Parents ‘n Schools

There are some 200 schools in the Calgary Board of Education. My (I think conservative) estimate is that parents in those schools raise an average of $20,000 per year through various means for those schools. That’s $4 million per year that largely goes unheralded and unrecorded.

Over the past five years or so the Calgary Board of Education has operated its own charitable foundation (branded “EducationMatters”). In a city with the second-largest concentration of head offices in the country, that foundation raises about $750,000 per year (to odd fanfare).

The difference, I believe, is the difference in sophistication between parents and corporate/high-net-worth philanthropists. Professionals managing donations for large corporations and for independent philanthropic foundations scrutinize potential donees closely, and hold causes to increasingly high standards of purpose, need and value. I’ve worked with such professionals. I respect their standards. And I appreciate how government schooling might not measure up to them.

Parents, of course, don’t apply anything like that same kind of scrutiny. Parents are content to backfill holes in government school budgets, without asking how those holes got dug in the first place, and why… year over year… they remain conveniently unfilled, waiting for the next crop of parents to come along and fill them.

Fundraising professionals ask about those holes, and they ask about how those holes were left and not others. Fundraising professionals are unwilling to backfill holes that government should properly be filling, and they’re certainly unwilling to fill them more than once or maybe twice. Fundraising professionals prefer to not fill holes at all, and instead build new hills with their philanthropy… to facilitate new vistas and help see new solutions.

Parents can learn from that in their fundraising for schools. I believe it is best not to raise money at all for government schools that have billions of dollars of treasury funds at their disposal. But if money IS raised, it is equally important to scrutinize how it should be spent, and on whom, and on what.

Parents should be prepared to simply say “no” to proposals put to them and “wish lists” submitted from schoolers, when those proposals contain requests for funds that should properly be (and are, at unseen levels) funded by government. Parent fundraising should be reserved for supporting initiatives that have not yet gained support in government schooling (and budgets), or may never. Innovations in technology can be funded on a “start-up”/experimental basis by parents, but it should go no further than that (particularly in a province like Alberta, where the education ministry has specifically promised to fully fund technology for every classroom… parents should not be coerced into purchasing it ahead of the queue).

But I believe fundraising should be reserved primarily for the things that government is likely never going to get around to, or any of the education “partners” likely to get around to thinking about. Things like “PD for Parents” (training and resources to help parents themselves, in bulk and individually, become better educators and better education partners for their children). And things like savings for post-secondary schooling (it takes a village to raise a child, and sometimes a village to afford to send that child off to college).

In any event, I believe parents should take a lesson from the reservations of fundraising professionals and apply increasing standards of scrutiny to proposals and suggestions for spending their hard-raised money. It is not enough that the “need” is presented to them (or that it conveniently persists year after year after year). It should meet higher standards of purpose from a professional fundraising perspective (including the question “why am I funding and not you… or why aren’t we even taking turns?”).

Fundraising is futile enough for parents ‘n schools, but there are opportunities in doing so to help government schooling encounter and adapt to higher standards and expectations (including accountability, outcomes and results). That is what sophisticated philanthropists are doing, in part, when they say “no” to government schooling and government school charitable vehicles. As Bill Murray’s character in “Groundhog Day” illustrated, rejection can be a powerful impetus to change and improvement (if it doesn’t make you depressed and suicidal).

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

What causes parents and the community to be led to believe that fundraising for government schools is necessary and good is the level of poverty that the government school system keeps each school at. When the money goes in at the top, and pachinko’s down through multiple-levels of deciders and multiple-levels of contracts and commitments, it is not surprising that very little filters through to the bottom or that it is left difficult to even see how much went in at the top.

But BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars goes in at the top. That the government school system chooses to allow next to nothing in the way of discretionary dollars or schooler/community “choice” to make its way to the actual school is not evidence of underfunding. It is more evidence of “over-grabbing” along the way.

If parents were positioned (as their other “partners” in public education are) to grab at dollars at every level as they fall from the top, the perspective would be very different on the need for fundraising. The teachers’ collective here in Alberta has a charitable foundation aimed at accepting donations from its membership in support of public education. That foundation, annually, drawing from tens of thousands of paid schoolers across the province, raises little more than a single, moderately-ambitious parent school council can raise (while that same collective negotiates billions of dollars directly out of the top to cover its share of its members’ pension liability).

Perspective matters.

Schools may appear (and are) strapped for cash… but government schooling is not. Schooling is second behind only health care in provincial spending, in a province that spends a LOT.

Parents and the community should not be deceived by appearance or structured “need” into raising money for government schools. They should perhaps follow the example of their “partners” and go up to the top and grab it before it falls into little pieces.

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

P.S. If the system were reversed, and like other businesses the money came in from the bottom… from the customer… from families by way of rebated/vouchered/credited tuition for each child… the perspective on more than just fundraising would shift 180 degrees. Instead of schoolers looking skyward (like chicks in a nest) for financial sustenance… and ignoring their customers, who have only pennies to drop… schoolers would look to the customer instead. That government schoolers object to such a shift at every turn…

This week in Calgary as school starts again and schooling matters become newsworthy for a time, there appeared an article in the paper describing a school council that had lost over $20,000 from its bank account (allegedly due to fraud on the part of one of the parent volunteers overseeing the funds). The article contained a lot of lamenting about financial risks to volunteers and how little is available to protect them in their work. This is true, and a serious problem, I believe… school councils are “legal nothings” in my opinion, and while billion-dollar-school-authorities hire a lot of lawyers to set things up for their proper protection, there are very few, if any, hired to set things up safely for volunteers… but I digress.

What the article also contained was a quote from the head of the provincial teachers’ association supporting parents by way of declaring that government should provide more funding to cover the things parents raise money for. I found this support… unhelpful.

In the “push me - pull you” world of multi-layered government schooling, what happens is that upper levels of government schooling dictate how much money will be available, while slightly lower levels (but still higher than you and me) determine how it will be spent. By structuring itself in this way, government schooling is able to neatly answer any questions or criticisms about funding using one of two convenient “at the ready” answers:

#1 - We gave them the money. Go talk to them about how they chose to spend it.

#2 - They never gave us enough money. (But if you give us some…)

The ensuing run-around for those not in the loop (eg., parents), if ever tapped by engineers, could produce more energy than windpower.

What I find unhelpful about support from teachers’ associations is, in particular, the government and teachers here in Alberta agreed just a few short months ago to direct $2.5 Billion to teachers’ share of their unpaid pension liability.

$2.5 Billion is equal to about a century of parent fundraising here in Alberta. One hundred years of bake sales, bingos, casinos and “fun lunches”.

What are the chances that when they were negotiating that $2.5 Billion payment in exchange for 5 years of labour peace, both sides paused and said “No… we should take 5% of this… a nickel out of every dollar… and give parents a 5-year break from fundraising, too.”

Now THAT might have been helpful.

Maybe next time.

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

P.S.  It is futile for parents to be backfilling budget holes with teaspoons while their “partners” are digging them up with bucketwheels. Perhaps it would be better for parents to pay with promissory notes, and then when the debt adds up to $2.5 billion, ask the government to pay it.

News Item: Thomas Bata dies in Toronto at age 93. Bata Shoe Organization spanning 50 countries built in Canada after Soviets seized Czech factory.

A great deal about government schooling is generated by how the money is divvied up. The government takes it in, and instead of giving it first to families to go out and buy their schooling (give it by way of vouchers or refunds or debit accounts), they give it to government schools to supply the schooling, notionally “free”.

Imagine if the government did the same with shoes — everyone got their shoes not by choice or independent purchase but by attending upon a government shoe supply outlet where you would be given shoes (”One Size Fits All”…).

I suppose you could also imagine you go to that government shoe store and to get your shoes you have to pay a “small fee” (or “reserve charge” or “resource payment” or…) to cover some costs of supplying shoes that “were not provided by government”. Like the soles. Or the laces. Or a different size.

Maybe you could also imagine being bussed to the shoe store, and…

And despite the signs that say “Free Shoes — All Welcome”, and despite the “small fees” (and perhaps the occasional fundraiser) how well do you think that government shoe store would be able to anticipate demand, innovate for need and purpose, evolve to stay ahead of the curve, reliably serve every individual and match a shoe to every foot? How well-shod would that society be? How fleet of foot? How much jump would it have?

How does children’s schooling differ from children’s shoeing? No doubt lots of ways. For one, how many would rush to put government shoes on their child…

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

Today, hereabouts, is the first day of a new school year. Big day. Exciting. Lots of new stuff. The work begins anew.

A K-12 course of learning is no small thing. It is, in its entirety, a rather big thing. Maybe the biggest thing in a child’s life. And you, Gentle Parent,… it’s a pretty big thing for you, too. Lots to know. Lots to think about. Lots to do.

Off the top of my head:

Fundraising, and all about that (including legalities and societies and accounting and liabilities and the cost/benefit of it all). School councils (including involvement and organizing and influencing and guarding against undue influencing). Education professionals (and the Acts and regulations and protocols and collegiality and duties and expectations that govern them all). The Money! (oodles and oodles of public money… where it all comes from… where it all goes). Your child’s chances of success (and how to improve them) within the government school system. The challenges of graduating (and the increasingly hard challenges of finding a seat in post-secondary schooling of choice). Saving for post-secondary study. Bussing! (don’t forget bussing, and the dynamics of school transportation both urban and rural). Skill development for yourself as an education professional… things like Brain Gym, Multiple Intelligences, How Boys Learn, Literacy and Reading. Your role as a “partner” in public education (and your alternative role as a consumer). Fees! (more about the money, I suppose… but fees come in so many shapes and styles and names and sizes… important to keep up with them). Technology. Allergies. Provincial achievement tests. Accountability (whatever that means). No parking in staff parking lots (probably no parking on the street, either… maybe it’s best if you just walk over… hopefully you don’t live too far). What kind of math your high schooler should take (if any). Coding (and special needs generally). Lunch supervision. Volunteering. Daily physical activity. Plagiarism. Labour disputes. Report cards. Interviews. And so much more…

A K-12 course of learning is challenging enough for your child. But at least they get a teacher.

You, Gentle Parent, get to figure it out almost entirely on your own.

Welcome back.

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

To me, one of the deepest tragedies in government schooling is the potential energy of 1 million parents (in Alberta alone) being frittered away on fundraising to add a single penny to every taxpayer dollar (in addition to the upwards of 20 pennies charged in fees).

I believe that energy is of much greater potential value to children than to government schools. I believe that penny is of much greater potential value to families and communities than to backfilling holes in multi-billion-dollar government school budgets.

I believe that parent energy should — through training, modelling and learning — into education resources for children in the 85% of their young lives that are spent away from school. I believe government schooling should make a habit of spending more on parents than is extracted from them.

Present government school budgets spend on parents barely a tenth of what parents freely raise for schools via energy-vacuuming fundraising efforts, and spend barely one-half of 1% of what is extracted from parents in fees. Government schooling, in its present form, effectively sucks the resources and energy out of parents and leaves them little to aid their children in learning away from school. In the K-12 marathon relay between home and school, government schooling’s 15% of time extracts 120% of the resources… and leaves parents’ 85% leg to be run on little more than love alone.

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

News item here in Calgary this morning is that 12 of the Calgary Board of Education’s 200 or so schools will be without permanent principals (acting principals have been appointed in their stead) because of a grievance filed by the teachers’ union regarding a leadership assessment test those principals were required to write in the course of their selection process with the CBE. Because the union (and presumably one or more of the principals in question) did not like the test, they are acting to hold up the hiring process.

And this is helpful for children how, exactly?

Not at all, of course… but it is not the primary job of teacher collectives to look out for the interests of schoolchildren. Their primary job is to advance the interests of collected schoolers. And that’s fine. Large, multi-billion-dollar enterprises like government schooling can be difficult things for individuals (students… parents… or schoolers) to stand up to all by themselves. (Is there a provincial parents’ union? Should I be paying dues somewhere? Maybe that might be something worth considering?)

But a short few years ago the Alberta Learning Commission (I called their work the best million dollars ever spent in public education) among nearly a hundred recommendations included a recommendation that principals be associated independently of the teachers’ union (as they have come to be in B.C. and Ontario). The vast majority of the Learning Commission’s recommendations were enthusiastically embraced by everyone (they haven’t all come to pass yet… but these things are just a matter of time… and money… and collected will). But the recommendations regarding principals and their independent collectivization was expressly not adopted. What that meant for teachers… what that meant for principals… what it meant for government schooling… hard to know for sure and a multi-faceted thing. But what it meant for children and parents is being partly played out in today’s news item.

I believe principals’ duties and roles and responsibilities are orders of magnitude different from teachers’, and as such their COLLECTIVE duties, roles and responsibilities are orders of magnitude different, too. And further to that belief I am convinced that principals should be represented collectively quite independently of their fellow schoolers. I believe, as did the Alberta Learning Commission, that it would be decidely in the interests of students and parents if that were to happen.

I first became aware of this dynamic, as a parent, on the occasion of the first looming labour action that I was exposed to… when I realized that there was nobody working in the school without self-interest on the table, and thus nobody working in the building who could be looked to as assuredly able to keep my children’s interests… my family’s interests… our community’s interests… in place ahead of theirs. That was an eye-opening experience for me. (Eye-opening as in “deer in headlights” sort of thing.)

As the CBE’s Superintendent describes in today’s news item, principals are managers of multi-million-dollar businesses with as many as 100 employees or more. He mentioned this in the context of defending the leadership assessment test that was administered and objected to. What he might have also mentioned is that principals are the “go to” person for many more hundreds of parents in the community. From this leadership perspective, and from the perspective of roles, responsibilities and duties (personal and public), it is very hard for me to look at teachers’ collectives that include principals and not conclude that — from the parent perspective — something just doesn’t belong.

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

Occasionally government schools in Alberta and Canada will announce with a degree of fanfare how they are doing in international rankings (eg., PISA). Generally they are doing pretty well.

But being the best in the world in schooling rankings isn’t like being the best at the Olympics. Such rankings are generally not a measure of higher, stronger or faster. They are rankings, generally speaking, in relation to each other — not against time, distance or other objective criteria or benchmarks.

Such rankings don’t really tell you if you’ve gotten measurably better, or even stayed as good. They mostly tell you how you stand in relation to everyone else. They are like a snapshot of everyone’s position on an escalator… but you don’t know for sure if the escalator is going up, or going down.

Given the daily challenges of schools around the world to keep their heads above water, rankings of this nature are more likely an international treading water competition, and other countries are going under for the third time.  Schooling seems to have very few fixed benchmarks. Very few “world records”. It is difficult to know what schooling’s “sea level” may be at any point in time, or what altitude you may have attained.

Take little comfort in rankings, Gentle Parent. Measuring how high you are in relation to other climbers is not the same thing as measuring how high you are in relation to “up”. (”How high is up, Mommy?”)

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

P.S.    Under the category of “It’s the Things They Don’t Tell You That Speak Volumes”, when government schools announce with fanfare their placings on PISA international rankings, they generally neglect to mention that Canadian non-government schools may be doing better (see Fraser Institute reports).

P.P.S.   International rankings can also be something of a “weight” competition, measuring how “big” you are, not necessarily how “good” you are — how big your budget was per capita, not how efficient or effective you were with each dollar. Be leery of getting drawn into spending contests, particularly in an industry that approaches 90% labour costs.

P.P.P.S.    One thing about Fraser Institute annual report cards is that they strive to find a manner of helpful benchmark by measuring schools against themselves — against their performance in prior years.

In the Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, scientist Lewis Thomas describes a list of science’s “Seven Wonders” not in the usual sense, but along the lines of the things he “wondered about” the most. Number One on his list was our planet itself — “Of all celestial bodies within reach or view, as far as we can see, out to the edge, the most wonderful and marvelous and mysterious is turning out to be our own planet earth. There is nothing to match it anywhere, not yet anyway.”

Dr. Thomas’ approach got me thinking about what I would list as “The Seven Wonders of Government Schooling”… the things about government schooling that I wonder about the most.

Saving #1 for last, Number Two on my list of things I wonder about is why there is no duty of good faith among all who are at work in government schools. Why there is no fundamental professional duty to communicate what they believed the other person would want to know, if they were in their shoes — akin to the fiduciary duties governing lawyers, accountants, engineers and other professionals in their work with persons whose interests are entrusted to them. This is conspicuously absent from statutes and regulations governing government schools, and I wonder about that.

Number Three would be wondering why parents get next to nothing in government school budgets, while evidence (both anecdotal and analytic) strongly suggests parents can and do play a pivotal role in children’s schooling success. Why parents get no money, no training and no resources yet are expected to share responsibility for a child’s lack of success in a government school system they have no authority over (or Wonder Number 3-A — why professional schoolers get all the money, all the training and all the resources yet are WILLING to share responsibility for a child’s lack of success in a government school system they have all the authority over…)

Number Four on this list of things I wonder about government schooling is why so little is spent on incorporating and applying technology toward reducing labour costs and improving efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of schooling. I don’t wonder about why this might not be happening. I wonder about how it can be put up with. We would be very reluctant to deliver our children to hospitals that have refused newfangled innovations like x-rays or anesthesia and still hold to the benefits of bloodletting, yet we contentedly deliver children up to schoolers who have somehow managed to stop time 50 years or so ago. Schooling should be where technology gets pushed to its limits, not pushed to the side.

Wonder Number Five for me is how one child out of every three that starts government schooling will not finish it with the other two… but nobody tells you that going in. If truth in advertising laws applied to government schooling, it could only admit to being a K-8 or 9 system, with the last few years being somewhat “iffy” as far as modern quality completion standards might apply. Yet it maintains a facade of full service and full reliability. With a one-third (or worse) probability of failure, shouldn’t government schooling be classed more as an “extreme sport”?

Number Six wonder for me is why there are no contracts in place between school and family. Why something as important as a 13 year course of learning can be conducted without so much as a receipt or a warranty, much less mutually agreed responsibilities and expectations. Delivery of natural gas and newspapers are facilitated by contract. Why are there no negotiated and mutually binding contracts in the delivery of government schooling?

Number Seven of my Seven Wonders of Government Schooling is a hard one to choose because you leave so many “wonders” out… but I shall choose to wonder why fundraising is encouraged, facilitated or even allowed. How can 30,000 professional schoolers have at their disposal the energy of 600,000 students and their 1,000,000 parents and choose to allow them to waste that energy on fundraising exercises that add barely 1% to government schooling’s available dollars? (Those numbers are for Alberta alone — multiply by 10 for Canada, and 10 times that for North America… but the 1% stays the same.) There are a myriad other ways to channel student and family energy than backfilling a sliver of massive government budgets.

And Number One on my list of things I wonder most about government schooling is why government delivers it. I can see why government might tax and fund it. Why government might regulate and oversee it. But I see no reason — from a student or family point of view — why government needs to deliver it. Anymore, at least (I can understand why government delivery may have been involved in public schooling’s beginnings, but I question whether that original necessity remains.) I wonder what learning might be like if government got out of the schooling delivery business. I imagine it as a future that I would like my children and grandchildren to see.

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

P.S. Feel free to share anything you wonder about your child’s schooling. Maybe we could compile a list of 70 Things (or 700).

Under the category of “everything I read is about government schooling”, I came across this little blurb from Dick Armey, former Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, speaking at Hillsdale College in Michigan about conflicts in government between what he called “legislative entrepreneurs” and “legislative bureaucrats”:”By legislative entrepreneurs, I mean a person who has a set of principles and is willing to take risks on its behalf. A legislative bureaucrat, by contrast, seeks only to perpetuate the current situation with the motive of remaining safely in office. The fact that legislative bureaucrats are usually in command reminds me of Armey’s Axiom Number One: ‘The market is rational. The government is dumb.’ I know the former to be true as someone who has studied economics. I know the latter to be true as someone who spent a long time in Congress.”One of the greatest entrepreneurial moments in the history of human government was the writing of [America’s] Constitution. America’s founders understood clearly what it means to accomplish a goal on behalf of ideas and principles that rise above self-interest…. In politics, every great enterprise eventually falls into the hands of what I call legislative bureaucrats.”

I have written before my observation that public education is more political than politics is… because there are millions more people (ie., families) who care about public education. I further believe that most anything written about politics and government can be translated to government schooling by inserting “schooling” or “education” everywhere “politics” or “legislative” appears. I believe that works particularly well in Mr. Armey’s description above.

Government schooling as an enterprise (great or otherwise) has, I believe, long ago become a bureaucratic one rather than an entrepreneurial one. In the course of that entrenchment, self-interest has come to lie above ideas and principles in its administration and evolution. I’m a big fan of self-interest as a motivating and energizing force. But I believe entrepreneurship is a much more rational mechanism for directing self-interest than bureaucracy, and I believe that if parents were viewed as consumers rather than partners of their children’s schooling, entrepreneurship would gain its proper place in the evolution, administration and future of schooling.

I am a big fan of self-interest. But disguised self-interest isn’t the same thing. Not the same thing at all. And public education and government schooling… as in politics and government generally… has a habit of disguising self-interest. Parents as partners helps perpetuate such disguises. Parents as consumers, I believe, would better remove them.

I have written before that the only person not acting in their self-interest in government schooling is the parent who “does more”. That there aren’t an abundance of parents willing to do more, I believe, is directly related to the self-interest swirling around them. What I call their individual “Schmuck Factor” gets into the red zone and they prudently distance themselves from involvement. Some parents with exceptional “spidey senses” keep their distance in the first place. It is a proper question to ask on behalf of parents ‘n schools “what’s in it for them?” — as it is proper for self-interest to be at work elsewhere in government schooling.

Removing any disguises where self-interest is at work in schooling, and putting the forces of self-interest to work for parents and their involvement in schooling, would I believe go a long way toward furthering the ideas and principles behind public education and rationalizing its evolution. That evolution might not go quite the way schoolers might like… but from the point of view of students and parents, it might be just the thing.

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

P.S. A “willingness to take risks”, to my mind, translates in two ways from an entrepreneurship v. bureaucracy point of view. It means a willingness to make mistakes (ie., fail… and publicly fail), as well as a willingness to eventually work yourself out of a job (ie., innovate yourself into obsolescence). In my observation, there isn’t much of either of those two things happening in government schooling, and the ones who suffer for their absence are the students, and particularly the future students.