Thursday, 25 April 2024

Glaze recommendations

Cindy Littlefair on the elimination of school boards: Finding our voice, time to show up

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Cindy Littlefair, Halifax Regional School Board member for district 4, reflects on the Glaze Report and how board members should respond. “I suppose if I was a good board member, a dutiful board member, I would “go quietly into that good night,” the night described by the newly adopted Glaze recommendations. For that matter, I would also do as required of me by my duly assigned board member role and responsibilities. I would not resist.”

Media release: Third party review calls into question validity of Glaze report

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A third party review, released today by the NSTU, calls into question the research methods, analysis and results of the Glaze report. The authors of the review conclude: “The high-stakes associated with these recommendations amount to a massive reform of the educational system. Before proceeding, the methods and data should be made public so that an independent stakeholder can reanalyze the data to ensure the findings are valid and reliable.”

Op-ed: How government let my students down

“I am angry! I am outraged! But mostly, I feel cheated for myself and for my students; because we are being robbed of a sound educational system. A system that recognizes that all students function at different levels and at different speeds and they are not just a cookie cutout from the same cookie cutter. A system that embraces uniqueness. A system that is not perfect and needs changes but is far from deteriorating into the abysmal cesspool of incompetent teachers and substandard test scores that the Liberal government and Dr. Avis Glaze’s report would have the public believe.”

On teachers and illegal strikes: When the law is ‘a ass,’ then there’s no surprise that it is disobeyed

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On February 20, Nova Scotia teachers will vote whether or not to engage in a strike to protest changes in the system of public education meant to remove elected school boards, further enfeeble the union and impose government control. Larry Haiven takes a closer look at that notion of an illegal strike. “Sometimes you just have to show that, as Mr. Bumble says in Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist, “The law is a ass – a idiot.” It is not at all uncommon in Canadian labour history for workers to give that message to employers and the government,” he writes.

Op Ed: Public education system needs unity, not division and distraction

Liette Doucet, president of the Nova Scotia Teachers Union, on the unnecessary and disruptive recommendations contained in the Glaze report and adopted by the Nova Scotia government. “If we are going to fix the problems in our education system we need to work together. The government’s strategy of dividing teachers and parents, and distracting from the real issues facing students does not work.”

Media release: Black Educators Association – Glaze Report snubs the Black community!

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The Black Educators Association of Nova Scotia is unhappy with the Glaze report. In a news release it states “The Black Educators Association was neither invited nor requested to give input into this review. BEA’s membership of teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals and community members are appalled to have been omitted from such a process of paramount importance.”

“It’s a calling, but it’s getting so hard.” Online survey aims to amplify teachers’ voices

Asking teachers and others who work in the school system directly what it is that works in today’s schools and what needs fixing, now there is a novel idea. Members of Educators for Social Justice (ESJ) are doing exactly that. We talk with Pamela Rogers, a member of ESJ, about the questions, the responses so far, and why it is so important to add an undiluted teachers’ voice to the current discussions.