Feb 5, 2015 — Dear fellow petitioners, On Tuesday, Feb 3rd, our team (myself, Dr. John Bowman, Cornelia Bica, Mae Chow, Dr. Ken Porteous and Stuart Wachowicz) met with Minister Dirks. Along with him were Deputy Minister of Education Loren Rosen, Dirks' Chief of Staff and the math team. Surprisingly, Minister Diana McQueen attended as well and she, as an MLA for my riding, actually spoke up in support of our cause to re-emphasize the foundational skills in math. The meeting was, understandably, a "listening" meeting so that Minister Dirks' and his staff can hear our concerns regarding the math and the Inspiring Education. We each took turns presenting our concerns, with myself making the opening remarks, while Mae addressed our parental concerns, John and Cornelia presented on the math and Dr. Porteous and Mr. Wachowicz made the case against Inspiring Education. The first key matter was that the mathematicians presented a position statement recommending the inclusion of the standard algorithms as a compulsory (not optional) component of the math curriculum: 48 signatures from the UofA professors, 17 from NAIT and 20 Grant McEwan. If the ministry does not follow through on this change suggested by the prominent math experts, then clearly, the ministry is corrupt and incompetent. The second key matter was a position statement opposing Inspiring Education, written by the highly regarded Parents for Choice in Education committee. Mr. Wachowicz eloquently argued how the implementation of Inspiring Education would violate parental choice. It was priceless to have Dr. Porteous, an eminent Professor of Emeritus, add a few words of wisdom regarding the ill-conceived direction in education. And lastly, I presented our new petition with your names and comments to stop Inspiring Education. I am most grateful to have your support in this because I know this matter is a hard one to grasp being how broad it is. We had only about 45mins to make our case, and in the end, though I tried to accept that it is "listening" meeting, I had to ask when we would get an answer to our concerns. In response, Minister Dirks started listing off all his credentials from being a father, grandfather, to all the positions he's held as a previous educator and the awards he's won as head of the Calgary School Board before telling me that he can't give a definite time because he still needed to listen to all the other stakeholders. Though he seemed to listen intently through the meeting, he seemed rushed at the end and so I held my tongue and didn't want to, for now, push him on the fact that the only important stakeholders are our children. So, if you catch Minister Dirks still praising Inspiring Education on twitter or any other forum after today, please challenge him why after knowing that Inspiring Education does not have the support of the broader community. The ministry and Minister Dirks are wrong if they think this meeting would quell the voices of dissension. The work has only begun :) Kindest regards, Dr. Nhung Tran-Davies (mrgranthd@yahoo.ca) ps. Those who have the Accountability Pillar Survey, please include personal notes to them before sending back. pp.s Just for your interest, here are my opening remarks and the list of our key recommendations: "I have looked forward to this day for sometime because what Premier Prentice seems to stand for is hope, honesty and humility. And I have great faith that he had selected only individuals who exemplify these qualities to represent him. We are here today because, with a new ministry, we have hope that you, firstly, will listen to us parents, professional and experts to improve our math curriculum, and secondly, that you will be honest with yourselves in accepting the fact that the Inspiring Education policy is greatly flawed, and the humility to urgently rectify this matter to protect our children's right to a good education. As you may know, Minister Dirks, your predecessor Minister Jeff Johnson and I have some unfinished business. I consider today's meeting as a continuum of the duty the ministry has to translate our parental and professional concerns into action for the benefit of our primary stakeholders, the children. Although we had our differences, in the end, when Minister Johnson knew better, he did better for our children's sake. Unfortunately, our meeting with Minister Johnson in June of last year was not long enough for us to iron out all the wrinkles in the math curriculum. And that is why I and over 17,000 math petitioners are back here today in the company of the experts. Where we left off with Minister Johnson was that the multiplication tables were once again expected, knowing and mastering basic facts were mandated, languages disparaging memorization, practice, drills or the use of algorithms were removed. Standard algorithms are again mentioned. And in response to hearing a letter my daughter's teacher wrote articulating how she was "mandated to teach multiple strategies", minister Johnson turned to the math team leader Kris Reid and explicitly told him to change that. Teaching multiple strategies was no longer to be expected. With the start of the new school year, we, unfortunately, are finding out that these changes have not been clearly and promptly communicated to all teachers in Alberta because on the front-line, some parents are still battling it out with their teachers and principals to not have their children subjected to multiple counter-intuitive strategies to solve basic math problems. With the standard algorithms left as optional, some teachers are neglecting to emphasize the mastery of the algorithms; neglecting such a foundational skill is a great disservice to our children. And then there are school boards that are still spending taxpayers' dollars to hire discovery-math proponents to give seminars in their district. With respect to Inspiring Education, please note page 18 of the 2009 Inspiring Education document: "In no case will progress toward the vision be achieved without the support of the broader community." We're here to tell you that the ministry does not have the support of the broader community. Inspiring Education had only about 3800 participants. 1400 of which engaged in the Fall 2009 Provincial Forum. Of the 1400, 63% voted for transformation and 28% voted for a complete overhaul of the curriculum. That's a total of 1274 individuals. May I present to you this new petition with over 1300 Albertans voting to stop the Inspiring Education agenda. With all due respect, Minister Dirks, contrary to what the Inspiring Education presupposes "Albertans want", the majority of Albertans like ourselves do NOT support the full implementation of Inspiring Education. Will you, Minister Dirks, listen to us Albertans as Premier Prentice mandated to "restore the bond of trust between Albertans and their government?" At first glance, the Inspiring Education document does seem quite inspiring because we want our children to be creative and critical-thinkers. But we need to be honest with ourselves and admit that these esteemed competencies are neither new nor exclusive to the 21st century. Where we are today is because of the highly-skilled and knowledgeable critical thinkers of the 20th century. The world has been changing since the beginning of time, and change has evolved for centuries from either stupidity or critical-thinking. I, as an educated person, would only be sold on 21st century skills if they were the personal ability to fly or the power to predict the unpredictable future. When you examine the Inspiring Education document closely, you will note that 1) it is rather disingenuous for the proponents to suggest these ideas of what Albertans wanted really came from Albertans because it echoes the mantras of educational gurus across Alberta and other jurisdictions that have bought into the new-age progressive/inquiry-based/21st century-learning educational fads, 2) there are glaring conflicts of interest between Sharon Friesen, a known proponent of the inquiry-based ideology, and her being hired as the steering committee lead for IE. In other words, the direction of the curriculum redesign was already predetermined at the outset. In fact, the corporate ties and entrepreneurial spirit pushed on our children by IE is highly suspect. 3) IE has the potential to inflict great harm on the education of our children, as with the discovery math curriculum, when it proposes that "Albertans must abandon our image of what school is", that we should "focus more on competencies...less emphasis on knowing something, and more emphasis on knowing how to access information about it", and that they want to "shift education away from a process of disseminating information to a process of inquiry and discovery." If you argue that the basics will still be taught, you need only listen to the Inspiring Ed symposium in Calgary to know that it was saturated with constructivist-proponents chanting that the "focus is no longer on learning to read, but reading to learn" and how they revered extremist such as Alfie Kohn. It is a dangerous precedent to even suggest that a child can read to learn without first great emphasis, time and practice on learning to read. By the same token, it is also presumptuous to think a student can think critically when they are deprived of knowledge and skills necessary for critical thinking. If you argue that IE is not dictating how teachers teach, then read IE's vision of defining teachers as "architects in learning". The over-indulgence on inquiry-based, student-centred/personalized-learning, a responsive curriculum/e-learning, differentiated learning approaches are all with the intent to ultimately undermine the essence of teaching and the expertise and wisdom of teachers. When the Wildrose crossed the floor, Premier Prentice signed a contract promising to "protect the rights of parents in making informed choices pertaining to their child's education." Therefore, to fully implement the Inspiring Education policy across the province is to infringe upon the rights of parents to choose the form of education for our children. We have not given you consent to breakdown our formal education system, to disparage our schools as industrial-era, showing pomposity and ungratefulness to a system that has nurtured you and everyone that have made Canada a great nation. We have not given you consent to take away our children's print-based textbooks and libraries, to go against expert medical advices and inflict health risks on our children by subjecting them to a digitally-based curriculum. Will you bear responsibility for the deterioration in our children's physical, cognitive, mental health and social development from the overuse of technology and what cost will you compensate the health care system? We have not given you consent to cut content and knowledge from the curriculum when we know that in a world saturated with information, we need more than ever knowledgeable and wise citizens. We have not given you consent to follow unproven fads that are failing in other jurisdictions such as the UK and Australia. In fact, there is now a reinvestment on traditional teaching methods and legislation put in place to mandate the teaching of and emphasis on foundational skills Minister Dirks, what we want is for you to halt the Inspiring Education agenda by 2016. Confine it to only the schools that are already piloting it, and grant parents the right to choose whether they would want their children to be educated in such manners. Perhaps, Minister Dirks, you would be so kind as to rewrite the Ministerial Orders so that we parents know that our children are actually taking something concrete out of school, that they are enriched with knowledge and skills at school. If you look at the timeline of the Education Reform Movement in Alberta, you will see that every few decades, the "progressive" reformers resurrect their failed educational ideologies. What ensues are documented deterioration in students' knowledge and skills. Time and again, to rectify the damage, the academics/parents are compelled to push back on these fads in order to raise academic standards and restore academic excellence. Each time the pendulum swings to the far end, the system fails a whole new generation of children -- recall all the children who couldn't read or write properly after the Whole Language experiment or the countless children who were too distracted to learn because of the open classroom concept. Unlike medicine where the side effects and wounds are apparent, the walking wounded in education are the ones living in ignorance or poverty or stuck in jobs they do not want; they are our children whose dreams remain unfulfilled and whose doors have been closed by a system that has failed them. This time, we will not let the pendulum swing back to the far end. We will maintain Alberta's history of excellence by stopping this Inspiring Education agenda now. With the fiscal shortage, the disastrous student learning assessments, the soaring school fees, the delays in building the promised new schools/modulars, it is clearly unethical for the ministry to invest anymore of our taxpayers' dollars on this curricular and pedagogical redesign. We will not let our children be victims of another failed experiment." KEY RECOMMENDATIONS 1. K-12 Mathematics Curriculum for Fall 2015 • Explicit requirement that students be taught standard algorithms for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Standard algorithms are not optional. • Explicit reminders that teachers are NOT mandated to teach and test multiple math strategies. When deemed necessary, alternative strategies can be employed for supportive or enhancement purposes. • Remove the over-emphasis on estimation in favour of regular arithmetic practice for development of efficiency, proficiency and accuracy. • Reduce time spent on patterns. • Promptly revise the Authorized Resources list to include other recommended texts such as JUMP math, Singapore Math and Saxon Math. Pearson should NOT monopolize teaching resources or curriculum. • Ensure funding for teacher-training and math-subject specialists. 2. Inspiring Education Agenda (effective immediately) • Halt further implementation of the Inspiring Education curriculum redesign. • Obtain consent from parents where Inspiring Education is test-piloted before further experimental changes are imposed on their children. • Protect parental rights to choose the forms of education (e.g., traditional-based vs inquiry-based model) for their children. • Support a strong content-rich curriculum by NOT slashing content and specified outcomes. Standards of knowledge and skills are compulsory. • Remove all disparaging languages from the Inspiring Education documents regarding the current school system (e.g., denigrating it as a factory/industrial-era model), the emphasis on acquiring knowledge (i.e., knowing something) and the need for practice, memorization or use of formulas. • Deemphasize unproven methodologies such as personalized-learning or differentiated learning. • Remove Inspiring Education's focus on pedagogical changes; that is, avoid emphasizing inquiry-based learning over direct instruction. • Remove Pearson multinational digital textbook publisher as a partner in curriculum redesign. • Discontinue the partnership between C21 Canada software lobby group from the Ministry of Education. • Investigate the conflict of interest between the Inspiring Education project and Sharon Friesen, a known proponent of inquiry-based learning, as the steering committee lead of Inspiring Education. Investigate her close ties to David Scott who runs for-profit consulting firm, Galileo Educational Network. The direction of Inspiring Education was predetermined from the outset. • Reinstate funding for print-based textbooks/resources to minimize the screen time children are subjected to. • Limit unnecessary purchase and overuse of technology in the classroom. • Preserve our school libraries as separate entities to the mandated learning commons. • Maintain standardized testing at Grade 3, 6, 9 and 12 levels as well as a quantitative grading system on report cards. Remove the requirement for students to participate in graded group work. Student transcripts should not be impacted by the academic work of other students. • Revise the Ministerial Order to reinforce the continued emphasis on broad-base knowledge and skills in addition to the competencies. • Direct taxpayers' money to building of urgently needed schools and support of programs such as language studies, sports, art and music classes rather than unnecessary curricular and pedagogical redesign. • Reduce the dependence of Alberta Education on private tutoring for ensuring foundational knowledge and skills are learned and mastered. • Remove the need for a two-tiered educational system by protecting the quality of our public education system.