Michael firmly believes that education matters. Today in the House he had an opportunity to ask questions of the Minister of Education Margaret MacDiarmid and brought up issues of interest to Maple Ridge – Pitt Meadows.
Below you will find the draft transcript of their exchange and as always the official Hansard will be posted when available.
2010 Legislative Session: Second Session, 39th Parliament
COMMITTEE A BLUES
This is a DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY of debate in one sitting of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. This transcript is subject to corrections, and will be replaced by the final, official Hansard report. Use of this transcript, other than in the legislative precinct, is not protected by parliamentary privilege, and public attribution of any of the debate as transcribed here could entail legal liability.
DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY
(HANSARD)
COMMITTEE A BLUES
MONDAY, MAY 17, 2010
Afternoon Sitting
PROCEEDINGS IN THE
DOUGLAS FIR ROOM
Committee of Supply
ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
(continued)
M. Sather: I have a couple questions for the minister regarding school district 42, which is, of course, Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows. One of them is around the literacy innovation funding. As we know, the Premier has put a high priority on literacy.
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The funding for our district was cancelled. That was $110,000. I just wanted to ask the minister if that had been reinstated or if any part of it had been reinstated or if there were any plans to do so. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
[1615]
Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The literacy innovation grants. It was a five-year program, and there was $5 million a year for those grants. It was never part of core funding or never meant to be part of ongoing funding. It was five-year grants.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
What’s happened is that there are a number of innovative practices that are now just part of what happens in school districts. They’ve become part what they do in terms of their literacy initiatives. Now there’s funding, which is $2.5 million, and it’s actually coming through Literacy Now and being used to fund literacy outreach coordinators. In some cases they are through a school district, and in some cases they’re through a community. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
[1620]
The idea is to take all of the different literacy services — some of them come through Education, but they also come from a number of other places — and coordinate them and provide that role. That’s the change that has happened. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
M. Sather: Thanks to the minister for the answer. Well, it doesn’t seem to be satisfactory to my school district, as they are quite concerned.
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They talked about the services that they had: supporting grades 3 to 6 in a comprehension project; providing release time for facilitators to meet with school teams to move literacy along; focusing on meeting the needs of at-risk learners and literacy by distributing the money to every school; supporting literacy work in secondary schools as well as the implementation of DART and RAD; supporting the expansion of the Reading Racers summer program; supporting Reading Racers once students have gone back to their schools in September; supporting the work of the district library, including Bookfest, which I’ve attended and which is a great event; the boys literacy event; and supporting the work of the collegial and curriculum teachers literacy programming and intervention in schools.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
Anyway, those are some of the concerns that they have. I want to ask the minister, though, about another issue — the foundation skills assessment testing, or FSA as it’s commonly known. The minister will probably know — well, does know — that there’s a great deal of concern among some parents and educators about the value of this testing.
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In our school district the participation rate has only been about 50 to 60 percent. Yet if kids don’t take the test, rather than not being considered part of the overall score, they’re given a zero, which really brings down the averages for the district. I’m wondering if the minister has considered changing that in order that if you don’t take the test, you shouldn’t be considered as part of the averages. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
Hon. M. MacDiarmid: We are still compiling the final report for the FSA tests this year in terms of numbers of students that wrote. My understanding is that while 49 percent of students in this district wrote the test last year, this year it’s up close to 70 percent, so a considerable increase in the numbers. The final report is nearly done. It’s not quite ready yet. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
[1625]
In terms of the point that you’ve raised, to me the important thing for us to do is ensure that the vast majority of students do write this test. We know that when a student isn’t meeting expectations on the FSA test, those students are not achieving as well. They are much less likely, for example, to complete, to graduate from high school. Students who are meeting or exceeding expectations have a much higher rate of completing school. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
In terms of our goal, which is to have every student reach their full potential, if we are able to identify a student that’s not meeting expectations on FSA, then what happens currently is that our superintendents of achievement actually go to each district and work with that district to make sure that the district has a plan for those students. But if they haven’t written, then we don’t have any way or any ability to identify them and to address whether they’re meeting expectations or not.
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I think the most important thing is that we ensure that as many students as possible are writing this test. We’re working toward that. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
M. Sather: Just quickly, my teacher was…. My teacher. My wife was a teacher for many years. Yeah, she’s my teacher too, I guess.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
She said that the problem with this kind of testing is that the teachers teach to the test. The results are skewed by the fact that teachers will…. If you’re scored on your performance on a test, then that’s where your educational effort goes. It’s not necessarily indicative of a very efficacious test but more, perhaps, of the way that the teaching is done.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
The last thing that I wanted to ask the minister about. She will have received this letter from our school board chair about funding for our district. The minister will say that the government has increased funding. I’m not going to dispute that with the minister. But my board says that they passed their 2009-10 preliminary budget, and as a result of the projected $3.2 million shortfall, they had to make reductions in staff and expenditures, including the closure of two elementary schools.
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I think, if I’m not mistaken, that our board comes out with a surplus, but it’s at a cost, and those are some of the costs. As the board begins planning for the next year — 2010-2011, which is now this year — they’re going to face another year of further reductions in staffing programs and services. This shortfall will increase in the event that the ministry does not acknowledge inflation, supporting increasingly complex student needs, financing a growing mandate, and restoring educational and support services eroded by years of budget restraint.
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The minister, I’m sure, has been asked by many districts to bring forward further funding. I guess that my question to the minister is: notwithstanding the funding increases, does she acknowledge what my school district is asking and what many others are saying — that the funding they have at their disposal is insufficient to meet the needs that they’re mandated to carry out? Or does she think that the school boards are mismanaging their budgets and that that’s the problem? [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
[1630]
[D. Horne in the chair.]
Hon. M. MacDiarmid: Before your question you made some comments about FSA that I’d like to respond to in terms of the test and the point that is sometimes made that having this test causes teachers to have to teach to the test.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
I would certainly not say that the test is perfect, and we are willing and actually would welcome the opportunity to work with all of our education partners to see how we could make this test better. But the test does not require….
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The test measures whether students have mastered their curriculum, whether their prescribed learning outcomes that are part of the curriculum that should be being taught in every school — whether it’s an independent or a public school — whether that has happened and whether the students actually learned them….
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There’s no special preparation necessary for this test, except that students need to understand what it’s going to look like, since it is expected that they will write it. There’s no special preparation or teaching that has to happen directly.
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If you actually go on line and look at it, this is a test that measures whether students have mastered what they should have mastered at that point in their learning, whether it’s grade 4 or grade 7. I did want to make that point.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
In terms of the funding, I appreciate your acknowledgment that education funding has increased, so we don’t have to review the history of that. Of course it has increased, and back before this budget was provided, we were hearing from a number of the school districts that were very concerned that the government, in fact, was not going to provide funding for full-day kindergarten and was not going to provide funding for the negotiated salary increases.
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We did hear from a number of districts once the budget was available. They were really relieved that the major cost pressures that they were experiencing this year, which were the full-day kindergarten and the annual increases, were provided for in the budget and that they were funded. They were also very relieved to see that the annual facilities grant was going to be provided across all of the districts, with an additional $110 million for that.
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Now, I certainly do acknowledge that it is a difficult time to govern and that there are other pressures at all levels of government, not only in government but businesses and homeowners. Pretty well everywhere you look, people are tightening their belts a little and are managing with resources that aren’t going as far, perhaps, as they would like them to. I certainly acknowledge that that is the case for school districts as well.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
That is why we are really committed to working with school districts to find different ways of doing things and, certainly, encouraging them but also actively working with them to find ways that we can find administrative savings. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
[1635]
By that, I mean looking at things like a common payroll and other shared business services, where we could actually reduce how much we’re spending there without making any difference to educational outcomes, free up some resources and provide those so that they’re back with the student. We’re committed to that and to doing some work with school districts.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
Of course, some of the school districts are doing this as well. Some of them are working with neighbouring districts to share different kinds of work. Some of them are also working with their municipalities to find savings so that, again, they can reinvest them with the students in the district. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
