government mandated standard report cards and inservice days

http://news.gov.mb.ca/news/index.html?archive=&item=9642


so.. remind why we actually need so many different school boards again?

Did he get permission from the teachers union ot do this?

School boards are often the launching pad for new politicians...

Stupid Announcement.

a) Seems like they are dumbing down the reporting

b) Stardardized inservice days, huh? The argument that it is a burden for parents because it differs between divisions is false. How many parents have children in different division at the age where they would need supervision?

If this is something MAST or MTS proposed, then fine. But sounds like more NDP meddling in areas that they should be leaving to the divsions.

If you can't tell, I have no use for NDP meddling in school division business. They'll meddle to make the politically popular choice at the expense of the best choice.

Oh I think we need some level of school boards. I just dont understand why we have so many. Winnipeg should be one school board. Schools should receive funding strictly based on the student population and demographics ( ie some schools have higher needs students).

The school board should still be elected, but in essence to ensure that the schools all work properly.. ie instead of merely hiring another level of government people to do it, then they would at least be somewhat accountable.

standardized in-service days would be great in my opinion, from a coaches standpoint I could then use those days as special training days for the entire team instead of just 50-75% of the team at a time.

As a parent... while cross divisional does not really make much diff to me.. but cross school.. that would be nice to be standardized.

I also think it would be nice to have a standardized GOOD report card out there. too many of these report cards have nonsense like 1,2,3,4 .... with teacher that say they refuse to give 4s. why bother then? Send actual grades so I can tell what it means, so I can figure out how much more I need to work with my kids and their teachers.



I have already sent our education minister an email discussing some of these points.. have you?

"If this is something MAST or MTS proposed, then fine."

The last people I want making the decisions.

This seems so logicial, so why is it a big announcement. Slow news day for the NDP?

Deank wrote:"If this is something MAST or MTS proposed, then fine."

The last people I want making the decisions.

Don't tell me you think those idiots in gov't make better educational decisions than MAST or MTS, do you?

How many schools do we still have open with 25 kids (chapman) because it is popular. How many schools do we have that won't prepare kids for anything ( Ecole Tache 50/50 program) because it is the 'popular' decision. How many areas don't have a suitable high school ( Whyte ridge / Lindenwoods) because it isn't an NDP riding?

MAST is made up of elected school trustees, so basically its an organization of politicians.

St Norberter wrote:

Deank wrote:"If this is something MAST or MTS proposed, then fine."

The last people I want making the decisions.

Don't tell me you think those idiots in gov't make better educational decisions than MAST or MTS, do you?

How many schools do we still have open with 25 kids (chapman) because it is popular. How many schools do we have that won't prepare kids for anything ( Ecole Tache 50/50 program) because it is the 'popular' decision. How many areas don't have a suitable high school ( Whyte ridge / Lindenwoods) because it isn't an NDP riding?

inservice days and report card type are not educational decisions, they are in fact political, province wide decisions. These are two things that should have been standardized ALWAYS, not something new.

Hell across Canada we should have the exact same report cards.

Deank wrote:standardized in-service days would be great in my opinion, from a coaches standpoint I could then use those days as special training days for the entire team instead of just 50-75% of the team at a time.

Okay, but what if several divisions want a speaker or put on a seminar for teachers with limited attendees - with this new plan, one gets the speaker, the rest are SOL.

Deank wrote:As a parent... while cross divisional does not really make much diff to me.. but cross school.. that would be nice to be standardized.

And the inservice days may differ depending on the demographics and locations of the divisions. What about rural divisions? I would suggest that they might schedule their days to correspond with harvest or or in some cases hunting. You think that's necessary in Winnipeg?

Deank wrote:I also think it would be nice to have a standardized GOOD report card out there. too many of these report cards have nonsense like 1,2,3,4 .... with teacher that say they refuse to give 4s. why bother then? Send actual grades so I can tell what it means, so I can figure out how much more I need to work with my kids and their teachers.

Standardized to what? Is this standardized between english/immersion ? It's well known that the performance curves differ between the two. Does this mean that english kids will score higher for grades 1-5 and then score lower after that? i.e. it will be impossible for an english student to get a '4' after grade 5?

Deank wrote:

St Norberter wrote:

Deank wrote:"If this is something MAST or MTS proposed, then fine."

The last people I want making the decisions.

Don't tell me you think those idiots in gov't make better educational decisions than MAST or MTS, do you?

How many schools do we still have open with 25 kids (chapman) because it is popular. How many schools do we have that won't prepare kids for anything ( Ecole Tache 50/50 program) because it is the 'popular' decision. How many areas don't have a suitable high school ( Whyte ridge / Lindenwoods) because it isn't an NDP riding?

inservice days and report card type are not educational decisions, they are in fact political, province wide decisions. These are two things that should have been standardized ALWAYS, not something new.

Hell across Canada we should have the exact same report cards.

Okay, call them political decisions. But you've seen the shitty political decisions the Gov't has made with respect to education. I son;t trust them to make any good political decisions with respect to education.

I cant understand how some of their decisions are crap. (like keeping schools open and not building other ones)... .but not these two particular ones.

I'd need more information before I could agree with it ( ie, implementation plan, final result,etc). I've seen the NDP announce one thing and then behind the scenes change it 180 degrees.

yeah.. I pretty much hope the "report card" team has a number of people who are not politically correct and quit babying people by not providing them real information.

BUT even if they mess it up... at least everyones kids will be messed up.. right?

St Norberter wrote:

Deank wrote:standardized in-service days would be great in my opinion, from a coaches standpoint I could then use those days as special training days for the entire team instead of just 50-75% of the team at a time.

Okay, but what if several divisions want a speaker or put on a seminar for teachers with limited attendees - with this new plan, one gets the speaker, the rest are SOL.

Why would anyone be SOL?
Just invite teachers from other schools to attend the same.
Speakers and presenters cost money. Instead of one school budget footing the bill for it, then several schools could benefit from it, or an entire district.

Also allows teachers from various schools the ability to plan together for other training or travel.

St Norberter wrote:

Deank wrote:As a parent... while cross divisional does not really make much diff to me.. but cross school.. that would be nice to be standardized.

And the inservice days may differ depending on the demographics and locations of the divisions. What about rural divisions? I would suggest that they might schedule their days to correspond with harvest or or in some cases hunting. You think that's necessary in Winnipeg?

It's not going to hurt anything to schedule universally across divisions/province, though running per School Division (so rural would be different than urban) may be most appropriate.

If there was scheduled 1 or 2 inservice days per quarter...it's not going to effect the harvest or hunting...they can schedule their hunting/harvest on those days ahead of time...besides...MOST families who rely on time to do harvest or hunting would just take their kids out of school for the day anyway.

St Norberter wrote:

Deank wrote:I also think it would be nice to have a standardized GOOD report card out there. too many of these report cards have nonsense like 1,2,3,4 .... with teacher that say they refuse to give 4s. why bother then? Send actual grades so I can tell what it means, so I can figure out how much more I need to work with my kids and their teachers.

Standardized to what? Is this standardized between english/immersion ? It's well known that the performance curves differ between the two. Does this mean that english kids will score higher for grades 1-5 and then score lower after that? i.e. it will be impossible for an english student to get a '4' after grade 5?

This is actually in many debates. Some schools don't even give grades anymore...just a "good" or "satisfactory" report.
It's debated now though that this is detrimental to a student's future, as it doesn't prepare them for a point where they can actually fail in the "real world".

Standardization would be beneficial...IF there were levels available FOR the standardization.
Too many times I've heard of students who are held back, because they have a "slower" student in their class...so the teacher cannot cover as much information as required by the curriculum.
There would need to be "levels" for students...those who may have some difficulties in certain areas, those who are "average" based on a standardized evaluation, and those who may be advanced in their learning skills.

Unfortunately...too many politicians have been crying that a leveled structure creates an atmosphere of elitism and ridicule, particularly for those in the "lower" learning areas. They try to create an atmosphere where "everyone is equal"...but all that is really occurring, is that everyone gets pulled down to the lower level by default...because it's impossible to go any faster than the slowest person.

What's stated in the news release is different than what the freep is reporting.

The news release talks about standardized inservice days across all divisions.

The freep talks about standardized inservice days within divisions

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/Standard-report-cards-in-the-works-102637224.html

It seems to me that those aren't the same thing. So which is it?

"Standardized to what? Is this standardized between english/immersion ? It's well known that the performance curves differ between the two. Does this mean that english kids will score higher for grades 1-5 and then score lower after that? i.e. it will be impossible for an english student to get a '4' after grade 5?"

not standardized to how to grade. Just standardized on how to report

ie 50%, 60%, 70%, ....


do away with the politically correct garbage that tells you nothing.

AGEsAces wrote:
Too many times I've heard of students who are held back, because they have a "slower" student in their class...so the teacher cannot cover as much information as required by the curriculum.
There would need to be "levels" for students...those who may have some difficulties in certain areas, those who are "average" based on a standardized evaluation, and those who may be advanced in their learning skills.

Unfortunately...too many politicians have been crying that a leveled structure creates an atmosphere of elitism and ridicule, particularly for those in the "lower" learning areas. They try to create an atmosphere where "everyone is equal"...but all that is really occurring, is that everyone gets pulled down to the lower level by default...because it's impossible to go any faster than the slowest person.

This has nothing to do with standardization, but with another BS decision by the NDP to have a 'no-fail' policy.

St Norberter wrote:What's stated in the news release is different than what the freep is reporting.

The news release talks about standardized inservice days across all divisions.

The freep talks about standardized inservice days within divisions

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/Standard-report-cards-in-the-works-102637224.html

It seems to me that those aren't the same thing. So which is it?

welll... technically the larger one ends up being the same as the smaller one.

Not having had a chance to talk to the premier and ask him questions he is confused about... I would say the provincial news release is accurate... but dont really know.

Deank wrote:

St Norberter wrote:What's stated in the news release is different than what the freep is reporting.

The news release talks about standardized inservice days across all divisions.

The freep talks about standardized inservice days within divisions

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/Standard-report-cards-in-the-works-102637224.html

It seems to me that those aren't the same thing. So which is it?

welll... technically the larger one ends up being the same as the smaller one.

Not having had a chance to talk to the premier and ask him questions he is confused about... I would say the provincial news release is accurate... but dont really know.

I read standardized across divisions to mean that all inservice days will be the same from division to division ( essentially province wide)

I read standard within divisions to mean the same through the division, but may vary from division to division (which makes sense).

they both make sense to me

heck we do have the two MASSIVE in-service days that are already province wide. The teachers get a good deal of education and workshops in during that time.

We also have a few (at least in WSD1) division wide ones as well.

Deank wrote:they both make sense to me

heck we do have the two MASSIVE in-service days that are already province wide. The teachers get a good deal of education and workshops in during that time.

We also have a few (at least in WSD1) division wide ones as well.

Oh I'm not disputing the need for a couple of province wide inservice days. Or division wide inservice days. But all inservice days province wide is stupid and not thought out properly. Period.

Why? if for no other reason, look at weather. The criteria for closing schools differs tremendously between Winnipeg schools and rural schools. Why? Because in rural schools, if the buses can't run then schools are closed, because highway conditions are dangerous. If we have a especially harsh winter, sometimes these closure days are counted as inservice days. If we standardize days across the province it means either Winnipeg schools will be forced to closed when rural divisions close because of the weather, or rural transportation will be forced to operate in conditions that are unsafe. Neither of those two options are acceptable.

"r, sometimes these closure days are counted as inservice days."

I have never ever seen that happen. EVER, doing so would probably violate the collective agreement.