diane regularly assigns homework.

... All parents help kids with their weekend homework. I purposely give

that kind of homework... In this community, all parents are concerned.

Most don't know what to do to help. [I] have to give suggestions. Some

go to weekend classes, regular language classes, [in addition to] art,

swimming, gymnastics and karate." (Diane, Kindergarten, School A)

When I inquired about the parents, most of whom are non-native speakers of

English, who may not have the language facility to be of much help to the children, she replied that help can be obtained from tutoring centres or a private tutor. I should add that tutoring or homework help centres have mushroomed in malls in the northeast quadrant of the city. One can find

61 storefronts offering "homework help and EQAO tutoring' in many plazas. (See

Appendix E for a typical store front). In fact, relying on the support of tutoring services is so common that it now seems a normal, an expected and indeed, standard practice in parts of the city. In conversation with a principal in a low- performing school, I was told in all seriousness that the major problem with his school was that the parents were poor and therefore could not afford to pay for private tutoring (Lee, Field notes, October 2004)! It was taken for granted that it was the parents' responsibility to obtain private tutoring if and when needed, and when that help is not available, it represents a "problem" for the school.

In school A, if the children come in with skills seen to be below the "norm", they are referred to assessment, and fast-track, private, client-paid assessment at that. Should there be problems, they can be detected and remediated in short order.

We see here the circularity of the whole setup. Because the students of

School A consistently produce stellar results, raining praises on the school and the board, the school attracts better-prepared students who in turn can be expected to produce better results. At the same time, the teachers also are judged by the school's ranking on the league tables, and consequently are accorded the status, autonomy and respect that is conducive to the kind of professional creativity that produces good learning, good students and good results. But Griffith's and Smith's point is well taken. What is concealed in the

62 advantageous intake is the work done by mothers and the material conditions

(resources for tutoring, for instance) implicitly required and that is not universally available. That is not often brought into view. Not only are the children given the kind of training such as listening skills, skills of concentration and attitude to authority; early literacy skills such as a sight vocabulary and familiarity with books to be school ready, they also have the benefit of private language classes or tutoring if and when necessary. Thus more time is available to the teacher for instruction, and with more time, the teacher has a great deal more flexibility to engage in the kind of "substantive conversation"18 (Lingard, 2005, p. 175) that is characteristic of "productive pedagogies". The relations of ruling, the institutional practice of imposing its own categories, norms and set of practices across sites in an effort at achieving uniformity and standardization, has not impacted negatively on the work processes of Carol, Diane or George of School A.

School B in contrast to School A

Recall that School B is only a few blocks away from school A, but is a world apart. Tina, the grade 1 teacher also finds the curriculum onerous but her reaction is quite different:

Lingard argues that the use of "substantive conversation" adds to the intellectual quality of the instruction. It is productive pedagogies or socially just pedagogy that make the cultural capital implicitly expected in school, explicit and accessible.(2005, p. 174-5) 63 Basically [the] curriculum is bigger than it has ever been. There're so

many times you're dealing with so many issues...[I end up] farther

behind than before... further behind." (Tina, Grade 1, School B)

She then provides possible reasons for not accomplishing what she intends or what the ministry prescribes:

Reading a story is no longer a pleasure. [I] Used to love to read [to the

kids]. You could have 40 kids and still have a rapt audience. Not

anymore, [I] have to constantly stop and put the book down because of

interruptions... reading to them... I have no time for that [now] with .so

many other issues. [For instance] I still have to tell them to walk, It's

June ... to come to the floor quietly, walk [instead of run] down the hall.

I gave them reasons...! give reasons too, why [we have rules]...they

don't see past that...

For some of them, adult approval [is] not important. Going to the hall or

the principal is not a threat anymore. Send[ing] a note home, doesn't

work. A lot of the time, mothers come back with excuses. One mother

wrote.." I understand you were yelling at my son yesterday". Kids have

changed. (Tina, Grade 1, School B)

From the above excerpt, one not only feels the tensions in the classroom, but can also see the state of the teacher's relations with the children, with the

64 parents and also with the administration of the school. Tina was talking about the curriculum, but was talking a great deal more than the curriculum. She talked about immature, noncompliant children and parental attribution differently from the way Carol in School A did.

They're [the boys] very cheeky, outspoken, Anxious to say what they

know. Feel they're bright and they are. [Have] lots of background

knowledge and experiences.... They're taken places and [are] involved

in different things... Quite an asset to the class... Most of them can

read well. Have lots of background knowledge.

...they're quite bold and don't seem to listen. [You] Ask them to be quiet,

[they] don't even acknowledge you. Like you're not speaking to them.

Not much difference [between boys and girls]. They're very loud. Have

no idea how to behave inside a classroom...That's the way they are at

home, [they] might be the only kids, [are] pampered, or parents don't

have those kinds of [behaviour modification] skills. ( Carol, grade 1

teacher school A)

In both School A and B classes, it seems that the children are not compliant and often do not respond to adult requests. Carol's take is that the children are pampered. Because they display the kinds of knowledge and skills associated with middle-class parenting, they and their parents are viewed much more

65 favourably, and without a hint of censure or disapproval. Note the contrast in what Tina of School B has to say

...[the parents] don't work with kids ... If there're any problems,[mothers]

make excuses for them. They are working class kids or lower middle

class...

... schooling [isjnot important to [the] parents. [The mothers come in]

with cellphones and long manicured nails, [The would likely] drop kids

off... then it'd be grandma making supper...while the mothers do their

own thing. [There are] a number of families [headed by] just mothers.

That's a big factor.

The harsh and judgmental tone was unmistakable. Clearly the conditions for delivering the curriculum and the agent of that delivery vary greatly between the two classrooms. Try as the ministry might, no curriculum expectations, no matter how specific; no strategy, high-yield or not, rendered under the present material circumstances of most urban classrooms, can be expected to ameliorate the difference or close the performance gap between schools A and B. (More in the last chapter).

In School A, despite the onerous curriculum, Carol remains enthusiastic and effective. Recall that her job is made that much easier by the cultural capital the children bring in that happens to be in the currency the school

66 values: an enriched home environment with all the bells and whistles including extra- curricular and cultural pursuits. In addition, parents in School A seem to know how to manage the home-school relationship.

Parents are very supportive. At interview time, if I ask them to work on

something, for the most part, they follow through. Sometimes, when

they have not, [it was] because they're busy.

The disapproving judgmental tone of Tina is absent here.

One of the non-statutory guidance emanating from the ministry, in pursuance of recommendations of B-C Commission, is that 90% of class time be devoted to helping students meet curriculum expectations. How does that work in the different classrooms?

Asked about what takes up most of her time, the answer from Carol School A was unequivocal: "instruction"

[Instruction] takes up most of classroom time: I do a lot of whole group,

then small group for follow-up. One centre is guided reading. I take one

group and work closely [with them].

All centres [are] language based. I have three reading groups. [ I have]

1. a poetry centre: a shared reading on Monday. Follow up [work]

includes : grammar and comprehension.

2. Sometimes I use pocket charts

67 3. Listening centre: [focus] on comprehension skills...[name your]

favourite part and why

4. Science centre... right now they are working on [the concepts of]

sinking/floating . They have to work together and record information.

(Carol, grade 1 teacher, school A)

The same goes for Pam, the grade 6 teacher of the same school. Her focus is instruction with an added twist. The month of May is devoted to EQAO preparation in the most direct way. Her class spends the month working on tests from previous years. Pam thinks the incremental advantage is minimal— perhaps just ten percentage points. (I should add that in most schools, an increase of ten percentage points would hardly be considered minimal).

From Tina's ( School B) perspective, none of the above is possible:

You can't teach 17 kids individually. There's no time. You have to have

one or two groups. Some kids will hear it more often than he needs to.

Kids don't work well on their own. If I was to set up centres...the only

centre where there's anything getting done is where I'm at. The other

three centres...they [the children] are not doing what they're supposed

to be doing. So much of the Balanced Literacy19 ... so much of it is:"...

19 Balanced literacy or Comprehensive Literacy program is the prescribed curriculum delivery method in kindergarten to grade 3 in a major school board. The program is delivered in four blocks: word study, writing, guided reading and self-selected reading taking up at least 120 minutes daily. Assessment is an important and integral part of the program. The teacher package comes complete with assessment instruments. (TCDSB, 2008)

68 give them these things... let them explore." Unless you're actually

there with them, it's not done.

...EQAO doesn't affect my class. But the curriculum has to be covered,

[you] do it your own way. Nothing [in the classroom] changes... now

because ...even if they [the ministry] insist on changes...we just do our

thing...fulfilling only] the paper requirements... Forget it...[meeting the

curriculum demands ] is not possible...they want you to teach five units

[in math for instance]... no time.

Tina resorts to the "autonomy of the closed door"(Lortie, 2002)

All through Tina's narrative is an aggrieved undertone. Within a year or two of retirement, she feels herself demeaned and devalued by the audit culture that implies a lack of trust, a lack of respect for her professional knowledge and experience. (Basu, 2005 ; Smyth & Shacklock, 1998 ; Woods

& Jeffrey, 2002).

If you come into the room and ask me how Johnny is doing, I can tell

you. I don't need to write it all down in a book. I don't know who it is for.

Very time consuming assessments... written down in a book...I don't

need it.

Accountability is another thing ...we have to be better [from year to year,

so we are told]. What happens when we pass 100% ? As a grade 1

teacher, I was asked to predict how they'll [my class] do in grade 3.1

69 had no idea...When I gave an honest answer: 67 per cent [can be

expected to meet the provincial standard]. I was told it's not good

enough...so I said put it down as 85 per cent then...I don't care...you

can't compare results from year to year... not the same kids... in any

case you can't make silk purse of a sow's ear. (Tina, Grade 1 teacher,

School B)

Tina feels that she is doing her best, following the process-orientation of the child-centred and developmental approach to learning. Now near the end of her career, she is being told, not in so many words, that she has been doing it all wrong. The focus now is on results as represented by a number from standardized testing. Just as the demand for results and exactitude took hold, she found demographic changes brought a new class of children with rather different cultural capital and without the linguistic and social competence that the activity-based, child-centred approach assumes. Protestation on her part sounds just self-serving. One gets the feeling that she feels herself under siege.

I find that parents are not supportive. Such a pleasure when I had

parents come up to say "you're doing a good job". Don't get that now.

They [parents] don't work with kids. If there're any problems, [parents]

make excuses for them. These are working class kids or lower middle

70 class kids... No, schooling [is] not important to parents. (Tina, grade 1

teacher, School B)

Tina resents how the audit culture has positioned her. She feels now parents do not respect her authority nor acknowledge her efforts. It has been such an assault on her identity and sense of well-being, or her substantial self (Nias,

1989; Ball, 1993) that she has retreated to unionism (More on p. 219 of this dissertation). She is quite candid in admitting that she does only what is required and no more. One can tell that disengagement, underpinned mostly by "passive dissent" and a growing cynicism (Clarke, 1997, p. 54), have not been an easy route and brought her no peace with herself. To those who still believe that primary teaching is, above all else, emotional work that requires, an investment of self (Woods, Jeffrey, Troman, & Boyle, 1997), it is not a pretty picture.

Another stricture the LNS imposes is that "variations in learning...[not be] attributed to background variables" (2007a, p. 3). Una, a grade 3-4 teacher at the same school, however, insists the impediments to children's achievement lie in the home.

[It is the lack of ] discipline in kids...[One needs to] give them

consequences...[children] need to be taught. I talk to parents, they say

" The kids don't listen to me...what am I to do?"... If I assign

homework. It's not done. I pack their bags... they unpack it and put the

71 books back on the shelf... We caught the kids unpacking and taking the

books out. Parents...[provide] no support. [I asked] for signature. They

sign, but still work not done. They do not supervise....

Maybe they just sign without looking because they're so busy with work

life and social life.

When asked what percentage of parents would be so disengaged, Una paused and started counting on her fingers before giving up and said," It would be easier if you ask the question differently...ask me about the good ones". I did." 10% will respond [to my notes or suggestions],,,only from 2 or 3 kids [can I expect parental support]

(Una, grade 3-4 teacher, School B)

The grade 8 teacher, Penny, of school B also feels the same way about the lack of parental support and the overloaded curriculum and how it does not accord with what she considers good teaching.

Learning happens not just in the classroom... Lots happen outside too.

[I] would love to be able to take the kids to the mall and let them see

what they can learn. ...Need to give kids the experiences. [They have]

nothing to talk about unless they have the experience... We ask kids

"What do you think?" ...[the response is usually] "nothing" [for they

have no experience]... Now the curriculum is so full there is no time to

talk to the kids... to give them what they need...the curriculum is full of unnecessary details that serve to confuse kids, not facilitate learning.

For example, in the math program, kids are presented with four different

possible solutions to each problem... Kids may be able to handle one.

But by the time, they get to the fourth one; they don't even remember

the first one. So they end up with nothing. (At this point, Penny stomped

out of the room without a word and came back with the math textbook

in hand).

Here...(Penny proffered to the interviewer an opened math

book)..."Solve problem by changing your point of view". Kids are not at

that stage. They can manage the procedure if you're slow and

systematic, but [they are] not able to put it [the reasoning] into words.

You ask them to talk about it, "Explain it to me" [you say]. [You get only]

huh?

(Penny, grade 8 teacher, School B)

It was obvious that math instruction was her forte, and she thought the present approach to instruction not only wrong-headed, but also as a personal affront.

When asked how she handled that problem, she motioned for the recording device to be turned off before venturing," I'm the teacher. I do it my way."

When asked if she had shared her grave concerns with the administration, she observed that it would not have been wise as her principal was on the committee that chose the math series in current use. Penny hit the nail on the

73 head with her candid and astute comments about teacher realities. Often

when innovations or best- laid plans do not work, those charged with

implementing the failed strategies are not free to file an honest report because

invariably the question asked would not be : "What is wrong with the concept/

strategy?" but "What's wrong with you?" D. Kronick, (1989, October 2), a

retired professor of Education, in an article entitled, "Why School Reforms get

a failing Grade", made a good point that innovations are often conceptualized

by people far, far removed from the classroom, and that as there are few

feedback mechanisms from teachers, "...one or more generations of students

are sacrificed to poorly conceptualized, poorly implemented and too globally

applied approaches before change is implemented" (p. A15). So teachers DO

have reasons to be wary of purveyors of innovations and new strategies, not

because of inertia or phobia of the new and improved models. Their fears,

informed by bitter experience, are that not all innovations are suitable for their

particular context, moreover, some innovations were rushed to market before

adequate testing. But when the new and improved schemes fail to live up to their billing, teachers bear the brunt of the blame while the sponsors of such failed schemes can always hide behind "...research has shown".

Penny also pinpoints the tough choices in the classrooms. Under the present regime, "covering" the curriculum takes precedence over higher pursuits of intellectual, cultural and citizenship purposes of schooling. Lingard (2005)

74 argues that such a course is in fact a social justice issue. He and his

colleagues find that teachers in the disadvantaged schools, well-meaning and

caring though they were, because of a lack of time added to the pressures of a

national curriculum, were consistently short-changing their students when time

pressures have left teachers with no time to engage in the kind of "substantive

conversation" that impact on the intellectual quality of teaching.

Just like Tina and Una, what takes up most of Penny's time is not instruction

but behaviour management.

...Discipline. Try to get the kids to behave in a consistent and

acceptable manner. Produce work consistently.... Not talking and

wasting time. They lack maturity . [I have to] to teach [them]

responsibility.

(Penny, grade 8 teacher, school B)

Herein lies another point of disjuncture between the assumptions and

expectations of the LNS and the classroom realities. Since the school day is

finite, time spent on behavorial management is time lost to instruction. Yet,

unless the groundwork and ground rules for appropriate classroom conduct

are well in place and rapport established between teacher and student,

academic work can hardly proceed (Cohn & Kottkamp, 1993; Lieberman &

Miller, 1984). Either the LNS assumes that all children come to school eager to learn, well-schooled already in delayed gratification and socialized to

75 handle themselves in a large group situation, or they conceive of children as being infinitely malleable and that learning is only a passive act, thus they are just vessels waiting to be filled. Penny thinks her job has been made more difficult and teaching less effective by the lack of parental support.

99 % parents think schooling is important. BUT they don't do anything

about it. They only want marks. They let kids go to bed after midnight.

How is the child going to be good for learning the next day?... No

demands made of kids, so [they] don't learn to be responsible.

Demands made on the teacher. [Parents] want [the] teacher [to] copy

down homework for the child in grade 8!! Parents [are] not demanding,

Not consistent. [They] only made excuses. [They] support them [the

children] in their erratic work habits... For example... Kids [are]

interested only in computers. There's nothing that says they can only

play games on the computer. They can read as well. But parents do not

guide or help.

(Penny, grade 8 teacher, school B)

School C

Recall that School C is an Ontario Focused Intervention Partnership (OFIP) school, one of the thirty neediest schools in the district. In the league tables, it stands in the bottom quartile. Challenges are many, chief of which are the language barrier and poverty among the new arrivals. At the other end of

76 spectrum is a small nucleus of white middle-class families that hold the staff collectively responsible for the "decline in standards" and were quite open in their allegation that the curriculum had been "watered down...to cater to the

ESL children" ( Marie, grade 3 teacher, School C, Field notes Oct. 2008). A quarter (six) of the entering grade four class voted with their feet and transferred out the past September (Marie, grade 3 teacher, School C, Field notes Oct. 2008).

Asked about the Ontario Curriculum delivery, the combined grade one-two teacher, Mary, said:

I find here...the [school's] focus [is only] on reading [as in decoding].

They must [be able to] decode. Now that they can decode, they don't

know that to do with that [decoding skill]. They can't transfer to writing,

they can't problem solve...I try to do a bit of everything to try to get

them where I want them to be...

I try to give one grade work they can do independently while I work with

another group. For example, the math lesson takes a lot of time... I set

up a system. Kids are not bad... they get used to waiting...Sometimes it

works, other times it doesn't... Sometimes I teach them together. One

group does language, the other math or journal...For science, one class

copies notes from the board... while I work with the other group. One

day they copy notes, the next day they do the lesson.

77 [There is pressure] from the board... for the numbers. Lots of emphasis

on decoding, but nothing on comprehension. They want a number [of

children at] ...a certain level [of attainment]... [a certain number of

children] at [the expected] instructional level. (Mary, grade 1, 2 teacher,

School C)

Mary has a combined grades 1-2 class of twenty-three children (within the provincial guideline). Even though the majority of the children come from a second language background, only five fit the ESL identification criteria. She added that ESL assistance does not extend to primary grades anyway. But this year, she is lucky, there was room in the 5th Block program, an intensive early intervention program, (more later) for them. Mary finds the 5th Block program effective. Unfortunately there has been a lot of pressure on her to replicate that program in her room. "I can't do what you [the 5th Block teacher] do when I don't have what you have!" And what does the 5th Block teacher have? For one thing, she has only six children in the class. The program works this way: each September, the 5th Block teacher approaches the grade 2 teachers for names of children who could benefit from "help in decoding".

These children are then given a battery of tests including decoding, sound segmentation, blending, and high frequency words. To be eligible, the children's difficulty cannot be attributable to ESL factors or Special Education.

The whole purpose of 5th block is NOT to render remedial assistance to the

78 general population of children experiencing academic difficulties, only those whose scores come "just below grade level" (Fran, 5th Block Teacher and

Kindergarten teacher, School C). The names of the candidates are then submitted to a committee [within the] Accountability Department that has the final say in which six candidates will be included in the program.

...the group has to be homogeneous...so we can move them

along...the program is prescriptive... [we are given] lots of professional

development, resources [in the form of] schedules and day plans...

There are 6 or 7 different things you have to do in a day...lots of

material [everything] is provided... I know exactly the scheme I have to

fit: Running record, 40 sounds, review the 5 words of the week, and

awareness activities... [there's] no sitting around talking, no written

aspect, no arts or craft... [it's] an hour of complete intensive

programming. They [the Accountability dept] come in to watch you

teach... you go twice a year to watch others... it took me a while to fit

everything together. But now I like it...everything is provided...most

teachers [however] find it too controlling... (Fran, 5th Block teacher,

School C)

Here is an example of the high-yield strategies at work. The group eligible for

5th Block assistance is NOT the neediest group, but the "least needy" of the

79 needy group, in line with notion of producing the highest dividend with the least amount of investment!

Fran is enthusiastic about the program. With twenty-seven years of teaching experience behind her, it sounded as though she had finally found her niche. She excels in performance and now she is in a role in which she is expected only to perform. The intellectual component is totally separated. Her part is prescribed in detail, for example one item on the schedule template says "review five words", she just slots in the words she wants to review that day. She is not burdened with planning, scrounging around for materials, coming up with assessment measures. Everything is routinized and provided for her. She is the only informant in Schools B and C who does not strain against the regime of control by the LNS.

Commenting on the learning centres, up until now the one and only approved way of primary classroom organization, she had this to say:

...There are many more things we can be doing that will promote the

development of foundation earlier. Once they have had their beginning,

they bring it into the centres. What happens in the centres then

become[s] more important. Now [in SK] I teach the forty sounds. Before

[I taught maybe] one sound a week. Now 40 sounds each day! By [the

end of] SK, they are in a better position when they enter grade 1.... We

never did that [literacy instruction] before. It was not an objective. Now

80 the emphasis is changed. It's literacy...it is the focus. As you go up the

grade, everything is language. Early primary years decoding [is

important]... .we can get them to decode. It [literacy instruction] was not

an objective... Some kids got it [literacy] by osmosis. Now it's a much

more even playing field. If after all this, kids still can't grasp... it may

indicate some problem. Majority of kids get it (decoding skills)...Now...

[there are] huge gaps in comprehension.

...Some are skeptical... Parents like it [5th block]. I would have every

child learn this way. ...Teachers don't like it. [They find] the program too

controlling, no arts and crafts, no sitting around...talking.... it's a very

fast-paced hour...very tiring.

...Of the 12 kids [in two classes of 6], the seven boys need [to learn]

focus. They just were not focused... [They were] not disruptive...but

[just] sat there... Now they've turned around. [In] a group of 6, they

can't hide...they all know everyone is at the same level... [they have

had to learn] to be students...take an active role ...

(Fran, 5th Block and Kindergarten teacher, School C)

I quoted Fran at length because she underscored many of the conditions that have contributed to the success of the program, conditions that are not the reality of the classroom teachers.

81 Mary, with 23 children in the class, with a whole range of abilities, and a

whole curriculum to cover, not just decoding skills, could hardly be expected to

produce the same kinds of results. Thus "the inspirational language to

organizational transformation" (Clarke, 1997, p. 54) in the communique from

the LNS and from the resource people "...It's so easy, watch what the 5th

block teacher has done!" rankles.

Mary's difficulties are many, starting with the paucity of supplies. She has had

to spend a great deal of her own funds to get what little she has in her room.

When asked about the additional funding for OFIP schools, her reply was that

the grand total for the division came to only $3000, not nearly enough. In

addition,"... [kids] have so many issues...they [administration] want

numbers.... [so many at grade level]... [the children have] No problems with

authority or behaviour...It is work completion... Some have issues at home...

[there is] the language [problem]... [and] no one checks up on them, so no

homework".

Here we see the disjuncture between the administration's priorities and

the teacher's reality. There is no doubt that the 5th Block has benefited a small

band of children. The success just underscores the point that given adequate

resources (1 to 6) teacher-pupil ratio, a narrow enough focus (only decoding

skills), and controlled context [a pre-screened homogenous grouping] great things can be accomplished. But the artificial conditions are somehow

82 discounted when pressure is applied to schools to improve their ranking.

Relations of ruling take no account of the "dailiness" (Lieberman & Miller, 1984, p. 5) nor the messiness of local conditions. The universality that it assumes requires complete decontextualization. Differences are not acknowledged or written up therefore they do not exist.

Here's another point of disjuncture. Marie, the grade three teacher from school C states that because schools are now under so much pressure to improve results in the grade 3 EQAO tests, there has been a relentless drive to ensure children master the requisite phonic skills to facilitate decoding. One unfortunate result is that the formal teaching of phonics has now been pushed down to the kindergarten level. "We now have kindergarten kids decoding at the grade 3 level but have very poor oral language skills." On probing, I found that because 90% of the students are from second language home, the only venue, apart from television, for them to learn oral language is the school. But if the classroom is now so firmly focused on discrete phonic skills, then where is the child to learn the language for communication? This is no small problem.

Recall that in primary grades, the emphasis has been on self-directed activities (in order that children can learn from exploration etc.) or small-group activities. In classrooms in which the majority of the children have English as their first language, the minority child has plenty of ready language models in addition to his/her teacher. But that is not the case at School C, nor at most

83 urban schools. And instead of being immersed in an environment rich in oral

language and text, s/he is surrounded by children who have as limited a facility

in English as s/he. And this condition has a direct impact on the pupils'

achievement in reading. Success in reading requires not only adequate

decoding skills but an adequate, age-appropriate general knowledge of the

world (Meier, 1981). Deborah Meier argues that difficulty with reading does

not lie in reading qua reading but rather related to unfamiliarity with content,

the abstract reasoning required, and difficulty in deciphering the meaning of

the task. She further argues that school reforms with "... a narrow focus on the

teaching...and on testing skills deprives children of the substance of literacy in

a quest for good scores" (1981, p. 460).

As mentioned previously, school C's focus is on pastoral care, on

keeping the children happy, on making their lives more pleasant. Two teachers

explicitly stated that academics is not their focus, nor does it figure high on

their priorities. The ESL teacher, Queenie, went so far as to proclaim that

academics is "the last thing" in her priorities for her students

The grade five/six teacher of School C, Larry has thirty-one students,

some of whom perform below the grade three level. To "engage and entertain"

such a disparate group, Larry makes full use of technology. In front of the

blackboard is a large Smart Board, a giant computer really which affords many opportunities for the class to be active and interactive. Even though the

84 academic and language challenges faced by at least twelve of the thirty-one members of the class seems formidable, there is no discipline problem. How does he deliver the curriculum?

With the common curriculum, each grade deals with different

outcomes... Language arts [is] not difficult to deliver. Reading, writing

skills, inferencing etc. [are] just skills... doesn't matter what

grade...same skills. Math is a lot more difficult. Math must be finished in

May [because EQAO is in June] even though the school year ends in

June. Grade 6 math most difficult. [There're] fourteen chapters...Very

stressful...difficult also [because I have to] include all ESL students. So i

use technology to help me deliver a differentiated program,..to suit

different learning styles... [The hand] is used as mouse...can write and

touch it to turn to type... Don't use the blackboard anymore.

[Delivering the] Science and social studies [curriculum

is] ...problematic... Four strands each class...all different, so for two

grades, [I've to cover] eight strands altogether. Impossible to cover four

strands for each grade Must also cover language and math. [So I]

rob Peter to pay Paul. Other subjects also end up losing to language

and math because of EQAO. Hard enough for a straight grade, harder

for both. I take pride in what I do...I hurt for the kids. If the upper

85 echelons replace kids with $ sign somewhere up the ladder, I can't do

much about it. To do it [to deliver the curriculum] properly is impossible.

In grade 6 I have kids who never passed grade 3, so they're 3-4 years

behind in habits, skills...I've a rigorous curriculum to deliver. AND

they're throwing me kids who are not grade 6, plus an intense

curriculum and a shortened year. Bothers me no end [to see their]

wonderful and flashy slogan..."No children left behind" Everyone can

succeed ...given enough resources...Now they're talking about

inclusion. [Having] Special Ed kids in the room, special ed teacher

works in the classroom with the [classroom] teacher...works well only

when there's a Special Ed teacher all day in that class. It's team

teaching then.

So you have IEP kids20 and C and D students [in one group with the

Special Ed teacher], they can all be taught at the same time. But with

everyone in the class including special ed kids...no way they can travel

the same speed with the A and B students...but because of

budget...everything is downloaded to us. "Here's the philosophy, it

works" [so they say],

What to do with the grade 5s? I had a student teacher all year. [I]

spoke to principal re the difficulty getting through the grade 6 program.

20 IEP Individual Education Plans are for students who require extensive program modifications to meet grade expectations So [I had] the student teacher and a co- op student who came in every

other day, to take over the grade 5 math program. So I just taught

grade 6.

[For the rest of the curriculum], Social studies and science...there's no

established text for science in junior division, For social studies, Grade

5 and 6 have two different programs...The board issued a guideline...

the subject matter for a combined grade... One topic is citizenship ... I

worked with the sixes, the student teacher took care of the grade 5.

We had group work on European explorers. For Science I use the

music periods ...to do science... [also used] the student teacher... [We]

did not do all the strands... [I used] independent study on motion...

[also used] hands-on cooperative learning...I'm positive I'm not

delivering the curriculum as it is laid out. I do the best I can. (Larry,

grade 5-6 teacher, School C)

Because of the relentless pressure to boost the reading scores, it is fair to say that in Larry's class, assessment IS the curriculum. Using a commercial package, the students are "drilled" in tackling the various types of questions on the EQAO, such as questions requiring information, inference and "the big idea". The cycle, test-teach-test is repeated. From the errors on the test, the

87 teacher's manual provides the next step, a short reading selection that ostensibly targets just that particular weakness or deficit21.

[I use] Reaching Readers: the TLC (Testing- learning cycle) to identify

weaknesses. Give them an assessment and determine what skills they

are weak in. For a 4-6 week cycle, we focus on improving that particular

skill. There's a post test and we hope to see an improvement.

The progress of the students is recorded on the "data wall" on the computer.

There has been a slight improvement. Three students went from Level 2 to

Level 3. There were two students at Level 4 at the beginning of the school year, by June one had fallen to level 2. Larry was at a loss to explain the slippage. "The idea of the whole exercise is to push the level 2s to level 3. The insistence on numbers. What a shame!" (Larry, grade 5-6 teacher, School C)

Larry elaborated on the "shame" -everyone, ESL, Special Ed, even the neurologically impaired 22(NI) pupil wrote the EQAO. He explained it this way,

Everyone even the Nl child wrote EQAO because exemptions count as

zero. Level 1 is better than zero... Impacts negatively on the school.

Two types of results [are] reported. Results that include everyone and

21 Although the term Mastery Learning was not used by Larry, it seems to be the method relied upon by Reaching Readers(RR) and hence by Larry. The cycle starts with a pretest to establish a baseline and areas of weakness. After a two to four week period of intervention, the student and tested again. And on the cycle goes. The idea is that complex learning activities can be reduced to the smallest unit and learned in sequence. 22 To preserve anonymity, the pupil's medical diagnosis is left deliberately non-specific. In this dissertation, her exceptionality will be referred to only as "neurological impairment" (Nl)

88 results that include exemptions. [But] the published results are the

inclusive ones. People look at only the published numbers. In a school

this size, each student represents 3 percentage points [difference in the

aggregate EQAO scores]

High pressure... because results are published. Too many people look

at results as an indication of the quality of the school. There's also the v

administration, not the school level [but higher ups] look at the results

and make value judgment as to how well the school is doing. [There is

unrelenting] pressure for decent results...even though we know we're

dealing with demographics... [when dealing with numbers] so much can

be misconstrued. [We use the year by year display]...unless school is

showing improvement year after year, [the easy conclusion is that]

there's something wrong. But not the same kids, we're dealing with.

[We should] look at how they did in CAT test23 or Grade 3

EQAO....Individual schools can look at CAT scores last year...but that

kind of information doesn't go outside the school, not even to the

SOs [superintendents]. They just don't look at the numbers that way

[only the EQAO scores count because they are publicized].

23 CAT refers to the Cognitive Abilities Test that is administered to the classes not involved in the EQAO assessment. It is low stakes testing and deliberately kept very low-key. Larry was the only informant who had anything to say about it. To the others, it is a non-issue. No one saw CAT as a diagnostic test. As the results are not made public, the CAT makes very little impression.

89 As I mentioned before, the pressure to produce high scores is so unrelenting that assessment now has become the curriculum. Stedman (1985) in describing some of the negative impact of testing cites Meir (1984) who writes:

Anyone today who visits elementary schools that are attended mainly

by low-income children notes the prevalence of programmed scripts

based on behaviour-mod techniques, reading "kits" consisting of

hundreds of unrelated paragraphs followed by multiple choice questions

and reams of ditto sheets.

(Cited in Stedman, 1985, p. 311)

Distance Diagnosis and Prescription

Another attack on teacher professionalism is the non-statutory "advice" from the LNS via the board's accountability department teachers must endure. Not only does the exercise take from teachers valuable time that they cannot spare, but the steering from a distance also misses the mark. Marie, the grade

3 teacher, was vocal about what she saw as the misguided focus and the wrong diagnosis rendered by EQAO, LNS and the resource people.

"... [We were told] to base everything on data. So [we] looked at the EQAO results to see how the child at a level 2.7 can be pushed up to 3... Not the 2.1, forget them! (Marie, grade 3 teacher, School C)

She gave me a specific example. The primary (K-3) teachers have recently

(Fall 2008) been asked to think in terms of setting SMART (strategic and

90 specific; measurable; attainable; results based and time bound) goals . To aid them in this exercise, they, with the guidance of a resource person, went over the EQAO results on a micro-level, to detect exactly what it was that rendered a level 2.7, and what it would take to nudge the same child to a level 3. Marie was frustrated and incensed because she disagreed with the scorer on what some of the "right" answers should be. But that was a minor problem. The bigger problem lies in the fact that the official perspective is so "out of touch with classroom realities" (Marie, Field notes November, 2008).

She gave me an example of one specific question on the reading test (grade 3) in which the student was given a number of statements about a particular animal, say turtles. The task was to identify which statement was a statement of fact, and which one of fiction. "But the trouble was that while the kids know the difference between facts and fiction [in the abstract], they didn't know enough facts about turtles to be able to tell the difference". (Marie, grade 3 teacher School C). In Marie's remarks, we see exactly what researchers like

Robin Barrow (1996), Geoffrey Milburn (1996), and Deborah Meier (1981) argue against, the idea that the elementary curriculum should be just the promulgation of free floating skills without content, the mistaken idea that critical thinking involves mental processes such as analyzing, interpreting,

24 SMART goals are a direct import from the "non-statutory guidance" given to teachers to effect continuous improvement from the UK Dept of Education and Employment (Gleeson & Husbands, 2002, p. 12-13)

91 evaluating, that can be taught in the abstract and improved with generic

practice (Hyslop-Margison & Naseem, 2007, p. 107)). This also provides an

illustration of what Linda Darling-Hammond (1989) sees as a key difference

between a bureaucratic perspective on teaching and professional

accountability. From a bureaucratic perspective, accountability means the

monitoring of test scores and the precise implementation of prescribed

procedures or in the LNS parlance, "evidence-based strategies". To the

bureaucrats at EQAO and the LNS, any shortcomings or failure to produce the

targeted outcomes means only one thing—that the prescription is not precise

enough or the implementation not rigorous enough (Darling-Hammond, 1989).

But as a veteran teacher, Marie's diagnosis is right on the mark—that the

students lack content knowledge, an age-appropriate repertoire of general

information on which to build and apply skills (Meier, 1981), not generic skills that can be improved upon by practice!

Once again, the relations of ruling take no account of local circumstances and limitations. Not only does the standardized testing demand content knowledge that some children do not have, it also assumes access to a middle-class lifestyle that is not accessible to a large number of children in an urban centre like Perth. A case in point is a recent EQAO test item requiring children to read and obtain enough information from a restaurant menu to give short answers to questions. (See Appendix F) Even a cursory look will tell us that the task involves more than just decoding and comprehension. It taps the type of knowledge that comes from a middle-class lifestyle, not to be assumed in an urban school.

The Provincial Report: Primary and Junior Divisions (EQAO, 2006-2007) presents an analysis of the specific difficulties children encountered together with suggested interventions. In other words, from the symptoms, the evidence, the EQAO renders a diagnosis and proffers a prescription from Queen's Park.

For this particular test, teachers were told that the children had most difficulty with Cafe Menu, characterized as a "non continuous text". True enough, the menu is not a narrative nor an expository essay and therefore the text is in fact

"non continuous". The strategy for improvement? Teachers are to "provide students with multiple opportunities to practise reading and demonstrate understanding of variety of topics presented in the variety of text genres required by the primary division curriculum, especially non-continuous texts with a variety of graphical features" (EQAO, 2006-2007, p. 36).

What are teachers supposed to take from this prescription? Should they be looking for, and working on non-continuous text genres such as the TV guides, bus or train schedules? Was it the unfamiliarity with the format that proved problematic to the pupils, or was it the content with which they were unfamiliar?

The test item assumed a familiarity with restaurant dining. For instance, how would a familiarity with non-continuous text help the student understand what

93 "on the side" means on a menu? The cause of the difficulty, as confirmed by

Marie, is that the test item deals with activities in a world with which the students are not familiar. They are not used to restaurant dining! Marie found that her students had no difficulty understanding and commenting on the TV guide even though it, too, is a non-continuous text.

On the same page of the above-mentioned provincial report, another

"symptom" noted was that: "On the reading selections, female students performed better than males on both multiple-choice and open-response questions". What does the ministry prescribe?

Teachers are "...to continue to provide a variety of topics in different text types of interest to both genders [and] have students work in mixed-gendered groups to benefit from the strengths of others" (EQAO, 2006, p. 38).

This is yet one more example of the pitfalls of trying to provide first order changes while second order ones are needed. Research literature on the differential academic achievement of boys and girls abound and they all point to rather deeper and fundamental and systemic causes such as society's general anti-intellectual bias and the popular construction of masculinity that positions the studious and academically successful male as deviant, effeminate and generally the butt of jokes (Arnot, 1999; Cohen, 1998; Connell,

1989; Connolly, 2004; Gilbert, 1998; Lee, 2006; Skelton, 2001).

94 So much for "evidence-based" strategies and yet these are routinely put to the teacher as "what works" and are simple to use, with the inference that if the desired results do not follow then the blame resides in the student or his culture or the teacher. So behind the rhetoric of "raising the bar and closing the gap" are the exporting and individualization of failure and the concomitant absolving the state of the responsibility for these children.

On the Ministry of Education website, teachers and parents can find helpful resources to gain a better understanding of the curriculum, and of the standards required for each level 1 to 4. My informants and I chose to examine the Exemplar Grade 1, Mathematics.

The task required students to determine the number of possible combinations to transport 16 people to the zoo with the stipulation that a van can hold a maximum of 6 people, while a car can hold 4. The package includes answers judged to be levels 1 to 4, together with notes and reasons for the score from the scorer (See Appendix G). Tina from School B pointed out the first hurdle—the difficulty of the language used. The second hurdle is that most of her students' families do not own vehicles. Thus they would have the added burden of being required to solve problems not in their experience.

Carol from School A thought the problem accessible to her students. However, both she and I took issues with the exemplars provided as Level 2, below provincial standard, and Level 4, the highest level of attainment.

95 In order to obtain a Level 4 on this problem, one of the requirements is to

"...demonstrate a thorough understanding of combining numbers to obtain the sum of 16" (Exemplar p. 13). But as Carol pointed out, it is one thing to ask children to show all possible ways of combining numbers to make 16 but it is something else to ask them to fit 16 people in vans or cars. The two tasks are not the same. In this case, the grafted- on problem does not achieve a good fit at all. The Ministry, echoing the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Learning, comes out strongly for an integrated curriculum and yet the math question assumes the child uses only math knowledge to solve the problem without any input or interference from other sources, such as the family or social studies. If a child had ecologically conscientious or pro-active parents, s/he would have heard at the kitchen table the necessity, and ways of saving energy and reducing carbon emissions. Such a child would not have come up with the 13 possible combinations (judged as level 4 by the scorers), for s/he would never have considered sending 16 people in 16 cars to the same destination, or putting 5 people in a 6-passenge van, nor 2 persons in a 4- passenger car. Nor would a child who has taken the "Reduce, recycle, re-use" theme in Social Studies (in Kindergarten) to heart. And yet that environmentally irresponsible math solution was judged to be "realistic in the context of the problem; [s/he] recognizes that the vehicles need not be full"

(Exemplar, p. 27). The child who chose to load the car and van to capacity was judged to be a Level 2, or below provincial standard. It is interesting to note that in a News Release dated February 26, 2009, the government proclaimed to one and all that "Ontario is making environment a part of every subject in every grade", and that their new policy framework include

"embedding environment education in all curriculum" (MOE, Making

Education Greener, 2009). To be fair, it must be pointed out that the exemplar was published prior to the official announcement of "Making education greener".

Discussion

From the teachers' narratives, we can see the chasm between the rhetoric and requirements of the LNS and the teachers' lived realities in the classroom.

One obvious foundational difference lies in the very different approaches and theories to learning embedded in the Ministry and LNS documents from and the teachers' implicit theory. It is obvious from the

Ontario Curriculum that its ideology is underpinned by Mastery Learning, the idea that knowledge can be broken down into bits then built into more complex learning. The progression from simple to complex is clear from the list of specific expectations for each grade. The expected outcomes (expectations) are listed as:

Reading (text)

97 Comprehension

Demonstrating of understanding

Extending that understanding by making connections

Presumably tests will assess the progression and mastery of these steps. But

Farr and Carey (1986) in Reading: What can be measured argue that tests designed to"... assess separate skills as if these separate parts made up the total of reading behaviour" are flawed. "Research on the reading process indicates that reading cannot be fractionated into a set of separate skills; to do so is to misunderstand reading behaviour." (p. 17)

The LNS itself is full of contradictions. Its focus on "what works" and evidence-based practice, "high-yield strategies" bespeaks of a reductionist/behaviourist approach to teaching and learning. At the same time

LNS is still touting a child-centred, constructivistic line as teachers are exhorted to ensure equitable student outcomes by "utilizing all strategies within their repertoire" (2007a, p.4) to effect the "(customization and personalization of the curriculum (2007a, p. 3), accommodating diverse learning styles (2007a, p.4). I am not suggesting that the two approaches are necessarily irreconcilable, but that there should be a recognition and acknowledgment on the LNS part that what is required of the teacher is NOT simply to be a teacher of skills, an implementer of prescriptive pedagogy, but a master teacher who can strike just the right balance to ensure students

98 acquire the requisite competency and skills in a child-centred and constructivist setting.

As we can see from the teachers' narratives, the only teachers who can deliver on both are those of School A because they have the luxury of time.

With an advantageous intake, it means that the teachers do not need to expend time on the teaching of foundational skills, such as decoding, attention skills for the children are socialized for school with not only listening skills but also school-friendly attitudes. Time is then available for intellectual and creative pursuits (Carol, grade 1 teacher).

When those school skills are not there, it becomes a different kind of teaching and will require the kind of customization to which the LNS ostensibly subscribes, but for which no allowance is made when EQAO comes around.

Take Larry's class, for instance, with thirty-one students in a split grade, with a wide range (from below grade 3 to 6) of abilities, there is no time for anything else except the test-teach-test cycles in preparation for EQAO. Additionally, there is no incentive to do anything that does not show up on the data wall

(which shows the number of students at various levels). He has no time even for those not poised to move up to level 3, never mind other concerns and non-tested topics, such as science and social studies. His "robbing Peter to pay Paul" strategy is eminently sensible and understandable under the circumstances.

99 A regime of control has been put in place to ensure that the intended curriculum would also be the attained curriculum. That is accomplished by just making assessment the curriculum, as in Larry's class. We saw how the curriculum is experienced in the three schools. One is certainly made aware of the ordinary messiness associated with embodied beings, teachers and students, activating that curriculum document under a wide range of circumstances. Institutional technologies of regulation and control, however, do not take into account local contextual complexities such as:

1. Class size: Mary of School C has 23 pupils in a split 1-2, Larry, also of

School C, has 31 in a combined grade 5-6. Just the number of bodies

alone put a limit on what is possible. In Larry's class for instance, with

not a small segment (twelve out of thirty-one) who require significant

program modification because of language challenges and special

needs, it is all the teacher can do to keep everyone "engaged and

entertained".

2. Intake variability: Some enter grade 1 without having any prior school

experience (Mary' class, School C) while others in School A enter

kindergarten reading at the grade 3 level. Some in Larry's grade 5-6

have never acquired the language competency expected in grade 3s.

3. Disparity in material circumstances: Not only have the children in

School A had the advantages of a middle-class discursive mother at the starting gate , they have continued to reap class dividends in the form

of supplementary work performed by the family, and if necessary,

private supplementary language classes as well. Parents in School C,

on the other hand, are so busy juggling multiple jobs to keep body and

soul together that there is no time nor energy for homework supervision

or assistance.

4. Differences in the level of professional prestige, confidence and

authority directly impacting on the way the teacher does his/her job.

Whereas there is not much the schools can do to equalize material

circumstances outside the classroom, there is much the schools can do

in the domain of professional prestige, confidence and authority. There

is no doubt that in School A the teachers' professional confidence has

given them the flexibility and freedom to use their professional judgment

and ingenuity for the betterment of their students. It is true, of course,

that because the groundwork has already been done (the development

of listening skills, attention skills, willing compliance, cooperative

dispositions); the teacher has more time to devote to instruction.

Professional confidence will empower and enable the teacher to do

what she thinks is right for her students, for example developing oral

language prior to teaching decoding skills. With School C, although

majority of the parents are co-operative and compliant in their own

101 fashion, the teachers feel the undertone of blame in the discourse of school effectiveness and improvement. Mary, the grade 1 teacher, has to answer the question, "If the 5th block teacher can produce such substantial improvement, why can't you?" Her reality as we saw is of course different. Just to add injury to insult, her request for a loan of the

5th block materials was denied. Thus she is left to handle the twenty- three children (in a spilt grade) the best she can. One middle class parent withdrew her child for two weeks in order to try a different school and then had the temerity, on the child's return, to inform Mary that her spelling words for the class were much easier and shorter than the other school's. Mary does not mind the intensification of the work, she does chafe under the discourse of blame especially when her explanations are just deemed self-serving and resources are not forthcoming. Teachers in School B are embittered and resigned.

Because of their variable EQAO standing (mainly due to a transient student population), they have been inundated with suggestions for improvement and change, all of which carry a discourse of blame albeit with the possibility of redemption. My informants feel very keenly a status diminution, akin to, although different in degree, the teachers' described in George Riseborough's study of comprehensive schools

(1981). Just as the teachers in the Riseborough study felt their status and career prospects tied to their students' achievement, my informants

at school B feel demeaned and marginalized even as they are exhorted

to "make silk purse out of sow's ears", as Tina puts it. Their nostalgia

for the lost Eden—the middle-class status of their neighborhood has led

to a palpable resentment of the newcomers, who coincidentally are

people of colour, adding to the conundrum another layer of complexity.

Because the children's background is seen to be pathological, the

teachers (in School B) see discipline as their top priority. To them,

unless and until the children learn the ins and outs of "doing school" like the middle-class children, instruction takes a backseat in the classroom.

The teachers seem to share the views expressed in Sharp, Green &

Lewis (1975) that"... until the child has acquired the right attitude to school, that is not until he has learnt not rush about and to address the teacher in modulated tones, and possess all the other qualities of the school trained child, is he considered "ready to learn to read, write and do number work" (p. 94). Just like the teachers in the above-mentioned study, my informants do not see that our picture of the ideal child, a human gold standard against which others are measured, is so class and culture- based as to constitute a grave injustice if rigidly applied.

The irony is that those who need instructional time most, in Schools B and C, are also so positioned as to get the least. I must add that it is

103 appreciated that one must have a modicum of order for academic work

to be possible in the classroom. However, it is one thing to work on

socializing the class to an acceptable level for instruction; it is

something else to pathologize the behaviour that does not fit the gold

standard. A ready example comes to mind. We expect children and

adults to speak in "modulated tones" in polite company, not often

keeping in mind that that expectation is culture and class-based and

should be viewed as such.

A uniform and standardized curriculum does not, and cannot guarantee an education of equal quality or equal results in an unequal society, high- mindedness and political will notwithstanding. The material conditions for success are an important factor and seem not to have merited the attention it should have. But the mandated common curriculum is just the beginning of the regime of control. Focus on accountability and assessment extends the reach with text and technology. But how did it happen? How is it that teachers find themselves hemmed in on all sides, subjected to surveillance and control as never before? I argue that part of what drives the relentless quest for numbers, for exactitude, certainty and for reform is but the politicians' clumsy way of expressing and dealing with our ambivalences, and the competing and conflicting demands we place on education. I suggest that with a powerful lens,

104 one can see traces of our current pre-occupations in the historical fabric, the subject of the next chapter.

105 Chapter 5

Teachers' work in historical context: Disjunctures and changing

expectations

Chapter overview:

In this chapter, I will deal with the first two distinct stages of teacher professionalism in the historical trajectory of the system to show how the social, economic, cultural and political forces helped define teachers' work and their realities. As Ontario grew and developed from a settlement to an emerging state; as an agrarian society transitioned to an urban one; as democratic ideals came to full bloom following a period of sustained economic expansion, teachers' professional lives too have shifted and changed.

The Formative years in Ontario's School System

Background

A comprehensive history of the system is not within the scope of dissertation. Instead I will borrow an idea from Robin Alexander (1992) and present historical snapshots, highlighting the different strands in time, and placing the present issues under discussion in a historical context.

The first snapshot is that of a pioneering community, a settlement of the

United Empire Loyalists who came up north because of the American

106 Revolution. They were joined by disbanded soldiers as well as a steady stream of Americans attracted by the offer of free land (Dunham, 1927/1963).

The settlers in the early 1800s, small farmers from New England, New York, and Pennsylvania, had more urgent matters than education to contend with.

Faced with a brutal climate and the harshness of pioneer life, not many had the need nor the surplus energy nor money for education (Phillips 1957).

Nonetheless there still existed a web of voluntary, informal, home-based, and practical schooling that befitted the settlers in a pre-industrial pioneering society.

As the communities grew in size, the social and political problems in those early years had a direct hand in the rise of public schooling. The immediate impetus was the War of 1812 and the rebellions of the 1830s which served to reinforce in the minds of leaders of the day of the instability and volatility of a hodge-podge group of settlers. Into this mix of political unrest were added social and economic changes that had begun to grip Upper

Canada. Even though farming remained the chief occupation, growth and urbanization had begun. With emerging urbanization came, not only a sense of possibilities, but also a certain degree of dislocation and uncertainty common in a society experiencing rapid social changes. The numbers alone indicate the magnitude of the change. Between 1825-1846 more than

600,000 immigrants came to British North America. Toronto had about 1600 inhabitants in 1824 but that number soared to close to 20,000 in 1841 (Cowan,

1961, p.185). Hamilton, for instance, had 250 inhabitants in 1829, four years later, it had 1350, a five-fold increase! (Phillips 1957) and by 1846, the number of inhabitants rose to nearly 10,000 (Cowan 1961, p, 185).

In 1848 Egerton Ryerson, the chief superintendent of schools for over three decades and the founder of the Ontario school system as we know it, claimed that nearly 100,000 or almost one-sixth of Upper Canada's population had arrived in that province in that year alone (Prentice 1977, p.56) The public men had the task of integrating the newcomers25 into the pioneer society of

Upper Canada. Against this backdrop, schoolmen like Ryerson placed the moral and religious education of the people as their top priority.

We see in this snapshot how the needs of the state were conceptualized. Just how that problem was constructed and how aims of schooling were articulated, and where the teacher stood through the formative years will occupy us in the rest of this chapter.

Ryerson, as chief superintendent of education in Ontario saw the perfection of man's three faculties, moral, intellectual and physical as the proper aims of education. But most of all, he saw education as a means of nation building first — the production of compliant and loyal subjects, then self-

25 From the mother country, came mostly dispossessed farmers, small producers who had fallen victim as the Industrial Revolution transformed economy and society (Cowan, 1961). Similarly the cumulative effects of the failure of potato crops in 1839,1837, 1835, and 1832 prompted mass emigration from Ireland as well (Cowan 1961, p.176). 108 sufficient, industrious workers who would enrich themselves and their country.

To that end, he felt the goals of education had to be moral and religious instruction, all that was needed to enable a man to pull himself up from degradation and difficult circumstances, all attributable "...directly to moral causes such as improvidence, idleness, intemperance, and a want of moderate energy and enterprise" (Ryerson, 1847, p. 14). It was mainly through social control that public men of the day had any hopes of bringing some cohesion to the hodge-podge collection of settlers and to achieve a measure of political stability (Prentice, 1977, p. 81). Maintaining the existing regime and stability was openly on the agenda (Hodgins, 1900 Vol. II, p.8; Vol.

V, p. 240). Ryerson's first task was to regularize and systematize heretofore casual and informal arrangements that characterized schools of the settlement.

The school promoters saw schooling essentially as a route to social progress for the poor and the working class and a means of fostering a degree of social harmony that would be conducive to the economic growth. Social control, therefore, was an important aim. As we will see later, the effort to exercise tighter control over children also meant tighter control over teachers.

By the mid to late 1800's, the provincial system was well in place. The first essentials of education were "reading, writing, arithmetic and the use of the English language, followed by a second category consisting of natural and physical sciences of the body, the laws of their healthy development and

109 preservation, geography, history, civics and Christian Morals. Later on, in 1871, agriculture, bookkeeping and the mechanical arts were added (Hodgins, 1900,

Volume XXIII, p. 83). By the end of the 19th century, compulsory primary education took on a new importance as new industrial employers saw the schools as a training ground for future workers."... Employers wanted reliable, productive and clock-based work habits from their workers and saw in schools a way to instill them. Schools would train children to tell the time, to run their lives by the clock, to work hard even at tasks they saw no point in, to obey orders" (Osborne 1999 p.7). Phillips summarizes the aims of education for this period as "a preparation for the active and actual business of life"

(Phillips, 1957 p. 429). The general consensus at that time was that the substance of public education was formal content and the process of education was getting this content into the mind (Phillips, 1957).

Where did the teacher stand?

In A. Hargreaves's term, the teacher was at a "pre-professional age"

(2000, p. 151). She (for the teaching ranks especially in elementary panel were disproportionately female), was young, unmarried, modest, retiring and appropriately deferential (French, 1968). She was unambiguously an employee of the school board, not quite labour and definitely not quite a

\ 110 professional26. In terms of credentials, she was probably teaching under a county, third class provisional certificate. It was not until 1847 that Ryerson established Normal Schools for the training of teachers and a uniform standard for admission three years later. Still in 1876, less than one third of

Ontario's 6,195 teachers held first or second class provincial certificates

(Stamp, 1982, p. 14), available only at the provincial Normal Schools. The majority obtained their third class provisional certificates from the county having had their training in Model schools which were not unlike a system of apprenticeship whereby a neophyte learnt the craft from an experienced member. After a session at the Model school, the new teacher could teach a year before entering Normal school. Only one quarter of Model school graduates eventually went on to Normal school. More often than not, the teacher would just go on teaching. As economy was very much the mindset of school boards, there was a disincentive in pursuing that Class 1 certificate.

Better qualifications commanded higher pay. In an era in which young teachers had to underbid one another for a post, going for better qualifications could mean pricing oneself out of the market (Stamp, 1982).

26 Although remuneration is not the most important indicator in the relative esteem of occupations, it is often regarded by most as a tangible expression of society's esteem. It is therefore telling that around 1900, average annual pay for a beginning woman teacher in Toronto was $324, compared to $321 paid to the charwoman at the post office, $421 to street sweepers and labourers at the stock yards, and $ 546 to stenographers at City Hall (French, 1968, p. 21).

Ill Curriculum

The elementary teachers' work was largely circumscribed by mandatory use of authorized texts, The Irish Readers, and later the domestic series - the

Ontario Readers, the Royal Readers and the Canadian Readers. The authorized readers served the intended purposes well in that they delivered on both the moral and academic fronts. Apart from developing literacy skills, the content of the curriculum was designed to shape the child's understanding of the past, and the acceptance of his present lot in life. Public examinations dictated the priorities in the classroom. Teachers then as now, taught what they thought would be on the exams.

It is important to note that even in the ordered and orderly world of the late nineteenth century Ontario, there was disagreement about the kind of education schools should provide beyond the 3Rs, especially after a law passed in 1891 that made public school attendance for those aged 8 to 16 compulsory. In 1894, just over 951 students headed for university while twice that number left for agriculture or business (Annual report, 1895. p. xx cited in

Stamp, 1982, p. 42). Traditionalists argued for an academic curriculum that inculcated the kind of mental discipline necessary for all walks of life. Others felt just as strongly that the academic route befitted only a small minority who were headed for the university and the professions. The government of the day tried to please both camps by adding physics, chemistry and botany

112 supposedly to foster mental discipline and also to serve the purposes of industry (Stamp, 1982). There were also strong pleas to the Toronto Board of

Education for increased manual training with the arguments that the training would provide a good balance of educational, social and practical benefits.

As new subjects such as agriculture, drawing, calisthenics, domestic science and hygiene were added to the elementary curriculum of reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and grammar, teachers had to scramble to acquire new skills. Resources were limited indeed. It was not until the closing years of the 19th century that assistance and training were provided to the teachers in the form of in-services after school, during holidays and the summer. However, increase in job skills and demands did not improve the teachers' lot. They were still locked into a regime of low pay and an uncertain tenure.

Accountability and control

In an era plagued by highly transient teachers and spotty training, the inspectorate did provide some assurance of a semblance of a common standard and compliance with departmental regulations. However, it would seem that the inspectors themselves were quite varied in their conceptions of teacher's role and work. One county inspector was quoted as having said that the teachers alone make the school. "Programmers, Exams and Textbooks may be valuable auxiliaries, but these are mere ciphers in comparison with the

113 live Teacher" (Annual Report 1877, p. 19 cited in Stamp, p. 14). That view was obviously not shared by the inspector who came upon John Martin, a future

Minister of Agriculture. Martin related an incident from his teaching years. A county inspector had caught him teaching a topic the pupils were not supposed to get till the following year. By way of explanation, Martin offered that he thought it a good idea to give the pupils a head start, whereupon he was told, "Don't you do anymore thinking; the Education Department is supposed to do the thinking" (as quoted in Stamp, 1982, p. 16)

Public oral and later written examinations for high school admission at the end of June provided the most visible form of accountability. It was generally accepted that it was the teacher's work, not the pupils' that was being evaluated (Danylewycz & Prentice, 1986).

Accountability also called for the generation of administrative texts.

Ryerson, himself, underscored the importance of producing a paper trail. He had occasion to remark to an official that as far as the system was concerned, when something was not in writing, it did not exist (Ryerson cited in

Danylewyez & Prentice, 1986, p. 66). Teachers had to keep records not only of attendance but also their written assessment of students' work. The Toronto

Public School Board in 1891 also required that teachers produce a "mind chart" for each of their students to go with the recommendations for promotion

(Danylewycz & Prentice, 1986, p. 68)

114 Growth and expansion

By the end of the 1940a and 50s, Ontario had metamorphosed into an emerging urban centre that had survived the ravages of the depression in the

1930s, emerged from WW II with visions of a much brighter future.

They were not disappointed. What followed were years of economic expansion that saw the personal income of Ontarians tripled between 1939 and 1975, that is in less than two generations. As good times rolled, schools became the repository of people's hopes for stability and security and aspirations for their children. The change in the social, economic and political contexts had a direct impact on the discourse and practice of education, the substance of the next section.

A Breath of Fresh Air: Restructuring the schools and teachers

When schooling was used for social control, for nation building and for building a workforce in the newly developed industries, the teacher, poorly paid, inadequately schooled, typically young and female working under the oppressive yoke of a patriarchal society and hierarchy, just carried out her duties as the school board's employee, with no pretensions at all of professionalism.

As Ontario grew and prospered, teachers' collective position improved, especially after they became organized. But it was not until 1950s and 60s that teachers' professionalism and autonomy reached the high water mark.

115 Progressive Stirrings

Just what and how children learn in school at any juncture depends

very much on societal needs and preoccupations at that particular time as well

as on society's views of children and their proper place in society. And of

course the content of schooling and the methods of teaching (delivering the

content to the pupils) define the teacher's job. To understand the next shift in

the teacher's position, we need to examine the next phase in the development

of public education, a phase of progressivism. It was during this phase that the

teacher's professionalism reached its high water mark. It was during this

phase that the teacher had control not only of the practices in the classroom,

but also the curriculum.

But first, how did progressivism come to define our system and in the

process restructure the teacher's job and also her perception of herself? The

first wave came in the 1930s when Ontario started a brief flirtation with

progressivism with The Programme of Studies for Grades 1 to 6 of the Public

and Separate Schools (1937,), popularly known as The Little Grey Book (LGB),

a balanced and pragmatic approach to child-centred learning. However, the

timing was not in its favour. It came when Ontario was just emerging from

years of scarcity and facing an uncertain future. The LGB brought in radically

different perspectives on the curriculum, on children and assessments. It stated that

116 the curriculum is to be thought of in terms of activity and experience

rather than of knowledge to be acquired and facts to be stored...and

that the elementary school had no business with uniform standards of

attainment...its business is to see that children grow in body and mind

at their natural rate, neither faster or slower, and if it performs it

business properly there will be as much variety of attainment as there is

of intellectual ability. (LGB, 1955/1941, p. 11)

Furthermore, teachers were told that the school's tasks were to"... help the child understand the nature of the environment, human relationships involved in the working of his society and the physical environment in which his society exists...[and that] living in a democratic society requires self-control, intelligent self-direction and the ability to accept responsibility" (p. 2). Pupils were to learn about human relationships through the study of literature, the relationship in more organized forms through social studies, and the physical environment through science and arithmetic. Schools were to"... assist the pupil to master those abilities that are essential to living in a modern society, read, write and cipher" (p. 3). In an age in which students still sat for exit exams, the LGB came out strongly against content, was activity oriented and insisted that" ...the elementary school has no business with uniform standards of attainment... its business is to see that children grow in body and mind at their natural state" (p.5-9).

117 The focus of the curriculum shifted from content to the

child. Thornton Mustard, one of the authors of LGB stated the "the factory

system of mass production is replaced by something approaching the care

and study of the craftsman and artist" (Educational Courier Oct 1937 p. 8-10

cited in Stamp, p. 167). In the classroom, Ontario Readers were replaced by a

new generation of colourful and attractive texts e.g. Mary, John and Peter,

which unlike Aesop's Fables and Nursery Tales, emphasized the child's

present and future, not his past. Geography and history were combined into

Social Studies to foster understandings, interest and attitudes said to be

necessary for participation in a democratic society.

The teacher's task was to motivate children to work cooperatively in

projects by linking their immediate interests with the programs and concerns of

the larger world. The focus was definitely on the development of the creative

and social domains.

The irony is that all the progressive tenets were buried in the Introduction

whereas the body of the manual, the part most teachers turned to

automatically, was prescriptive. For instance, in the English section for Grade

3 is a list of activities one of which is "Listening to Poetry". Under that

subheading is: "Daily reading by the teacher. Five or ten minutes a day" (p. 43).

However, by all counts (Stamp, 1982), the difference was less than what met the eye. The main difference lay not in the ends but in the means. The

118 inspectorate was frank in admitting that the appeal to the child's interest via the activity-based activities was just to entice him into doing what the teacher wanted him to do in the first place.

In any case the flirtation with progressivism was brief as Canada entered the war years during which time the electorate opted for the tried, true and familiar. George Drew made the removal of all traces of progressivism from the system, the reinstatement of the 3Rs and discipline as part of his

1943 Ontario election platform. (Stamp, 1982).

The Restructuring of education: Hall and Dennis Report and Child- centred Education

The Little Grey Book (LGB) might have tried to make forays into child- centred education and progressivism, but it was not until the release of Living and Learning: the report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of education in the schools of Ontario (1968), hereafter referred to as the Hall and Dennis Report (HD) that progressivism took the province by storm. It heralded not an incremental but a radical root and branch change in almost every facet of public education from our understanding of the child,, the nature of knowledge, the functions of the school, the curriculum and the role of the teacher. A survey of the highlights of the HD report together with the transformation of the system follows.

Official Knowledge: Child-centred education

119 The Hall and Dennis report (HD report) brought a new and bold conception of schooling to Ontario schools. Hall and Dennis state that the major aim of the school is to "... enable young people to investigate freely, discuss, evaluate, think, and decide" (1968, p.69). The primary purpose of schooling is not social control, not vocational training, not even to acquire content but to "learn to learn". Because pupils learn at different rates, the curriculum needs to be flexible enough to accommodate individual interests and inclinations. It follows then the curriculum will have to provide for individual progress and therefore the schools' graded system is to be abolished; senior students will have their own individual timetable; and curriculum would not be determined centrally. Hall and Dennis note that "remote curriculum constructors [as] an anachronism ... [and] any policy which predetermines the total structure of a curriculum and attempts to impose it upon all should be condemned... [as] such an approach is in complete antithesis to a learning program which seeks to develop the potential of every child" (1968, p. 60).

The Hall and Dennis conceptions of the objectives of schooling were given expression in the various documents that served to guide the profession in its practices and pedagogy. In Education in the Primary and Junior Divisions

(P1J1), we were told that:

The goals of an educational system reflect the values held by the

community.... As Canadians, we accept certain values as essential to

120 the continuing development in our society. These include respect for

the individual, concern for others, the concept of social responsibility

and the acceptance of work... and leisure as valid pursuits for human

beings (MOE, 1975, p. 5).

The document that gave a new direction to elementary education went on to declare that:"... It is the policy of the Government of Ontario that every child be granted the opportunity to develop as completely as possible in the direction of his or her talents and needs" (MOE, 1975, p. 5). One of the major goals of education was to help each child "to develop and maintain confidence and a sense of self-worth" (Ministry of Education 1975, p.7). The document outlined specific objectives not in terms of outcomes or levels of competence, but in terms of providing children with "opportunities to acquire competence in certain areas". This curriculum, the first since the LGB (1937), states clearly the policy directions for elementary education until the introduction of the

Common Curriculum in 1993.

It should be noted that objectives in that period (late 60s to the 70s) were framed in broad and fluid terms, consonant with Dewey's view that"... the educational process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end;" and that

"... the educational process is one of continual re-organizing, reconstructing, transforming" (Dewey, 1938/1997, pp. 49-50). Hall and Dennis define the curriculum as "all those activities in which children engage under the auspices

121 of the school", and that the curriculum is "a dynamic process not a table of contents ... and that the curriculum is more interested in the learning experience of the child than with the instructional performance of the teacher"

(1968, p.75).

Since the curricular guidelines were more statements of philosophy than a syllabus (Hall & Carlton, 1977), the task of curriculum development fell to the school boards, if the teachers were lucky, or to the teachers themselves, if they were not. (I found myself in the latter category). In any case, we were told that the focus was NOT on content or product, but the process. The two axioms were the content had to be "relevant" and the learning had to be "fun"

(Hall & Carlton, 1977, p. 58). Children were to be engaged in activities closely related to his/her past experiences. What it meant was variability in the "what" and "how" not only from class to class, school to school but also from group to group in the same room. Thus, it would be next to impossible for the principal or the parents to discern, let alone evaluate, what was in fact being learnt or taught in some classrooms. For some, it was enough that the children were happy and "busy" (Sharp et al., 1975). Dennis Raphael, a former director of the Coalition for Education Reform, in a paper explaining the contradictions and dilemmas faced by Ontarians who cut their professional teeth on the child- centred approach and the present push for accountability, related a telling anecdote. While urging teachers to promote science in the elementary school,

122 Raphael reported that one teacher told him, "If students enjoyed working with science-type materials such as magnets or mirrors. I really don't care if they learned anything." A principal standing nearby stated, "As an educator I fully agree with that view, but as a parent it scares me to death." (Raphael, 1993, note 4).

What the HD report brought in was a whole new Official Knowledge based on a new institutional understanding of the nature of the child, the concepts of childhood and of learning underpinned by the theories emerging from the field of developmental psychology and particularly those of Jean

Piaget. It is to the developmental psychology and the Discourse of Natural

Development that underpins the child-centred approach to education that we now turn.

The Discourse of Natural Development

Underpinning the HD report is the Discourse of Natural Development which has taken on an almost mythical proportion in education and among practitioners. It is axiomatic that there is a universalist developmental path that each child must follow, and for him/her to thrive, right things must happen at the right time. The discourse of Natural Development gained currency because of its claim to a "grand totalizing theory" based on "scientific data" and timeless epistemology (Walkerdine, 1993, p. 452). But now we know that not only should "scientific data" be understood in the social and political context of the time period (Burman, 1994), it should possibly be regarded with

a healthy dose of skepticism. Foucault posits that psychology is one of the

sciences implicated in the provision of new techniques for the governments of the day to manage the potentially unruly population (Walkerdine, 1 993, p.

452). It was the social upheaval and turmoil in the wake of industrialization in

England that provided the impetus for devising ways of regulating and

keeping hordes of potentially unruly population occupied and under scrutiny.

This led to the rise of compulsory schooling. But compulsory schooling

required coercion applied to a large segment of the population. Child Study

Societies of the day came to the rescue with the invention of a separate and new category - childhood, a period of time during which the child, in "a stage- wise progression" makes his way to cognitive maturity (Walkerdine, 1993, p.

453). The "mapping of stages, the quantification and production of characterizations produce a new object...the developing child (Walkerdine,

1993, p. 453. See also Griffith, 1995). The production of norms and developmental milestones then promoted a "maturational view of development, as a process of natural unfolding whereby development is equated with growth" (Burman, 1994, p. 16). It was this process of normalization that prompted the naturalization of development, and bestowed upon what started out as practices of classifying, measuring, regulating and controlling populations that could pose a potential threat to the existing social order, a scientific legitimacy. But the normal child, the "ideal" child, as described by developmental psychologists, complete with capacities and achievements tied to months and years is in fact a discursive construction, "an abstraction, a fantasy, a fiction, a production of the testing apparatus that incorporates, that

constructs the child, by virtue of its gaze" (Burman, 1994, p. 17). And it is upon this abstraction and fantasy that our child-centred approach to the education of children is based.

From this discourse of natural development flows the construction of the natural child whom Piaget, a French biologist whose theories of cognitive development27 took North America by storm, depicted as a "little scientist", discovering, exploring his immediate environment without input, intervention or scaffolding from adults (Connolly, 2004, p. 74). The child, who, if left free, will develop from the "inside out" (Connolly, 2004, p. 69), so the theory goes.

To explain their wholesale adoption of Piaget and child-centred education, Hall and Dennis note that" ...needs and aspirations change as economic and cultural conditions change...[therefore] lock-step structure of past times must give way to a system in which a child will progress from year to year throughout the system without the hazards and frustrations of failure"

(1968, p. 14). "Natural curiosity will carry the child through the invariant stages

27 Central to Piaget's theory of cognitive development is the notion that all children, go through invariant stages of development naturally. No stage can be skipped, nor can the stages be telescoped or hurried. The child has to be "ready". The right things must happen at the right time to facilitate that development (Ginsburg & Opper, 1988). 125 as long as the "atmosphere [is] positive and encouraging", with a "more relaxed teacher-pupil relationship which will encourage discussion, inquiry, and experimentation, and enhance the dignity of the individual" (Hall & Dennis,

P- 15).

Hall and Dennis (1968) went out of their way to warn us against any temptation to accord undue importance to "the worship of intellectual and scientific endeavours for their own sake... as the continuance of the liberal and humane tradition should hold a premier place in the provision of a general education in a democratic society" (p. 21). And as for recognition for. excellence, we are told "when schools exhibit a small selected honour roll of students, a price is paid by those who did not make it" (Hall & Dennis, p. 55).

Taking their cue from the Hall and Dennis report, the Ministry of

Education constructed their official directive to their teachers in various publications such as Education in the Primary and Junior Division (MOE,

1975a) or The Formative Years (MOE, 1975b). These documents set out the precepts of child-centred education for the teachers of Ontario.

Paramount to all curriculum decisions are the children and their ways

of learning. These are affected by such intrinsic factors as the stages of

the individual child's emotional, physical, cognitive, and moral

development, his or her general abilities and specific talents. In addition,

126 extrinsic factors such as the child's preschool environment have

affected them. (MOE, 1975a, p. 9)

Thus child-centred approach extends its evaluative gaze to the "whole child" past the cognitive domain into the child's emotional, physical, and moral development which had hitherto been primarily in the family's domain.

The role of the teacher

With the new understanding of learning, the teacher's job had to change accordingly. Her job was no longer just to exercise control and deliver content as the focus was not on bodies of knowledge. Hall and Dennis insist that curriculum is not a table of contents but a dynamic process which requires the teacher "to select, organize and guide learning experiences" (1968, p. 75).

Therefore the schools "...require imaginative, resourceful and qualified teachers (1968, p. 60) to create a unique curriculum for each group and for each child (1968, p. 75).

The teacher then is a guide, a facilitator who observes children closely and is ready to provide just the right conditions for the child to grow and develop, not unlike Bernstein's Invisible Pedagogy (1975) whereby the teacher so arranges the environment that the child will end up choosing just what the teacher would have wanted him to choose in the first place. Thus for the child- centred approach to work in the classroom, it is assumed that the teacher will be a knowledgeable, socially responsible professional who has a large

127 repertoire of professional and experiential knowledge at her finger-tips and is ready to deploy them at a moment's notice. Her practice then will invariably be dynamic, creative and unpredictable. Thornton Mustard, one of the authors of

LGB was quoted as saying that teachers rose from "...the level of the clerk in a chain-store system to the status of ambassador to the Kingdom of

Childhood" (Stamp, 1982, p. 169).

In the same vein, Hall and Dennis argue that

For children to be treated with ease in their learning situations, their

teachers have to be treated as professionals in a flexible, decentralized

atmosphere which breaks down centralized authority and shifts

responsibility and freedom to every principal and his staff as a co­

ordinated team, to be respected and treated as worthy of teaching the

children entrusted to their care (1968, p. 62-3).

Child-centred education on the ground

What were the effects in the classroom as a result of these root and branch changes? The most visible one was the room arrangements. Schools built in that period were literally just big boxes with exterior walls and a staircase. Inside, in the spirit of ungrading, to facilitate each child going at his/her own pace and various activities going on simultaneously, was one large space to be shared by usually four classes, that is in excess of 110 to

128 120 pupils and four teachers. Let me give a first person account of the physical setup of one such learning environment.

There were four quadrants to the room, the grades 1 and 2 on one side,

and grades 3 and 4 on the other. A little seminar room, the size of an

average walk-in closet was at the end. Each teacher tried valiantly to

set up visual boundaries with the aid of waist-high bookcases and filing

cabinets. Instruction had to be done with the children all sitting on the

carpet before the teacher. It was the only way the teacher had a chance

of being heard. It was altogether a hellish situation for the teachers and

the children. The noise level was so high that in one school (mine), one

teacher, to the chagrin of her colleagues, used a megaphone to read

out the words of a spelling test. As unpleasant as that incident was, it

galvanized and stiffened the spine of the staff. A formal deputation

appeared before the "much-surprised" principal who very astutely put

the concerns before the parent association. Even so, it took three more

years before interior walls materialized. (Lee, Field notes, 2007)

It must be said that although the ministry tried very hard to insist that not only the superficial features of the new system be implemented, but also the "changing underlying philosophies of educational practice" be understood and adopted (Address by the Hon Robert Welch 18-20 cited on Gidney p. 83), compliance at the elementary school level was variable. Changes, as well as retrenchment, were much more evident in the high

schools. In place of subjects, the high school program was organized into four

areas of study: communications, social sciences, pure and applied sciences

and arts. To replace the 2, 4, and 5 year streams, courses were organized into

four levels of difficulty: advanced, general, basic and modified. Each course

carried the same weight. From this smorgasbord, the student had to complete

twenty-seven courses for a grade 12 diploma and six additional ones for a

grade 13.

That freedom was short-lived. In 1973, Tom Wells, the Minister of

Education, responding to public dismay and complaints, reinstated six

compulsory credits: (4 English, 2 Canadian studies). More restrictions

followed. In 1976 Wells announced more curricular changes: All grades 9 and

10 students would be required to study English, math, science, Canadian

history or geography. New guidelines stipulating the core content of each

subject were promised. The ministry document" The Formative Years" which

was the statement on goals and curriculum for the primary and junior divisions,

even contained a reference to "the basic skills that are such an essential part

of a child's education, especially in those early years of formal schooling"

(Annual Report, 1974-5, p. 2). The speed of the retrenchment increased after the conservatives found themselves in a minority government situation

130 In just eight years, Wells, the then minister of education, had to admit that in the heady days of 60s and 70s,".. .we may have gone too far in decentralizing the responsibility for the preparation of courses of study...the idea was great in theory but it isn't working" (as quoted in Globe and Mail,

November 13, 1976). He assured one and all that the ministry would make curriculum guidelines "more comprehensive and of greater assistance and direction to classroom teachers". Guidelines would also be "more prescriptive, descriptive than previous guidelines" (Annual report, 1976-7, p. 5).

Accountability and control

...the elementary school has no business with uniform standards of

attainment... its business is to see that children grow in body and mind

at their natural rate, neither faster or slower, and if it performs its

business properly there will be as much variety of attainment as there is

of intellectual ability (LGB 1955/1941, p. 11)

"The child who is learning cannot fail... and any chastisement for failing

to meet set, rigid requirements is almost a form of barbarism in our day"

(Hall & Dennis, 1968, p. 62).

A central tenet of the Child-centred approach is that children develop and learn at different rates and can hardly be hurried or regulated. LGB acknowledges that there cannot be uniformity of attainment and that interest in the activities alone would provide the children with motivation for learning. The

131 HD report condemns outright any examinations and calibration with external

standards.

What was left unstated was that the child-centred approach based on the Discourse of Natural Development, was underpinned by the labour of

middle-class mothers. And it was the disenchantment of the middle-class

mothers whose sense of entitlement was so rudely disturbed that added to the

brewing discontent, the subject of the next section.

Middle- class mothers and schooling: The Mothering Discourse (Griffith &

Smith, 2005)

The Child-centred approach to education brought in not only a different

understanding of the child and the nature of learning, but also a new

relationship between families and school. It became no longer enough just to get children to school on time, families (read mothers) were now expected to provide supplementary educational work as matter of course, regardless of individual circumstances (Griffith & Smith, 2005). It is all very well to proclaim as Hall and Dennis did in 1968 that

The needs of the child are simply stated. Each and every one has the

right to learn, to play, to laugh, to dream, to love, to dissent, to reach

upward, and to be himself...they must be made to feel that the world is

waiting for their sunrise, and that their education heralds the rebirth of

an "Age of Wonder" (p. 47). But someone has to do the work to enable the "sunrise" and to bring about the "Age of Wonder". In other words, someone has to laboriously till the ground for the invisible pedagogy29 (1975) and the child-centred approach. In the manner of just-in-time delivery, the Mothering Discourse provided the necessary intellectual and philosophical legitimation for this downloading by claiming that the mother is what makes the difference between "...the possibilities of reaching the individual's full potential and the social waste of unrealized development" (Griffith & Smith, 2005, p. 37). The Mothering

Discourse, like the educational discourse provided a way of thinking about, talking about, and writing about the subject. Just in time, the Mothering

Discourse was taken up by middle class women at the same time the child development discourse structured our knowledge about children's maturation and development (Griffith, 1995). Underpinning the Mothering Discourse were the predominant psychological and social theories of the 1950s. Bowlby's official report to the World Health Organization entitled Maternal Care and

Mental Health went out of its way to secure women's continued unpaid labour

Lisa Delpit (1997) posits that in the child-centred classrooms, teachers do little teaching. The "teaching" only affords middle class children the chance to display what they have already learned at home. 29 Basil Bernstein's (1975) invisible pedagogy (IV) is built on the availability of a mother's labour. In schools, in which the IV was practiced, teachers did no direct teaching but were engaged in arranging a learning environment to facilitate exploration, play, inquiry and free choice. The child learns by discovering things for him/herself. For IV to succeed, Bernstein himself listed the requirements: the child must have an "elaborate code" of language; a discursive mother; an extended timeline for acquiring competencies (Bernstein, 1975). Thus equipped, the middle class child goes forth to school where the teacher awaits his/her "unfolding" (Burman, 1994, p. 16). in the traditional family forms by raising the spectre of" maternal

deprivation"30(Amot 1999, p. 55). It makes no allowance for differing

conditions under which mothers have to do the mothering. The demands of

motherhood are presented as non-negotiable and absolute31, and carry no

statute of limitation, I might add. It takes for granted the subordination of

women's lives, their days and nights, their unpaid labour to her children's

development (Griffith & Smith, 2005). Thus middle-class mothers, freed from

the economic necessity of having to hold a job, make the education and

development of children their job. Mothers are the ones who check out the

schools, and upon the children's entry to school, find time to volunteer for

various jobs at the school, to serve on the Parent Council, or to supervise on

school trips, and in myriad ways provide the kind of support and resource not

uniformly available to all parents.

In securing educational advantages for their children, by shouldering

the supplementary education work of the school, middle-class mothers have

enabled the schools to function the way they do, and at the level they do

(Griffith & Smith 2005), without ever having to acknowledge that the same

30 Even though the children in Bowlby's study were deprived of mothers in a more fundamental way (by death or abandonment), his findings were used to develop a notion that even part-time employment "would have a deleterious effect on children's so called normal and healthy development" (Arnot 1999, p.55). 31 Dean (1991) put the advice to mothers in a historical and political context. He argues that in post-war England, the first priority of the government was to provide employment to former military personnel. So their immediate task was to create job openings by "luring " women back to the home by using"... a mixture of persuasion, education, rewards and warnings" (p. 270) advantages are not uniformly available to all. In reproducing middle class status for their children, and in contributing to the functioning of the school, middle-class mothers take for granted a particular career trajectory for their children. The implicit contract seems to be that their children will attend schools which can be expected to affirm their worth, earn credentials, enabling them to go on to tertiary education which provides for a course of studies that would lead to a professional career, or a career in management or public service. And with each incremental rise in their career, comes financial rewards that in turn will ensure the transmission of their middle-class status to their children (Griffith and Smith 2005). Having lived up to their end of the bargain, these mothers have certain expectations of the system. Schools were to affirm their children's worth (Skelton, 2001). But the Oil Crisis of the 1970s that destabilized the economies of the West, and the economic globalization that followed, have wrought irreversible changes in the labour market. (See

Chapter 6 of this dissertation for more). As schools cannot create more jobs, more income or more status, parents became disappointed and disillusioned with the schools' inability to dispense power and life chances with knowledge

(Hum, 1985). Many felt betrayed by a school system that was supposed to hold such promise for their children. It was nothing short of a breach of faith as that middle class came to the realization that the middle class lifestyle

135 associated with a middle class job became more elusive. K. Dehli (1996)

quotes a father of two sons, who is also a teacher,

This [anxiety] is a fairly recent phenomenon-in the last 3-4 years...I

guess it's probably stimulated by the collapse of the economy and the

realization that our place in the world is no longer guaranteed. It's a

pretty competitive world You can no longer count on the fact that

your kid can kind of drift through school then fall into some sort of half-

decent paying job. And we all came to the realization that our kids

better be damn well educated or they're going to be in a lot of trouble

(p. 82).

Schools do not exist in a vacuum and sooner rather than later, the

happenings, stresses and tensions in the larger society usually find their way

into the school. After the euphoria and building boom of the 60s came the

harsh realities of the 70s. Premier Davis not only had to rein in education spending of local boards, he also put a limit on the provincial share of educational funding at 60%.

It was unfortunate that Davis' change of tune in educational finance came at about the same time as school boards were scrambling to implement

32 On May 2, 2009, Generation Why Me details the woes of a generation who "grew up being told if they studied diligently and worked hard, they could have it all: a good job, a comfortable home, a family." Reporters Nicole Baute and lain Marlow continue," But then the world shifted and everything changed (retrieved from thestar.com on May 3, 2009) 136 HD's recommendations. For implementation of a new program, any program, but especially one that represented such a departure from the past, requires an enormous injection of funds. James Daly made a point well worth keeping in mind as we examine the course of education in this province:

If people come to expect miracles, and see no signs of them, the result

could be a subtle and massive growth of resentment which would

deeply shake public confidence in the whole process in education (1969,

p. 73).

Summary and Implications

In this chapter I have started the story of how the school system evolved to its present state alongside the path of teachers' professionalism. I outlined the two early stages of teacher professionalism to show how the social, economic, cultural and political forces helped define teachers' work and their realities. As Ontario grew and developed from a settlement to an emerging state; as an agrarian society transitioned to an urban one; as democratic ideals came to full flower following a period of sustained economic expansion, teachers' professional lives too have shifted and changed. From a pre-professional stage in the early years, teachers, in the heyday of progressive reforms of decentralization (in the late 1960s and early 1970s) were accorded the freedom of autonomous professionals firmly in control of their craft. We saw how the Discourse of Natural Development

137 provided the theoretical underpinning for the child-centred approach which in turn was built on the unpaid supplementary labour of middle-class mothers.

But the teachers' Camelot was short-lived. The next chapter will tell the story of the retrenchment that followed in the wake of economic reversals; as the drive for competitiveness gained momentum in a period of great uncertainty and turmoil; as disenchantment and angst of the middle-class set in. How the erosion of teacher autonomy, authority and status came about is essentially a story about politics, politicians and the socio-economic fallout of a de-industrialized mature economy—the substance of the next chapter.

138 Chapter 6

Teachers under siege : The Changing Context of education

Chapter Overview

Educational policies are made to meet perceived public needs but they are also made within frameworks of prevalent political ideas. During times in which liberalism held sway, that liberalism was mirrored in our educational policies. The 1960s and early 70s were a time of expansion, a time of decentralization, a time in which issues of social justice, gender, race and ethnicity found voices and advocates. But with the economic downturn, educational policies were fashioned in a different climate altogether. It was a climate of fiscal restraint, replete with calls for value for money, quality, accountability, and a competitive individualism against a backdrop of macro- forces of neo-liberalism, globalization and managerialism. Public schools are not only learning communities but also public symbols and instruments. They are the means by which each generation can pass on to the next what they consider important in their lives and culture, what they consider important for their progeny to learn or be able to do. As such, public schools are public expressions, or public accommodations of the community's beliefs, values and virtues, and for better or for worse, a reflection of forces and strains in society at large.

139 In this chapter I will examine the social-economic maelstrom that had

Ontario in its grip (from the early 1970s continuing into the late 1990s) and provided the milieu for the radical changes spawned by the three macro forces of neo-liberalism, globalization and managerialism. The changes affected not only the discourses in education, but also directly on teachers' self-identities and their professionalism which in turn impact on the classroom experiences for students. I will examine how the discourse of blame that managed to convert an economic problem into an educational one prepared the ground for a frontal assault on teachers and schools in the subsequent discourse of derision.

Socio-economic upheaval

In the confident 1950s and 60s during which time the average income of Canadians grew by 43 percent, and 37 percent respectively (Bricker &

Greenspon, 2001, p. 20), we had every expectation that there would be a place for everyone and a comfortable one at that, regardless of what the person learned or not learned in school (Radwanski, 1987). It was inconceivable then that the objective of schooling would one day be framed in terms of producing a competitive workforce!

A scant fifteen years after the HD report in which the authors sounded a warning against "...giving priority to the economic over the spiritual and emotions needs" in our school system" (Hall & Dennis, 1968. p. 27), the U. S.

140 National Commission on Excellence in Education in the now-famous report, A

Nation at Risk, (1983) heralded in a decidedly different conception of education by linking it to success in the world markets.

George Radwanski (1987) is even more direct. He insists that education "will become progressively more important in the future. There already is ample evidence in today's economy of a direct link between the employability and earning power of individuals and the level of education they have attained" (p. 19). Ontario Premier McGuinty put it this way: "The bottom line is, in a world where you can borrow your capital and copy your technology...there's only one thing left upon which to build a sustainable high- wage economy and that's skills" (quoted in K. Howlett, 2005).

How the context of education has changed! The context of education has changed because the world has changed, some say beyond recognition.

Since the oil crisis in the 70s, the West has been unable to take prosperity, security and opportunity as a birth-right (Halsey, Lauder, Brown, & Well, 1997).

The kind of societal changes resulting in a massive underclass that W. J.

Wilson (1996) describes in When Work Disappears has not left the middle class unscathed. During the 1980s, United Auto Workers lost 500,000 members. General Motors alone shed 150,000 production jobs during the 90s

(Reich, 1997). Between 1981 and 1986, more than 780,000 foremen, supervisors, and section heads lost their jobs through layoffs and plant

141 closings. (U.S. Dept of Labour 1986 cited in Reich 1997, p.168). From 2001-

2004 nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs were lost; (Lokeman, 2004), that was in addition to the 1.8 million manufacturing jobs lost between 1981 and 1991

(Barlett, 1992). According to a study entitled "Involuntary Job Loss in Canada"

(S. Wilson, Silver, & Shields, 1998), the yearly average unemployment numbers (at 10% during the 1990-1993 recession), as grim as they are, gloss over an even grimmer picture. During that period "... nearly a third of the labour force was unemployed at some point in time" (p. 2) While the aggregate number might look fairly constant, the unemployment picture took on a different texture. Permanent layoffs were affecting traditionally 'advantaged' workers such as public sector workers, older, higher paid workers, middle managers and professionals (Picot, 1997). In the last couple of decades

Canadians saw the demise of such iconic institutions as Eaton's, Creed's and

Winston's. The Globe and Mail reports that in 2004 in Ontario alone, the manufacturing sector had cut 52,000 jobs; in the month of July 2005, Ontario employers shed 19,000 jobs (Grant, 2005). Re-employment prospects were and are dismal (Aronowitz & De Fazio, 1997; Gait, 2005) as companies scrambled to survive and to maintain profitability. Technological advances and cheaper transportation costs have made it possible for companies to locate their plants in newly industrialized countries where the labour cost is a small fraction of that in North America or Western Europe. Not only were

142 manufacturing jobs disappearing, so were white collar jobs at a dizzying speed

(Reich, 1997). As the cost of communication drops, companies continue to shop the world in their "race to the bottom", in terms of labour cost.

The editorial in The Boston Globe (September 3, 1995) summed up the dismal realities:

The sagging of millions of middle-class Americans back into working

class status, and the drop of millions of working-class people into the

welfare class, is probably the single greatest force loose in the political

system today. (David Nyhan, 1995)

Nor has the bloodletting stopped. In September, 2006, Ford announced the closure of a plant in Windsor, resulting in the loss of 10,000 salaried jobs (CBC,

2006). In the summer of 2008, General Motors workers blockaded the plant in

Oshawa to protest the planned closing. Magna International announced 400 job cuts in St. Thomas (Maurino, 2008).

Early in 2008, Ontario officially became a "have-not" province

(Ferguson, 2008), making it eligible to receive equalization payments. Robert

Reich posits that it is the new economic order that is making the rich, richer and the poor, poorer, and changing the once comfortable middle class into what he terms the "Anxious class" (1994). When routine production jobs vanished, so did layers of lower and middle-management jobs, the bedrock of middle class career and financial stability (Reich, 1997).

143 The economic turmoil was accompanied by changes in the

management of both the public and private sector brought about by the macro

forces of neo-liberalism, globalization and managerialism or New Public

Management (NPM).

Macro Forces of Neo-liberalism, Globalization and New Public

Management (NPM) and their impact on teacher professionalism

Although the terms "neo-liberalism" and "globalization" have been

used interchangeably in some contexts (Treanor, 2005), they are not

synonymous. Neo-liberalism is more of a philosophy, an ideology that guides

and explains certain actions or policies, while globalization is a set of capitalist

processes which is, for the most part, underpinned by neo-liberalism. NPM is

the process by which neo-liberal policies are translated into action by the

introduction of private sector techniques to public sector institutions like

schools. These are global forces that have driven policies in education in

Ontario. Publications on the three topics can easily fill a medium-sized library.

Since the focus of this dissertation lies elsewhere, I will give only a brief

overview of their main tenets and their impact on the issues under discussion.

Neo-liberalism, globalization, and NPM

To the neo-liberal, the world is a marketplace and all men and women are vendors and purchasers. They all have their entrances and exits with sale and purchase contracts in hand. To the neo-liberal, only one kind of rationality reigns supreme—economic rationality (Apple, 2000b). The market is the be all

and end all. From its small beginning with Friedrich von Hayek and his student,

Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, neo-liberalism has caught the

imagination of politicians and has provided the ideological justifications for

politicians like Thatcher and Reagan.

Neo-liberalism is "new" or "born-again" liberalism. The original

economic liberalism was made famous in 1776 by a Scottish economist, Adam

Smith. In his seminal work, The Wealth of Nations, Smith advocated the end

of state intervention or interference in money matters. Adherents to that

laissez-faire school of thought wanted no restriction on business, no trade

barriers and no tariffs. The Depression in 1930s led some economists, such as

John Maynard Keynes, to question whether laissez-faire was the best policy.

In Canada, the liberalist Keynesian theory exercised a great influence on

federal policies for almost three decades after World War II. Not only was that

period a time for expansion of the welfare state and the public service, it was

also a time of economic growth.and price stability (Basu, 2004). In the 1970s,

however, the good times came to an abrupt end as the upsurge in oil prices

wreaked havoc to the economy. Inflation tripled in the early part of the decade while unemployment doubled (Basu, 2004). With shrinking revenues and a

ballooning deficit, nation states found themselves unable to "afford" social services such as health care, education and social assistance that were

145 established and promised to the citizenry during better times. Thus a perceived need arose to remove the state from its heretofore accepted and understood obligations to act in the interest of all its citizens, especially those unable to help themselves.

All political processes require a narrative, a justification, or a legitimation (lion, 1994; Smyth et al., 2000, p. p. 1). To justify a roll-back or withdrawal of public social services, a crisis of confidence would help the medicine go down. Thus began the refrains of "Public is bad; Private is good".

The citizenry was told that the public sector is a monopoly and public service is an object of "producer capture" (Apple, 2000b, p. 60) and is therefore inherently inefficient and a drain on the public purse (Bacon & Eltis, 1976).

Social institutions, such as schools, which had been seen as investments in the public good with benefits not only to the individual but also to society, came to be seen as "black holes" into which the state thought it unwise to throw good money (Apple, 2000b, Bullough, 1988).

This calculative mindset has invaded every aspect of human life.

Domains that had never before been seen through the eyes of instrumentality and profits are subjected to the disciplines of the marketplace. Because neo- liberals believe that men and women are primarily vendors and purchasers; it follows, they are also entrepreneurs of their selves. So a corollary of neo- liberalism is an acquisitive and competitive individualism (Halsey, Lauder, Brown and Well, 1997) which often has the effect of blurring our vision of the common good. Furthermore, discourse in education, infected by the logic of the marketplace (Giroux, 2003), has become increasingly laced with the language of business such as standards, value-added, targets, performance, outcomes, benchmarking consumption, privatization, and value 33(Bottery,

2000). At the same time, the purpose of education became unapologetically instrumental, looked upon more as a consumer item, a private asset instead of a public good worthy of public investment (Giroux, 2003). Now the language of the new discourse of competition, efficiency and effectiveness has become so "natural" that today, "making level 2s into level 3s" rolls easily off our tongues34, eclipsing the language of social justice and community. In a world underpinned by only economic imperatives and instrumentality, words like the market, individualism, and consumer choice have the power to formulate questions and answers. They form the lens with which others see us and our work, and more importantly, also how we might come to see ourselves. Public schools came to be seen as "...production facility whose primary mission was

33 Ontario had an education minister during the Harris years who told teachers that they were "front-line service providers" with " ...students ...[as] clients, parents and taxpayers ...[as] customers." The minister went on to say," ...we must continue to ask ourselves if we could be giving our customers better value for their dollar" (J. Lewington, 1995, p. A. 2) 34 More will be said later. But for now, it is sufficient to note that in the present testing regime Levels 2s do not meet the provincial standard and the most urgent goal of the schools now is to push as many level 2s to level 3s, thus improving the school's ranking in the unofficial league tables. This is considered strategic investment of resources, strategic in the sense of putting in the least investment and yielding the highest return (Torrance, 1997). 147 providing industry with its required human capital" (Hyslop-Margison & Sears,

2006, p. 2).

Furthermore, neo-liberalism has ushered in a culture of fear and of

acquisitive competitiveness (Ibbitson, 1997) among students and among

schools.35 While it is true that the selfish have always been with us36, neo-

liberalism seems to have made that self-seeking individualism socially

acceptable37 (Giroux, 2003).

The most pernicious effect is in the new ways in which professionals

like teachers are being viewed. Previously, the very definition of a professional

included not only expert knowledge and expertise acquired from years of study

and training not readily available to the lay person, and "the exercise of

discretionary judgment within conditions of unavoidable and perpetual

League tables remain "unofficial". School results are readily available online and hardcopies in public libraries. Realtors reportedly carry hardcopies of the schools in the areas in which they market their wares. 36 When a Methodist magistrate objected to "being compelled to educate all the brats in the neighbourhood", Ryerson, in defending the bill that provided for assessment for school funding, had this to say, "...now to educate all the brats in every neighbourhood is the very object of this clause of the bill and in order to do so, it is proposed to compel selfish rich men to do what they ought to do, but they will not do voluntarily" (Ryerson to Draper April 20,1846 in Sissons, 1937, pp. Vo. II, p. 101). 37 John Ibbitson (1997) in Promised Land dissected Mike Harris' Common Sense Revolution incisively. He observed that Harris CSR's explicit focus on reducing taxes and deficits at the same time inevitably meant an assault on the poor and the dismantling of the social safety-net. " The CSR challenged Ontario voters to decide whether they truly had the courage to embrace a political program most of them claimed they wanted...The CSR massaged their [the middle class] resentments, comforted their fears...but it was an ideology that heretofore...had dared not speak its name, that the mainstream media, the academic, social, and political elites, even much of the business community had dismissed as unjustified, petty, divisive, mean-spirited and cruel—something to be ashamed of, something not even to be said out loud. Now it has been said" (Ibbitson, 1997, p. 73-74) by premier-in waiting who went on to win two landslide electoral victories. 148 uncertainty" (A. Hargreaves, 1994, p. 19), but also the implicit expectation and requirement of altruism on the part of the professional (Bottery, 1996). The idea is that the professional acts always in the best interest of the client, even if it means going against the wishes of the client him/herself, motivated not by what is advantageous, expedient or convenient (Bottery, 1996; Darling-

Hammond, 1989). These assumptions were turned on their heads with the ascent of neo-liberalism. In the public mind, gone is the trust or good faith, to be replaced by a document-mode accountability and Caveat Emptor.

Globalization when driven by neo-liberalism, as it often is, has a devastating impact on education. As the Keynesian welfare state is transformed to the present state in which communal interests lose out to discourse of competitive individualism, public institutions, including schools, have been and are being transformed.

Starting in the 1980s, large corporations, and transnational industries run by professional managers, came to see employees as just an item of expense on the company's balance sheets. Instead of having patients, clients, social agencies now have customers. The rhetoric is one of not only efficiency management, but of input-output, high-yield, low-yield strategies (Morley, 1999) and the "rolling out" of state power (Clarke & Newman, 1997, p. 30). The results cascading down to the schools have meant "processes of regulation, surveillance and evaluation" (Clarke & Newman, 1997, p. 30) that has

149 effectively changed the nature of the teacher's job and what happens in the classroom. Furthermore, globalization has exacerbated the middle class "big fear" (Bricker & Greenspon, 2001, p. 158) of "falling"(Ehrenreich, 1989), causing all manners of angst, discontent and electoral volatility for politicians.

What is disturbing is that globalization and neo-liberalism as they were introduced to schooling have been made to sound like "common sense". We have moved from the social justice purposes we embraced in Ontario in the

1960s and 1970s. The government has adopted unabashedly strictly instrumental technologies (such as EQAO scores). The ministry now looks to schools not as sites to provide youths with the inspiration, aspiration and means for a just society, but as a strategy to regain the province's prosperity and economic health (Office of the Premier, 2007, November 27; MOET,

March 9, 2009). This is in direct contradiction to the purposes of schooling espoused by my informants. Of the twenty-four informants, twenty-three of them chose goals other than the economic and job-related ones as being most important for their students. The two goals teachers consider paramount are: personal development and citizenship,

Globalization has also changed the concept of community, lion (1994) posits that previously, when one's future prospects were tied to those of one's geographic community, there was a sense of common purpose, values and destiny. With the globalized job market, "home" and "community" are no longer

150 geographically bound. When our best and the brightest stop at home just to

pick up fresh laundry, or as Lasch (1995) puts it, stop only "in transit" (p. 6),

with the concomitant" tourist's class view of the world" (p. 6), one wonders

about the ties that bind, and the almost inevitable erosion of their social

commitment to the welfare of their neighbours or the social institutions such

as our schools (Hon, 1994). 38

New Public Management (NPM)

At about the same time that neo-liberalism and globalization mania

swept into developed nations, there arose another spectre— Managerialism,

New public Management (NPM), or Total Quality Management (TQM) as it is

known in the U.S. (Clarke & Newman, 1997; Davies, 2003). NPM emerged in

the 1980s and 90s. It is based on the idea that generic management skills can

provide the necessary oversight, surveillance and control over the organization

and people therein. Under this regime, power, autonomy and discretion are

taken from the professional and vested in managers who function mostly as

In August 2009, Torontonians emerged from a 45-day public service strike enraged, with 75% of residents sold on the idea of privatization of garbage collection. All major newspapers in the city warned of dire political consequences for City Hall. What is telling was the fact that except for those who lived near the temporary garbage dumps, the majority of residents managed. Private haulers and young entrepreneurs cruised neighbourhoods and did a booming business charging a fee of only $5 a bag for disposal. Public opinion is now definitely on just "getting the job done", and getting rid of the stranglehold monopolistic service providers have on us, hammering one more nail in the coffin of public utilities and services.

151 auditors . The School Effectiveness Movement, and in Ontario, the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat (LNS) are examples of NPM. In schools, NPM manifests itself mostly in the central place given to outcomes (as the product of schooling), documentation, audit, checklists, performance indicators, target- setting, league tables and the cult of 3Es, economy, efficiency and effectiveness (Morley & Rassool, 1999, p. 59, 63). It rests on the assumption that teaching is reducible to a number of mechanical, inter-changeable and

replicable lists of competencies; learning, to an accumulation of skills. Thus it follows then professional practice is focusing on goals explicitly formed and defined by others; applying the means of attaining them on the basis of evidence, that is, what has been shown to work under a particular set of circumstances; measuring the outcome to gauge the level of success (Davies

2003). In such a scenario, a school principal becomes a strategist for implementing external directives, a professional manager, rather than a senior teacher or curriculum leader; the teacher a "managed" professional (Furlong,

2005, p. 123) as curriculum, pedagogical decisions and assessment become management problems, amenable to management solutions and fixes, not professional judgment, experiential knowledge, or expertise. Schools have to produce action/improvement plans, mission statements, targets, strategies

39 Although the LNS is staffed mainly with former educators, my informants and I maintain that by the time these selected former principals, consultants and superintendents reach those positions, they would have been out of the classroom for many, many years, even decades 152 and vision as a matter of "symbolic compliance" (Morley & Rassool, 1999, p.

66). Thus the external directives, are presented as normal, and self-evidently and indisputably good, above reproach or contestation.

Neo-liberalism, globalization and NPM combine to produce new social relationships that do not bode well for education, teachers and the cause of social justice, despite bold official pronouncements to the contrary. (See

Chapters 8 and 9). These forces combined to provide the background for the push for standardization, assessment and accountability.

153 Chapter 7

Teachers under siege : The Political and cultural Context for the change

in discourse in education

To understand how the present discourse and its easy adoption of purely business lexicon,(e.g. performance indicators, high-yield strategies, evidence-based, result-focused) came to seem so natural and normal, and how teachers could in a matter of under two decades plummet from the perch of an autonomous professional to a managed one, one must examine the political and cultural milieu of our recent past that facilitated that plunge. Just like the building of Rome that change in discourse did not happen overnight. It took some doing and two decades. A brief overview of the political landscape of that period follows.

The political milieu

After decades of relative political tranquility under the Conservatives, the political landscape was changed abruptly, again and again. Because education is political, (Smyth and Shacklock (1998) go so far as to say that teachers cannot choose not to be political) this section will deal with the political context of the rise of the discourse of accountability and assessment.

It will detail how the governments of the day, Liberals, NDP, Tories and Neo-

Liberals, in turn tried to secure their tenure by first stoking the smoldering fires

154 of public discontent, then entering, gingerly at first, the assessment minefield.

It was only after the Conservative regime and Harris' discourse of derision and the relentless assault on teachers that standardized testing gained legitimacy and became institutionalized.

In 1984, the forty-two year Conservative dynasty came to an abrupt end.

The NDP- Liberal accord entitled An Agenda for Reform, a "blueprint" for the alliance (The Globe and Mail, May 29,1985, p. 4), set out a number of social reform initiatives the NDP exacted as a price for supporting the Liberal minority government40. Education was conspicuous by its absence even though it was to become an important platform for Premier Peterson. Even so,

Sean Conway, the Education Minister, wasted no time in recruiting Bernard

Shapiro41, then director of The Ontario Institute of Studies in Education,

University of Toronto (OISE), to provide ideas on which the Liberals could build an election platform in two years. Very shortly after his appointment,

Shapiro launched the first test project, a grade 9-10 geography test in 1986-7, designed ostensibly to find out how well the system was implementing the

40 The Liberal-NDP Accord included: pay equity for women, extended rent review, environmental action, protection for workers in the event of layoffs and plant shutdowns, policy review and funding of day-care, and the piece de resistance—banning of extra billing by Ontario's doctors (Gagnon, 1991; The Globe and Mail, May 29,1985 p. P 4).

41 The appointment of Shapiro as the Deputy Minister (a departure from tradition in that he was the first senior education bureaucrat who had not risen through the ranks of that bureaucracy) was an astute one. In Shapiro, the liberals had a Deputy Minister who not only believed in assessment and accountability, a stand diametrically opposed to that held by most education insiders who were still focused on the child-centred approach to education, but was also knowledgeable enough not to be snared and waylaid by the bureaucracy (Speirs, 1987). 155 intended curriculum by conducting sampling testing of a limited number of students in a limited number of schools. Some in the schools saw the move for what it was, the successful insertion of the thin edge of the assessment wedge

(See p. 184 of this dissertation). More reviews in other subjects were promised. At the same time, the Liberals committed the province's students' participation in a national testing project sponsored by the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada (Gidney, 1999; J. Lewington & Orpwood, 1993).

To appreciate just what a sea-change even a limited review represented, one has to recall that in the two decades since the abolition of the grade 13 departmental exams in 1968, Ontario schools had assiduously eschewed any form of student assessment because it was at odds with our child-centred educational philosophy (Raphael, 1993). In the 1987 Throne speech, Peterson announced that the province would establish new provincial benchmarks for literacy and numeracy in grades 3 and 6, and would develop more effective ways of measuring student achievement against those benchmarks (Toronto Star, April 29, Nov 4 '87).

Benchmarks were part of the emerging outcome-based education

(OBE), all the rage in the U.S. OBE is about behavioral objectives. Curriculum states what the student should able to do as a result of instruction, not objectives nor intentions. (More in a later section). OBE dove-tailed quite nicely with the rising demand for greater efficiency and accountability.

156 Whereas the P1J1 (1975) was more a philosophical statement than a curriculum guide for teachers, with the course of study expressed in amorphous terms and in terms of objectives or intentions, the Benchmarks program was quantifiable and observable, providing an external standard by which these attainment could be measured. It also has the advantage of leaving teacher autonomy more or less intact. Benchmark testing involves not only pencil and paper testing but also other forms for authentic and holistic assessment at the teacher's discretion (Larter, 1991). On the campaign trail in

1987, Peterson insisted that" we are seeing too many problems in our high schools and in our universities that have their origins in earlier years...we have to focus our energies on getting things right at the beginning, rather than fixing them at the end" (Sheppard, 1987, p. A. 1). The campaign promises sold so well that Peterson was rewarded with a majority government.

The government did not stop at benchmarking. The very next year they announced that the Benchmarks will be accompanied by province-wide

"diagnostic tests" in reading, writing and math at the end of grade 3 and 6.

The announcement was greeted with howls of outrage from the teachers' unions (Martell, 1995). But Peterson was not deterred because he had taken the public pulse. In the 1980s, Ontario students had taken part in a series of international assessments of knowledge and skills in math and science with

157 very disappointing results. Dennis Raphael (1993) reports some of these dismal results he had presented to the ministry:

• In the Second International Mathematics Study (1989), Ontario grade

8s were found to know less math than similar students in British

Columbia;

• In 1985, in the Second International Science Study, Ontario students

knew less science than their counterparts in other provinces

• In 1988, results of the International Assessment of Educational

Progress (IAEP) found that Ontario 13-year-olds knew less math than

students in Quebec, BC, and English speaking New Brunswick. (D.

Raphael, 1993).

On March 24, 1988, Ontarians awoke to this headline in the Toronto Star:

" Canadians 'flunked' in world science competition' (Watson, 1988, p. A. 20).

Philip Nagy (1994) made a study of the national and international comparisons of student achievement in math and science and raised some very pertinent and cogent points. The first point he makes is that comparisons of national and international achievement results are fraught with problems, contingencies and caveats which media reports almost always neglect to report.42 Headlines

42 Among the points Nagy raises include: 1. Since there is no one curriculum for all the participating countries, testing students on topics that they have NOT had an opportunity to learn, is not meaningful nor relevant Results would be more meaningful if students were to be evaluated in the context of "opportunity to learn" (1994, p. 457). 2. In some countries, only high-achieving students take math and science, so the question is: are we comparing the 158 like that fed the public's suspicion and stoked their anxiety and anger, preparing the climate for major assaults on the school system (Basu, 2005).

Shaping the context of standardization

Although testing and especially pencil and paper standardized testing was and still is anathema to the liberal educator, it was eagerly embraced by the public as they groped for certainty in a particularly turbulent period in the province (D.

H. Livingstone & Davie, 1997). During this period, three reports were released that added more fuel to the fire. In Competing in a Global Economy, report of a task force chaired by Premier David Peterson, the message was quite simple and unequivocal:

... Ontario students [are] not performing as well as they used to, and

their achievement levels are well below those of the highest achieving

industrial nations. (1988, p. 10)

The report concludes that Ontario is not getting full value for what it spends on education. Education spending rose by two-thirds between 1981-1987, the report continues, with no measurable improvement in dropout rates or scholastic achievement levels (p. 10).

results of an elite group (elsewhere) with the results of a much larger but unselected group? Lewington (1993) cites a specific example: 18 year-old Britons did much better than their Canadian counterparts in an international (IAEP) science test. But in Britain only 10% of 18- year-olds take sciences courses compared to 50% of the same age group in Canada. Lewington (1993) points out that the top Canadian scorers ranked near the top (p. 150).

159 To some, Peterson was simply reiterating the harsh realities of the new age. With fading geographical and political boundaries, countries and provinces needed to sell themselves on the international market as attractive sites for business and money to locate or relocate (Brown, 1997). Peterson was quite aware of the fact that businesses and their money will go to locales that are business-friendly, places with stable interest rates, without the encumbrances of expensive social programs (Wollstencroft, 1997). Those were, and are the harsh realities.

However, language is not neutral (Grace, 1989). It is well to be reminded that power resides not only in what is said but by whom and with what authority (Ball, 1990, p. 2). So when a document from the Premier's

Council, chaired by Premier Peterson himself, asserted that Canada was losing out in the globalized economy because our students did not perform as well as those from other countries, it was not a discourse of school reform, possibility or hope, it was a discourse of blame. Thus Peterson was able to convert an economic problem (of jobs and economic downturn) into an educational problem, one that redirects the accusing finger to schools and teachers but at the same time enables him to hold out a message of hope.

"Now if only our students could do better, they would have jobs aplenty", was the subtext. (I shall return to this topic later.) If Ontarians had been uncertain before of the cause of their economic woes, they were not so anymore. Premier Peterson himself had pointed the finger at our underperforming

schools as the cause of our ailing economy. But there was still more fuel for

our anxieties.

The Radwanski Report

The discourse of blame continued in Radwanski's report, Ontario Study of the

Relevance of Education, and the Issue of Dropouts released in 1988 which

delivered a harsh indictment of our schools and teachers. The report, the

findings of a one-man commission, has variously been described as a

"sensible" document (McPeck, 1991, p. 83), with "...much to be admired"

(Barrow, 1991, p. 11), in addition to being "...courageous...[setting out]

admirable goals (Ayim, 1991, p. p. 70) At the other end of the spectrum,

Marion R. Baghel (2007), analyzing the document from a teacher's

perspective, noting the not-too-well-concealed disdain for teachers,

characterizes "the language [as] provocative and inflammatory in places" (p.

93).. Radwanski starts with castigating the "flower-child...the do-your-own- thing" (p. 2) outlook of the Hall and Dennis report and its unsuitability now in a world that has undergone a massive transformation—from a society in which economic dominance came from industrial production to a society whose well- being is dependent on human knowledge. He bemoans the misdirections of an earlier era in which knowledge was made subordinate to development of self-esteem and self-fulfillment goals, and states emphatically that the purpose

161 of schooling is the development of autonomous and critical minds (in addition to making the individual employable) rather than group therapy or the enhancement of self-esteem. Radwanki eschewed and ridiculed the idea that schools can provide only "opportunities" for children to acquire knowledge and skills and the notion that if the child, for whatever reason, chooses not to avail

himself/herself of that opportunity, then the child is responsible. To most people, and to some teachers, the whole idea of making the child bear the

responsibility for choosing whether to learn or not, is preposterous.43

While I, like many teachers, decry the "hands-off...wait-and-see" non- interventionist, power-backed orthodoxy of an earlier era, I do not agree with

Radwanki's obvious neo-liberal bent either. His point that since capital and technology are highly mobile, "education [becomes] the paramount ingredient for competitive success in the world economy" (p. 11) is well taken, although some would argue that the problem is not a shortage of skills or educated workforce but a shortage of well-paying jobs (D. W. Livingstone, 1999; D. D.

Noble, 1994). Of the three themes—excellence, equity and accountability in his report, it is his commitment to the equality of outcomes which holds out the promise of a substantive and significant change in the educational trajectory

431 have a vivid recollection of what transpired at a dinner party in which most of the attendees were teachers. Just before dinner, the news came on and Radwanski's report was discussed. The discussion revolved around just that idea that teaching was no more than merely providing children with opportunities to learn. Everyone AGREED with Radwanski's indictment A pall descended and enveloped the gathering as everyone seemed pre-occupied and more than slightly embarrassed. 162 for the disadvantaged students that has earned him the admiration of many, albeit not without qualifications. (Ayim, 1991; Barrow, 1991; McPeck, 1991).

In his insistence that all students, regardless of social class, race or gender be required to attain a certain specified level of skills and knowledge, and that schools and teachers to be held accountable for that attainment; in his commitment to equality of outcomes; his endorsement of the notion of a standardized product and province-wide testing, Radwanski makes the relations of ruling very clear indeed. Despite the very real differences in abilities, dispositions, motivation and material circumstances that have a direct impact on the level of achievement in the classroom, students are expected to fit neatly into the kind of uniform schemes or categories that institutions demand. Radwanski is unequivocal: ALL students are to have acquired certain outcomes as a result of instruction (Recommendation #1).

Furthermore, these outcomes will be specified and prescribed by the ministry

(Recommendation #3), and students to be tested to ensure a standardized product (Recommendation #23). Not only that, Radwanski endorses "the mastery learning approach" which treats tasks in each subject area as sequential, and can therefore be broken down into the smallest unit that can be mastered step by step, one at a time. What is missing from the

Radwanski's report is the knowledge and views of the embodied and contextualized world of teachers Radwanski's idea that curriculum can be captured in terms of only measurable learning outcomes, is problematic even to his admirers. Barrow

(1991) argues that being clear about aims is one thing and a good thing, but

"clarity" does not necessitate the "specificity" implicit in the notion of learning outcomes. If aims were restricted to only what is measurable and quantifiable, the result would be a drastic change to the very concept of education. For instance, Barrow (1991) asks what is measurable about historical understandings or literature appreciation. Surely, historical understandings have to mean more than who - did - what - and - when; similarly, literature has to mean more than who- did- what- to - whom. But those are about the most readily measurable and quantifiable knowledge in these domains.

I argue that it is these same assumptions and his acquiescence to the bureaucratic needs of the institution that underpin some of his more confusing and confused notions. His commitment to equality of outcomes is laudable, but does that sit comfortably with his insistence on only measurable outcomes and province-wide testing? Here one sees clearly the text-based relations of ruling used to define "categories, and concepts claiming universality" (D. Smith, 1996, p. 172) fulfilling the institutional need to organize and coordinate, regulate and control our world (1986). It is also the very visible hand of the New Public

Management rather than the needs of the students that hold sway. Frank

164 Smith (1986) in Insult to Intelligence: The bureaucratic Invasion of our classroom argues that

There is only one reason for the insistent control of programmatic

instruction and tests in classrooms. That reason is lack of trust.

Teachers impose programmes and tests when they do not trust children

to learn, and politicians and administrators impose programmes and

tests when they do not trust teachers to teach,

(p. 149. Emphasis in the original).

Although Radwanski insists that the aims of province-wide testing that he recommends are "diagnostic and remedial" (p. 57), the EQAO testing as practiced strikes teachers as more of an evaluative, audit exercise.

Consequences and implications

The significance of the report lies in its ability to shape the public perception of educational issues in a particular way. It foreshadows some of the important recommendations of a subsequent Royal Commission on

Learning (1994) chaired by Begin and Caplan in a number of areas and the current practices of the LNS .:

• Focus changed to learning outcomes

• The equity of student outcomes as a goal

• Core curriculum to be centrally prescribed

• Province-wide testing

165 • Use of technology

The Radwanski Report, viewed by some more as a document of policy advocacy than analysis (Allison, 1991), by almost a sleight of hand introduced the idea of uniform standards of achievement and province-wide testing to ensure the standards are upheld. It had the effect of galvanizing public opinion, validating and confirming the very dim view the public had of teachers, and preparing the climate for what would turn out to be pernicious policy changes under the Conservative government in a just few years hence.

Context of standardization: The NDP and the Conservatives in power

In this section, I will deal with the social-economic and political context that made the Mike Harris's Conservative electoral victories possible, and that in turn orchestrated the discourse of derision that gave legitimacy and credibility to the present clamour for standards, excellence, and accountability.

The bleak picture painted earlier in the chapter got bleaker still as a period of slow growth was followed by wild inflation. The unemployment rates which stood at 5 percent in the 80s rose to over 10 per cent in the early 90s.

Although inflation dropped to between 1 to 2 per cent and stayed at that low level for the rest of the decade, economic health and growth did not return until the late 90s. In times of economic expansion such as in the late 80s, when the tax revenues rose, the liberal government embarked on large capital investments in roads, health care and schools and program expansion. But

166 recession hit the province with a vengeance between 1989 and 1991, coinciding with the first two years of the NDP government. With a whooping

$9.7 million deficit for 1991, the government had no stomach for continued spending. The result was that its policies netted only 15,000 new jobs, not nearly enough to make a dent in the misery index, and yet just enough to anger business and financial markets (Walkom, 1994, p. 99-103). It was not until late 1991 that Premier Rae gave in to pressures from bond-rating agencies44 and attempted a sharp reversal of official policy by limiting the rate of increase of transfer payments to universities, schools and hospitals to reflect the province's reversal of fortunes. By 1993, however, Rae and his advisers felt that even more drastic measures were needed and settled on what his finance minister F. Laughren termed the "three-legged stool" strategy

(Walkom. p 137)45, the most controversial of which was the immediate reduction in the government's payroll. Instead of laying off a large number of

Ontarians (estimated to be about 40,000), each public service employee was to be laid off a set number of days, amounting to taking a 5 per cent wage cut.

Those days were termed "social contract days" in the sense that everyone

44 In Spring 1992, Standard and Poor, the bond rating agency that had already down graded the province's debt once the previous spring, put Ontario on credit watch. The reasons given were that a combination of a weakened economy and the NDP's "political commitments" would make it difficult for the government to increase revenue and curtail spending in order to rein in the deficit to an acceptable below $10 billion level" (Gagnon, 1991, p. 148-9). 45 In a drastic reversal of policy, the Rae cabinet decided on taking $8 billion out in the way of spending cuts and tax hikes. After much wrangling, it was decided that $1.8 billion would come from tax hikes, a total of $4.4 billion from spending cuts and $2 billion from the social contract savings. (Walkom, 1994, pp. p. 136-137) shared in the pain while sparing some Ontarians from losing their jobs altogether (Monahan, 1995; Walkom, 1994). It was a particularly grim time for

Ontario.

Social and educational context

In times of financial turmoil, and uncertainties about the future, it is inevitable that questions would be raised about the prospects of the younger generation. What sort of future awaits them? Are they receiving the right kinds of preparation? The questions invariably land at the school door. When financial prospects turned gloomy, Ontarians wondered aloud if they were getting their money's worth from their schools. In 1999, The Globe and Mail conducted a survey and found a "staggering 82 percent of parents" worried about the quality of education their children received (Bricker & Greenspon,

2001, p, 156). Bricker's and Greenspon's interpretation of the results is worth quoting at length:

That's not to say that their [parents'] opinion on the quality of education

received by their children had deteriorated that sharply. The bigger

factor may well have been the "demand" side of the equation rather

than the "supply" side. In other words, the times simply demanded a

better education than ever before. Indeed, we would argue that the real

public opinion story in education is more about the changed

expectations than decay in the system. Consumers of education felt the status quo no longer sufficed; they expected far more from the

education system than ever before and were unconvinced it could

deliver. (Bricker & Greenspon, 2001, p. 156).

It was during such turbulent times that the NDP found themselves in the corridors of power.

Marion Boyd, a social activist who replaced the more experienced

Education Minister Tony Silipo, carried on the agenda already set in motion by the departed liberals with two notable additions of her own: integration of exceptional students into the regular classrooms, and canceling the province's participation in student achievement tests sponsored by the Council of

Ministers of Education (Gidney, 1999). The Benchmark program was held in abeyance

However, the NDP started making its own mark in education. High on the NDP agenda were:

• De-streaming in grade 9 starting September, 1993. It would end the

practice of placing students entering grade 9 into the basic or

vocational, the general 4-year and the advanced level based on

their ability.

• Curriculum integration also known as de-coursing into four core

areas: language, the arts, self and society, mathematics, science

169 and technology. Each area will have its own set of outcomes and

provincial standards.

• De-labeling; the integration of exceptional students into the regular

classrooms starting September 1993.

• Mandatory provision of junior kindergarten in September 1994.

• Anti-racism and employment equity.

(Gidney, 1999).

Furthermore, Education Minister, Silipo was committed to a new common curriculum, based on outcome-based education. When a draft of Everybody's

Schools, Silipo's first version of the Common Curriculum was released, teachers, parents and the general public were baffled and enraged by the

"gibberish, gobbledy-gook, holistic hogwash mumbo-jumbo, or edubabble gone mad" (Gidney, 1999, p. 221)

Amidst the furor generated by the slew of reforms unleashed on the province, from destreaming, decoursing, the Common Curriculum, benchmarks program, the proposed abolition of grade 13, integration of special education students to official endorsement of the use of anecdotal reports, the NDP government announced the establishment of the Royal commission, the first since The Hope Commission in 1950. Its mandate was to

• Provide a "shared vision" in the province • Devise a program of studies for elementary and secondary schools

• Offer guidance on the issues of accountability and provincial standards

• Examine school governance.

It was to report in a matter of 18 months, before the anticipated provincial election. (Gidney, 1999).

The establishment of the royal commission afforded the government some breathing room as it dealt with crisis after crisis on the economic front.

In the meantime, criticism of the education system continued to be the number one spectator sport. For instance, the Star insisted that "...a tidal wave of parental anger and frustration [was] eroding the bedrock of Ontario's education system" ( June 12 1993).

When The Star ran front page stories on the "waste and duplication' within the metropolitan Toronto educational system, listing "...the 9 administrative centres, employing 14,3000 non-teaching employees, its 9 directors of education, 10 assistant directors, 123 superintendents, 48 assistant superintendents, all for 360,000 students !" (March 8,1993), the stage was set for the neo-conservative agenda of cutting services. Voters, except for the urban elites (Ibbitson 1997, p.55) and teachers felt the

"...province's over-managed and over-priced school board system needs a shake-up" (The Star Nov 9, 1992). As Gidney put it:

171 In the media, and in the minds of many politicians, policy makers,

academics, businessmen, parents and taxpayers, the schools stood

condemned for their lack of financial or academic accountability, dismal

standards of achievement, suspect pedagogy and irrelevance in the

face of a changing economy. (1999, p. 178).

The stage was now set for Mike Harris and the Common Sense Revolution

(CSR) and the assault on teachers.

The Common Sense Revolution

Our lens zooms in on the most painful part of our recent past from the

teachers' perspective—The Common Sense Revolution (CSR) and the

discourse of derision. Because the CSR was primarily about reduction in funding, we need a word about the financing of education.

The Financing of public education

Since the days of Ryerson, education funding has always been a

combination of provincial transfers and local tax levies. From 1985 to 1995,

provincial government grants were in line with inflation. But as the overall spending soared at a phenomenal rate, from $6 billion in 1985 to $12 billion in

1993, the provincial grant went on a steady decline—from 60% in 1975 to 40% in 1991 (Gidney, 1999). Reasons for the soaring expenditure included the increased cost of teaching a much more diverse student body. For instance, in

1996, in one Scarborough high school, only 39% of students claimed English

172 as their mother tongue. In 1997, the provincial average of the percentage of

grade 3 students who spoke a language other than English at home stood at

21 per cent. But for the Metro Separate School Board, it was at 49 per cent, 51

per cent in North York, 39 per cent in Toronto and 42 per cent in Etobicoke.

Additionally, school boards had to provide for the expansion of special

education, mandated reduction in class-size, teacher preparation time, anti-

racist education, violence prevention (Gidney 1999, p. 179, p. 183-187). But

another reason was the rate of population growth. In 1985, Ontario was home to just over 9 million but that number grew to just under 10.8 million by 1996

(Monahan, 1995, p. 57). Indeed the question of financing has plagued successive governments regardless of political persuasion, but each, rather than risk their political capital, chose to appoint commissions instead 46

(Ibbitson, 1997).

The Common Sense Revolution and the Discourse of Derision

Whatever else Premier Mike Harris might have been guilty of, he cannot be accused of sleight of hand. His intentions were spelled out in The

*° The Macdonald Commission (1985) stated among other things that "...Fairness is the key consideration" and that in order to "provide a fair share of the available resources to each pupil, irrespective of location of residence", the idea of pooling residential and industrial assessments was bandied about. ( p. 189). But the ensuing outcry from wealthy boards such as the Toronto Public School Board to the "Robin Hood scheme" stayed Peterson's hand. The NDP government's Fair Tax Commission (1993) also documented the inequities to both taxpayers and students, on the reliance on property tax to fund the system. One of its recommendations was that the provincial government should "...set a basic standard for educational expenditures and assume responsibility to funding to that standard" ( Gidney 1999 p. 189-190)

173 Common Sense Revolution (CSR), both an election platform two years before his ascent to power and an action plan after his electoral success (Ibbitson,

1997). They represented "...a neo-conservative manifesto of self-reliance, lower taxes, withdrawal of government services, law and order, workfare and stricter control and standards in education" (Ibbitson, 1997, p. 85). To finance the promised 30% cut in provincial income tax, the government had to

reduce expenditures by $6 billion; Education's share came to $400 million.

To most urban school boards, it meant a drastic cut in resources. The first cuts did not affect the Toronto and Ottawa school boards whose large and rich property tax bases made them ineligible for provincial grants. It was not until the province took over the funding of education and subjected all boards to the same funding formula that the large boards had to face a brutal slashing of their budgets (Ibbison, 1997; Gidney, 1999).

While teachers, for the most part, thought that Harris came up with his evil slashing agenda all on his own, the fact of the matter was that he had taken the pulse of the voters and had correctly read the public's mistrust of free-spending governments and a much more conservative mindset as reflected in the late 1997 Angus Reid Poll for the Globe and Mail. When asked where government should direct the budget surplus expected47, 47%

47 In February 1998, the federal government delivered the first surplus budget in twenty-eight years. Brickerand Greenspon maintain:" It was ...the moment—symbolically and substantively—we regain our confidence in the future" {Bricker & Greenspon, 2001, p. 10) 174 respondents chose paying down our national debt; 37% favoured tax cuts, with only 13% for spending on projects such as shoring up the youth employment market and reducing child poverty (Bricker & Greenspon, 2001, p.

37). What was even more telling was that even though 55% of respondents thought the federal government had overdone the cutting of funds and services, 54% thought that the strong medicine would make them better off

(Bricker & Greenspon, 2001, p. 38). So Ibbitson (1997) was right on the mark when he suggested that Harris' electoral success was due to his promise of shrinking the government and imposing spending cuts.

The CSR pamphlet (1997, p. 12) reinforced the message graphically with a chart entitled "Ranking of Education Quality" by The World Economic

Forum (1993) showing Ontario's ranking last in a list of fifteen countries.

The stage now is set for the next act:

We believe Ontario's education system is in need of system-wide

reform, based on the principles of providing opportunity to students,

excellence in curriculum and teachers, and accountability to parents

and taxpayers (CSR, 1997, p. 11)...With a core curriculum set

province-wide, and standardized testing at all levels, we know that we

can spend more efficiently, while improving the quality of education we

offer to students (CSR, 1997, p. 12).

175 ...more than 45% of the educational personnel we are paying for don't

teach" (CSR, 1997, p. 11, emphasis in the original) and "Cuts in these

areas ... will save Ontario taxpayers at least $400 million" (p. 11).

To most Ontarians, the message was simple, powerful and effective. The problem according to the CSR was that the system has been profligate, negligent and self-serving48. The Conservatives had just the prescription: less money and more rigor enforced by standardized testing. Harris' first Minister of Education was caught on tape saying that a crisis had to be invented in order to fix the "broken" system (Lewington, 1996, p. A1 ); and Harris himself taunted teachers with, "There may be some teachers who are opposed [to testing] but no teacher has anything to fear, unless they are incompetent" (as quoted in Mallan, 1999)

In a different place, at a different time, such a discourse of derision would have ignited a ferocious storm from the public. But instead, Harris's message resonated with voters so well that he was rewarded with two majority governments. Indeed it was even claimed that the Tories were counting on

"voter support, not despite cuts to services, but because of them" (Ibbitson

1997 p.68, emphasis in the original).

48. Ross Fergusson comments about the UK social institutions are echoed in the CSR's message: The school system was"... construed as expensive, not self-evidently adequately productive, insufficiently accountable, monopolistic, producer-dominated, a bastion of an entrenched professional elite, resistant to consumer demand, and at worst, self-generating and self-serving" (1994, p. 93).

176 I argue that it was partly due to the neo-liberal virus which has infected the system that has made "yesterdays' outrage" into today's commonsense or norms (Ball, 1990, p. 39). To the public and the media, education is too often thought of as a delivery system of neutral knowledge to students who bank it, and at an appropriate time, withdraw and display it so as to compete in the workplace49. Therefore the imperative was to do it as cost-effectively, as efficiently as possible. To middle class parents, education is supposed to work, almost with "algorithmic certainty" (Morley, 1999, p. p. 122), something like this:

Good students obtaining good grades, and good knowledge will end up with good jobs (Apple, 2001). Implicit in that discourse is the sense of things gone awry, not only in economic terms but also in social terms. Middle class parents have an unspoken, taken-for-granted sense of entitlement that the schools confirm their children's worth (Skelton, 2001). But with the economic upheaval, and globalizing labour markets, middle class parents were no longer confident that the school would serve its old purpose: to confirm their children's worth and to help them preserve or even enhance their class advantage or privilege

(Ehrenreich, 1989; Lareau, 2003).

Concluding Comments

49 Paulo Freire contends that modern education positions the learner as an empty vessel in which the teacher pours knowledge (or makes deposits). The students are then expected to display that knowledge (or to make a withdrawal) on demand. 177 In this chapter I examined the social, economic and political upheaval that provided the context for the drastic change in the substance, tone and tenor of discourses in education. Ontarians did not emerge from this tumultuous period unscathed. Both Bricker and Greenspon (2001) and Peter Newman (1996) refer to a decided change in our psyche. The authors remark in their respective books on the fact that Canadians and especially Ontarians felt that when crunch time came, we had only our own resources to fall back on.

Governments and institutions had let us down. Thus we emerged definitely cynical and defiant, though unbowed. Never again are we to be cowed by governments or professionals who claim they know better. We, chastened by harsh realities of the past two decades, are much less inclined to take things at face value, or on good faith (Treanor, 2004). We demand proof and certitude. We crave the comforting certainty of exactitude. We became the perfect foil for the purveyors of standardization, standards, quality, evidence, and data.

The "Big Fear" of the 1990s, (Bricker & Greenspon, 2001, p. 158), added to the recent meltdown in financial markets, looms even larger now.

There is a collective sense among the middle class that there has been a breach of faith and it is this middle class that governments must appease, re­ assure and stroke if they wish to stay in power. It is only against this backdrop can one understand the political appeal of the present discourse of standards,

178 of effectiveness, of continuous improvement and of blame and redemption; the present obsession of finding evidence; the focus on assessment and accountability; the need to "manage" teachers and the urgent quest for that magic ingredient that would make things right again, all in a milieu of mistrust.

179 Chapter 8

The Present Terrain

Chapter Overview:

So far we have traced the passage of teachers from the discourse of blame, through the discourse of derision. This chapter will deal with the discourse of accountability and assessment, a preamble to the end—the discourse of redemption underpinned by the discourse of school effectiveness and improvement.

In this chapter, I will trace the route to the present culture of accountability and assessment and how various governments, starting with tiny steps, employing camouflage when necessary, moved inexorably towards a neo-liberal stance in education in which the discourse of accountability and assessment holds sway.

Teachers have come a long way from the pre-professional stage of the early educational system in Ontario. They had their moment in the sun as autonomous professionals in the HD years. They have survived the discourse of derision of the Harris years to find themselves now in an even more difficult position. Most of my informants, except those in School A all expressed in varying degrees their disaffection ranging from ambivalence, disquietude, disenchantment, disengagement to embittered outrage. Even though the

180 present liberal government has a much kinder and gentler face and engages in a more conciliatory (even consultative) tone with the teaching profession, most of my informants are still wary, cautious and suspicious. EQAO testing hovers menacingly over the primary teachers in both School B and C. They are beginning to suspect that although the exterior has changed, the nature of the political beast has not.

They are right. According to Ibbitson (1997), McGuinty, as the Liberal leader promised during the election that a Liberal government would

"...consolidate the Conservative reforms while lowering the level of political tension" (p. 285). The Liberals have kept their word. There has been more pacification and appeasement than substantive changes, except for revoking the bill that required the recertification of teachers. The Student Focused

Funding remains in place. The Special Education funding known as Intensive

Support Amount (ISA) 50funding model was not discontinued until school year

2005-2006. What was more telling were the reasons given for the change contained in Review of Growth of Claims for Students with Severe Special

Needs. (MOE 2005 ). Apparently, the funding formula was discontinued for

An important component of special education funding is the Intensive Support Amount (ISA) which is designed to enable the school boards to fund the very high expenditures necessary in educating students who require significant assistance in order to succeed. In order to access these funds, school board had to make written applications on behalf of each claimant. The applications usually consisted of a clinical report by the appropriate professional, the student's timetable detailing the amount and nature of assistance required, an IEP (Individual education plan) and progress reports.(Daniel, 2004)

181 mainly economic reasons—a staggering rise in the volume of claims ranging from an increase of 22% to 1800%! (MOE 2005, p.5) Certainly the Harris's derisive tone is absent, but the simplistically neo-liberal linear concept of outcomes and accountability remains as evidenced in the following:" ...The reasonable expectation of parents is that funding and staffing increases will equal educational improvement." (MOE, 2005, p. 6) Indeed the 8-page document is peppered with business concepts/lexicon such as: the call for demonstrated results in student achievement, parent satisfaction, quality assurance programs, audit, effectiveness and efficiency (MOE, 2005, p.7).

Furthermore, an Effectiveness and Efficiency Office would "... conduct periodic audits, including classroom visits to verify board practices and positive outcomes for students." (MOE, 2005, p. 7)

My informants were right. The ground has shifted. "The nature of the

[teacher's] job has changed" (Tina, Grade 1 teacher, School B). It is the culture of accountability and assessment that underpins the shift.

Accountability and Assessment

The most significant process for coordinating teacher's work is the present discourse of teacher accountability. The word," accountability" comes from the Latin accomputare, meaning to reckon with (Webster, 1979), to evaluate with arithmetic. It was originally used to refer to the practice of merchants' honouring each other's bill of exchange. This basically money- management term, however, has come to mean in education and business,

"bottom-line" "cost effectiveness" (McTaggart, 1992, p. 76), benchmarks, performance indicators and standardized testing. The last chapter dealt with the political, social and economic contexts that have made such "corporate management" tools (McTaggart, 1992, p. 76) seem so natural and normal.

Thus by adopting the term accountability and the concomitant descriptors such as benchmarks, performance indicators, profiles, key competencies, politicians and policy-makers have created new social relations. McTaggart (1992) points out that to be accountable to someone is to allow someone to have the power to judge one's work against externally imposed criteria, possibly "an orientation toward instrumental^ rational goods of effectiveness" (Ranson,

2003), not necessarily congruent with one's own. Basically discourses of accountability are about patterns of power as it is essentially a social practice

"pursuing particular purpose, defined by distinctive relationships and evaluative procedures" (Ranson, 2003, p. 462).

If one believes as most teachers do that teaching is a moral enterprise because it has the potential to affect the life trajectories of young human beings, then how can, one might ask, the product or outcome of that moral endeavour be judged or evaluated in amoral terms, against amoral standards or benchmarks? Furthermore, teachers are routinely faced with dilemmas, that is doing one's level best but often having to settle for an imperfect solution,

183 given the circumstances. Because teaching is done mostly in groups, the resolution of the various and often conflicting demands of students, parents and school administration, is just part of the job (Woods, Jeffrey, Troman and

Boyle, 1997). Regardless of the nature of the conflict, the resolution usually rested on the teachers' "legitimated professionalism" (Woods, 1997, p. 48).

How can the idiosyncratic responses and resolutions be represented in a performance checklist? And because they do not appear on such a list, do they count as work? In the present climate noted for its audit mentality, the teacher's job has been redefined. The job now calls for more clerical demands

(record keeping for audit purposes), much less autonomy as pedagogy now comes in prescriptive packages contained in thick binders from region office to tell the teacher how to teach, and assessment measures at the end to ensure it has been done as directed. The control is now visible and real, resulting in status diminution (Woods et al 1997).

The result is that job satisfaction in general is on the wane and frustration on the rise, particularly when teachers see the conflict between curriculum demands and their perception of the needs of the children (Woods et al, 1997). School C's Marie, grade 1 & 2 teacher and Mary, grade 3 teacher both note that phonics instruction now takes precedence over oral language development, the foundation of literacy. This has implications for primary teaching as teachers are now basically required to fulfill institutional

184 need for numbers and continuous improvement at the expense of building a solid foundation for literacy development. Furthermore, so much of a primary teacher's work consists in bonding with the children, in giving just the right kind of support at the right time, in making the right type of demand, in engendering a love for learning, a degree of perseverance in the face of difficulties and courage to take risks in trying out solutions to problems. But when institutional demands and constraints are diametrically opposed to teacher's own concept of what good teaching should be, they are not just rules and regulations, not just technologies of control, they become an "assault on the substantial self

( DH Hargreaves 1972, p. 79; Ball 1972; Nias 1989).

Our present cult of accountability, and the insistence on regulated models of quantifiable results assumes that the effects of education are all external such as wealth, status and power51, displacing internal qualities like justice, courage, friendship or citizenship (Maclntyre, 1981 as cited in Ranson,

2003, p. 460). Assessments meant to facilitate needs assessment, planning, and teaching have become evaluation of efficiency (Elliott 2001). Although

Ontario teachers have not yet been subjected to some of the harsher measures such as rigorous inspection, introduction of a "performance threshold" beyond which incremental pay is triggered for staff, and heightened

51 One of the most coveted external goods in secondary schools now is academic excellence. The subtext for excellence is individual competition, first in gaining admission to the high status courses, leading to admission to elite tertiary education. The quest is for just the right credentials, the currency for a high status occupation.

185 competition among schools for high-achieving students (Gleeson & Husbands,

2001, pp. 1-2), they feel their professional accountability has more than a whiff of neo-liberal corporate accountability. In the tale of the three schools, we heard what the teachers had to say about the oppressive paperwork load, the pressure to produce numbers to satisfy a purely bureaucratic need for uniformity and control, and the change in parental attitudes especially in

School B and C.

History and Context of Assessment and Accountability

Assessment and accountability, in a sense, have had a long history. For almost from its inception, the public schooling system served a selecting and sifting function for society, and it was through the examination process, people were sorted into different normative ranks and subsequently had different life and career trajectories. Selection started early. Up until the late 1800s, pupils

(between 5 to 6 per cent) wrote examinations after typically having spent seven or eight years studying four books in elementary school before sitting for the entrance examination to high school (Stamp, 1982).

Once in high school, the students pursued one of two programs of studies, an

English or commercial course of studies or the more prestigious classical course that prepared youths for universities and professions. By 1945, of the

100 pupils who entered school, 84 stayed till the end of grade 8, of these, 58

186 entered high school, 21 would complete grade 12, and 13 would graduate from grade 13 (Stamp, 1982, p. 182).

Although Reports of the Minister of Education indicate substantial growth in high school enrolment, from 12,910 in 1880, to 33,036 in 1920, the functions of secondary school and examinations did not change markedly until

1962 after the Federal government made funds available through the

Technical and Vocational Training Assistance Act (1960) for the building of technical schools in Ontario. The Reorganized Program introduced in

September 1962 to go with the spanking new facilities offered program diversification, with the expressed purpose of retaining more youths till the end of grade 12. The retention rate did increase from between 67 to 77 per cent between 1960 and 1968 (Stamp, 1982, p. 205)

However, when economic downturn hit Ontario (see Chapter 6), voices were raised, questions were asked about the content and the quality of education the children were receiving. As early as 1984, the Davis government, under enormous public pressure, made a commitment to a province-wide testing (Gidney, 1999) but found it impossible to follow through with that promise because of the intrinsic incompatibility between the idea of standardized testing and the entrenched child/student-centred approach to education (Raphael, 1993). It was Premier Peterson who entered the testing

187 quagmire gingerly by launching a systems review of grade 9 and 10

geography, or a sampling (Earl, 1995).

But that review was just the beginning. With his eye firmly on the polls and

finger on the public pulse, the following year, (in April 1987), Peterson

promised that the government would establish province-wide benchmarks52 for

literacy and numeracy in grade 3 and 6. In the subsequent election campaign

later that year, Peterson pledged that minimum standards would be

established for arithmetic, science and social studies, and that school boards

would issue benchmark reports to parents when their children are in grades 3,

6 and 8 (Sheppard, 1987). In the following year, Peterson took a giant leap,

by announcing that the benchmarks would be accompanied by "diagnostic

tests" in reading, writing and mathematics to be administered at the end of

grade 3 and 6 (Gidney, 1999). Before any of these came to pass, Peterson

called a surprise election and lost to the NDP's Bob Rae53.

Benchmark in a literal sense refers to a surveyor's mark on a landmark which will then be used as a reference point in measuring levels or altitudes. It has come to be used in businesses to describe the processes of measuring products and services against a criterion or against competitors. In education, benchmarking offers a different (holistic) approach to student evaluation. In the late 1980s, the Toronto Board of Education embarked on an expensive 3-year program of developing video and print benchmarks in language and math for grades 3, 6 and 8 against which students performance could then be measured. However, the benchmark program never took root mainly due to the political climate of the time and a skeptical public that, in the search for the comforting illusory certainty of numbers, generally saw the benchmarks program as "voodoo voodoo assessment" (Gidney, 1999, p. 221). See Larter, 1991 for a full description of the benchmarks program development.. 53 Pages 164-167 of this dissertation detail the problems and woes that beset the province's first NDP government and their agenda in education.

188 In 1993, Dave Cooke, Education Minister, while acknowledging grave reservations about province-wide testing, thought it more important to deal with the skepticism and mistrust with which the public held the school system.

" I am not afraid of issues like testing, because if we don't get more public confidence in the education system I think that's a greater threat to the ...system than anything else right now...I know there are fears about it

[standardized testing], but I think those fears can be dealt with, without penalizing people" (quoted in Walker, 1993, The Toronto Star, p. A. 11).

However, despite the brave words, there was no follow-through. A decision was made to await the findings of the Royal Commission before proceeding with province-wide testing with one notable exception. Cooke ordered the already announced provincial review of grade 9 reading and writing skills be converted into an assessment of every grade 9 student. A quantum leap indeed, one that generated a great deal of controversy especially regarding the dissemination of test results. Gidney notes that it was not Cooke's intention to release the results to the public. However, some school boards, notably the North York Board of Education chose to release their own school- level results together with school profile as a show of public accountability

(Gidney, 1999). When one school board refused to release the students' test scores of the fifteen schools randomly selected for testing in 1990, critics were able to obtain scores from the education ministry through the freedom of information act. What they found confirmed their worst suspicion that the school board's reluctance to unveil the scores had more to do with self- preservation than any student-related concerns (S. Walker, 1993).

It is in this context that the Begin-Caplan Commission commenced its work. In their report, For the Love of Learning, the commissioners, too, expressed their "...lack of enthusiasm for extensive, expensive, universal testing" (Vol. II, p. 150) as well as their suspicion of traditional student assessment (p.148-150). However, they, bowing to the public's "...need for some measure of basic student achievement that is applied in the same way to every student at a few points in time" (Vol. II. p. 150), recommended uniform assessment in Language and Math to be administered at the end of grade 3. "The test results are, most emphatically, not to be used to place or sort students for any reason in any way" (Vol. II, p. 150).

Another recommendation is that a literacy test, to be taken in the later years in secondary school, be made a condition for the award of a secondary school diploma as a "literacy guarantee" (Vol. II, p. 150). To ensure the legitimacy and credibility of province-wide testing, the commission recommended the establishment of an independent agency that would oversee every aspect of the test administration and dissemination of results.

Thus with the passage of Bill 30, EQAO ( Education Quality and Accountability

Office), a technology of standardization and control was born. The EQAO's mandate is to develop and manage the standardized testing of elementary and secondary pupils based on the curriculum expectations as outlined in Ontario Curriculum in language and math. There is also a research component to their mandate. They are to research and evaluate quality and improvement of education, collect information, and suggest strategies for improvement in student achievement and the accountability of boards. While the EQAO insists in its report that the focus was on providing information for the purposes of improving practice, teachers tend to view it as a technology of control and surveillance.

The first assessment in school year 1997-8 involving only the assessment of the grade threes in reading, writing and math (over a two-week period in May) was contentious. For that first assessment, Level two was considered an indication of adequate performance. Parents and schools were assured that the assessment results had no consequences on the children's academic trajectory. As one principal recalls it," the results were definitely kept out of the OSR" ( Nadia, former principal of School C) in a secure place in the office. The very next year, the assessment regime spread to the grade sixes as well. Now annual testing of grades three and six takes place every

June. The results are reported every fall with great fanfare, training the spotlight on schools that have shown significant year over year improvement in the percentage of children who met the provincial standard, now defined as

191 Levels 3 and 4.54. EQAO also administers the testing of grade 9 math as well as a literacy test in grade 10. Since 2002, the literacy test has been made a secondary school graduation requirement. The EQAO has the power to require schools and districts to submit school improvement plans each year subsequent to publication of assessment results. The assessment results are now part of the students' record and a copy is kept in the OSR (Ontario

Student Record). Theoretically, EQAO is considered low stakes testing in that the results do not impact on the elementary students' placement.55

Table 2 in Appendix H provides a summary of the evolution of province-wide assessment measures in Ontario.

Summary and Implications

In this chapter we saw the evolution of standardized testing in Ontario and the rise of the discourse of accountability and assessment. Some see standardized testing as a vehicle of accountability and system improvement, providing pressure and support to teachers. My informants see only the pressure. They feel the pressure to keep and improve on the school's ranking in the league tables. They feel the pressure that comes from the constant

54 The year over year comparison of results is between different cohorts. 551 suggest that the testing might be low stakes for the students, it is not so for the schools or the teachers. As will become clear in the dissertation, the discourses of student testing, self- assessment on the part of teachers and schools and continuous improvement are not value- neutral nor innocuous and have had, and continue to have, consequences for the delivered curriculum and pedagogy.

192 comparison at every level. At the school level, there is the year over year comparison (of different cohorts); the comparison between the genders; comparison with the school board "averages". And these are just the formal comparisons represented by bar-graphs in the official reports. On an informal level, there is the comparison with other schools in the same geographical area.

At the District school board level, there is the year over year comparison as well as comparison with other boards. At the macro level, there are results of international testing and the popular media has been very aggressive and quick in drawing comparisons and conclusion.

It is the discourse of accountability and assessment that has provided the philosophical and ideological underpinning and has lent legitimacy and credibility to the transformation of the teacher from an autonomous professional to a "managed" one—the subject of the next chapter.

193 Chapter 9

Technologies of Control

The Making of the Managed Professional

Chapter Overview

So far we have seen how teachers have been constructed through the

discourses of blame and derision leading to the present culture of

accountability and assessment. The teachers are positioned now to be

redeemed, to be disciplined, to be managed. This chapter will deal with the

agencies, mechanisms and technologies of control in the making of a

managed professional. These mechanisms and technologies include The

Ontario Curriculum, and the Provincial Report Card mandated by the Ministry

of Education and the LNS, a department specifically created in 2004 to

administer the regime of constant measurement, comparison and display. The

chapter will include an examination of The School Effectiveness (SEM) and

School Improvement Movements (SIM) that provide the theoretical and

ideological underpinnings for the current technologies of management.

A professional and a "managed" professional

A professional can be characterized in various ways. In 1929, J. G.

Althouse wrote that a profession was characterized by dignity, adequate pay

194 and a code of ethics (French, 168, p. 9). M. Bottery (1996) distills the characteristics of a professional to three broad concepts; the requirements of expertise, altruism, and autonomy.

Teachers have always operated as de facto professionals; parents were expected to trust the teacher's judgment and take the teacher's observations and judgment on good faith (Whitty, 2002). In recent years, however, with neo-liberalism in the ascendant, teachers, not unlike other public servants, have had their intentions and motives questioned. Through the neo-liberal lens, and especially after the discourse of derision they had to endure under the tenure of Conservative Premier Mike Harris, teachers are losing the struggle to be seen as socially responsible professionals who use their experiential knowledge and professional judgment in service of their students.

What has emerged in the last five years is a regime of standardization and control administered expertly, efficiently and often indirectly (through the school boards) by the Ministry of Education and the Literacy and Numeracy

Secretariat (LNS) that has constructed teaching as a managed profession and the teacher as a "managed professional" (Furlong, 2005). To be managed, in

Fred Inglis's words (1989) "is to be persuaded of something against your better judgment" (p.39). The regimes of public accountability have rendered

195 teachers' work into accountable and auditable commodities through increased

control and surveillance mechanisms (Kostogriz, 2009).

Recall that in pursuance of the recommendation of Begin-Caplan

Commission, the Conservative government under Harris and later Eves

institutionalized province-wide standardized testing and created the EQAO as

a quasi-non governmental agency to administer the business of testing.56

When the McGuinty Liberals took the reins of power in 2003, they realized

very quickly that their longevity was contingent on the public perception of their

performance in education. Like politicians in the U.S. (D. Noble, 1994), they

hitched Ontario education to the wagon of reform as a low-risk and high-yield endeavour. Effectiveness in schools and improvement in student attainment

became the watchwords of the administration. To put teeth into their effectiveness claim, the Ministry has instituted :

• a uniform and mandated provincial curriculum,

• a uniform evaluation rubric,

• standardized institutional language in reporting

• standardized testing to display the products of schooling

• a separate department (LNS) to facilate and monitor the path of

continuous improvement

Technologies of control:

56 See p. 190-191 for the mandate of the EQAO. The present Ontario Curriculum, a legacy from the Harris years, shares the

same philosophical genesis as the Common Curriculum (CC) that the NDP

produced before being defeated at the polls. The CC was important in that it

gave Ontario teachers their first glimpse of Outcome-based education (OBE),

the ideology that has swept over North America and was to provide the

theoretical underpinnings for the current Ontario Curriculum, and is very

different from the child-centred constructivist views held by most teachers.

OBE requires a re-orientation in the thinking and planning of the

curriculum. Although OBE came into its own in the late 1970s or early 1980s,

its roots went back to Ralph W. Tyler, who set forth four questions in his Basic

Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (1949). They are:

1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?

2. What educational experiences are likely to accomplish the purposes?

3. How can the experiences be organized?

4. How can we determine whether these purposes have been attained?

(P-1)

According to Guskey who traces the history of OBE, Tyler's educational objectives approach became associated with objective-based approaches, a basically behaviourist model that is focused on breaking complex tasks into smaller units of sequential basic skills. Later in the 70s, educational competencies, defined by William Spady as "indicators of successful

197 performance in life-role activities" came into vogue (Guskey, 1994, p. 1).

Instead of focusing on content and instructional objectives, OBE focuses on the "competencies, knowledge and orientations" the students have as a result of instruction (Spady, Filby and Burns, 1986).

OBE seems to have something for everyone. To those hankering for accountability and quality, OBE holds out the promise of certainty of quantifiable and observable "products"; to teachers, it offers autonomy, for although the outcomes are fixed, the means of attaining that outcome is within the teacher's purview (J. A. King & Evans, 1991); to social justice advocates

OBE works on the premise that everyone can succeed, if given enough time

(Spady, Filby, & Burns, 1986), and that schools control the conditions for success.

Critiques of OBE abound (Berlach, 2004; Brady, 1996; Schwarz, 1994;

Smyth & Dow, 1998; Cuban, 1983). From a teacher's standpoint, the promise of autonomy is hollow indeed when the purposes and ends are determined by others. If the outcomes the students are expected to attain consist of providing the right answers on criterion-referenced tests, then that is what will be taught in the classroom. To the classroom teacher, the major flaw of OBE is the very mechanist and narrow conception of learning and teaching as just an input- output operation. It is indeed ironic that a key ingredient for success for OBE is a long-term commitment of resources. The proposition that every child can

198 succeed if given enough time and resources, is meaningless at best and a cruel hoax at worst, when we know ahead of time that there will not be enough time, or nearly enough resources! All the goals are lofty, worthwhile, and inspirational. The only problems lie in the embodied teacher and students.

How is the teacher, with her one body, to divide herself up to act as a private tutor for twenty-three to over thirty children at one and the same time; some with special needs, others without knowledge of the language of instruction?

Furthermore, what is required of her, in addition to the teaching, is the production of administrative texts that will coordinate the doings of various sites and present a picture of uniform compliance and achievement.

Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8 Language (2006)

The present Ontario Curriculum is framed in terms of outcomes, behavioral objectives or expectations, what the student will know and be able to do, at the end of each grade. "By the end of grade 1, the student WILL...." (MOE, 2006, p. 39, emphasis added). What follows is a series of commands in the form of a list of observable and measurable outcomes or expectations, almost akin to a "production schedule" (Wien & Dudley-Marling, 2001, p. 101). Such a focus stands in stark contrast to the humanist, liberal and holistic view of learning held by many elementary teachers who do not favour such an authoritarian stance, and who view learning as "dialogic" involving "complex negotiations" of meaning (Wien & Dudley-Marling, 2001, p. 103). But the actors implicated in

199 the curricular relations of ruling — from the conception of the curriculum to its facilitators at the board offices do not take into account the messiness, the variations in terms of student readiness, motivation, prior experience or competence. The curriculum serves only to narrow and control the vision of teachers, obliterating from view her agency and that of her students as active co-constructors of knowledge and meaning57. With the focus on efficiency and narrowly defined skills, the curriculum outcomes are meant to indicate the production of a standardized, controlled and quantifiable product.

In the curriculum document, there is the obligatory nod to ESL (English as a second language)58, ELD (English Literacy Development)59 and special learners. There is recognition of the length of time required for the student to reach the level of language competency required for grade-level functioning.

While modifications and accommodations are made for the new arrivals, it is not apparent that there is the flexibility or provision in the achievement chart to acknowledge and record the harder-to-detect language inadequacies that dog many born-in-Canada students who started schooling with little or no

English thus limiting the particular student's effectiveness in displaying certain

57 A chart adopted from Poplin & Stone (1992) contrasting the principles of holistic constructivist learning process and their behavioral and reductionistic counterpart can be found in Appendix I: Table 3. 58 The ESL (English as a second language) program is available for newcomers, and for those who come to school with no English. Usually ESL is limited to students in grade 3 and higher. 59 ELD (English Literacy Development) program is for students whose first language is not English, or is a variety of English that is significantly different from that used in school instruction.

200 skills against a given criterion, occasioned not by a lack of potential but more by linguistic distance, cultural and knowledge gaps. Marie, the grade 3 teacher from school C, told me that of the twenty-three students in her class, only a third of them can meet the provincial standard or attain level 3, no matter how hard she and the students have worked all year. Only three in her class of twenty-three fit the idealized image of the white middle-class male child that underpins the assumptions of the OBE curriculum. (Lee, field notes,

October 2008).

Standard evaluation criteria and standard language used in evaluation

An achievement chart in the Ontario Curriculum serves as a standard province-wide evaluation guide for teachers (MOE, 2006, pp. 20-1). Students are to be evaluated against established criteria and their level of achievement is to be represented by a letter grade for grades 1 to 6, and a percentage grade for grades 7 and 8. (p. 15). The achievement chart for language found in

Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8 Language identifies for teachers the four categories of knowledge and skills deemed important. They are: knowledge and understanding; thinking; communication; and application, that is, the use of knowledge and skills to make connections within various contexts (MOE,

2006, pp.20-1). To ensure uniformity, (that is the grades mean the same standard of achievement across the province), the document provides not only the institutional yardstick but also the standard institutional language to report

201 the levels of attainment. Teachers are introduced to "descriptors" and

"qualifiers". The descriptor in the achievement chart for the thinking, communication and application categories is effectiveness. For each of the four levels of achievement, a specific qualifier is required: limited for level 1; some for level 2; considerable for level 3; and a high degree or thorough for level 4. (MOE, 2006, p. 18-21) The qualifier is used along with a descriptor to produce a description of performance at a particular level. For example, the description of a student's performance at level 3 with respect to the first criterion in the Thinking category would be: "The student uses planning skills with considerable effectiveness" (MOE, 2006, p. 19).

What's in a word? Standard language in evaluation

Effectiveness cannot and should not be considered in a vacuum, it has to be viewed in context and from a certain standpoint. Hence some of the questions such as effective for whom, in what and for what purpose must be answered and must be part of the equation. The managerialist strategy called evidence-based practice assumes that professional practice should specify goals explicitly, selecting the means for achieving them based on objective evidence about their efficaciousness, then measuring outcomes to determine the degree of success (Davies, 2003). This leaves unanswered questions such as: who defines effectiveness, or success? Effective in what? What is the point of being effective unless the object of the exercise is desirable or

202 worthwhile? One would hardly celebrate the success of a very effective burglar or swindler. Effectiveness cannot be decontextualized; it is always inextricably intertwined with means and ends.

Standardized institutional language is seen as a "time-saver" a "work- saver" for teachers and principals. One of my informants, Evelyn, latterly of

School C now a Literacy teacher in an OFIP school, reported that this was the message conveyed by a Student Achievement officer from the LNS to the staff.

The staff was advised on productive and non-productive uses of time. Time spent on report-card was deemed unproductive as it does nothing to improve student performance. The Student Achievement officer advised the staff that by using the report card technology, reports for the whole class should be done in an hour, a definite boon to overworked teachers!

A common language to describe student performance might present the semblance of a common standard, especially to those who know little, and appreciate less "how complex and morally demanding" teaching actually is

(McTaggart, 1992, p. 78). Once again, one has to be reminded that language is not ideologically neutral. It presents the views of the dominant group while at the same time shapes the view, circumscribes the possibilities by defining the parameters and the terms of the discourse for others (McTaggart, 1992, p. 78;

Smith, 2005). It unambiguously indicates the transfer of power from the professional teacher to the central agency that has appropriated what used to

203 be the teacher's job in curriculum planning and design under very broad

guidelines from the Ministry of Education.

The Provincial Report Card 60

The same institutional language found in the achievement chart is used in

reporting to parents. Since 1998-1999, the Provincial Report Card has been

the standardized reporting instrument. The Guide to Provincial Report Card,

Grades 1 to 8 (MOE, 1998), comes with detailed instructions on how to fill in

the report, field by field. The task is made a great deal "simpler" by the

Comments Bank. All the teacher has to do is to enter the letter grade and a

menu of possible comments for that grade cascades down for her perusal and

selection. The uniform language of the comments bank is coordinated with the

aforementioned achievement chart. For instance, if a student's grade is "B",

then s/he is said to function "with considerable effectiveness".

A student who obtained a B+ in reading, and whose report card was

made available to me, had comments as follows:

XXX reads independently, using a variety of reading strategies with

considerable effectiveness....demonstrates considerable understanding

of vocabulary and main ideas from various texts...when writing, she

60 On March 4, 2010 when this dissertation had been completed, The Globe and Mail reported that the province will bring out a new template for the report card in the fall of 2010. Among the changes are: teachers will have the option of writing his/her own comments; the first report of the academic year would be a report of progress and would not include grades (Hammer, 2010).

204 communicates ideas and information with considerable effectiveness"

(Field notes, July, 2008. Emphasis added)

The same student had grades ranging from B- to B+ in the various strands of math. Her math section read:

XXX identifies, extends, and explains numeric and geometric patterns

with considerable accuracy...she represents, compares, and estimates

number with considerable accuracy. (Field notes, July, 2008. Emphasis

added)

The standardized description of the child and his/her particularities are part of the process of fitting the individual into the institutional regime for greater ease of coordination, control and comparison. There is no provision in the report's comment bank to denote that perhaps the "limited" or "some" effectiveness in a particular student's report represents Herculean efforts on the part of the student and/or teacher. These are the relations of ruling mediated by the institutional technology of the standardized report card. It has had the desired effect of regulating, standardizing and ultimately controlling what counts as learning — discrete skills that are observable is what is to be reported in the standard institutional language.

Although the standardized reporting language is mandated, Carol, the grade 1 teacher in school A has absolutely refused to use the Comments Bank and insisted on writing her own reports. Another informant, Evelyn, latterly of

205 School C, also eschewed the authorized computer-generated comments. She reported that her principal complained that her reports took him three times as long to read. Those who resist the managerialist processes; who work against the process of deskilling through routinizing teaching; and who insist on exercising their autonomy in fulfilling their professional duties, are set up to be deviant and are therefore, vulnerable (Smyth & Shacklock, 1998). With the obsessive focus on uniformity in gaze and language, teachers can be forgiven for seeing the curriculum documents, published "aids" in student assessment and standardized report cards as part and parcel of what McTaggart (1992) terms "an accounting practice" aligned with "corporate managerialism" (p. 72) or technologies of control to "manage" professionals (Furlong, 2005, p. 123).

Furthermore, the production of administrative texts (such as the standardized report's letter grade for each subject, even for grade 1), has directly affected teachers' work processes and by extension what goes on in the classroom.

Agency of Control: The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat (LNS)

In the early years of the public system the systems of control were overt and explicit. They are now a great deal more nuanced, nonetheless pervasive.

The LNS, along with EQAO, organize the "measurement and surveillance"

(Ball, 1995, p.260) processes of school systems in Ontario. The LNS was established in November 2004 with the purpose of making Ontario schools

(kindergarten to grade 6) more effective to support the liberal government's

206 "drive to 75%" initiative (Ontario Liberal Party, 2007 cited in LNS, 2008, p. 2).

The "drive to 75%" refers to the government's core priority of setting the target of 75% of students achieving the provincial standard in language and math by the end of grade 6, or age 12. But before we examine the reach and power of

LNS, we need to look at the School Effectiveness and School Improvement

Movements (SEM & SI) which provide the Ministry of Education its theoretical and ideological underpinnings and the LNS its raison d'etre.

The School Effectiveness (SEM) and School Improvement Movements

(SIM)

The discourses of school effectiveness and school improvement have been in the ascendant in the last decade in Ontario, and for well over two decades in the U.K. and the U.S (Hamilton, 1998; Morley & Rassool, 1999).

Since the publication of James Coleman's (1966) Equality of Educational

Opportunity (Coleman report) and Christopher Jencks' Inequality: A

Reassessment of the effect of Family and Schooling in America (1972),6' which claim that most of the variation in student school performance could be attributable to background factors, SEM researchers have worked to prove them wrong. Once the attributes of an effective school are identified, they can be transported across town to be replicated in order to improve the effectiveness of less successful ones: so the theory goes.

61 Jencks et al (1972) concluded equalizing schools would reduce test scores disparity by less than 3%.

207 What the SEM has done is to re-centre the school as the site of the

problem of low achieving students. The reasoning goes something like this:

Even after controlling other variables such as class, family income, ethnicity

and race, some schools still perform better than others by producing more

students with better results. This is generally referred to as "value-added", a

term borrowed from the business world. In education, it simply means "school

effect", what a school has been able to do for the students. The focus of SEM

is in measurement and monitoring. Its major flaw is the decontextualization, a

"disconnect from social and cultural constructions and from political and

economic interests" (Angus, 1993, p. 335). SEM assumes that the end is

settled and self-evidently unproblematic and all that remains to be done is to

find the most efficient or efficacious means to achieve the end. SEM is

suffused with scientific concerns such as evidence-based practice, result-

driven, data-based decisions, concepts imported from the discipline of

medicine. But unlike medicine in which there is just one desirable end (Biesta,

2007), education has multiple ends, mirroring not only our diversity but also

our richness in imagination in that we can envision more than one version of

possible worlds, and more than one version of the good and true. The SEM

assumption is that teaching is a technical exercise which subordinates any

moral practice and that educational judgments are technical not moral (Biesta,

2007). It also takes the view that students are malleable cognitive units on whom teacher-technicians can apply their techniques (Angus, 1993). It further assumes that educational problems can be quarantined within the classroom walls (Giroux, 1981).

The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat (LNS)

One technology of control is The School Effectiveness Framework: A

Collegia! process for Continued Growth in the Effectiveness of Ontario

Elementary Schools (2007a), the Ontarian version of The School Improvement

Movement, provided by the LNS as a guide to schools and school boards for improvement planning. The LNS stresses "horizontal accountability" as teachers, schools and administrators "...accept responsibility to hold themselves accountable for ensuring that research-based, effective strategies are consistently implemented across the province" (LNS, 2007a, p. 4).

Although LNS emphasizes the fact that the school self-assessment process is not an "externally imposed evaluation" (LNS, 2007a, p. 11), it is in fact an instrument of regulation and control precisely because schools and teachers are not at liberty to opt out of this mandated process of self-reflection, self- criticism and improvement planning.

How does the self-assessment work?

The School Self-Assessment Process consists of five parts as follows:

1. Review of School Improvement Plan

2. Familiarization with the framework 3. Data collection and Analysis

4. Improvement Planning

5. Implementation and Monitoring

(LNS, 2007, p. 13)

In each phase, the LNS is very specific in what the expectations are and what actions are to be taken, providing a step-by-step guide for self-scrutiny and criticism.

Phase 1 of the process, for instance, starts with "Review priorities";

"review targets" (LNS, 2007a, p. 13) akin to the examination of conscience, part of the "confessional technique" (Ball, 1995, p.261). Then an admission of guilt or transgression (phase 3) follows as in "...using the indicators of the framework, identify strengths and areas requiring improvement... Identify areas which need improvement". To ensure that the staff stay on course or the straight and narrow, to continue with the confessional imagery, they are exhorted to: "identify indicators of progress and to ensure monitoring process is in place" (Phase 4). Just in case the admonitions are not specific enough, helpful questions are provided in Phase 5: "Ask: "How effective are we in achieving our student learning and achievement goals? What is the evidence?

What actions will we take to ensure continuous improvement?" (LNS, 2007a,

210 p. 13). All is offered in a "culture of collaboration... [that seeks] to foster self- efficacy and professionalism, (LNS, 2007a, p. 24) of course62.

Additionally, the 60 page document, Implementation Pilot September 2007-

June 2008 is filled with charts and tables as well as imperatives such as " The expectation is that districts and school will review all of the Essential

Components in a given cycle" (LNS, 2007a, p 10). Timelines are also specified: the school review should take not more than three months, the district review, no more than four weeks to allow a number of cycles in a school year.

The LNS proclaims that "...Student achievement must be the primary outcome of schooling" (2007a, p. 29) and that "Instruction itself has the largest influence on student achievement" (2007a, p. 18). But my informants get a different message. They feel that the LNS is more interested in documentation about teaching and learning than the teaching and learning themselves. How else can one explain the burdens of record keeping, checklists, indicators of progress and needs, precise calibration of reading levels for each student at least three times a year, even if it means foregoing instructional time to do so.

(See page 219 of this dissertation). The School Effectiveness Framework:

(LNS, 2007a), is viewed by my informants as another form of supervision, as

This process of self-assessment bears a striking resemblance to the self-criticism that Mao Tse Tung extols in Chapter 27 of Quotations from Mao Tse Tung available on the Mao Tse Tung Internet Archive.)

211 "ways of keeping tabs" on them (Mary, grade 1 School C). It is a technology of surveillance and control

Another less direct form of control takes the form of routinization of the teachers' work as more and more areas such as curriculum and reporting become uniform and standardized. The intellectual components of the teacher's job have been "outsourced", thus the teacher's use of her professional knowledge, judgment and experiential knowledge became subordinated to the prescribed curriculum (Woods, Jeffrey, Troman, & Boyle,

1997) and prescribed pedagogy. I will quote my informants to demonstrate the

LNS's reach (sometimes indirectly through the Accountability Department of the school board) into the classroom:

The program is prescriptive... Lots of P D, resources, schedules and

day plans [are provided]... There are 6 or 7 different things you have to

do in a day. Today, I know exactly the scheme I have to fit: Running

Record, 40 sounds, review the 5 words of the week, awareness activity.

They [Accountability Department] come in watch you teach, you go

twice a year [to observe others]... [The program is] successful and

efficient. No sitting around, no written aspect, no art... [It's]... complete

intensive programming... It took me [a while to get] ...all pieces to fit

together...Some are skeptical, Teachers don't like it. Too controlling,

(Fran, Fifth Block Teacher, School C)

212 We saw how the achievement chart provided in The Ontario Curriculum has replaced professional judgment and discretion. Not only is the "what" of teaching being codified and routinized, the same regime has penetrated the

"how", the methodology, hitherto generally considered a teacher's domain, in fact the sine qua non of her job. It is one thing to provide teachers with curriculum binders with resources but it is quite a different matter when the scripts billed as a 5-day plan are handed out to participants in professional development sessions. The following is a short excerpt from such a script:.

213 Read Aloud

5 day Plan

Day1

Predictions:

• Read the title of the book to the students63

• Explain that you will be predicting from the title and the cover what will

happen in the book

• Explain that we can predict what books will be about by using clues from the

cover, the title, the name of the author, the font etc.

• Define a prediction—it is when someone uses a limited amount of

information to guess what may happen. Model how to make a prediction

based on the title. For example, based on the title, My Rows and Piles of

Coins, I predict that this story will be about someone who is collecting all

kinds of coins such as pennies, quarters and loonies.

• Model how to make a prediction based on the cover illustration. Based on the

picture on the cover, I predict that the main character of the story is a boy

who is happy because he has a collection of coins. I know he is happy

because he is smiling.

The book in question is from the junior collection, to be used with grades 4 to 6. 214 Managed Professionals in the flesh

My informants in their own ways, echoing Fred Inglis's (1989) argument that "to be managed is to be persuaded of something against your better judgment "(P-39), related their experiences as managed professionals. Larry of

School C felt very strongly that "making a Nl (neurologically impaired) child write the EQAO " was not right and "a shame" but the exigencies of circumstances were such that he felt he had no choice in the matter.

Everyone even the Nl child wrote EQAO because exemptions count as

zero. Level 1 [the lowest level, the expected attainment level of the Nl

child] is better than zero. [Claiming an exemption for the Nl child]

impacts negatively on the school. Two types of results [are] reported.

Results that include everyone and results that include exemptions.

Published results is the inclusive one. People look at only the published

numbers. In a school this size, each student represents 3%... High

pressure... because results are published. Too many people look at

results as an indication of the quality of the school. There's also the

administration, not the school level (higher ups) look at the results and

make value judgments as to how well the school is doing. [So there is ]

pressure for decent results...even though we know we're dealing with

215 demographics ...numbers...so much can be misconstrued. The year by

year display...unless school is showing improvement year after year...

[the mistaken conclusion is that] there's something wrong. (Larry,

grade 5-6 teacher, School C)

It was obvious that the decision, against his better judgment, haunted him and will probably continue to do so for some time to come.

Mary (Grade 1 teacher), Marie, (grade 3 teacher) and Fran, (Literacy &

Kindergarten teacher), all of School C decry the impoverishing effects intensive and exclusive phonics instruction has had on the children's oral language and reading comprehension. Yet, they feel they have no choice but to make the LNS's and the school board's focus their own focus in the classroom, against their better judgment. Penny, grade 8 teacher of School B has grave reservations about the overcrowded and uniform curriculum and its misplaced focus:

... We ask kids "What do you think?" [the answer is always] 'Nothing*.

[because they have] no experience. Now the curriculum is so full there

is no time to talk to the kids, to give them what they need.

Yet she soldiered on, doing her best to deliver the curriculum and in the manner expected, against her better judgment.

216 ...[The prescribed text is] full of unnecessary details that serve to

confuse kids, not facilitate learning. For example, in the math program,

kids are presented with four different possible solutions to each problem

Kids may be able to handle one. But by the time, they get to the fourth

one; they don't even remember the first one. So they end up with

nothing, "Solve problem by changing your point of view"... Kids are not

at that stage. They can manage the procedure if you're systematic, but

[they are] not able to put it [solution or thinking] into words. You ask

them to talk about it, "...explain it to me". [Their response is] "Huh?"

The rhetoric of collegiality, collaboration, ownership, "self-directed improvement agenda" of "empowered individuals who have fully internalized the need for a sense of urgency" (LNS, 2007a, pp. 4-5), signifies the most effective and sophisticated form of control — cooptation (Bacharach &

Bamberger, 1995). With cooptation, we become our own jailer (Foucault,

1980). After adopting what the LNS regards as normal — elementary schooling should be focused on raising the scores on the EQAO and improving the school's ranking on the leagues table; after submitting themselves to surveillance and monitoring, including self-scrutiny and examination of conscience; it seems easier to adopt the LNS mantra as one's own, completing the cycle of confession, submission and transformation into a

217 rule-following, self-disciplining functionary of the first order (Bacharach &

Bamberger, 1995; Ball, 1995).

Constant comparison and display as a technology of surveillance and

control.

In the last chapter we examined the evolution of standardized testing in

Ontario. We saw how standardized testing became a vehicle of accountability

and system improvement, supposedly rendering teachers pressure and

support. My informants see only the pressure. They feel the pressure to keep

and improve on the school's ranking in the league tables. They feel the

pressure that comes from the constant comparison at every level. At the

school level, there is the year over year comparison (of different cohorts); the

comparison between the genders; comparison with the school board

"averages", all displayed in bar graphs. On an informal level, there is the

comparison with other schools in the same geographical area.

Running Records

Running Records (RR), administered three times a year, is another technology

of standardization and control. RR, is an individual reading assessment tool that allows the teacher to assess the child's reading as she reads from a

benchmark book64. As the child reads, the teacher marks each word on the

64 Benchmark books are for assessment purposes only and are typically kept in the library, out of the children's reach.

218 protocol using specified symbols. Substitutions are to be noted and written over the text. Self-corrections and teacher interventions are also noted. The administration procedures are detailed and the scores, the results of math calculation according to the formula supplied. For instance, the accuracy rate is expressed as a percentage. The formula for calculation is as follows: "Total words read minus total errors then divided by total words read. Multiply by 100.

The accuracy rate is used to determine instructional level defined as between

90 to 94%" (Running Records and Benchmark Books retrieved on June 18,

2006 from Reading A -Z.com). The idea is that instruction can be tailored more precisely to the child's level.

RR serves almost as a lightning rod in Schools B and C. Whereas the EQAO testing does not really affect teachers of the early grades, Kindergarten, 1, and

2 directly, RR is a constant and persistent irritant. Teachers in Schools B and

C find RR an onerous task that serves no purpose other than meeting a bureaucratic need—generating a letter to be entered on the data base, posted for all the school board to see. Tina, the grade 1 teacher of School B feels strongly about RR:

...Really bothers me. RR had a kid read a passage. You have to listen

to every word... Words, not sense. If a kid reads "house" for "home",

that's counted wrong even though the sense is right...it's just word

calling... RR [is] administered by everyone. Everyone does it differently.

219 We base [our] judgments on that!....ln-services won t help. We take

these results and publish them [on the computer]. We put them

[assessment results] out there as if they [conditions of administration]

were all the same. [I maintain] the results... not that valid. It is just an

added thing I have to do three times a year... I might do it [for the odd

child]... If you come into the room and ask me how Johnny is doing, I

can tell you. I don't need to write it all down in a book. I don't know who

it is for. Very time consuming... [for] most of the kids you don't need to

do it. Administering ... it is another thing...in the classroom. [Say] you're

a little 6-year-old with a quiet voice...I have to hear every word...giving

it [the assessment] in the classroom... it is so unfair to the child. Would

you come in to do testing in the middle of my room? [I] give other kids

busy work so I can do the test... I've an EA, that helps, but kids still

come over.

Tina has good points about the validity of the RR testing. But what rankles is the marginalization of her professional and experiential knowledge as she copes with taxonomies, pre-test, post-test, performance indicators, boxes that need to be checked off, and calculations to render the required numbers. "All for what?" This is one of the texts that constitute evidence- based exactitude, an objective measure of reading attainment. But Tina regards the whole RR as just a charade, a pretense as she rightly points out that the first condition of the test administration cannot even be met. It is supposed to be administered on an individual basis, in quiet surroundings, not in a noisy classroom with 17 children milling about and some vying for attention. Tina has no choice but to do the best under the circumstances but chafes under what she sees as an unreasonable expectation. I mentioned earlier her retreat to unionism. She contests the unreasonable demands in the only way opened to her. She has refused to enter the results of the testing on the school's data base. She so informed the principal. Her union told her that the job of data-entry is a clerical duty, not part of a teacher's job. It is her way of coping with what she considers an assault on her professionalism and her way of trying to salvage a measure of dignity.

Does the RR's cumbersome way of determining and calculating the instructional level help instruction? Mary, grade 1/2 teacher of School C has this to say: "Yes, but things we do in the classroom also help. Doesn't have to be so formal...when you work with kids you know...It [the RR] is a way of checking up on us". To Mary, it is another technology of control brought to bear on her. Although RR was intended to make reading instruction more effective by meeting the child's needs more precisely, in practice RR has meant less instructional time and less instruction for the neediest children in

Schools B and C.

221 The RR [is] very difficult [to fit into the schedule]. This year, it was

confusing. In the past, on Mondays when kids do journal, I do RR, try to

fit it in as often as I can. RR takes a long time. I try to rush through it. I

don't give them 20 minutes for each. This RR is used as only a rough

guide....[there is] pressure from the board for the numbers. Lots on

decoding, but nothing on comprehension. They want a number....[at]a

certain level...instructional level. How do I do it? Movies work. [I have]

lots of videos available. Let them watch video to give us the time. The

other Grade 1 teacher had to do RR. I took her whole class for gym,

and then showed them a video with my class to give her the time to do

23 RR...for what? No one asked for the results. I'm a language rep, I

print the data out [for the school].

(Mary, grade 1/2 teacher, School C)

Carol of School A, on the other hand, has a much easier time. She has access to a conference room so she is able to leave her class with the EA, and do RR under optimal conditions. Here we have the obvious and considerable variability in testing conditions, making a mockery of the so-called standardized testing and the often-claimed unassailable reliability of "objective measures". Even so, Carol finds the requirement an affront:

222 RR is so time-consuming. One child went from level E last term to N. I

listened to 8 books!! If I didn't have EA, (eyes rolled heavenward and

voice trailed off) I don't [know what I would do]. [I don't] have time to do

the other testing...Rosner and segmentation. I have to take RR home,

and input in the computer. [RR is] not [designed by] people who work in

the classroom. Kids don't read quietly and don't behave that well unless

you're watching them...not fair on the kid reading either. People who

make these things up don't work in classrooms. I can tell you that.

(Carol, grade 1 teacher, School A)

RR, as unsatisfactory and onerous as it is from the teachers' standpoint, is an important technology of control from the School Board's perspective. In theory, it helps to individualize and customize instruction. (But did anyone heed the voice of those charged with implementing the plan?) In practice, RR fulfills the LNS's requirement for performance indicators for purposes of classification and comparison. Now schools have the numbers to submit. In the school year

2006-7, School C posted the aggregate results for each grade on their School

Improvement Plans available on the web.

Apart from the aforementioned difficulties with doing the RR testing, there is the matter of the actual texts themselves. The testing booklets, or the

Benchmark booklets as they are called, ostensibly used to assess the child's reading level, can also be said to plumb his/her cultural knowledge. There are

223 stories that assume familiarity with traditional English nursery rhyme

characters such as Humpty Dumpty, Little Bo Peep, Little Red Riding Hood

and The Cat and a Fiddle. I asked my informants at Schools B and C if the

rhymes were taught in school, the answer was "No". In schools in which the

minorities constitute the majority, the use of testing materials so interlaced with

cultural allusions is patently unfair.

Another booklet presents scenes far from the students' everyday

realities. How do children whose parents work at two or three jobs to put food on the table relate to the portrait of a comfortable middle class suburban life­ style in which children can be seen looking at the heavens through telescopes, cooling off under trees, or on swings? The text assumes a degree of familiarity and comfort with puppies, monkeys, frogs, pigs, birds and the great outdoors.

One story asks the young reader about various places animals could hide, as well as hiding places in his/her room. It assumes, of course, the reader has his/her own room, spacious enough to have nooks and crannies for hiding.

Another booklet deals with a child's encounter with a pony on the neighbour's property. Such idyllic portraits of comfortable suburbia just makes reading that much more difficult for a child who has to share an apartment with two other families, a common enough phenomenon in both Schools B and C. For all our liberal rhetoric, the reality is that the middle class child with his interests and preferences still is the universalizing norm.

224 The injury done to the minority or working class children lies in the institution's failure to see them and recognize their difference in setting categories and benchmarks. It is that invisibility to the "regulatory gaze"

(Rassool, 2000, p. 253) that school effectiveness discourse does not acknowledge. It is that failure that generates negative consequences from ostensibly benign and beneficial measures. It is part and parcel of the accommodations and acquiescence that constitute the daily reality of managed professionals.

Critique of decontextualized evidence-based, skills-based practice

The LNS takes the "evidence-based" model, imported from the field of medicine, as the gold standard (2007a, p.2). I argue that even in medical science, contextual factors are not routinely dismissed. Why else would a physician bother taking family and medical history? It is precisely that that history informs subsequent observations and decisions. Why then should LNS put so little stock in contextual information? They insist that in an equitable system "variations in learning are not attributed to background variables" (LNS,

2007a, p. 3).

Teachers know that teaching entails not only techniques but also relies on

"multiple values, tacit judgment, local knowledge and skill" (Hammersley, 2002, p. 2). The whole point of focusing on achieving equitable student outcomes is to galvanize institutional and professional energies and resources in

225 combating whatever disadvantages background factors may have caused by taking appropriate measures to ensure equal benefits at the end, including unequal distribution of resources. Thus contextual factors cannot be brushed aside. To do so indicates a rather different view of education.

The current focus on evidence is part of the demands of accountability, characteristic of managerialism, an import from the business world. As we noted above, managerialism is underpinned by the idea of the generic manager who needs not have any detailed knowledge about the work in question nor what it takes to get it done. All s/he needs is a list of written performance indicators against which the performance or efficacy of the particular operation can be measured (Hammersley, 2002, p. 3). This is a legacy from the Taylorist factory system that revolutionalized the shop floor.

When applied to the school system, it has meant that the actual teaching in the classroom is separated from the design and planning of professional practice, now done centrally at the LNS or board office. The professional knowledge of teachers is being replaced by the managerialism of generic auditors and accountants and the concomitant demands for administrative texts and documentary evidence. For example:

• the insistence on a letter grade for all subjects even in grade 1 (Carol,

School A);

226 • the requirements of not only testing but also the production of a number

to indicate the exact instructional level; (Running Records)

• the record-keeping requirements of the data wall; ( Schools B and C)

• the requirement that each grade be supported by three pieces of

documented evidence; (Marie, School C)

• the misreading of local context resulting in distance diagnosis and

prescriptions that do not fit the local conditions ( Marie, School C)

This change in teachers' work has been described as proletarianization (H.

Giroux, 1986). Teaching has always been thought of as a dynamic process,

involving myriads of professional judgments, big and small, usually rendered

on the spot (Connell, 1985). The student's personal relationship with the teacher will make the difference, especially in dealing with young children in

elementary school who have not yet acquired the intrinsic motivation for the

sustained effort required for learning. Sustained attention, perseverance in face of difficulties, and willingness to take risks are all contingent on the quality of that teacher-pupil relationship (Cohn & Kottkamp, 1993). As such, a teacher's work involves not only intellectual labour but also emotional investment. Unless that connection is there, academic gains will be elusive.

The quality of teacher-pupil relationship, an essential ingredient in nurturing success, is not something that can be captured on a performance checklist.

227 The LNS insistence on evidence-based practice at every turn speaks of a positivist view of knowledge, a simplistic and mechanical view of the learner and the teacher, which saps the confidence and commitment of teachers

(Hyselop-Margison, 2007; Cuban, 1983). Herein lies the basic flaw of the

School Effectiveness Framework: A Collegia! Process for Continued Growth in the Effectiveness of Ontario Elementary Schools (LNS, 2007a). By taking such a technicist and reductionist approach, it assumes that teaching is a technical, mechanical process; and views educational problems and decisions as engineering problems (Angus, 1993; Hextall, 1998) that can be solved with

"greater precision and intentionality" (LNS, 2007a, p. 3).

I contend that such a mechanist and reductionist view puts the most vulnerable students at risk by denying them access to the intellectual capital consistent with academic success" (Hyslop-Margison & Naseem, 2007, p. 106).

The effects are far from innocuous, they are pernicious. In privileging the evidence-based research and its quantitative "guarantee" of objectivity, the state and its agencies have shaped, and are shaping the gaze of those who devise policies. This gaze privileges standardized testing and data over the normative and philosophical dimensions of education. If the state grounds its policies in decontextualized "data" it is highly likely that its implementation will fall short in supporting student learning in classrooms. As we saw in Chapter

Four, Marie (Grade 3 teacher, School C) complained bitterly about the wrong

228 diagnosis rendered by the resource person whose role was to examine

weaknesses at the micro-level and to identify strategies for strategic

improvement. Marie gave me an example of one specific question on the

reading test (grade 3) in which the student was given a number of statements

about a particular animal, say turtles. The task was to identify which statement

was a statement of fact, and which one of fiction. "But the trouble was that

while the kids know the difference between facts and fiction [in the abstract],

they didn't know enough facts about turtles to be able to tell the difference"

(Marie, grade 3 teacher School C). We heard how Mary and Tina had to use

videos or low level "busy work" to free themselves from teaching for the

purposes of generating evidence. The insistence on documentation and

evidence informs teachers that the LNS values the evidence of teaching and

learning more than the actual endeavours. Hyslop-Margison (citing Kaestle

1993) claims "there is little to no evidence that empirical research generates

any improvement in education practice"(Hyslop-Margison & Naseem, 2007, p.

5). Not only has this privileging of the discourse of evidence questionable as educational policy, it does harm when it promotes "an instrumental view of education as a technical enterprise" "(Hyslop-Margison & Naseem, 2007, p. 4).

Furthermore, evidence-based interventions act as a distracter for they provide legitimation for the state to use "evidence" to denigrate schools, teachers and pathologize the most vulnerable segment of the student body. Having

229 proffered evidence of what "works", the state then can safely export the blame

to teachers and students when the evidence-based strategies do not produce

the desired improvement.

What is at stake is not school improvement as such but tensions and

contradictions between different versions of what primary education is

conceived to be, what purposes, and whom it is supposed to serve. By

narrowing the focus of schooling to basic skills that can be quantified, the LNS

can support the claim that it meets the goal of continuous progress and

transparent accountability.

I argue that LNS has mistaken the means for the ends of education.

Although the LNS has not come out to state that content in the primary

curriculum be neglected, their almost exclusive focus on basic skills speaks

powerful volumes. Ultimately, what is tested will inform teachers the repertoire

of official knowledge despite official protestation to the contrary. Since time is

finite, demands many and escalating, documentation requirements exact and

insistent65, it is only natural and inevitable that teachers, especially in low-

performing schools, concentrate their efforts on "what counts". And "what

counts" will constitute the curriculum. What is being tested informs the teachers as to what is valorized and what is valorized is what will be taught.

65 One of my informants ( Marie, grade 3 , School C) told me that each grade in the report card has to be supported by three pieces of "evidence". What is generally accepted as evidence, are the scores on written tests.

230 And the consequences? In the short term, there is much to celebrate. By focusing on basic skills, the LNS has been able to demonstrate continuous

improvement for the last few years (see p.1 of this dissertation), but as

Aronowitz and Girourx (1993) contend, and I agree, an almost exclusive focus

on basic skills "...encourages the subordination of a conceptually illiterate

population "(p. 62 emphasis in the original). In the longer term, schools will

produce "...a docile workforce whose skills are on a technical plane, but who

can fulfill orders and can be counted on not asking too many questions (p. 64).

Thus, far from effecting the equity of outcomes, the LNS has, in effect, wittingly or unwittingly, ensured unequal outcomes while claiming to focus on equity. It is the disadvantaged students, the poor, the non-middle-class, the minorities, those who depend on the schools as the sole source of their intellectual and linguistic capital who will be further disadvantaged and disenfranchised (P. Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977/1990). For the disadvantaged, liberal and Utopian rhetoric is no substitute for a meaningful curriculum and explicit instruction (Gee, 2008, Graham, 1993; Lingard, 2005). Furthermore, such "...reducing, simplifying and concretizing the curriculum" (Egan, 2002 p.) in the elementary schools results in children not acquiring the prerequisites for later learning. It is not an exaggeration to say that the students could be trying to "catch up", not altogether successfully, the rest of their academic careers.

Vigorous denials that variations in learning and achievement can often be

231 attributed to background variables are not helpful at all. Some go so far as to

claim that the denial of difference is the new conservatism that seeks to

ensure the continuation of the present unjust status quo (Salter & Tapper,

1981).

I do not doubt the good faith or the abundant good intentions of the

LNS. I have great difficulties with their blindspots. Children start schooling

often with huge differentials in skills, attitudes and dispositions. Wishing them

away will not make them disappear. It is only in an honest recognition of those

differentials, that we can begin to bring about some measure of equity.

Institutions like LNS can in fact make that quest possible by virtue of their

access to huge amounts of resources over long periods of time. As Thrupp

(1999) argues: for the marginalized, academic attainment is often their only

chance of gaining a toehold in the mainstream. Thus "...for this reason alone,

improving the academic success of working class kids in the existing system is

a legitimate goal of those concerned with social inequalities in education" (p.

11).

I find the LNS's goals laudably inspirational. The difficulties do not lie in the conceptions and aspirations of equity. The difficulties lie in the fact that in an effort to standardize, normalize and regularize teaching and learning - essentially a highly unpredictable human endeavour, the LNS has missed the forest for the trees. And by using its institutional power to persuade and shape

232 our educational discourse to achieve its espoused goals, it has wrought a great deal of damage to the morale, professional confidence, public and self regard of the frontline workers — teachers in the classrooms, on whom the success of the LNS enterprise ultimately depends. Instead of encouraging and nourishing teachers' ingenuity and professional judgment, the LNS directly and indirectly (through instructions and injunctions to school boards) places teachers in pedagogical straitjackets. By focusing on "high yield strategies" with "greater precision and intentionality" (LNS, 2007a, p. 3), the LNS has allowed the Ministry to sidestep such questions as: Why is it that learning in schools has become so contingent on the efforts of the family (read mother)?

Why is it that the middle-class priorities and needs are institutionalized so that

Others become deviant, wanting or "at risk"? Whose interest does it serve to silence those who might wish to raise these questions? The LNS efforts have been directed to limiting the educational discourse to the technical components such as differentiated instruction, literacy, learning styles, meeting individual needs through customization and personalization of the curriculum (LNS, 2007a, pp. 3-4).

It is also naive, to put it most charitably, to think that acquiring free floating skills such as decoding can bring about the ultimate equity of outcomes, or produce highly-skilled graduates who can support a high-skilled, high-wage economy. The scores might rise for the grade 3 EQAO tests now

233 that more children can actually read the words on the page. But even on

LNS's own terms, progress has stalled (LNS, 2007a, p. 7). Apparently

authorities have found the same phenomenon in UK where after continuous

improvement for a number of years, progress has stalled. Michael Fullan, in a webcast to Ontario teachers on September 14, 2007, explained the stalling as

a lack of deep commitment on the UK teachers' part, a mistake LNS is

cognizant of, and will not repeat (LNS, 2007c)! My informants have a different

view. They contend that one of the consequences of the narrow focus on basic decoding skills has been an impoverishment of oral language and imagination which in turn impedes reading comprehension. I agree with the notion that it is the concomitant loss of content (Barrow, 1996; Hyslop-Margison & Naseem,

2007; Sullivan, 2001) that deprives the marginalized students the intellectual and cultural capital that underpins academic achievement (Hyslop-Margison &

Naseem, 2007). A. Sullivan argues that educational attainment is

...in fact the possession of knowledge or a set of competencies... public

participation of culture does not contribute to intellectual capital...

whereas private consumption as in reading does... Lower class kids

suffer most when the curriculum is designed to avoid content and styles

that are associated with the dominant culture because assessment tend

to reward linguistic ability and cultural knowledge, broadly defined

(2001, p. 910)

234 The disadvantaged students "...need knowledge of which skills are a derivative" (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993, p. 64),

Summary and Implications

In this chapter, I have examined how institutional procedures can be used to mask a power transfer as we have seen how teachers' work becomes routinized, the product of their labour reduced to auditable commodities in the form of checklists and performance indicators; the intellectual and planning component of the job detached from their classroom performance rendering teachers managed professionals. The institution also has the power to construct a problem discursively. The solutions proffered are more or less binding on the front-line workers.

The present narrow focus of the LNS has done some good in that a large number of children have learned to read. But literacy and numeracy skills are only the first necessary step to an education. The current discourse of evidence, data, and outcomes does not stand up under critical scrutiny and is maintained only by the institutional power and technology. It undermines and denigrates the efforts of those who do the actual work.

I also outlined the technologies of standardization and control employed to

"manage" the teachers. To sum up, these measures include:

• The LNS and its power and reach into the classrooms

• Province-wide use of a standard curriculum • Standard provincial report card and the mandatory use of institutional

language for reporting to parents

• EQAO testing in grades 3 and 6 to monitor teacher's work via student

performance

• Constant comparison and display as a means of quality assurance

• Discourse of blame and redemption embedded in the Discourse of

Continuous Improvement in The School Effectiveness Framework

The teachers have become "managed professionals" whose work is an auditable commodity, subject to invidious comparisons and continual display.

236 Chapter 10

The Heart of the Matter

There can be no educational practice that is not directed at a dream, an

idea of Utopia. Because of this, a serious education cannot be neutral.

It must be based on a set of ethical and political principles, one that

overcomes immobility and fatalism and enable learners to become the

subjects of their lives and histories.

(Paulo Freire, 1996, p. 128)

So what is at the heart of the matter? What is it that is gnawing at teachers, sapping their confidence and satisfaction? It is not just the intensification of work, the piling on of demands nor the shifting goal posts. All these can be accommodated. Most of my informants spoke with satisfaction and joy with respect to their work with their pupils. Yes, some of the stress is attributable to the Damocles Sword in the form of EQAO that hangs over them. But by and large, my informants have accepted the reality of EQAO testing. Then what is at the root of the disaffection, resentment and stress?

What is at stake?

At stake are the differing conceptions of education held by teachers and other stakeholders. To put it very simply and bluntly, it is a clash not of means but of ends. The Ministry and the LNS equate knowledge as information

237 reducible to the smallest unit that can be transmitted, tested and measured.

The product can be improved upon by practice and the application of

evidence-based, result-focused, high-yield strategies. Any difficulties are

amenable to technical solutions. The "system" and "strategies" are the major

determinants of student success. Thus schooling becomes a process of the

accumulation of requisite skills for the production of a competitive workforce.

Teachers, however, hold a rather different view of education. I should

add that my informants did not talk about their theories of education as such.

Their responses, their beliefs, and values that guide their practice were ever-

present in their talk with me. My informants did not talk about effective schools.

They did talk about what they considered the important outcomes of schooling.

Only one informant named academic gains as the most important outcome of

education. Most described the social ends of schooling - the formation of

citizenship values, a communitarian outlook - as the most important outcomes.

My informants basically disagree with the LNS narrow (short-term) definition of

student success. They echoed in their own way Silver's (1994) argument that

an effective school is not necessarily a good school. A school is effective if it

meets the external criteria set for it. For instance, if a school's EQAO scores

continue a linear steady ascent like the schools profiled in Schools on the

Move (LNS, 2006), it is effective. But might the criteria of success be so narrowly-based and so focused on short-term gains that it does not align with

238 the community's idea of what is good? A school is judged to be "good" to the extent it meets and fulfills the expectations and aspirations of the school community in all its complexity and diversity. In a real sense, normative values change with not only demographics but also with social-economic conditions

(Silver, 1994; Cuban, 1998). Thus what is good and true cannot be captured on a checklist and preserved for all times. There really is no "one best system" for everyone (Cuban, 1998). It is precisely for this reason that teacher autonomy is essential in the provision of optimal conditions for teaching and learning.

The loss of autonomy, the increase in prescription, the demand for documentation, the built-in audit mentality that has invaded the teacher's world and work, has meant the transfer of power (not responsibility) from the teacher to a central agency such as LNS or the Curriculum and Accountability department of a school board. The transfer of power speaks of a lack of trust resulting in a decline in professional confidence (Helsby, 1995). By professional confidence, I am not referring to only teacher sensibilities or territoriality. It is confidence that is rooted in a belief in one's ability to make important decisions about one's work and one's authority (institutional and professional). It is the confidence that allows one to take risk, try a new approach to old problems, with every expectation that s/he has the support of colleagues, supra-ordinates and parents until the innovations bear fruit. That

239 confidence or belief in one's professional judgment and abilities is shaped by training, previous experience, and custom but can be seriously undermined by unstable working conditions and challenges to one's authority (Helsby, 1995).

That is what is happening in our schools. With routine interventions suffused in a discourse of blame and redemption from the LNS through the Board's

Accountability Department, teachers are simply told what to do and when to do it, rhetoric of collegiality notwithstanding. Marie (grade 3 teacher at School C) related just such an encounter. In an in-service when the resource person from the board's accountability department was offering formulaic solutions,

Marie voiced her misgivings, not objections she was quick to point out. She was just curtly told that "...these suggestions are evidence-based...how do you know your way is going to work?" (Field notes, October 2008) The heart of the matter is that when planning is centralized, and teachers' voices silenced and concerns ignored, the best laid plans with the best intentions can often go awry and unintended consequences ensue.

Unintended consequences:

Because ruling relations seek to mould, influence and standardize practices across sites, they are inevitably decontextualized. The norms, standards and categories cannot be made to accommodate the local diversities, variations and complexities. Teaching and learning are human endeavours, moral endeavours, fraught with the contingencies and quirks of particular

240 circumstances. Teachers and pupils alike are embodied beings who come into the classroom with their yesterdays and expectations of tomorrows. They bring norms and views that contextualize not only how knowledge is dispensed or received, the interpretation put on it and the ultimate integration with existing repertoire, but also their very disposition in the classroom. Much has been written about student motivation; teacher motivation is crucial too.

Teaching is such a complex endeavour that no number of fine specifications can produce a standardized product. Factors such as the teacher's biography, worldviews, values, personality and her current personal circumstances, all affect the methodologies she employs and how effective they are. The prescriptions of the LSN are flawed in that they deem strategies to be free agents. Hence a strategy shown to have worked in school A can be transported and replicated across town in School Z. But as Carol of School A put it, "[I must] try the curriculum my own way, so I can survive in the classroom... [What is] most important is my rapport with kids." Carol is referring to the "relational outcomes", as Lortie terms them, not ends of education in themselves but are conditions for effective teaching (1975, pp.

117-8). Students need to be connected and related to their teacher affectively.

The quality of that interpersonal relationship affects students' discipline, attitude to work, and ultimately achievement (Brophy & Good, 1986). How can those relational outcomes be standardized across sites?

241 An unfortunate consequence of the discourse of accountability is the centrality of standardized testing, misconstrued to be an indicator of teacher performance. Classroom priorities need adjusting as the teacher, often against her better judgment, makes quantifiable and measurable basic procedural and decoding skills her only focus. Although the Ministry has not stated that all other goals are to be ignored, the insistence that ninety per cent of time had to be devoted to helping students meet expectations leaves little time for more ambitious, long-term goals such as citizenship and communitarianism. No time or effort will be expended in areas not on the tests. Herein lies the rub. In a rush to better results for the school (as in a higher ranking in terms of percentage of students with a provincial pass), schools had concentrated their efforts in building decoding skills in their primary classes, a perfectly legitimate and worthwhile endeavour. But it has also led to ridiculous excesses. In

School C, I was told that the push has meant intensive phonics instruction for kindergarteners. Has the effort meant an enhancement of learning opportunities for these kindergarteners? Quite the contrary, both Mary, the grade 1 teacher and Marie, the grade 3 teacher note that a direct result of that shift of focus means that the students' oral language skills are now so poorly and inadequately developed that their reading comprehension is impeded.

The Curriculum and Accountability department roll out strategies such as thinking aloud, meta-cognition as aids for improving reading comprehension

242 and building higher-order thinking skills. But such strategies will not yield

results when they are built on sand—an inadequate oral language repertoire.

Classroom teachers know that. My informants have remarked on the

difficulties encountered by students because of a lack of language and

experience. Oral language development requires opportunities to learn. And

such opportunities are severely curtailed by the drive to teach and test

phonemic awareness, segmentation and phonics skills, all explicitly required

by the school board. The pressure to improve reading scores has been so

relentless that Marie, the grade 3 teacher at School C claimed not to have had

the time even for math, and that there was a serious proposition to shave five

minutes off recess. Luckily, that measure did not come to pass after the school

posted stronger than expected EQAO results. It has also meant that students

are taught formulaic "tactical" moves. Evelyn, latterly of School C, relates how students were taught a formula in answering comprehension questions on the

EQAO. Each answer is to be made up of three parts: answer, p_roof and extend (APE). Much time was spent on practice and drill to ensure the strategy for written answers is well retained. I was told that the children executed that formula with religious consistency resulting in lower EQAO scores that year

(Personal communication, June 18, 2009). Apparently, the children applied the formula in all written responses, irrespective of what was being asked. One- size strategies or solutions will not fit all. Teachers need the flexibility and

243 elbow room to deal with the complexities of learning on the ground and in the flesh.

By limiting itself to only what can be measured on standardized testing, the LNS has in effect, narrowed the curriculum to the most basic of skills (a necessary but definitely not sufficient measure of education). Teaching for conceptual rather than procedural understandings requires rather different strategies. Procedural understandings, measurable by use of standardized tests, lend themselves to whole-class teaching; conceptual understanding involving more complex knowledge is best done in small groups in which the child can learn the requisite vocabulary in use (not from a list). But with the accountability measures now in place and the concomitant necessity to produce ever-higher scores, the focus has to be on procedural knowledge that is being tested (Galton, 1995).

Once again, a well-intentioned effort to lighten the burdens of the disadvantaged, to enfranchise the disenfranchised, has gone awry. It is the children in School B and C whose education will be impoverished as the teachers scramble to meet bureaucratic /test demands. Teaching focus will be on skills, discrete skills. There will not be time for content or subject knowledge

What is pernicious is the deskilling, all in the name of "helping" or

"lightening the teacher's load". The deskilling happens when the teacher's work is so routinized that the nature of her job has changed. A number of

244 informants, not all, said as much. In an earlier section, we saw how the reporting of students' progress has been taken over by the mandated

Provincial Report Card the content and the language of which are codified and specified not to be altered, according to the Ministry's explicit instructions. The rationale is uniformity. Unfortunately, in the classroom, the teacher does not deal with standard issues and children have not yet learned how to be standardized or universal subjects. Fortunately, we still have brave souls that resist. Teachers in School A do not feel compelled to report on student progress that way. No one gives them grief. As has been said before, no one argues with "success". In Schools B and C, it is a different matter. Compliance is expected and is absolute. In my interviews, the only exception was Evelyn, latterly of School C, now in another OFIP school, who refused to use the report template and the Comments Bank. I must add that Evelyn's solid reputation among her peers and supra-ordinates has helped to keep her professional confidence and courage intact even in an OFIP school.

There is little doubt that the intellectual component of the teacher's labour has been outsourced. We saw in the last chapter how the achievement chart provided in The Ontario Curriculum has replaced professional judgment and discretion; prescribed scripts in the form of 5-day plans can replace and do replace pedagogical decisions. But the most disturbing aspect of this limiting of a teacher's area of responsibility is not only in the risk of atrophy of

245 skills that remain unused, but also in the way it has to a large extent, shaped the teacher's view of the job and herself. Younger members of the profession might just come to see that kind of deskilling as "help" and normal, especially when publishers of commercial materials too have followed the lead, and now have brought to the market "kits" of reading materials, complete with overhead transparencies and a detailed script. Larry of School C is a case in point.

Recall that he is the teacher who bemoaned the shortage of time and the long lists of material that has to be covered, especially in science and social studies, subjects that have low priority on his schedule. He added that fortunately, a kit is now available that would remedy the situation to an extent. Reading selections in that kit include topics on the natural sciences and social studies.

The teacher's manual that he showed me comes complete with transparencies and script. The teacher needs only to read from the script and follow its directions such as "Show transparency #1 now". Even the simplest recipe from

The Betty Crocker Cookbook requires the cook to add an egg or water. Not in this kit or script. Everything, except the projector, is included. No instructional decisions need be made. When I inquired how the class liked the lessons, the answer was, "I haven't started using it yet. I'm waiting to be in-serviced" (Larry, grade 5/6 teacher, School C).

Recall also that what started us on the slippery slope of assessment and standardization was the public sentiments, fanned by self-serving

246 politicians with a not-school-friendly agenda, and aided and abetted by a

gullible media that Canadian students were not achieving at levels that would

enable them to compete successfully in the global economy (Premier's

Council, 1989; Radwanski, 1987). The public was told that high-paying jobs of

the future will go to those who can solve problems sans borders, who possess

creativity, ingenuity and critical thinking skills (Noble, 1994). We were told our

school system must be re-engineered to produce such students. But who is

going to produce such a happy breed? Are they likely to emerge from

classrooms presided over by compliant, rule-following, conforming

functionaries, who follow the dictates of a centrally produced taxonomy,

generate administrative texts for audits, and from whom not much cultural or

intellectual input is expected or required?

The original intent of such technologies of control as EQAO or LNS was

to gain public trust and confidence, to reassure the middle-class parents that a

child's education in any Ontario school is commensurate with any other in the

province; to ensure an unproblematic link between teaching and learning; to

overcome idiosyncrasies of individual teachers by providing "evidence of

learning". Thus began the discourse of standards and accountability. The

irony is of course, that the Ministry, in an effort to regain public trust in the school system, has in effect been giving out the message that their teachers, the very people the system depends on for production, are not trustworthy.

247 They are the people who must be "managed", subjected to centrally produced taxonomies, requirements of performance indicators, continuous improvement,

progress audits (such as the Running Records), and whose work can only be

measured in terms of evidence and numbers. Furthermore, in their insistence on numbers and the discourse of continuous improvement to persuade and assure middle class parents that the system is committed to raising the bar, the Ministry has managed to effectively lower it instead. The minimum standard (level 3 on EQAO) has now become the maximum. Instead of using level 3 as the baseline, we have vaulted it to the ceiling. This is an aspect of the social justice issue that has not received much attention—the entitlement of the level 3s and 4s. I use the word "entitlement" advisedly. Public education is not just a right; it is an obligation, enforceable by law, on parents. Therefore, the parents have a right to expect that their children's best interest be attended to, that is they will receive an education that suits their needs (Thiessen, D.,

Pike, R., Scane, J., Dionne, J. P., Trottier, G., Tochon, F., etal. 1992).

Unfortunately, operating within a uniform curriculum, under the micro- managerialism of prescriptive, step-by-step pedagogy, and unrelenting pressure to show rising scores on the EQAO, teachers have no time, let alone encouragement or incentive, to attend to the needs of the level 3s and 4s.

With all the talk of high-yield strategies, focusing one's efforts on "what counts" makes a great deal of sense. After all, nudging a few Level 2.7 students up to

248 Level 3 yields big dividends for the school in terms of an immediate rise on the league tables. On the other hand, working to expand the vocabulary, horizons, intellectual and cultural repertoires of the Levels 3s and 4s does not fit on any

LNS list of performance indicators, nor affect the schools ranking, and therefore hardly counts as work. There is a gaping hole between LNS's conception of equity and that conceived by Thiessen, D., Pike, R., Scane, J.,

Dionne, J. P., Trottier, G., Tochon, F., era/. (1992).

... But the narrow interpretation of equity [that is equity equated only

with those less successful] excludes a proportion of the population and

thus contradicts the essential meaning of the term. School programs

must not disenfranchise those currently enfranchised in favour of the

disadvantaged. All children have the right to expect an education that

suits their particular needs (p. 78).

But who will speak for the Levels 3s and 4s? The efficacy of the LNS is never questioned. Those of us who have a long institutional memory can recall the extraordinary zeal with which the supposedly unassailable child-centred approach was sold, and Radwanski's scathing indictment of the same that came fifteen years later. As one who has such an institutional memory, I suggest that the tragic flaw is that our movers and shakers, researchers, policy makers and curriculum designers were often afflicted with the propensity to take a part as the whole, the totality, and the unassailable good. Teachers saw

249 parts of the child-centred approach as being very, very good, but were aghast

when everything else (such as spelling and grammar instruction in addition to

the furniture) got thrown out to make way for the implementation of the new

educational change. Some ideas were definitely absurd such as doing away

with not only interior walls but also desks and chairs even in grade 6! So how

did children write? By sprawling on the floor (Field notes, June 2006)! It was

the blind and universal application of a good idea that brought the scheme so

much disrepute. The same process derailed the whole language approach to

reading, which in theory does wonders for children's language development

and love of literature. Once again, when used exclusively and indiscriminately

(that is across the board without consideration for local conditions), it did

nothing for the non-middle-class child who does not have the free labour of a

discursively-oriented mother. But in each case, did the teachers have a voice?

What is it that bedevils us? Of course some of us are opportunistic and

never saw a bandwagon we did not like, especially when it offered upward

mobility on the career ladder. But I believe most educators are professionals of good will. Perhaps if we can probe how and why the best intentions end up in the dust, we might be spared Yogi Berra's " It's deja vu over and over again!".

Summary and Conclusions

In this dissertation I have peeled off the layers of rhetoric to expose the inherently contradictory ideologies and assumptions embedded in the

250 espoused aims of the LNS. While the LNS presents itself as a value-neutral institution that works to even the odds for the presently disenfranchised, we have seen how value-laden the discourse of school effectiveness and continuous improvement really is. We have also seen how the exercise of power can be masked and how it can transform the issue of inequity into a technical matter of just raising scores on the EQAO, thus leaving much larger issues of social justice, race, gender, class and values of the larger society, untouched and unquestioned.

We saw in Chapter 5 the rise of the status of teachers from a pre- professional stage in the early years to that of an autonomous professional in the wake of HD report. We have also seen the drastic reversal of fortunes

(Chapter 6) that came after years of growth and expansion. With that economic tsunami came the dislocation and disillusionment of the middle class and their "big fear" for their progeny. The socio-economic turmoil prompted the discourse of blame. After all, it was a lot easier for Premier Peterson to blame the jobless themselves for their lack of skills than to probe the much deeper and harder-to-accept causes of the decline of a de-industrialized economy. From the discourse of blame, it was but a short hop to the discourse of derision with which Premier Mike Harris launched a frontal attack on the profession (Chapter 7). By then the public aided by the popular media was poised to look for quick fixes, paving the way for the discourse of

251 accountability and assessment (Chapter 8). In came Premier McGuinty who offered teachers a chance to self-correct and self-improve with the discourse of school effectiveness and continuous improvement. Little did the teachers know that encased in the velvet glove was the iron fist of technologies of surveillance and control that have changed every facet of a teacher's job from curriculum, planning, pedagogy, assessment and reporting rendering her a managed professional at best or a technician at worst.

But all is not lost. Although the managed professional has had to live with accommodations and acquiescence, her own sense of what it means to teach, has not been vanquished. At the gut level, my informants know that

"...good teaching cannot be reduced to technique" (Palmer, 1998, p. 10). I take heart from the cris de cceurwe heard in Chapter 4. Even though power and control disguised as "help" can be quite seductive, my informants sense that things are just not what they seem. S/he sees the wrong but is so positioned as to be powerless to correct it. Worse still, his/ her voice of caution is misconstrued as the recalcitrance of the self-serving. We saw also the unintended consequences on the students.

What conclusions can we draw?

1. The best-laid plans, with the best of intentions can go awry when they

do not take into account the embodied practitioners, teachers who are

in the trenches doing the real work day in day out. What works in School A cannot easily be transported and replicated in Schools B and

C. Contextual factors interfere with "what should work".

2. Education is a human endeavour subject to all the complexities and

contradictions inherent in being human. Therefore, it is a fool's errand

to try to find a fix that will work for all and for all times. One-size-fits-all

solutions do not fit.

3. After the discourses of blame and derision, it is imperative that teachers

reclaim the respect and autonomy necessary for their job performance.

If we are looking to produce students who are resourceful, creative

problem-solvers and thinkers, then we will need creative and

resourceful professionals, with high personal qualifications and

commitment to his/her craft. Mr. Justice Andrew Hope delivered a

strong message to the NPM school many years ago when he wrote:

A perfect program can be handed down from education's Mt. Sinai,

yet if competent, sensitive and wise teachers were not available to

put it into operation, little would be accomplished (1950, p. 34).

A managed professional will simply not do.

4. The present neo-liberal ideology that permeates through our public

policies in education should be contested more loudly, stridently and

less politely. The government should not be able to hide behind

scientism, common sense or economic imperatives. 5. At the heart is a fundamental disagreement about goals of schooling.

While Premier McGuinty focuses on only the instrumental values of

education (Office of the Premier, June 30, 2009) and short-term goals

(such as a steady rise in EQAO scores) achievable within one election

period; my informants' focus is on personal development, fulfillment and

citizenship values, not quantifiable, achievable and observable only

over time. I am not suggesting that the two foci are necessarily mutually

exclusive. What is required is a master teacher who can strike just the

right balance to ensure students acquire the requisite competency and

skills in a student-centred and constructivist setting which affords ample

opportunities for the kind of "substantive conversations" (Lingard, 2005,

p. 175) that facilitate learning and growth. A managed professional, a

dispenser of skills, an implementer of prescriptive pedagogy will not do.

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288 APPENDICES

289 Appendix A

INFORMED CONSENT

1. The purpose of this project is to obtain data that will be used for the production of a dissertation, in partial fulfillment of the Ph. D. degree requirements in the Graduate Program in Education at York University. 2. My dissertation is concerned with how the differential attainment of various social groups is conceptualized. I am also interested in how Official Knowledge works to mould a teacher's gaze, her labour and the outcomes of her labour. I am interested in the perspectives and practices of teachers in their every day work. It is my hope that this type of inquiry will help to make the tensions, ambivalence and the often conflicting and intensifying demands on teachers visible to society in general and the schools in particular. 3. The procedures used in the research project involve open or semi-structured interviews with teachers with the aid of a voice recorder. The initial interview will be of the duration of about 90 minutes. A follow-up interview might be necessary. But the subsequent interview could be conducted over the phone. 4. The procedures pose no anticipated risks to the participants. 5. It is my hope that the findings will lead to a better understanding of the institutional and societal forces that regulate, coordinate and circumscribe teachers' perspectives and practices. It is also hoped that

290 such studies might contribute to the continuing struggle for a just and caring education for all our children. 6. The comments expressed by you, whether recorded or transcribed in a manuscript will be treated and kept in utmost confidence. Although the ideas expressed and your answers to questions may be used verbatim in my dissertation or other academic and research contexts, your identity and any identifying characteristics will be obscured to ensure your anonymity. No information that identifies you personally will appear in my dissertation or any paper or publications resulting from this study. The data generated from the study will be stored in a secured location in my home, kept for a period of three years after which time it shall be destroyed. 7. Should you experience any discomfort with the process, you are free to withdraw from the study, discontinuing your participation immediately. All data generated as a consequence of your participation shall be destroyed. 8. Should you require additional information pertaining to this study or your rights as a participant, please feel free to contact the Graduate Program in Education Ethics Committee at 416-736-5018, or the Manager of Research Ethics for the University at the Office of Research Services, 214 York Lanes, tel.: 416-736-5055, or my supervisor, Professor Alison Griffith, Director of Graduate Programs, Faculty of Education, York University at [email protected]. Should you wish to discuss any

291 concerns, kindly contact me at gloria [email protected] or telephone me at 416-733-2550. 9. This research has been reviewed by the Graduate Program in Education Ethics Committee and approved for compliance on research ethics within the context of the York Senate Policy on research ethics.

I am fully aware of the nature and the extent of my participation in this project as stated above. I hereby agree to participate in this project. ! acknowledge the receipt of a copy of this consent statement.

Signature of Participant Signature of Researcher

Gloria Lee Ph. D. Candidate Graduate Program in Education York University

Printed name of participant Date

292 Appendix B Table 1

List of Informants

Informants School Years of Types of experience (Pseudonyms) Experience Elizabeth School A 20 Principal Diane School A 17 Kindergarten & primary Carol School A 20 Primary Pam School A 27 Junior Betty School A 17 Junior George School A 25+ Special Ed Emelia School A 15 Special Ed & intermediate Barb School B 18 Principal Una School B 30 Primary and junior Tina School B 27+ Primary, junior & special ed Charles School B 2 Special Ed & Literacy Penny School B 17 Intermediate Cindy School B 18 Special Ed & junior, intermediate Bonnie School C 19 Principal Mary School C 8 Primary Fran School C 20 Kindergarten & literacy Marie School C 30 Primary Grade 3 Queenie School C 15 Intermediate & ESL Larry School C 22 Junior & intermediate Evelyn Ex School C 20 Kindergarten, primary and literacy Sam Ex School C 25 Special Ed Sally M C School 30 Junior (grade 6) Keith Ministry of Ed. 30+ Former principal, now a Student Achievement officer

293 Appendix C

Profiles of a select group of informants:

Diane, a kindergarten teacher in School A, came into teaching late in life.

She had worked as a journalist for many years in the Orient.

She is happy with children who come in with all the accoutrement of middle-class upbringing. Four children are already reading at the grade 3 level.

She is demanding and finds the parents compliant and cooperative. She is not shy about telling parents what to do. The homework her students get every weekend requires parental input and assistance. When asked what non-English speaking parents are expected to do. "Go to language classes on the weekend, or get a tutor". She is certainly in the right school. She talked about three children who are "struggling". She had already contacted the parents and was assured that the parents would seek private assessment. The waiting time for an assessment at school board could be as long as two years.

Diane was very sure of her judgment but I was somewhat uneasy wondering if those three children were in fact having difficulties learning, or were just average five-year-olds "struggling" among very high achievers.

The only problem she conceded was in the writing block of Balanced Literacy.

294 "Kids just not ready". But it is a required block. So she counts on parental help.

"If I don't do this, the grade 1 teacher will complain". I sensed the pressure to produce results, but the expectations are not out of line with her own inclinations. Although she espoused other values, citizenship, moral, I sense that the focus is on the academics.

Carol, the grade 1 teacher of School A, came to teaching after a short stint at nursing. She is divorced and has no children. She takes her job very seriously. When the new curriculum was introduced, she found herself so conflicted and tormented (because "I couldn't teach it the way they wanted us to") that she had to take a year off to recover from mental stress. The most important thing in her day is her rapport with the children. One can readily see the psychic reward that Carol reaps in abundance (Cohn & Kottkamp, 1993).

She regards LNS as a minor nuisance. "People who think these things up don't work in the classroom". She does what is required in terms of administrative text production to ensure compliance in form.

Pam is the grade 6 teacher in School A, easily the most admired teacher in the whole school board. For the past six years, the school has produced stellar results on the EQAO. She comes across as a seasoned professional,

295 extremely competent and caring. Although academic excellence (as in stellar

EQAO scores) figures prominently in that school community, it is not her exclusive or even the most important focus. She stresses community service with her class, and academic excellence is just taken for granted, as something that is expected and will take care of itself. With a strong academic background herself, she takes it for granted that her students will all be successful in their academic pursuits. She exhorts them "...to shoot for the star. Don't aim for the treetops only". As for EQAO testing, she takes it in stride. She spends the month of May going over, studying, and dissecting previous EQAO tests with her class. She feels however, that even without that sort of preparation, her class would still have turned in excellent results. In the past year, she has noticed a perceptible demographic change. She has now in her class three boys who are decidedly not academic. "They do the minimum and what they do is very poorly done". She is clearly unhappy that the families, though supportive in words, have not been efficacious in bringing about a change in attitude about schoolwork. Pam is certainly well placed. She would have been extremely unhappy at School B or C or any number of schools in the city. It is a different kind of teaching that she is able to do with the class of high-flyers. The secret of

296 her success does not lie only in the advantageous intake, but also in the perfect fit between her own priorities and values and those of the community.

Betty is the grade 7 teacher in School A. Energetic, vivacious, she is very well respected in the school and the parent community. Passionate about her work and the children, she is very upset that some students, especially the

boys are so "bone lazy" because the parent are not demanding enough. She feels very strongly about the EQAO. She does not object to testing in principle, just the "sloppy way" the testing is conducted. She spoke with obvious approval of the stringent security measures surrounding the 11+ and the A level exams in England. She has refused to participate in the marking of the EQAO tests.

She told me of instances of alleged grades manipulation (such as lowering the standard after the papers were marked). All in all, she feels that if testing is to be done, it must be done with due regard for standards and integrity. She also does not approve of the wide publication of results which is in effect the naming and shaming of schools. The EQAO and LNS do not impinge on her style. She does with aplomb what she thinks is in the best interest of her students. She believes in the efficacy of whole class instruction and does not care what the pedagogical orthodoxy happens to be at the moment.

297 Emelia is one of the two special education teachers in school A. She is the epitome of efficiency. She was quite candid about the career path she has laid out for herself and that her stint in special education was to round out her profile since she had taught in every division. What made Emelia difficult to interview was that she seemed totally lacking in affect. When I arrived, I was asked to wait in her room while she was in the machine room making photo-copies. In the room was a grade 6 student working by himself. On her return, without any preliminaries, pleasantries or eye contact, Emelia just told the student curtly that he could go back to his class. All through the interview, she seemed guarded in everything she said, making sure that I understood that she had followed the guidelines and curriculum to the letter. While most teachers, even those at School A, expressed dissatisfaction with the math program in use, she had no complaints at all. She just did what she was supposed to do, page by page. She expects no help from the parents and receives none.

Penny is the grade 8 teacher at School B. She, herself has a strong academic background and holds strong views on what kids should be like and what they should be doing. She also has a strong sense of teacher

298 responsibility in laying a good foundation for life. Teaching is a second career for her, to fit in with demands of motherhood. She has been in Canada for just

seven years and had not cut her professional teeth on child-centred approach

to education and finds the concept baffling. What bothers her most is not just the lack of engagement and task commitment on the part of the students but

also the lack of parental guidance and involvement in most cases. There

seems to be an unbridgeable gulf between her own conception of the purposes

of schooling, those held by the parents of the school community. School A would have been a much better fit.

Tina, the experienced grade 1 teacher at School B, has just one year to

retirement. She sounded tired and bitter. She tried very hard, but unsuccessfully, not to sound negative about her class and the parents. During the interview, her voice trailed off periodically, and she was often close to tears.

I got the distinct feeling that she never came to terms with the changed demographics of the school attendance area and has been mourning the lost

Eden for the past few years. She copes by retreating to a militant unionism.

While it is true that her class does not fit the universal model the LNS seems to be working from, she does not make things any easier for herself or the class

299 by her own intransigence. The trouble she had with the one child and one parent has been generalized into unhappiness with all the children.

Mary, the grade 1/2 teacher at School C, is well-placed. She had transferred from a middle-class school and referred to it now and again during the interview in something less than a complimentary tone. Her primary concern is for her students and their well-being, ahead of anything else. She volunteered quite a bit of biographical details and it seems that her own hardship has made her empathetic and sympathetic to her students and their families. Academic achievement is not of importance to her. She volunteered that she herself was not a good student and had really not expected to make the cut for the Faculty of Education. So now, her focus is on pastoral care and the social and citizenship goals of schooling.

Marie, the grade 3 teacher at School C, has over 20 years of experience.

She came into teaching after a stint in accounting. She is organized and methodical. She was most vocal about the hardship remote steering and planning have caused her and her class. The pressures from having to produce a respectable showing for EQAO have taken its toll. She moved out of her position the first chance she could.

300 Fran, the 5th Block teacher at School C, is in her element. While others complained about the control from above, she did not. She reveled in the structure and the predictability and classroom- ready features of the 5th block program. Time and again, she raved about the fact that she did not need to do any planning, or scrounging for materials. Everything, including daily plans is provided. She also liked the immediacy of student gains and feedback. All in all, she is very well suited to her job. Not being of academic bent (as she herself volunteered), she had found the planning and the intellectual part of a teacher's job onerous. Now it seems that all that is required of her is performance which is her forte. She thinks that the LNS has made her a much better teacher.

Larry, the grade 5/6 teacher, was trained for the teaching of physical education. He, too, is very well-placed. With 31 students in the class (twelve of whom are ESL/Special Ed), Larry admitted that his aim was to keep the students busy and entertained. The SMART board, and the computer graphics,

Larry adds, serve to keep the students mesmerized and out of trouble. As for the kind of substantive conversation Lingard (2005) advocates, or the intellectual content Barrow (1996) Meier (1981) regard essential to primary education, Larry has neither the time nor inclination to attend to.

301 Appendix D

Interview Guide

Teacher's background information:

What is your position?

How long have you been in this position?

How long have you been teaching?

What brought you into teaching?

What grades have you taught?

What is your next career move?

Contextual Information

Could you describe the school in demographic terms?

How big is the student body?

Composition of the study body in terms of language and cultural

background, social class. Is the composition of the student body

representative of the demographics of the catchment area?

Teacher perspectives

Tell me about the boys in your class.

How many?

302 Ethnic Mix?

Groups in terms of ability?

Behaviour?

Attitude to school, work?

Off task behaviour?

Compliance, co-operation?

Industry, diligence

Peer relations

Attitude to authority?

Reading : willing reluctant resistant

Work completion ..supervision ?

Tell me about the leaders? What makes them leaders?

Do you have to intervene sometimes? What kind of intervention?

Individual problems or group problem?

Tell me about the girls in your class

Note and probe the same areas as boys

Note any difference in specificity and tone

Has your job changed? In what ways?

303 Do you hear much about the child-centred approach and Piaget's readiness concepts?

Why not, are they so well established that they are just embedded in our normal way of doing things, like to goes without saying....

Tell me about the most successful student you have had.

Note embedded definitions of "success" for pupil and teacher

Note links to Official Knowledge

Tell me about the most challenging student.

Note embedded understandings of "problem"

Note taken for granted assumptions re norms and benchmark

Racialized or classed gaze?

What is the most important aspect of your work?

Note perspectives and practice

What is the most onerous?

What do you consider the most important outcomes of schooling

Note links to Official Knowledge

How do you measure student "success"?

How do you measure "success" for yourself?

304 What takes up most of your classroom time?

How much time spent on individual/group/whole class instruction?

What do you consider the most efficacious method in the classroom?

How often do you assess progress?

What format/instrument do you use?

Do assessment results help in the future planning of your program?

What about reporting to parents?

Do you see a difference in the way various children approach, or engage in learning?

What are they? Is the difference obvious to the class? How do you explain the difference?

What is the most important source of professional knowledge and development to you?

Relationship with parents

How often do you meet with parents?

What usually would trigger a call from you/or from the parent?

Do you see a pattern of difference in the concerns of various groups of parents?

305 How is that conveyed to you?

Do you see different parental expectations? What are they?

How do you reconcile the various and differing expectations?

How do parents support your work in the classroom, with what effects on the

pupils?

What do you do, (access to other support services?) when the parental support

is not forthcoming? If the answer is nothing, why?

Relationship with other professionals

What resource personnel do you see regularly? How do they support you?

How often do you see the "resource" people? How do they help you?

How do they affect what goes on in the classroom? (For example, do you say to yourself, "Got to do this today because so and so is coming tomorrow and she'll want to see the kids' scores/products")

Outcomes of schooling

What do you consider some of the most important outcomes of schooling?

What does the administration consider the most important outcomes of schooling?

306 Parents?

Do you having difficulties reconciling the demands of the academic curriculum and the discourse of child development? (Each at his own pace, in his own time, as a result of his own exploration and activities)? What do you do?

If there is one thing you want changed in your job, in the schools, what would it be?

307 Appendix E

EQAO Tutoring Storefront i

308 Appendix F

Cafe Menu

Grade 3, Spring 2007 Reading

My Cafe Menu To Start Nachos $2.75 Our warm nachos are served with mild, medium or hot sauce. Rolls $1.30 Baked fresh every day, our rolls are a favourite! Bread and Jam $1.95 Our bread is baked fresh each day. Choose from On the Side strawberry, raspberry or blueberry jam. Onion Rings $2.00 Carrot Sticks $1.15 Made right here, these Cut thin or thick, these carrots are juicy either way! treats are crunchy and sweet. Celery Sticks $1.45 Veggies and Dip $2.00 Served with cream cheese or peanut butter. They're a Choose from ranch, real crowd-pleaser. sour cream or Italian dip. Soup of the Day $2.00 Please ask your server about the soup of the day. French Fries $2.00 Home-cut fries are crisp Main Course on the outside, soft on the inside! Macaroni $3.95 Baked in a wood-burning oven, this dish always comes Salad $2.00 out right! It's your choice of garden, Stir-Fry $4.25 Greek or Caesar salad. Choose your own three-vegetable combination to make your plate sizzle. Dessert Chili $4.25 There is nothing chilly about this meal! Different flavours are Rice and Beans $3.95 available every day! This yummy dish is the perfect blend of mild and spicy. Ask your server for details. Spaghetti $4.25 Pie or Cake $2.55 A cafe favourite! Noodles come thin or thick—your choice. Ice Cream $1.55 Cheese Pizza $4.25 Lots of gooey goodness on a thin crust. Fruit Salad $1.75

OEQAO, 2006

Student Booklet: Language 1

309 Appendix F

Cafe Menu

Reading Grade 3, Spring 2007

D The phrase "a real crowd-pleaser" means that celery sticks O are a healthy snack. O are liked by many people. O come with a cheese spread. O can be found in most restaurants.

0 The sentence "There is nothing chilly about this meal!" means that the chili on the menu is O hot. O red. O cold. O brown.

El Spaghetti is a "cafe favourite" most likely because O the noodles are long. O the sauce is extra spicy. O spaghetti is fun to cook. O many people order spaghetti.

• The onion rings, veggies and dip, french fries and salad are in their own box on the menu because they O should be eaten first. O are healthier than the desserts. O cost more than the other dishes. O can be ordered with another dish.

2 Student Booklet: Language 1 Appendix F

Cafe Menu

Grade 3, spring 2007 Reading

El Explain why pictures are included in this menu. Use information from the selection and your own ideas to support your answer.

EI Use the "My Cafe Menu" to plan a healthy meal. Explain your choices using information from the selection and your own ideas to support your answer.

Student Booklet Language 1 3

311 12 The Ontario Curriculum - Exemplars, Grade 1: Mathematics

to the Zoo

The Task Prior Knowledge and Skills This task requiredstudent s to determine the number of possible To complete this task, students were expected to have some combinations in which 16 people could be organized in cars knowledge or skills relating to the following: and vans for transportation to the zoo. Students were told that • solving problems that involve multiple combinations or a van could hold a maximum of 6 people and a car could hold a solutions maximum of 4 people. Students were asked to explain how they • solving problems using manipulative objects solved the problem. • exploring addition and subtraction concepts • communicating their problem-solving strategies and mathe­ Expectations matical learning, both orally and in writing This task gave students the opportunity to demonstrate achieve­ ment of all or part of each of the following selected expectations from the Number Sense and Numeration strand. Note that the For information on the process used to prepare students for the task codes that follow the expectations are from the Ministry of and on the materials and equipment required, see the Teacher Educations Curriculum Unit Planner (CD-ROM). Package reproduced on pages 31-34 of this document

Students will: 1. understand and explain basic operations (addition and sub­ traction) of whole numbers by modelling and discussing a variety of problem situations (lm6); 2. solve simple problems involving counting, joining, and taking one group away from another, and describe and explain the strategies used (lm8); 3. represent addition and subtraction sentences (e.g., 5 + 6 = 11) using concrete materials (e.g., counters) (lm30); 4. use concrete materials to help in solving simple number problems (lm35); 5. describe their thinking as they solve problems (lm36). Task Rubric - Going to the Zoo

- selects and applies a problem- - selects and applies an appropri­ selects and applies an appropri­ - selects and applies an appropri­ solving strategy that leads to an ate problem-solving strategy that ate problem-solving strategy that ate problem-solving strategy that incomplete or inaccurate leads to a partially complete leads to a generally complete leads to a thorough and accurate solution and/or partially accurate and accurate solution solution solution

Understanding of canupts The student

• demonstrates a limited under­ • demonstrates some understand­ • demonstrates a clear under­ • demonstrates a thorough under­ standing of combining numbers ing of combining numbers to standing of combining numbers standing of combining numbers to obtain the sum of 16 obtain the sum of 16 to obtain the sum of 16 to obtain the sum of 16

Application of mathematical procedures The student

- uses concrete materials and - uses concrete materials and uses concrete materials and ' uses concrete materials and mathematical procedures, mathematical procedures, mathematical procedures, mathematical procedures, making many errors and/or making some errors and/or making few errors and/or omis­ making few, if any, minor errors omissions and arriving at an omissions and arriving at a par­ sions and arriving at a clear and/or omissions and arriving at incomplete or a limited solution tial or an unclear solution solution a clear and thorough solution

Communication of required knowledge The student 3.5 • uses pictures, words, or numbers - uses pictures, words, or numbers ' uses pictures, words, or numbers - uses pictures, words, or numbers to describe and illustrate with to describe and illustrate with to describe and illustrate clearly to describe and illustrate clearly limited clarity the methods cho­ some clarity the methods chosen the methods chosen for investi­ and precisely the methods cho­ sen for investigating the cars- for investigating the cars-and- gating the cars-and-vans problem sen for investigating the cars- and-vans problem vans problem and-vans problem - describes with limited clarity the • describes with some clarity the - clearly describes the strategy - clearly and precisely describes strategy used strategy used used the strategy used

"The expectations that correspond to the numbers given in this chart are listed on page 12. Vote: This rubric does not include criteria for assessing student performance that falls below level 1.

13 Number Sense and Numeration m x o 20 The Ontario Curriculum - Exemplars, Grade 1: Mathematics (D "O Going to the Zoo Level 2, Sample 2 cr o o 3 Explain ho* yon wived the problem. d 3 16 people am going to die JMO. sr Vans IIM) on cto be used to drive everyone (o

The mod • van can hold Is 6 people, fa . 5*

The most a car can hold is 4 Vfe r^ocsJ: o c How many cars and vans oml•Id he tued? Show ii many ways as you can lb 9 > the 16 people in can and van*. .yy.e (XA- .0 o* •o c_ (D c 3 ******** m LAJOfrJ?_ 3 a our l S" ft Mil* m x Q 3CD •o. ^$? fi> t O S a rrtj cm 3 A) it­ -flf- the feOpMt^O VQftS Q/W s' (D 1 on* car* 3 0) o' CO m x o

•D Teacher'* Notes Comments/Next Steps 5) Problem Solving - The student needs to reread his or her responses to make sure that they are _„ - The student selects and applies an appropriate problem-solving strategy complete. that leads to a partially complete and/or partially accurate solution - The student should use concrete materials to solve problems. o (e.g., uses illustrations as "counters" and an elimination strategy to find two - The student needs to solve similar problems, where multiple combinations 3 combinations). need to be found, and to find as many combinations as possible. O Understanding of Concepts - The student demonstrates some understanding of combining numbers to 3 obtain the sum of 16 (e.g., in the combinations presented, does not recognize sr that the cars and vans can have empty seats, but does explore the possibility of different combinations: 6 + 6 + 4-1B, 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 16).

Application of Mathematical Procedures o - The student uses concrete materials and mathematical procedures, making c some errors and/or omissions and arriving at a partial or an unclear solution (e.g., in the two combinations shown, the computations are correct but are not recorded). I * Communication of Required Knowledge i 1 - The student uses pictures, words, or numbers to describe and illustrate i a with some clarity the methods chosen for investigating the cars-and-vans problem (e.g., draws 16 people and then crosses them out as a van or car is m x filled; shows the total number of people in each car or van and provides the *. O appropriate numeral and concluding sentences). 3 - The student describes with some clarity the strategy used (e.g., explains the elimination strategy. 'First we draw cars and vans then second we cross 0> the people amd we put the people then we put the number and words"). Os a.

w r* 3" 21 Number Sense and Numeration (D 3 S«-») ; O W 26 The Ontario Curriculum - Exemplars, Grade 1: Mathematics

Going to the Zoo Level 4, Sample 1

Explain tow yog solved tbe profcton. £*>=d^ U>^0& Lci^O> &=5t\

16 people us jninf to the zoo.

VM a*d car* en be wed to driw everyonB to Ike zoo.

The not • vta en bold b 6 people.

Tli* most i or can hotd 1J* 4 people. 3- ^ed *en up i owi^ 3^

How many cars uul van* eootd be used? Show as many ways as you can to organize /~>Jba 16 people i* can and vau. lb- i-V3t^3^b

T—T"""'S. m x o (D •a Teacher's Notes Comments/Next Steps «* Problem Solving - The student should investigate whether number combinations such as - The student selects and applies an appropriate problem-solving strategy that 6 + 5 + 5 and 5 + 5 + 6 are the same or different. "I leads to a thorough and accurate solution (e.g., finds thirteen combinations; uses numbers and clear symbols to illustrate).

Understanding of Concepts - The student demonstrates a thorough understanding of combining numbers o to obtain the sum of 16 (e.g., finds many combinations for 16, most of which 3 are realistic in the context of the problem; recognizes that the vehicles need sr not be full). - Application of Mathematical Procedures o - The student uses concrete materials and mathematical procedures, making o few, if any. minor errors and/or omissions and arriving at a clear and thor­ c ough solution (e.g., writes completely accurate, specific addition sentences for each combination). E * Communication of Required Knowledge - The student uses pictures, words, or numbers to describe and illustrate S clearly and precisely the methods chosen for investigating the cars-and-vans ?i a problem (e.g., shows letter symbols above the numbers in the addition sen­ m ><' tences to denote vans and cars). - The student clearly and precisely describes the strategy used (e.g., "I use Symbols v for vans and c for car"; "when I added then up I owise got 16"). 3

ft) •n o a.3 (D

ft) 3" (D 3 27 Number Seme and Numeration ft) o" 0) APPENDIX H

Table 2

The Evolution of standardized testing in Ontario Year Government Tests/Review Official Focus Program review in grade 9 Review and 1986-7 Liberal geography improve curriculum Check on adequacy 1986-7 Liberal OAC Examinations Review of exams and consistency in grading Promised (in the '87 Throne No follow through 1987 Liberal Speech) provincial Benchmarks for grade 3 & 6 reading, writing & math "Diagnostic testing" in reading No follow through 1988 Liberal writing & math at the end of Government fell grade 3 in1990 The grade 9 program review Over 70% of the 1993 NDP converted to a test of every electorate were in grade 9 in reading and writing favour of province-wide testing. Begin & Caplan Commission 1994 NDP recommended province-wide testing of students at the end of grade 3 in literacy and numeracy and grade 11 in literacy as a graduation requirement Pre-election 1995 NDP New Foundations: proposed platform. No testing of all students at the follow-through as end of grades 3, 6, 9&11 NDP went down to

318 defeat in summer of 1995

1996 Conservative Bill 30: to establish EQAO in Standardized pursuance of testing recommendations of the institutionalized Begin-Caplan Commission 1997-1 Conservative First Province-wide EQAO Teacher 998 testing of Grade 3 accountability students in reading and Math over a 2-week period in May 1998 1998-9 Conservative EQAO testing of grade 6 Ostensibly to began and grade 3 continued enable continuous improvement 2002 Conservative EQAO grade 10 literacy test Teacher and public as a graduation requirement accountability

319 Appendix I

Table 3

Contrasts between behavioral/reductionist and holistic constructionistic

teaching and learning processes

Principles of behavioural Principles of holistic /reductionistic learning process constructionistic teaching/learning process Learning is additive and cumulative. The whole of the learned Parts and elements can be learned experience is greater than the sum individually and added to make a whole. of its parts

New learning is taken in, recorded and The interaction of the learned stored. experience transforms both the whole and part being learned Learning is regulated by the teacher. The learner's spiral of knowledge is self-regulating and self-preserving.

Learner is dependent on external Motivation is internal as learners motivation. actively search for and constructing new meanings.

Learning proceeds best from part to Learning proceeds from whole to whole part to whole

Errors are to be avoided. Errors are essential to learning.

Teaching is a science and techniques Learners learn best from personal determine the degree of learning engagement and experience. achieved.

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