TORONTO—Larry Killens, the Manitoulin trustee on the Rainbow District School Board, has weighed in on the Ontario government’s recent mandate to school boards to provide 60 minutes of math instruction per day. Mr. Killens, who made it clear that he was speaking on his own behalf, and not on behalf of the board, voiced his strong objection to what he characterized as an interference in school board prerogatives.
“Why are there school boards or trustees,” he said, “if they are going to start telling us what to do at the local level. Local school boards have the best idea of what they need in their areas, we don’t need someone from Toronto telling us what our students need.”
Mr. Killens said he had high confidence in the abilities of the management and administration of the RDSB and that the board was well positioned to know what their students need.
“You look at the EQAO testing, not that I am a fan, but if you look at the test score results, our students are doing well,” he said. “The students in (RDSB) schools are holding their own in math.”
While the provincial government sets the provincial curriculum, Mr. Killens maintains that the recent moves by the province to mandate hours of study in a particular course of study within that curriculum steps beyond.
“Local school boards have the best idea of what they need in their areas, we don’t need someone from Toronto telling us what our students need.”
“It certainly is curriculum,” noted RDSB Superintendent Lesleigh Dye, “but this is the first time that the province has mandated the amount of time to be spent on a subject.”
In any event, the amount of time for math instruction mandated by the RDSB itself far exceeds that recently put forward by the province. “We decided a number of years ago at the board level to set instruction at 60 minutes for Grades 1 through 8 and five years ago we added 10 more minutes.” That gives students in RDSB classrooms 70 minutes of math instruction daily, where the province is mandating 60 minutes.
“We saw the need at the board level and made that decision,” she said.
Mr. Killens said that he was very concerned with what seems to be an erosion of the role of school boards and their boards by the province and its Ministry of Education.
Mr. Killens was reacting to a news report of an announcement by Education Minister Liz Sandals that the province would be investing $60 million into a “renewed math strategy.” The announcement indicated that the province will also require that each school have at least one math lead teacher, and in larger schools, up to three, who is deeply knowledgeable about teaching math and who would receive up to five days of math professional development a year.
The announcement included more support for some 500 schools where math achievement is weak, more province-wide parent tipsheets, better access to online math homework help and professional development in math for some elementary schools’ entire staff.
“We know the jobs of today and tomorrow require key math skills and knowledge,” said Minister Sandals in making the announcement, adding that while Canadian students are still strong math performers on global tests, scores on Ontario’s standardized EQAO math tests slipped seven percentage points in Grade 6 over the past five years and four points in Grade 3.
President of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario Sam Hammond said he welcomes any investment in elementary education, but he questioned the focus on literacy and numeracy (those subjects measured each year in the EQAO provincial standardized tests), which the ETFO decries as “costly and unnecessary.”
“It comes at the expense of the arts, science, geography, citizenship, physical education, why not $60 million on arts or science?” asked Mr. Hammond. “It’s because we focus on subjects that are measured in a test one day a year.”
“Why do we have trustees if Premier Kathleen Wynne puts everyone in Ontario in the same basket?” he asked. “We have differences, rural/urban, Northern Ontario, southern Ontario. Why doesn’t Wynne distribute the money evenly and let the mangers in each board manage and target the more needy areas of each board.”
