Tart Cider: Hands across the ocean

May 02, 2006

Hands across the ocean

The National Post reports today that as a result of Ontario's 20-student cap on JK and SK classes, the Toronto District School Board may have to "axe music classrooms, increase class sizes for older grades, and in one case, consider putting children in a basement classroom."

It was a "well-meaning initiative," the article assures us. Like hell. It was a cheap political stunt to impress parents, and it was pursued despite the obvious potential for exactly what's happening now and despite the fact that there is no consensus on just how much (if at all) reduced class sizes result in increased student achievement. (Note: In undeserved fairness to Dalton McGuinty, I don't trust school boards as far as I can throw them and I'm willing to believe that they're just targeting music to provoke a public backlash.)

Libby Purves' blistering column in today's London Times is surprisingly apropos:

Targets! Years ago, at the start of this mania, I sat on a charity committee that spent a long meeting trying to decide between a target of 82 per cent of 24-35s marking us more than 5 on a scale of 10 by 2005, or perhaps 67 per cent of 24-64 year olds marking us as a 6 by 2010. When I asked why we couldn’t have spent the two hours just inventing ways of making ourselves popular, I was slapped down with a reproving “Target-setting is a valuable discipline”, as the chairman marched proudly onwards up his own backside.

Government targets do not invigorate public bodies: rather they alarm and distort. Watch how many schools push easy GCSE subjects and teach to the test, drilling SAT pupils to serve the school’s credit, not young minds.
…
And everyone, in government or any kind of business, should look askance at the poisonous managerialist idea that the vigorous thing to do is always to set a statistical “target”. It isn’t. It is about as useful as my habit of making lists headed “To Do Saturday”, and promptly falling asleep.

There's a lot of UK-specific stuff in there, but the point is dead-on. Your average politician couldn't predict what a superball would do if he were to drop it on the floor, which is why we should be resisting targets like 20-student kindergarten classrooms on principle.

(Cross-posted to the Shotgun.)

Posted by Chris Selley at May 2, 2006 11:02 PM

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Comments

Children in the basement; pfft! I guess none of these dorks have ever heard of portables before. By the way, in BC they've introduced legislation to make classroom size caps the law.

Posted by: Robert McClelland at May 2, 2006 11:25 PM

Robert: Portables only work if you have room to set'em up; I could see that being a problem for some urban schools.

Mind, announcing that you'll have to axe popular programs/introduce 'dire consequences' is a classic bureaucrat trick for raising more money ; the city I live in used to announce cuts to local police and fire stations, then 'reluctantly' raise taxes instead. You never get an announcement that "unless the funding issues change, we'll have to cancel our three week fact-finding mission to Maui we had schedlued for February" in these situations...

As for lowering class sizes, it fits my classic example of government program priorities: the first priority is always to be seen to be doing something about a problem, the second how much political trouble you have to go through to enact it ; whether the actions taken actually do anything to help is often a tertiary concern, and whether they're the most cost-effective way to get the job done is seldom considered until the budget is about to crash.

Lowering class sizes looks like you're doing something, and is a change you won't have to fight the Teachers' unions to enact.

Posted by: Craig at May 3, 2006 10:51 AM