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The Global Search for Education: More from Canada
Dr. Ben Levin says that a high-pressure system that focuses on testing, teacher evaluation and union bashing won’t give the US the wholesale change it needs.
“Good Teachers are critical. It is an absolutely vital factor.” -- Dr. Ben Levin
“The U.S. cannot improve its education system for all or even most children by keeping its present focus on charter schools, more testing, teacher evaluation and union bashing. None of those feature in the best-performing countries. There must be a focus on helping all schools improve, combining pressure with lots of support. That is how to improve system performance.” — Dr. Ben Levin.
Dr. Levin is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Education Leadership and Policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. He has worked with private research organizations, school districts, provincial governments, and national and international agencies, as well as building an academic and research career. He served as Deputy Minister (chief civil servant) for Education for the Province of Ontario from 2004 to 2007 and again in 2008-09. From 1999 through 2002, he was Deputy Minister of Advanced Education and Deputy Minister of Education, Training and Youth for the Province of Manitoba. He has published five books, most recently, How to Change 5000 Schools. His current interests are in large-scale change, poverty and inequity, and finding better ways to connect research to policy and practice in education.
What kind of educational system will permit a country to have the people skills needed to compete globally?
It’s a very broad question, but essentially the way I would answer it is that you need a system which is both high quality and high equity. That is, large numbers of students who are achieving high levels of skill and confidence, and where the gaps that are based on extraneous factors are small.
What are your views on the standardized testing currently used?
Having good reliable data on student progress and outcomes is essential to making progress. There are lots of indicators other than tests, which are only one measure. For example, graduation rates, participation and success in tertiary education, labor market experiences, proportions of kids referred to special education, and proportion of kids making a year of progress each year are also relevant measures. Where we are going to use testing, we need to make sure that the tests are of a high quality and linked to curriculum; or like PISA, we need to clearly identify important competencies. Test results and other outcome data should not be used punitively; you cannot scare people into excellence.
Do you think the systems we have in place are sufficient to test the broad range of students?
There is no measure that is perfect. Every measure is partial and every measure has error in it, so one needs multiple measures to form a better picture. PISA has tried hard to get at critical thinking, and the tests in Ontario on elementary literacy and numeracy have a very substantial component of critical thinking. Critical thinking isn’t some abstract skill. You have to be thinking critically about something. We also know that most teaching is focused on basic skills, not on higher order skills. We’ve got years and years of evidence showing this.
“Where we are going to use testing, we need to make sure that the tests are of a high quality and linked to curriculum.” -- Dr. Ben Levin
How do you see the importance of good teachers in the education process?
Good teachers are critical. It is an absolutely vital factor, and the educational systems that are most successful are paying lots of attention to recruiting, retaining, and developing good teachers. They are also providing a system that encourages and fosters good teachers. However, the focus cannot be only on teachers as individuals. Teaching is a social process, so good teachers can only ply their craft in well led and reasonably resourced schools.
How do you see the role of parents in this process?
Parents and families are very important. Family background continues to be the single most powerful predictor of student outcomes. That’s been the case as long as we’ve been measuring and it continues to be the case in every study. We know a lot about how to engage parents more effectively in students’ education but we don’t always use that knowledge.
What can be done to better address the emotional well being of students in an environment where competition is more intense than ever before?
Fortunately, I don’t think that in Canada we are living in that intense world of competition in schools. My perception of this is that in Canada the proportion of kids who are subject to intense pressure is quite small. Frightening kids into working hard would be a mistake. It is far better to engage people in things that they care about, generating real effort that does not come out of fear. There is sometimes too much mindless homework.
Competition to get into our best institutions has significantly increased the pressure on students. Can you share your experiences and comparisons on the Canadian college system?
Canada does not have the same kind of stratified higher education system as in the US. The US higher education system has institutions that are superb and institutions that are not very good at all. Canadian institutions are not all identical in quality, but in this country it doesn’t really matter where you do your undergraduate degree. We don’t have institutions that take everybody they can get and other institutions that only take 1 in 20. I think ours is a better system. You want every institution at least to be good; having some that are great and some that are terrible doesn’t work at all in education. The whole goal is that everybody gets a good education. There is an annual ranking of Canadian universities done by one of our magazines, but we simply don’t have the same kinds of inequalities in higher education.
From a larger perspective, does your country’s definition of educational excellence take into account the quality of life of individuals and of society?
We try to do that. For example, in Ontario for the last five years, we added thousands of teaching positions, almost all of them in areas like art, music, physical education, or languages. So I don’t think there’s an inconsistency between saying we value a broad education and saying we have to ensure our kids can learn to read. We have got to learn to do both things, and I would say Canadian schools do both those things reasonably well by world standards, as judged by our outcome data. (Editor’s note: Canada ranks among the top 10 countries in all categories of the PISA test.)
Any final thoughts on education systems?
There is a conventional wisdom about education, which is that it’s all about economic competitiveness, that I think is wrong. But there is a conventional critique of education which is that’s it’s too much about economic competitiveness and hard skills, that I also think is wrong. We don’t want an educational system that is factory-like in the way it treats young people. That can’t be successful. But equally, the idea that we can have an unstructured, everybody-do-their-own-thing education system, I also find unappealing because the result of that will be that most people will not get a good education. It is possible to balance the concern for real skills with the concern for a broad education, and Canada does that about as well as anyone.
Dr. Ben Levin and C. M. Rubin
(Photos courtesy of Dwight International School Canada and Dr. Ben Levin)
In The Global Search for Education, join C. M. Rubin and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
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Tuesday
September 27th, 2011
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Comments
That’s an interesting insight into the quality of Canadian universities – that they’re all relatively equally respected. I can see straight away how that is a vastly superior system and it reduces reliance on league tables which is always a good thing.
Well, it means that students don’t feel hugely pressured to get into one of the top three universities in the country – it’s equally acceptable if they get into any university. Much less pressure on gaining a place at the top results in happier, healthier students.
That’s the crux of the issue – the pressure applied on students to get into the most prestigious universities. The pressure is simply unfair and won’t make for a better student.
I’m in complete agreement with you – the current set up is very poor and not conducive of solid education system. It is what we have to put up with, though, at the moment.
Through a viarety of examples, such as redlining maps, racially restrictive covenants in property deeds, block-busting, racial steering, and more, this chapter portrays real estate agents in the Hartford area in an extremely negative light. In its description of block-busting, for instance, the chapter criticizes real estate agents for using a sales technique [that] played on White racial fears to make a quick profit. (OntheLine Preview Chapter 2) In this example, the author places the blame for block-busting on the real estate agent. However, the author could have named other entities, or a combination of entities, as responsible for the discriminatory practice, such as the white homeowners that held fears of black families entering their neighborhoods, or the political climate of the 50s and 60s that created opportunities for real estate agents to make money off of discriminatory practices. Pointing to these factors enables a more comprehensive view of block-busting, and sees real estate agents as agents of larger cultural and structural issues, rather than independent culprits. In light of this, the author is overly narrow in assigning significant blame to real estate agents for the discriminatory nature of American suburbanization.
What I would say further to that, is how can we change the US system to be more like the Canadian system? This time it’s not just about passing new legislation, these university rankings are essentially hard coded into academia. I don’t think it’s something we can change, so we have to look for alternatives.
This provides opportunities for virtually all secondary school graduates to get an outstanding college education.
It’s true, it’s always down to the parents. A friend of mine works in a fairly poorly performing secondary school, and come parent’s evening there is always one common theme – most of the parents couldn’t care less about their child’s education. What I think they’re missing is that their education will affect their entire future lives and careers. For a parent not to care about their child’s future strikes me as wholly irresponsible.
It’s easy to blame the parents, but to tar them all with the same brush is a bit unfair, in my opinion. The research showing that they are the largest external influence on education results is sound, but it shouldn’t detract from the sterling work that other parents do.
The fact is, whether the parents are good or bad, their impact is enormous. This has to figure into any plan to improve the public school system in the US and the UK.
While this gives everyone a chance at a good education, it does not offer the exceptional education that the top universities and colleges in the US provide.
I just don’t think that it’s helpful to have institutions that are renowned for being sub par. It means that students who go there because they couldn’t get in anywhere else end up with an inferior education, debt, and any employer would still think poorly of them for going to a sub standard university. The Canadian system bypasses this problem as all are much of a muchness.
A great education system needs to be based on great principles. A principle of increasing economic competitiveness, whilst great for the politicians, is not so great for the students themselves. Education is a about exploring the limits of ones own understanding of the world, I don’t see how this can possibly tie in with the GDP of a country.
Canada, like some of the other countries that are recognized for their educational success, has adopted a philosophy of balanced education. This vision seems to be present in the curriculum, the testing, and the quality of their colleges. The US should take a comprehensive look at a system not far away that performs far better in their public secondary schools.
To we Canadians, the USA seems to be chasing its tail in a panic instead of drawing a breath and saying, what do all the more successful countries, not just Canada, do that we don’t. There is almost zero interest in charters and vouchers in Canada. We look to Finland, if anywhere, for improvement models. Most Canadians don’t much care which university you went to. They all charge much the same tuition at the undergraduate level. The “Community Colleges” in Ontario 44% of Canada are respected for non-degree post secondary programs. Many canadians go to university first and then community college.
Canadians are not driven to be rich, just “comfortable”. Our poor are much less poor than the USA but our rich are also less rich.
[...] found this excellent interview with Dr. Ben Levin, University of Toronto on the value of standardized tests and the differences between the US and [...]
Standardized tests alone lead to no learning. Studying for the test does not lead to learning.
I love what Rubin and othres in this movement are doing. It’s definitely making a difference! Their activism has spurred conversations about the junk our kids get at schools and resulted in some schools changing for the better. Thanks for sharing!
Due to his support of standardized testing, Ben Levin is not seen as part of the progressive camp in Canada.
The litmus test of progressivism is opposition to testing. The rest is window dressing.