From the Globe & Mail: Alexandria Pavelich, a sociology student at York University |
Before the Ontario legislature dissolved to make way for our provincial election, the government’s last act was
to try to end the strike at York University by imposing binding arbitration.
Because the Liberals waited till the last minute before the election campaign
started, they needed all the parties to agree. The NDP refused.
This means that 50,000
York students have not only lost much of their spring term but likely there
will be no summer school at all. On the plus side, it's a timely reminder of
where the NDP's loyalties lie.
If ever there was a
strike that needs binding arbitration this is it. The
victims are the York students (including my daughter) while between the
striking faculty and the administration, there's nothing but irreconcilable
differences – so a government-mandated investigation concluded May 4 (here).
The Liberals and the
Conservatives voted in favour of ending the strike and in favour of the
students, who are losing their education. The NDP voted in favour of the union,
which wants the strike to go on.
Update: As
of May 30, the York strike became the longest
running strike ever at
a Canadian college or university.
If elected, the
NDP has pledged they will not end this strike.
They've promised they'll never force
an end to any strike.
So if city workers go
on strike and there's no garbage
collection for
months? The NDP's fine with that.
Teachers go on
strike across the province? The NPD promises
it won't do a
thing. Horwath claims she can avoid public
service strikes by
giving workers what they want – as
if
that's possible without the province going broke.
|
If the Liberals had acted earlier, they could have legislated an end to the strike without the support of the other parties – they had a majority after all – but the Liberals aren’t likely to lose any seats over this strike, so they didn’t care.
On a closely related note, Ontario’s biggest teacher’s union, representing elementary teachers, has endorsed the NDP. Why? Well, first they’re teed off at the Liberals for occasionally using their power to end or forestall strikes by the teachers.
The NDP have promised to be
more deferential to the teachers’ unions and will care less
about the students – who are always the main victims of any teacher strike or
work-to-rule campaign.
Second, the NDP has
endorsed the union’s call to scrap standardized testing of students. A majority
of parents and the general public support standardized testing {administered in grades 3, 6 and 9 by the EQAO}, while the
teachers’ unions have opposed it from the start.
They argue that teachers
are best placed to assess how a student is doing. Which is generally true and beside
the point. No one’s suggesting teachers should stop assessing students, only
that it’s good to have an additional way of measuring their progress.
Parents like
standardized testing because it gives us at least one objective measure, not only
of how well our own kids our doing, but how well their school is doing and how
well the education system as a whole is doing – measurements which are
obviously beyond the capacity of individual teachers.
The teachers’ unions dislike
standardized testing (at least in part) for the same reason parents like it:
the unions don’t like the results of the teachers’ efforts being measured. I
understand, of course, but don’t much sympathize.
NDP leader Andrea Horvath clasps hands
with Elementary Teachers
Federation president Sam Hammond from the National Post here |
A case in point: In
2017, half
of Grade 6 students failed to meet provincial standards in math on the
standardized test – and this for the second year in a row. Indeed, the number
of grade 6 students measuring up has been dropping since 2013, and back in 2013,
the results weren’t great, with only 57% of students meeting the provincial
standard.
To correct lousy math
scores, the province has spent $60-million to
add math-specialist teachers to schools and to provide additional training for
staff. The ministry also increased class time for math to an hour a day. All to no good effect.
Because we have standardized
testing, we knew there was a problem. Because we have standardized testing, we
know the solution we tried hasn’t worked. Everywhere
else in Canada, students have been getting better at math. Not in Ontario. Our
kids have been getting worse. The problem seems to be with the “Discovery”
model currently being used to teach math, so the next step should be to change
that.
But the teachers union
proposed a different solution. In response to the dismaying 2017 math scores, the
Secondary School Teachers Union ran an editorial in its newsletter saying it
was time to scrap the testing. This wouldn’t solve the
problem but it would make it invisible. To the delight of all the teachers
unions, the NDP is endorsing this “solution.”
Ironically, standardized
testing was developed by Bob Rae’s NDP
government. It was the Conservatives under Mike Harris that implemented it and the Liberals under Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne who have maintained
it. All three parties, plus parents and the wider public across Ontario have understood
the value of the system.
Now the
NDP wants to scrap it to show the unions whose side they’re on.
Come
voting day, June 7, we should remember this.
Postscript, June 7, 2018: Seems most people in Ontario have decided the NDP isn't a good choice. Good.
Postscript, June 7, 2018: Seems most people in Ontario have decided the NDP isn't a good choice. Good.
Brian Henry is a
parent and creative writing teacher and the publisher of the Quick Brown Fox
blog. He used to be a member of the NDP party.
Very well said, Brian!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Michelle.
ReplyDelete