Toronto Star, May. 17, 2003

Lest we forget scorched-earth war on schools

MICHELE LANDSBERG

Governments come and go, trends wax and wane, and official mistakes are usually swept away and lost to sight in the relentless current of events. But some mistakes, some wrongdoings, should never be forgotten or forgiven.

When Mike "Mr. Silly" Harris was elected with his pack of suburban and rural Tories in 1995, he set about with a vengeance to destroy the big-city idea of education. In the end, he and his minions harmed not only what they so hated and feared - the tolerant, diverse, open-minded, progressive, innovative and richly successful urban schools - but also the small northern and rural schools they pretended to represent.

Many teachers and parents say we'll never get back what we in Toronto lost at the hands of the Conservatives. It took at least 20 years to build the depth of professional expertise and creative programs to fold our huge immigrant population into our local schools, to the enrichment of all.

Now, we've lost our language programs, community outreach workers, youth counsellors, most of the attendance officers, librarians, many principals and vice-principals, school secretaries, cleaners, music classes, textbooks - and the sense of trust and community we used to enjoy. Being robbed of our democracy, with a Tory flunky sitting in power over our schools to continue the destruction, feels like being ruled by an occupying army.

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education has been measuring public attitudes toward the school system for two decades. Satisfaction with the schools plunged after Mr. Silly took office and began his blitzkreig, and remains at just over 40 per cent. But 71 per cent like and trust their children's teachers. In other words, the parents seem to know that the teachers are doing a valiant job against the ridiculous odds established by this provincial government.

For one thing, we got saddled not only with a Tory "supervisor," but also with a Tory-appointed director of education, David Reid. He recently made a chilling speech in which he mused about the need for less democracy and more appointees in school governance (more like him, at $230,000 a year?). He sniped nastily at the teachers' unions. And he actually implied that the elected school trustees who fought the Tory dismantling of the school board were bent on "overthrowing the government." How very McCarthyite of Mr. Reid. Here in Toronto, we voters were proud of our trustees.

Another OISE study, just released, backs us up. The final report of The Schools We Need team (Kenneth Leithwood, Michael Fullan and Nancy Watson) is a damning report card on the never-ending "crisis" inflicted on our schools by Oklahoma cowboy and MPP John Snobelen, Harris' first education minister. After eight years of cuts and chaos, our system is reeling and our long-established school democracy lies in ruins.

"On balance, the result of the Common Sense Revolution has been disappointing, with demoralized teachers, program cuts and no evidence of improved student learning," the report states.

The botched funding formula, for example, has led to the closing of hundreds of small schools, inflicting long commutes and unravelling neighbourhoods in many parts of the province.

The double cohort heads to university only to face soaring tuition costs; many students, doomed by the high-stakes literacy test, won't even get that far. And speaking of the constant testing, at huge expense and with little benefit, the OISE study points out that "student performance in Ontario has been essentially flat since 1997."

Well, of course it has. People who believe in patriarchal power think you can test, punish, browbeat and scare students into better learning. You can't.

Instead, the OISE study lists 10 proven policies, supported by clear evidence, that improve schools: high-quality early learning, professional development for teachers, prenatal health care, supportive housing to reduce student mobility, small class size in the primary years, diverse grouping of students, no "failing" in the primary grades, small school size, continuing monitoring of student learning (not individual testing), well-prepared teachers and effective school leadership. The Tories have brutally attacked every one of these pillars of learning, no matter what their lying propaganda asserts. Their mean-mindedness, and their complete failure to understand how children learn, have been unforgivably damaging.

Tired of chaos, angry about the damage, a majority of Ontarians opposes public money going to private schools, and is willing to pay more taxes to shore up the public system.

A tough political literacy test awaits these citizens. If they vote for the Tories again, they flunk common sense - and they fail the children of this province.