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Steps to Effective and Sustainable Public Education in Nova Scotia Report to Nova Scotia Department of Education Ben Levin, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto April 2011

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Page 1: Levin Report

Steps to Effective and Sustainable

Public Education in Nova Scotia

Report to Nova Scotia Department of EducationBen Levin, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

April 2011

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Steps to Effective and Sustainable

Public Education in Nova Scotia

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Steps to effective and sustainable public education in Nova Scotia: Report to Nova Scotia Department of Education

© Crown copyright, Province of Nova Scotia, 2011Prepared by the Department of Education

The contents of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part provided the intended use is for non-commercial purposes and full acknowledgment is given to Ben Levin and the Nova Scotia Department of Education.

Website References

Website References contained within this document are provided solely as a convenience and do not constitute an endorsement by the Department of Education of the content, policies, or products of the referenced website. The department does not control the referenced websites and subsequent links, and is not responsible for the accuracy, legality, or content of those websites. Referenced website content may change without notice.

Cataloguing-in-Publication DataLevin, Ben Steps to effective and sustainable public education in Nova Scotia: Report to Nova Scotia Department of Education / written by Ben Levin, OISE, University of Toronto.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-55457-420-9

1. Educational change—Nova Scotia. 2. School improvement programs—Nova Scotia. 3. Effective teaching—Nova Scotia. I. Nova Scotia. Department of Education II. Title.

379.158–ddc22 2011

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Executive SummaryThe challenge for education in Nova Scotia today is to educate many more students to much higher levels of accomplishment, in a broad variety of areas, than ever before. We have increasing evidence from many sources that this is indeed possible.

The ideas in this report are intended to provide options and opportunities for the system to develop in positive ways, have a good base of evidence, and could be implemented across the whole system within a few years.

Good outcomes do not come from money alone but from the thoughtful application of resources to proven methods of good education. Whatever the level of resourcing, it is usually possible to increase effectiveness by improving the way that resources are used.

The report defines five key areas of focus for the province.

1. Reducing Failure Throughout the System. A reasonable estimate would be that even excluding special education, about 10 percent of total system spending is devoted to remedying the effects of initial failure, when it would be cheaper and better to prevent failure in the first place. The idea of failure as necessary to maintain standards is deeply engrained in our thinking about education. However a very large amount of research shows clearly that failure tends to depress, not increase, future effort, whether in education or in other areas of life.

2. Improving Daily Teaching, Learning and Assessment Practices. Working to improve daily teaching practices in line with evidence has great potential to yield better outcomes. There are more and more areas where we have good reliable evidence on effective practices. The task is to help people use those practices consistently.

3. Allowing More Things to ‘Count’ as Learning for Purposes of Earning School Credentials. Finding ways to encourage and recognize more forms of learning is both efficient and effective, and can be very motivating for students. Embracing some version of ‘any time learning’ has the potential to be efficient, effective, and highly motivating.

4. Building Public Support and Engagement. One of the lessons of education reform in recent years is that school improvement can only happen when all partners in education—students, parents, staff, educators and governments—work together in a spirit of mutual respect and sincere effort. An honest and open process of communication, grounded on good access to information, will support improvement while it also creates more public support for the system.

5. Making Better Use of Existing Facilities and Resources. All organizations should be involved in continuing efforts to increase productivity by replacing less effective practices with more effective ones. The vast bulk of money for education is spent on salaries so improvement depends on making better use of people or in being able to generate the same or better results with fewer people, or some combination thereof.

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Specific Proposals

Nova Scotia as a system should examine how much retention in grade exists in the elementary schools and how much this could be reduced. A specific, and very low, target should be set for the proportion of students being retained and systems should be developed to ensure that students get additional support quickly to allow them to catch up.

One important way to reduce the pressure for retention in elementary schools is to build stronger connections between local elementary schools and preschools or day cares.

A second approach to connecting schools and preschool is the use of an instrument to assess the capacities of four- and five-year-olds. The point is not just to collect data, but to act on the data in ways that decrease failure and increase equity of outcomes.

The most important area for reducing failure is in high schools, as this is where most repeated courses or additional years of schooling take place. This is highly wasteful in all ways. Real increases in high school graduation rates require a comprehensive strategy that focuses on four pillars: knowing all the students and intervening early when problems arise; programs that give every student the opportunity of a good outcome; strong connections with parents and communities; and improving daily teaching and learning practices. Every high school should have an organized system for knowing the progress of all students and for intervening early, before students fail, to increase the proportion of students who successfully meet all their course requirements each year.

An education system that was able to reduce the number of children requiring special education services would improve efficiency significantly. The highest performing countries tend to have very low rates of special education placement.

This report makes three recommendations in this area. First, every effort should be made to reduce paperwork requirements related to the special education system and to ensure that such requirements do have clear benefits for students.

Second, the province should assess the academic progress of students identified with learning disabilities or behavioural issues to see if they are making reasonable progress.

Third, given the weak evidence on benefits, Nova Scotia should consider reducing the number of teaching assistants in special education in favour of more training for classroom teachers to support a wider range of students and intensive interventions that allow struggling students return to regular programs and expectations in a short period of time.

Increasing Effective Teaching

Over the next few years, Nova Scotia should, through a collaborative process, set out good teaching and learning practices in those areas where there is sufficient research evidence, and should seek to make those practices close to universal in schools, just as is the case in other professions. The active engagement of the teaching profession is central to this effort. Good practice is not something that professionals are ordered to do; it is something that they own and embrace as part of their professional identity. Also essential is helping principals and other leaders learn how to be better leaders of instructional development.

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One of the very highest yield strategies is to use assessment for learning practices. Assessment for learning, or formative assessment, should become a normal expectation for all Nova Scotia classrooms.

In all work on instructional improvement, the voices of students are important. The Nova Scotia system should ensure that students play a significant role in the formulation of education policy and in the assessment of the state and needs of the system but even more to provide feedback on their learning experiences and needs.

Information technology is changing the way people learn and work. However technology use in schools should begin from good teaching and learning practice, not from a desire to use technology. We should not be afraid in any way of efforts to use IT in new ways, but information technology alone is not a starting point for improvement.

Opening Up Modes of Recognized Learning

The province should encourage more independent learning by students. Independent learning is an essential skill today for every adult yet one that is not much supported in schools.

Students should be encouraged to enroll in courses or programs that do not require physical attendance at a school, or require it only some of the time. This would include online learning, arrangements negotiated with teachers to include independent learning into regular courses, and appropriate recognition for real knowledge and skills developed outside the school, such as learning a language or an art.

Standards and processes need to be set to make sure that independent learning is meaningful, but also that the process is not excessively bureaucratic or difficult.

It is entirely reasonable to think that every high school graduate should have at least one significant independent learning accomplishment. Principals should have discretion to substitute two or three compulsory courses with roughly equivalent external learning.

The province should develop an active program of dual credits, in which high school students can take college or university courses for secondary school credit.

Building Engagement, Public Support, and Confidence

The province should set a small number of clear, easy to understand goals for the system. Progress on these goals should be measured and publicly reported regularly, with attention not only to overall levels of accomplishment, but also to levels of equity.

A second critical element is creating the forums where the interested parties can meet and debate what needs to be done in education. Participation in these dialogues has to include educators, but also parents, students, and other community groups, especially those that have not experienced the desired degree of success such as African Canadian, Aboriginal, and disability groups. It is important that every school and district be a place that is collegial and respectful for all participants.

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A third proposal is that the Department of Education and the school boards minimize new policies or program initiatives over the next three years. Reporting requirements should be reduced. The rate of introduction of new or revised curricula should be slowed down and in general schools should be able to count on several years in which they will not face significant new requirements or initiatives either from the province or from their own boards.

While respectful dialogue is important, evidence also matters. Although a small province, Nova Scotia has enough research capacity to strengthen greatly the availability and use of good evidence in the education policy debate. Nova Scotia should develop and implement a strategy to do this.

Making Most Effective Use of People and Facilities

Proposals made above will contribute substantially to this goal. However other suggestions include:

• Reducing teacher turnover. A good system has a low rate of teacher turnover, especially among young teachers. The province and districts should set a goal of reducing turnover among early career teachers to no more than 10 percent in the first five years.

• Reducing extra credits. A considerable number of secondary students in Nova Scotia obtain many more credits than are required to graduate. While there can be understandable reasons for this, they come at a significant cost. Nova Scotia should gather data on how many students are completing extra credits and years, and open a discussion as to whether the resources used for this purpose would be better allocated to other purposes.

• Reducing excess capacity in school facilities. Rapid declines in enrolment necessarily mean that there is much excess space in schools across the province. Closing schools is always a challenge. Schools should not be closed if they are a considerable distance from the next school; putting students, especially in elementary school years, on long bus rides is undesirable. However there would appear to be quite a few schools across the province with other accommodation close by, and significant savings from closing some of these schools. The province will need to work with boards in this effort. The province might also consider some incentives, such as providing some funds for renovation of schools to accommodate students from nearby schools that are closing.

• Community use of schools. It makes much sense to have school facilities used more extensively for a range of related purposes, from community recreation to associated services to child care. The province should experiment with allowing school boards and other partners to recapture funds freed by more effective use of facilities, and should also encourage sharing of facilities between the secondary and post-secondary sector.

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Implementation

Achieving these goals will require redirecting the work of both the department and the school board administrations from the usual focus on administrative matters to a focus on addressing priorities related to student outcomes. One of the main tasks in Nova Scotia should be to look at these implementation issues across the entire system. The department should also work with school boards to develop survey instruments that can provide regular feedback from students and parents on the schools.

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ContentsBackground ..............................................................................................................................1

Scope of the Report ................................................................................................................2

A Perspective on Improvement and Student Outcomes ......................................................3

A Perspective on Education Resources ...................................................................................4

The Role of Research and Evidence ........................................................................................5

The Need for a Strategy ..........................................................................................................5

Some Things Not to Prioritize .................................................................................................6

Five Areas of Focus ..................................................................................................................7

Specific Recommendations or Areas of Focus .....................................................................10

Special Education ..................................................................................................................11

Increasing Effective Teaching ...............................................................................................13

A Word on Technology ..........................................................................................................15

Opening Up Modes of Recognized Learning ......................................................................16

Building Engagement, Public Support, and Confidence .....................................................18

Making Most Effective Use of People and Facilities ...........................................................20

Implementation .....................................................................................................................22

Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................23

Notes .......................................................................................................................................25

Note 1: Expectations ...........................................................................................................25

Note 2: Resources ................................................................................................................26

Note 3: Research .................................................................................................................27

Note 4: Grade Retention ....................................................................................................27

Note 5: Special Education Programs ..................................................................................28

Note 6: Educational Assistants ...........................................................................................28

Note 7: Online Learning .....................................................................................................29

Note 8: Dual Credits ............................................................................................................30

Note 9: Teacher Attrition ....................................................................................................30

References ..............................................................................................................................31

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Steps to Effective and Sustainable

Public Education in Nova Scotia1

BackgroundThis report was commissioned by the Nova Scotia Ministry of Education to suggest ways in which public education in Nova Scotia can become more effective and more efficient given the realities of social and fiscal pressures.

Nova Scotia, like other jurisdictions, is facing the challenge of how best to create a high quality, high equity public education system. This dual focus on high levels of achievement coupled with high levels of equity in outcomes is a significant change even from a few decades ago as jurisdictions realize increasingly that public education must aim for good results for all, not just for some. These higher goals are themselves the result of the success of public education over the last several decades; as student performance has increased, the public appetite for even more has grown.

All this is to say that public schools in Nova Scotia, as in Canada generally, have much to be proud of. Public education has provided Canada with high levels of skill for large numbers of people, has done so at reasonable cost, and has led to less inequality in educational outcomes than is the case in most other countries (Knighton, Brochu, and Gluszynski, 2010). This is a record all Nova Scotians should be proud of.

However no system can rest on its laurels. In a world of change, schools run up constantly against new challenges and pressures. From the standpoint of educators, these challenges include changing demographics such as student ethnicity or family structures, changes in knowledge that need to be reflected in school curricula, changes in technology, changes in the labour market that affect what students need to know and be able to do, and changes in student and parent expectations, among others. The challenge today is to educate many more students to much higher levels of accomplishment, in a broad variety of areas, than ever before. The challenge is also to ensure that the benefits of education reach everyone in the province, and that achievement is not linked to factors such as socio-economic background or ethnic origin, as it still is today. This is a daunting but also an exciting and energizing task.

In Nova Scotia two other challenges are particularly significant. First, the government faces enormous fiscal pressures due not only to recent economic events that have affected Canada and the world, but also to declining revenue from the province’s oil and gas industry. In the case of public education, that pressure is exacerbated by steady

1. IwishtoacknowledgetheresearchassistanceofSachinMaharajandlogisticalsupportfromReginaHui.ManypeopleinNovaScotiaprovidedinputandtheDepartmentofEducationprovidedmuchdataformyreview.Allopinions,interpretations,anderrorsareminealone.

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declines in enrolment in Nova Scotia schools, from more than 210,000 in 1971 to 156,000 in 2000, to 129,000 today, with further declines over the next few years to less than 115,000.

In responding to these challenges, the Nova Scotia Department of Education wants to maintain a perspective that seeks better outcomes for more students with no more, and preferably less, inequity in those outcomes. Thus the goal of this report is to suggest ways in which the department and Nova Scotia schools can continue to focus on improvement and development while also recognizing the very real fiscal pressures on the public sector in the province.

Nova Scotia has some very promising features on which to do this work. Relationships among the stakeholders are generally good. Of course frictions exist, as they always will, but there is a willingness to listen to each other and to work together that bodes well for handling difficult circumstances. And over the last few years the province has produced some very good policy work, such as the Increasing Learning Success (Nova Scotia, 2008) report and the 2010 collaborative effort on improving professional development, although the degree to which these have been put into practice is quite unclear.

An additional complication in writing this report is that the fiscal challenge and potential reductions in expenditure are creating significant stress across the system. So on the one hand, there is a desire for significant change but on the other hand, worries that the system will already face pressures to which it will be difficult to respond.

Scope of the ReportThe terms of reference are appended. It is important to say both what the purpose of this report is, and what it is not.

• The report aims to provide ideas grounded in evidence that could help improve education outcomes in Nova Scotia given fiscal and demographic circumstances. The ideas here will need further elaboration and adaptation but they should provide options and opportunities for the system in Nova Scotia to develop in positive ways. This work should complement and support the ‘Visioning’ effort that is also now underway.

• In making these proposals I am trying to identify options that could make a significant difference for students, have a good base of evidence, and could be implemented across the whole system within a few years.

• The report is not about how to cut expenditures, or how to save money, nor does it take any position on the adequacy of funding of schools in Nova Scotia. Decisions on overall funding levels and funding formulas are and will continue to be made through the normal political and governmental process. My position on resources in education generally is described a little later.

• The report contains a range of recommendations and suggestions, ranging from quite specific proposals to broader areas for further consideration. This approach seems consistent with the above goals and scope. Suggested areas for action are in bold type within the text.

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An important challenge in writing this report has been how to balance breadth of coverage with depth of analysis. The intent of this exercise is to produce a report that speaks to a broad range of readers, including parents and students as well as government, and offers general directions rather than very specific proposals. That argues for a document focused on big ideas. It also means that important issues are necessarily treated rather briefly. As well, I reviewed a large amount of data on the Nova Scotia school system, but reference only some of that data in this report. I have tried to strike a good balance by keeping the main report short while providing additional information through a full set of references and in some areas extended notes with references.

A Perspective on Improvement and Student Outcomes

Schools are expected to achieve many purposes, both academic and social. Indeed, a main challenge for schools is the many different and sometimes conflicting expectations people have for them.

In the short term, schools are primarily concerned with students’ achievement in relation to the range of objectives in the curriculum, and with students’ social skills. In the longer term, we want our schools to help students find a productive path in life, encompassing not only their intellectual skills and further education, but also their ability to gain meaningful employment, to live as good citizens, and to participate fully in society.

This is a tall order for a single institution to fulfill; one reason that people are so often critical of schools is that our expectations for our education system are so very high.

At the same time, new research is showing us just how much is possible. At one time not so long ago (well within the memory of people living today), it was felt that higher levels of education were only required or appropriate for small proportions of the population. Gradually this belief has changed, and we have discovered that many more people were capable of much higher levels of accomplishment than had earlier been thought possible. Fifty years ago the idea that virtually all students should graduate from high school, and half or so should pursue post-secondary education would have been thought wildly improbable; today it is conventional wisdom, has been accomplished in some countries, and is the aspiration of most. This is a huge change in a short period of time.

Moreover, quite a bit of research of various kinds has shown that people, at all stages of life, are often capable, with the right supports and motivation, of achieving much more than they or others thought possible. We have learned that we often underestimate potential and then act in ways that prevent rather than help students in achieving important goals [Note 1]. We may not know what the limits for student performance are, but we can be quite confident that we have not yet reached them. In particular, the gaps in outcomes among different groups of students related to ethnicity or geography, though smaller in Canada than in most other countries, are still far too large, with serious negative consequences not only for those students but for the society at large,

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since social inequality is connected with worse outcomes for everyone (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009). The systematic inequities in educational outcomes for Aboriginal students, African Canadian students, or students from poor families and communities are neither acceptable nor necessary.

There is also much debate in education about the need for ‘transformation’ of schools. I take the view that school systems, like all other organizations, do require continuing innovation to generate improvement. However it is also the case that a great deal of recent innovation in schools has not yielded much lasting benefit (Levin, 2010). So my basic orientation is that the main focus should be on using what we know to improve existing systems and processes, and that innovation, while important, has to be carefully organized and evaluated so that changes are not made unless there is good evidence for them.

Similarly, pilot projects can play a role in helping determine the value of particular approaches. However too often pilot projects remain just that, and are never really integrated into the system as a whole, in which case they have little value.

A Perspective on Education ResourcesAlthough this report is not about money or financing of schools, it does begin with an economic perspective that emerges from a growing body of research internationally (e.g. Grubb, 2009; Levin and Naylor, 2007) [Note 2]. The central assumptions are:

• Money is an important input to education.• Good outcomes do not come from money alone but from the thoughtful application

of resources to proven methods of good education. • There will never be enough money to do all the things that people in a system think

are desirable, so difficult choices are always necessary.• There are demonstrably better and worse choices around the way that school

resources, including money, are used to support good school outcomes. However we tend to privilege what was done in past as opposed to looking at evidence on how to use resources most effectively.

• Other inputs, such as trust and leadership, are catalytic in the sense that they allow more benefit to be obtained from the same quantity of resources.

To put this another way, whatever the level of resourcing, it is usually possible to increase effectiveness (or what economists would call productivity) by improving the way that resources are used. That perspective shapes this report.

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The Role of Research and EvidenceThe knowledge base around good policy and practice in education has grown dramatically in the last couple of decades [Note 3]. Although there is much we still do not know, in many areas we do have much better grounds for preferring some approaches to others. Nova Scotia has done some good work in this regard through some of the recent reports and analyses. Throughout this report I emphasize the importance of basing what we do in schools on the best available evidence, carefully considered.

The Need for a StrategyTo a remarkable extent, school systems everywhere have operated with at best an implicit, and often no clear strategy as to how outcomes can be improved and inequities decreased. Existing practices continue with little evaluation of their effectiveness and new practices are also often introduced without good supporting evidence, causing a substantial waste of energy and resources. Initiatives tend to be introduced one at a time, with each heralded as vital but with little connection among them. The Nova Scotia report Increasing Learning Success is one instance of an effort to describe an overall strategy but it is not clear that the analysis has been accompanied by the necessary efforts at implementation.

In a recent book on improved schooling (Levin, 2008) I identified nine core school practices and four supporting system practices that have substantial evidence supporting their effectiveness in leading to better school outcomes and that taken together provide an overall strategy for an education system. Those practices are:

A. School Practices• high expectations for all students• strong personal connections between students and adults• greater student engagement and motivation• a rich and engaging formal and informal curriculum• effective teaching practices in all classrooms on a daily basis• effective use of data and feedback by students and staff to improve learning• early support with minimum disruption for students in need• strong positive relationships with parents• effective engagement of the broader community

B. System Practices• engagement and commitment by the adults in the system• effective collective processes for educators to continue to improve their practices

(often referred to as professional learning communities)• aligned, coherent and supportive system policies and practices• appropriate allocation of resources

In the couple of years since that book was published, further evidence has surfaced to support these claims—for example, John Hattie’s meta-analysis of more than 800

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other research reviews (Hattie, 2009). Everything else in this report builds on this set of conditions as basic elements of a strong education system. Every province, and each district within the province, should have a clear statement of strategy and priorities: the range of things that are important, the much smaller number of things (preferably no more than three) that are of the very highest priority, and an explicit theory of action as to how the strategy and priorities will produce the desired results. This should be a brief, public document that is at the centre of all decisions on initiatives, priorities, and budgets.

A strategy is necessary, but not enough. Many strategy documents have been produced but few have been put into action in lasting and effective ways. Indeed, my central view is that real improvement in an education system only comes about through relentless attention to system-wide effective use of well-grounded practices. Announcements of new policies and programs are exciting but always insufficient and sometimes actually counterproductive. I have more to say at the end of this report on the requirements for effective implementation of and support for improvement.

Some Things Not to PrioritizeI have been struck for years about how much effort in education goes into proposals and policies that cannot produce the desired results. Here I provide a short list of areas that should NOT be the focus of system-wide change in Nova Scotia in the near future because evidence is that even though they may be appealing to some people, these efforts do not produce benefits that are commensurate to the effort expended.

• governance arrangements such as the number of school boards, their duties, or their boundaries

• professional certification, unionization, teacher evaluation, or the status of principals as part of the bargaining unit

• pre-service education of teachers• choice and competition among schools• accountability systems, testing, or inspection• school size or the organization of grades or timetables• focusing on new curriculum documents instead of on teaching and

learning practices

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Five Areas of FocusThe recommendations that follow are intended to address one or more of five main areas of focus that I believe have the most potential to help build a strong public education program in Nova Scotia in the context of limited resources. These five areas are:

1. Reducing Failure Throughout the System

2. Improving Daily Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Practices

3. Allowing More Things to ‘Count’ as Learning for Purposes of Earning School Credentials

4. Building Public Support and Engagement

5. Making Better Use of Existing Facilities and Resources

1. Reducing Failure Throughout the System. In any system, correcting problems is often less effective and more expensive than preventing the problems in the first place. So I make a series of proposals as to how students can be more successful throughout the system, leading to less need for remediation, special education, and the costly and ineffective practice of repeating courses or grades. Reducing failure by getting things right the first time is a fundamental element of system improvement in any system; there is no reason education should be an exception.

As noted earlier, Nova Scotia has an enviable record of student success in its schools, including one of the higher high school graduation rates in Canada. However even this strong record includes a substantial degree of student failure. Fifteen percent of students do not complete high school at all, many others take at least an extra year to complete, and of those who do graduate another significant—though undetermined—proportion fail or withdraw from at least one course during their high school years. It is reasonable to assume that something like 25 percent of the total resources of the secondary system are devoted to students repeating courses or years. Even in elementary schools, systems that have actually analyzed grade repetition have found there to be much more than they thought; as many as 10 percent of students may be taking an additional year to complete the elementary grades. So a reasonable estimate would be that even excluding special education, about 10 percent of total system spending, or something like $80 million per year, is devoted to remedying the effects of initial failure, of which probably three quarters is in the high school years.

The idea of reducing the amount of failure may seem counterintuitive if not downright disagreeable to many people. The idea of failure as necessary to maintain standards is deeply engrained in our thinking about education. However a very large amount of research shows clearly that failure tends to depress, not increase, future effort, whether in education or in other areas of life [Note 4]. It is success based on real effort that builds people’s confidence and their desire to do more. Of course students should not be moved along in the system without real skills, but failing them is not a good strategy to help them acquire those skills.

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Further, it is hard to think of another field that regards a large amount of failure as an indication of quality. Any business with a 10 percent failure rate in its services or products would soon be out of business! The goal of every enterprise, including schooling, must be the highest possible quality with the lowest possible failure rate, and everything we know about education, as noted earlier, says that we have consistently underestimated what is possible given determined effort.

2. Improving Daily Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Practices. The heart of schooling lies in what students do every day, yet most school reforms tend to focus away from the classroom. Working to improve daily teaching practices in line with evidence has great potential to yield better outcomes and we know a reasonable amount about how to make this happen.

Everyone agrees that teaching and learning is the heart of the educational process yet remarkably few education reforms are actually about teaching and learning, and many of those are not firmly grounded in reliable empirical evidence. Instead, we persist in fiddling with school structures, timetables, or curriculum documents, or we adopt a program that some school elsewhere claims to be successful. Neither of these approaches does much to change what most students do every day.

As noted earlier, there is an increasing knowledge base about good teaching and learning practice. While there is much we do not know, there are more and more areas where we have good reliable evidence on effective practices. In most professions, evidence of good outcomes would immediately lead to efforts to make those practices universal across the profession. In education, instead, we have a romantic idea that each school and teacher should find its own way to good practice. Imagine if we applied that principle to medicine or to engineering. To say that we expect the widespread use of good practice is not to deprofessionalize teachers. Quite the opposite; it is to give them the tools to do their jobs well, and to use their judgment where it is most needed, which is in the many situations where ‘the usual’ does not apply.

3. Allowing More Things to ‘Count’ as Learning for Purposes of Earning School Credentials. Students can and do learn many important things outside the formal school system. Finding ways to encourage and recognize more of that learning is both efficient and effective, and can be very motivating for students. It would also reduce the pressure on schools to add more programs.

School rests on the basic idea that learning happens in its walls during scheduled times. That is why we have the whole apparatus of days, hours, attendance, and so on. Yet we all recognize that most of what everyone learns is learned out of school—indeed, out of any formal learning situation. Of course all learning involves focus and effort, but this is a different thing from an institutional schedule. New information technologies have compounded this feature of learning as they offer enormous and rapid access to huge amounts of knowledge and skill.

While there has been much talk about open learning over the years, no school system of which I am aware has done very much of it. New Zealand, for example, has a qualification framework specifically designed to support recognition of external learning, but in practice there is very little such recognition. Yet embracing some version of ‘any time learning’ has the potential to be efficient, effective, and highly motivating.

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4. Building Public Support and Engagement. A public education system can only be successful if it has the support of the people of the province—parents and others. An honest and open process of communication, grounded on good access to information, will support improvement while it also creates more public support for the system.

One of the lessons of education reform in recent years is that school improvement can only happen when all partners in education—students, parents, staff, educators and governments—work together in a spirit of mutual respect and sincere effort. People cannot be threatened or frightened into better teaching any more than students can be threatened into learning. It is very tempting, but in the long term fruitless, for policy-makers to put in place policies that will ‘force’ people to do better.

However support inside the sector must be coupled with serious engagement with the public which, after all, sends its children and provides the money for public education. The people of Nova Scotia will support public education if they believe that the schools are working hard on behalf of and have an unrelenting commitment to all the children of the province and to their families. Although educator support is critical, the system does not exist for its staff, but for students and their families.

5. Making Better Use of Existing Facilities and Resources. As in most organizations, many current practices in schools are allowed to continue primarily due to inertia. The main reason most things are done in a given way in any organization is that that is the way they were done yesterday or last year.

In schooling and public services the slogan of ‘doing more with less’ has a bad name, and often with good reason. The goal is not to have everyone work harder, but to allow people to achieve more with approximately the same or even less effort. Doing more of the same tends to yield diminishing returns; gains in effectiveness come from doing things in different ways that yield more result. All organizations, including schools, have room for improved efficiency based on new knowledge about productive activity. All organizations should be involved in continuing efforts to increase productivity by replacing less effective practices with more effective ones.

In schools, the vast bulk of money is spent on salaries (in most systems approximately 60 percent for teaching and about 20 percent for support staff), so improvement depends on making better use of people or in being able to generate the same or better results with fewer people, or some combination thereof. That is why the main recommendations in this report have to do with how people—teachers, students, and others—use their time and how the system helps them get better at their work. Although it is often said that the focus of education spending should be on resources in the classrooms, education is a complex process that requires the right balance between what happens in the classroom and the supports for teachers and students to allow them to be effective. A better way to prioritize is to focus resources based on a well-tested theory of schooling and learning, not on simplistic nostrums. In such a theory, as noted earlier, classrooms play a central role but the supporting conditions for good practice are also very important. Removing essential supports is not a way to improve classroom practice (though of course there is much debate about what counts as ‘essential’).

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Specific Recommendations or Areas of FocusNova Scotia as a system should examine how much retention in grade exists in the elementary schools, why, and how much of this could be reduced. It seems likely that much of retention in primary occurs after consultation with parents, but there will be other students repeating grades throughout the elementary years. It seems likely that the prevalence will vary considerably from one school or board to another. If one were to keep in mind that each repeated year costs nearly $9,000 (approximately the average annual operating cost per student), then it should be possible, using less money, to put in place supports such as tutoring or other support programs that can help students be successful and so reduce the need for retention. Once the current situation in terms of retention is known, a specific, and very low, target should be set for the proportion of students being retained and systems should be developed to ensure that students get additional support quickly to allow them to catch up so that they can continue to make progress.

One important way to reduce the pressure for retention in elementary schools is to build stronger connections with preschool programs. Where schools and child care work together, student transitions are easier and teachers are better prepared to work with the particularities of new students and the parents are better acquainted with the school. Co-operation among staff in terms of expectations and approaches to working with children is helpful to transition at every stage, including initial entry to school. Much can be done just by having some personal contact between local elementary schools and preschools or daycares.

Another approach to connecting schools and preschool is the use of an instrument to assess the capacities of four- and five-year-olds. A number of these presently exist, designed to give the system an overall picture of the strengths and challenges of young children. The Early Development Inventory is already widely used in Nova Scotia although not long enough to get a full picture of how these data relate to school success. Data on students’ capacities is important, but unless people know what to do to increase success, the danger with such instruments is that they may increase educators’ sense that students are not capable, when their purpose is actually to identify areas in which different supports can lead to success. The point is not just to collect data, but to act on the data in ways that decrease failure and increase equity of outcomes. Discussions at the board and provincial level would be useful to move this agenda forward.

The most important area for reducing failure is in high schools, as this is where most repeated courses or additional years of schooling take place. One in seven students in Nova Scotia are not graduating, and some further proportion take at least an extra term or year to do so. In Alberta and Ontario (and very likely in Nova Scotia), significant numbers of students come back for an extra year of high school in an attempt to graduate, but in both provinces only about a quarter to a third of those returnees graduate. This is highly wasteful in all ways.

Real increases in high school graduation rates require a comprehensive strategy that focuses on four pillars: knowing all the students and intervening early when problems arise; programs that give every student the opportunity of a good outcome; strong

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connections with parents and communities; and improving daily teaching and learning practices. All four elements are essential. The scope of this report does not permit a full exposition of these elements—indeed, I am writing a new book that describes this strategy in much more detail. A number of later recommendations also relate to this issue, but there is an immediate need, which is for every high school to have an organized system for knowing the progress of all students and for intervening early, before students fail, to increase the proportion of students who successfully meet all their course requirements each year. This is not a difficult thing to set up, and it has been shown to produce rapid and significant improvement just by having people pay more attention to the problem.

Further recommendations that would increase high school success rates are made later in regard to teaching and learning and student engagement.

Special EducationSpecial education is consuming a larger and larger share of education expenditures around the world. Since much special education is about children who are not doing well, it is appropriate to discuss under the heading of ‘reducing failure’. An education system that was able to reduce the number of children requiring special education services would improve efficiency significantly.

A full discussion of special education, which is perhaps the most complex policy area in the whole education system, is well beyond the scope of this report. In the last ten years Nova Scotia has conducted two reviews of its approach to special education. In this report I take up only a few of aspects of special education that seem to me to be fundamentally related to improving the efficiency of the Nova Scotia system.

The ideas behind special education are noble ones—to provide appropriate programs and services to children who are outside the mainstream in their skills and abilities. Many services are the result of hard fought battles by parents and advocates, and supported by court decisions. There have been many successes, such as the integration of children with complex physical and mental needs into schools. It is easy to forget that not so long ago children in wheelchairs or blind children could not even attend regular schools. In many cases, special education services led to dramatic improvements in educational outcomes for many children.

However in the last couple of decades this picture has changed. First, more and more children are being referred into special education and there seems no end to this increase. In Nova Scotia, while overall enrolment has declined by 2–3 percent a year, special education enrolments have grown by 3–4 percent a year. Since 2001, the proportion of students with IPPs has doubled. At one time, experts thought that 3–4 percent of all children might require special education services. Now many systems are around 15 percent with continuing pressure to increase these numbers.

This growth is due almost entirely to increases in what might be called the ‘soft’ areas of identification, especially students thought to have learning disabilities or behaviour

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problems. The number of children with actual physical disabilities has remained constant or possibly even declined. Nobody really knows whether the increases in these other categories are a result of real change in student performance or increased sensitivity to differences that at one time would have been regarded as part of the normal range of student behaviour; these are issues on which there is considerable disagreement.

In many education systems a major concern is the amount of effort that goes into the paperwork related to the special education system. Many days of staff time can go into preparing documentation for students, with much of it driven by administrative, legal or auditing requirements. Other systems have found that this documentation, including the content of many individual education plans, may have little impact on students’ experiences or learning. While the pressures to comply with legal or audit mandates are very real, the overarching purpose for work in the system should be that it has real benefits for students’ learning.

A more serious problem is that it is not clear that special education programs, although expensive, actually result in improved outcomes for students diagnosed with learning disabilities or behavioural problems. While experts do not agree on these matters, in all systems students placed in these programs continue to lag behind other students and sometimes the gap gets bigger rather than smaller. The limited literature on self-contained special education classes in these fields is not very positive in terms of short- and long-term improvement in student outcomes [Note 5]. There is hardly any evidence as to whether special education placement actually helps reduce achievement gaps, and there is the further concern that once students are placed in special education they almost never re-emerge into ‘regular’ program status. The highest performing countries tend to have very low rates of special education placement. Finland, for example, organizes support services in a much more flexible way so that students can get additional support quickly but in most cases for only a limited time, and are never formally ‘identified’ or ‘placed’ as is the case in most of Canada.

Third, much of the ‘programming’ for students in special education consists of attaching an education assistant or teacher aide to them on a full- or part-time basis. There are now some 2000 staff in Nova Scotia schools doing this work. Although parents often value their presence as showing some effort to support students, the empirical evidence does not show that having aides results in improved student performance, and at least some evidence shows that they can have the opposite effect—for example by creating situations in which these students actually get less time and attention from trained teachers [Note 6].

These comments are not meant to impugn the skills or commitment of anyone working in special education. It is quite possible to have a system in which the people are all well-intentioned and hard working but the overall outcome of the effort is not good, especially in a newly-emerging field such as special education that has a weak knowledge base along with strongly conflicting opinions among parents and advocates about the best models. But these positions do suggest that there could be significant benefits from some changes in some aspects of special education.

The Nova Scotia system should review documentation requirements related to student identification for special education. Special education systems tend to rely on extensive

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documentation such as special education plans or justifications for placement or resource allocation. Such plans make sense where they are clearly linked to classroom practices, but in many settings they are not. Sometimes they are not even written by classroom teachers. Reducing these requirements would immediately save significant staff time that can be reallocated to real services to students.

Less identification of students will also mean less demand for education assistants. Given the lack of evidence on the value of adding so many EAs for special education, Nova Scotia should commission research into this issue. Meanwhile, the goal should be to reduce gradually the number of education assistants and to have schools and districts consider whether some of these resources could be better used to help classroom teachers support a range of students, or to provide intensive but short-term interventions for struggling students with the goal of getting them back to regular programs and expectations in a short period of time (weeks, not years). This is what is done with much success in Finland and Singapore, two very high performing systems. Another option is to redeploy resources from classroom assistants to school-community work that supports connections with and the greater engagement of parents.

A third suggestion is to do more careful monitoring of the academic progress of students identified as having a learning disability of a behavioural challenge to see if the existing programs actually do allow these students to make good progress and to see how many return to ‘regular’ programs. Such information will provide a basis for more informed decisions about program options.

The most important single element in improving outcomes for struggling students is to work with classroom teachers and principals to strengthen their skills and confidence in working with diverse students. That is the focus of the next section of this report.

Increasing Effective TeachingOne of the most important things any education system can do is to increase teachers’ knowledge, understanding, and use of effective practices so that teaching is increasingly a collegial, professional activity grounded in the best available evidence.

As just noted, this approach is particularly important for students with diverse backgrounds and learning needs. There is much that regular classroom teachers can learn about differentiated instruction and particular ways of working more effectively with students who are struggling academically or behaviourally. As teachers feel more confident in their skills, they will feel less pressure to refer students to special education services. This can be done—as it was quite successfully in Ontario from 2005 to 2007—by redirecting professional development activity, in-school collective work, and parent engagement to focus on these vital skills.

However better teaching practice is not just an issue for struggling students; it is central to every classroom and to the whole system. Rather astoundingly, in education the effort to improve practice is, as noted in Report and Recommendations of the Education Professional Development Committee (Nova Scotia, 2009), rather hit and miss. We do

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not approach this learning in a systematic way. Most school systems have little capacity to do this work and very few departments of education are set up to support these efforts either. Yet the many connections among stakeholders and the strong commitment to working together in Nova Scotia makes this a very important area for change and improvement, as long as the emphasis is kept on actual teaching and learning practices.

Over the next few years, Nova Scotia should, through a collaborative process, set out good teaching and learning practices in those areas where there is sufficient evidence, and should seek to make those practices close to universal in schools, just as is the case in other professions. There is much evidence to suggest that this work will yield improved student outcomes while also making teaching more satisfying work.

The active engagement of the teaching profession is central to this effort. Good practice is not something that professionals are ordered to do; it is something that they own and embrace as part of their professional identity and provides the base from which innovation and professional creativity emerge. It happens through teachers working collectively along with good external inputs to adapt good practices to their own settings. The Nova Scotia Teachers Union and teachers across the province should be centrally involved in defining good teaching and learning practices, and in the work to make these practices normal in all schools.

Also essential to this collective learning is effective leadership from principals, department heads, and teacher leaders. Important work by Viviane Robinson and colleagues (2007) has showed how important it is for principals to be deeply involved with teachers in professional learning in the school. Accordingly, helping principals and other leaders learn how to be better leaders of instructional development should be the major focus of Nova Scotia’s leadership development work in the coming years.

While there are many effective teaching and learning strategies that should be in widespread use, such as building on students’ previous knowledge, using balanced literacy in the early years, using first language learning for ESL students, and others, one of the very highest yield strategies is to use assessment for learning practices (William, 2009). Assessment for learning, or formative assessment, should become a normal expectation for all Nova Scotia classrooms. Like other teaching practices, assessment for learning is not a recipe, but a set of ideas and possibilities. These include:

• clear criteria for and examples of good work, preferably with student input into the formation of the criteria, so that students understand clearly what quality looks like (Clear criteria also tend to result in more higher order skills instead of just recall of knowledge.)

• consistent criteria across subjects and courses, so that students could make wider use of generic learning and metacognitive skills

• alternative ways to demonstrate learning in a course consistent with the goals and criteria, such as different kinds of writing, or alternatives to writing, or combinations of group and individual work

• multiple opportunities to demonstrate learning, with evaluation based on the most consistent evidence of overall learning (which means an end to non-educational practices such as averaging marks across a term or course)

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Assessment for learning is especially important in high schools, where current practice may be farthest from these principles.

In all work on instructional improvement, the voices of students are important. Students’ views about their schools and teaching are powerful shapers of their performance and their views are also powerful for teachers (Wilms, Friesen and Milton, 2009; Thiessen and Cook-Sather, 2007). Moreover, just being heard is highly motivating for students. The Nova Scotia system should ensure that students play a significant role in the formulation of education policy and in the assessment of the state and needs of the system but even more to provide feedback on their learning experiences and needs. An organized ‘student voice’ initiative would provide structured means for students to take part. One aspect would be at the provincial and district level; elements could include elected student non-voting representatives on school boards and organized processes across the province for dialogue between student leaders, the department, and school boards.

The most important student voice work is at the school and classroom level, both elementary and secondary. Gathering data, formally and informally, from students about their schooling not only provides valuable information to teachers, it also tells students that their views matter and builds their understanding of their roles as the ‘owners’ of their own education. One strategy is to use surveys like those done in the Canadian Education Association’s What Did you Do in School Today? initiative to assess various aspects of students’ engagement in their schooling. Even more, teachers can gather regular informal feedback on various instructional practices using a variety of means, from informal surveys to class discussions. The department would work with boards to provide teachers with valid and reliable tools and strategies for gathering this feedback. Introducing all these steps would strengthen education across the province.

A Word on TechnologyMuch is written about how information technology will revolutionize learning. I am a sceptic. Over the last fifty years there have been repeated predictions that each new wave of technology, from television to video machines to computers to laptops to PDAs will change the schools dramatically. None of them has had that impact, despite spending quite large amounts of time and money on technology projects over that time (Cuban, 2001; Moss et al., 2007; Ungerleider and Burns, 2002). To simplify a much more complex issue, technology changes too quickly, and the school system is too large and stable to believe that large changes will come from technology-led initiatives. My view is that a considerable amount of time and money has been wasted on technology-driven reform efforts.

This is not at all to dismiss the importance of information technology, which is certainly changing the way people learn and work. However one should begin from good teaching and learning practice, not from a desire to use technology. Many recommendations made in this report will require changes in the way people use technology to support learning. So, while we should not be afraid in any way of efforts to use IT in new ways, neither is it desirable to view information technology as the starting point for improvement.

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Opening Up Modes of Recognized LearningI suggest that the province should encourage more independent learning by students. Independent learning is an essential skill today for every adult yet one that is not much supported in schools. I propose several actions to support this goal.

First, students should be encouraged to enroll in courses or programs that do not require physical attendance at a school, or require it only some of the time. Being able to manage one’s obligations in this independent way is a critical life skill. There are many online programs available already to support this kind of work, including virtual high schools across the world but also post-secondary and skills programs that could connect to dual credits (described in the next paragraph). Various systems to manage online learning already exist, so there is no need for Nova Scotia to develop its own online learning system or platform. Increasing access to online learning should not become an issue of competition among schools or districts for enrolments. The department will have to play a leadership role to ensure that online learning is efficient and effective, including evaluating success rates.

Independent learning does not, however, have to be online. Students should be able to negotiate with teachers arrangements in which they build independent learning into regular courses—by, for example, undertaking independent work on the course instead of attending some classes. As they will be required to do in university, students learn in this way to regulate their own effort and learning.

Further, a student who spends a summer on an archaeology or forestry project, or learning about child care while working at a camp, is also developing real and important skills and knowledge. Students should be able to get appropriate recognition for real knowledge and skills regardless of where these were acquired. Typically referred to in the higher education world as “Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition,” PLAR policies exist in some school systems but are rarely used. Nova Scotia could be much more active in this area, designating a whole range of areas in which students could have outside skill and knowledge evaluated for school credit. Among the most compelling examples:

• knowing how to read, write, and speak a language• a particular skill such as music, art, a sport, or a craft• knowledge obtained from self-study of something of special interest, such as the

depth of knowledge some young people acquire about some period of history, or place, or ethnic group

Standards and processes need to be set to make sure the learning is meaningful, but care must be taken that the process is not excessively bureaucratic or difficult; the goal is to support and recognize such learning, not (as in so many universities) to make it difficult to get the recognition. Schools will have a natural desire to have students gain all their credits at the school, not outside it. While schools should be authorized

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to recognize external learning based on some simple criteria, there should also be provincial direction on the kinds of learning that could be recognized and it may also be desirable to have an independent body able to award credits.

There are many community resources that could support this kind of independent learning, which has the additional advantage of connecting schools to their communities. Colleges and universities also need to play an important role in this area, not only through dual credits (described below) but by recognizing the value of independent learning—which, incidentally, will likely bring more students to their institutions.

Independent learning is not a panacea, and there is much evidence that students engaged in it will continue to require some adult support [Note 7]. However this support is likely to be less intense than having students in a class all the time. It will be necessary to figure out the system design and workload implications in ways that provide teacher support to students without increasing overall demand on teachers.

The province should set some goals in this area; it is entirely reasonable to think that every high school graduate should have at least one significant independent learning accomplishment but many elementary school students are also entirely capable of worthwhile independent learning (which could also involve a few students working together).

The province should also develop an active program of dual credits, in which high school students can take college or university courses for secondary school credit. Dual credits are now widely used in the US as well as in Manitoba and Ontario. They are a way of bridging the artificial divide between secondary and post-secondary, have been shown to have good outcomes for a wide range of students, and they are efficient in that they reduce duplication in learning across the two levels [Note 8]. In Ontario, for example, disaffected high school students have often been very successful in college courses; more than in their high school courses (Armstrong, Desbiens, and Yeo, 2006; Whitaker, 2010). The United States has an active program of ‘early college’ high schools in high need areas, in which students can earn up to two years of college credit during their high school years. Again, a goal could be set of having a typical student earn at least one dual credit during their years of high school, with 5–10 percent of students earning as much as a full year of post-secondary credit before completing their high schooling. This strategy, too, can reduce the demand for additional courses in high schools. Many post-secondary institutions now have online courses which might in many cases be just as suitable as high school level online courses and could also serve as dual credits, especially in small schools where it is difficult to offer many high school options.

Where they are in place, post-secondary institutions find dual credits to be valuable as ways of encouraging students to attend their institutions, and in building stronger links with secondary schools. And post-secondary institutions retain, in partnership with schools, control over the quality of these courses so they can be assured that students who complete them are capable.

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While much of this independent learning would be in optional areas of the high school program, there are also cases in which they could substitute for compulsory courses. For example, a science dual credit course could replace a required high school science course even if it is not precisely the same content. Principals should have discretion to substitute two or three compulsory courses with roughly equivalent external learning.

An important benefit of these steps would be to reduce the pressure on high schools to have so many different courses on offer, a pressure that currently leads to offering many courses with very low enrolments at a very significant cost. Although there is a widespread belief that more variety in courses is a key to better student outcomes, there is little evidence to support that view. The quality of teaching and learning has consistently been shown to have more impact than the provision of additional course options, especially where some course options are consistently associated with poorer student outcomes (as has been the case for many vocational programs in secondary schools).

Building Engagement, Public Support, and Confidence

Building public and sector support and confidence requires many elements but based on my understanding of the current situation in Nova Scotia, I emphasize four.

First, the province should set a small number of clear, easy to understand goals for the system. These should involve numerical targets, such as the proportion of students who are able to read with fluency at age 12, or the proportion of students who graduate from high school within three years of starting grade 10, or the proportion of students who express an enjoyment of mathematics at age 15. Progress on these goals should be measured and publicly reported regularly, with attention not only to overall levels of accomplishment, but also to levels of equity so that the public can be assured that the system is helping all students to progress.

Provided they are broadly acceptable, goals such as these help set priorities in schools, establish public expectations and also galvanize professional energy. As progress is made towards the goals, everyone in the system, and the public who support the system, feel better about their accomplishments. Of course education has many goals, but trying to do twenty-five things at once, with no measures of success, is a recipe for failing to do anything very well. All successful systems have priorities, and these have to be few in number. Other things also need attention, but lower on the priority list.

A second critical element is creating the forums where the interested parties can meet and debate what needs to be done in education. Nova Scotia education groups already have a strong tradition of working together, even when there are serious disagreements on particular issues. This collegiality has to be nurtured, especially when hard decisions have to be made. It is vital that people have an opportunity to be heard but also that the parties hear and respond to each other, not just talk individually to government. The ‘visioning’ committee is one approach to this work but there are many other ways as well in which this ongoing, respectful conversation can take place. Participation in these

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dialogues has to include educators, but also parents, students, and other community groups, especially those that have not experienced the desired degree of success such as African Canadian, Aboriginal, and disability groups.

Structural solutions to community engagement, such as mandating community committees, have a poor record. What is important instead is genuine interest at the local level and leaders with good skills in engagement, problem solving, and conflict resolution. Additional training and support for school board members, superintendents, and principals in these areas would likely yield more than policy measures in these areas.

It is important that every school and district be a place that is collegial and respectful for all participants. This is hard work and is never fully accomplished, but it is essential. Giving people orders and demanding they obey is always tempting to managers, and perhaps especially so at times of stress. However this temptation, if given in to very often, whether it be with students, parents, teachers or school boards will inevitably lead away from the kinds of schools and communities we need for student success. It is especially important in the next few years to maintain schools as collegial community institutions and to avoid a narrow managerialism.

A third proposal is to reduce the number of new initiatives to schools from districts and the province. Educators often report feeling overwhelmed by the number of new things to which they are asked to attend. In Nova Scotia’s current climate this issue takes on added salience. I propose that the Department of Education and the school boards agree to minimize the number of new policies or program initiatives over the next three years, focusing instead on a small number of key strategies, as recommended in this report, that are aligned with each other so that the whole package makes sense to people in schools. This requirement should extend to new curricula, reporting requirements, program models, and other elements. Indeed, there should be a concerted effort by both boards and the department to simplify or eliminate some current reporting requirements in lower priority areas. Funding targeted to particular areas or programs does have an important role in ensuring that new priorities do get attention. However too many targeted programs creates problems and complicates administration. In my view, the number of programs in Nova Scotia with separate targeted funding and reporting should be reduced from the current level. As well, sometimes targeted programs get fixated on process considerations and the original purpose can be overshadowed. The system should always try to focus on the goals and results as being more important than the procedures. Accordingly programs with targeted funding should allow boards more discretion in how the programs work as long as practices are consistent with the evidence and the goals are met. The rate of introduction of new or revised curricula should be slowed down and in general schools should be able to count on several years in which they will not face significant new requirements or initiatives either from the province or from their own boards.

The final area concerns the role of research. While respectful dialogue is important, evidence also matters. We want people’s opinions to be grounded in a careful consideration of the best available evidence. There is also, as suggested earlier, much more evidence available today than used to be the case; there is a lot we know about good (and bad) policy and practice. Nova Scotia is a small province that will not be able

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to develop its own significant infrastructure for education research but there is enough capacity in the province now, if it were brought together appropriately, to strengthen greatly the availability and use of good evidence in the education policy debate. Recent reports and analyses in various areas such as professional development and assessment practices are examples of basing analysis on good research. We know much more than we used to about how to build connections that sustain a more significant role for research and evidence while also recognizing the importance of professional skill and knowledge. Nova Scotia should develop and implement a strategy to do this work. There are good examples of modest but effective efforts in this area in several other jurisdictions that rely primarily on redeploying existing energy and funds to more effective uses.

Making Most Effective Use of People and Facilities

As noted earlier, all large organizations or systems have a range of practices that allocate resources in ways that are not necessarily optimal. Often these are practices that have been in place for a long time and were originally adopted without much evidence of value. Sometimes they have been advocated by an interest group, again without necessarily having much supporting evidence. However the lack of evidence does not solve the challenge for a government in changing something that is seen as beneficial by some part, whether there is good reason or not.

Proposals made above will contribute substantially to this goal. Reducing failure rates is the most important single step to be taken because it is not only much more efficient, but it is, even more, much better for students. It is reasonable to think that over a few years, quite a few millions of dollars could be redirected in this way. Increasing teachers’ skills and slowing or even reversing the growth in special education enrolments would also be an important efficiency gain. Allowing more independent learning and dual credits is also both efficient and good for students. The proposals made in those sections of the report would reduce pressures on boards and schools for more courses, programs, and support services.

I propose three other actions as well, related to teacher turnover, extra high school credits, and excess school space, including a discussion of community use of schools.

Teacher turnover: A good system has a low rate of teacher turnover, especially among young teachers. Every time a young teacher has to be replaced, there is a significant cost to train, recruit, hire, and orient a new person, and a loss in productivity from a new teacher who is inevitably less effective than she or he will be with a few years of experience, not to mention the waste of training for the person who has now left the profession [Note 9]. These additional costs are much larger than the modest cost of salary increments over time. One US report estimated that teacher turnover costs between $40,000 and $80,000 per position, and that turnover in the US in 2007 cost more than $7 billion in total (Carroll, 2007). In this light, teacher turnover rates in Nova Scotia seem far too high. Accordingly, the province and districts, working with teacher

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organizations, should set a goal of reducing turnover among early career teachers to no more than 10 percent in the first five years.

Achieving this goal would mean that fewer new teachers would need to be trained. Even now, Nova Scotia already appears to train far too many teachers, although many of those are not educated at Nova Scotia-based institutions. It is impossible and undesirable to match supply exactly to demand in a field like teaching, but equally it is inefficient and unfair to have students invest years in a program if large numbers of graduates do not get jobs they anticipated when they enrolled.

Extra credits: A considerable, though undetermined number of secondary students in Nova Scotia obtain many more credits than are required to graduate, and anecdotal evidence is that a significant number of students will do an entire extra year of secondary school even after meeting all the graduation requirements.

There can be understandable reasons for taking these actions, from exploring additional areas of interest to improving grades for purposes of admission to post-secondary education. But they do come at a significant cost in terms of teachers’ time and public expenditure. One must ask whether Nova Scotians should be paying an additional $8000 for a student to, for example, improve her or his grades, when the same result could be obtained at much less cost through private tutoring. In the absence of good data on prevalence, it is hard to make a clear recommendation on this point. Nova Scotia should gather data on how many students are completing extra credits and years, and open a discussion as to whether the resources used for this purpose would be better allocated to other purposes.

School facilities: As a final area of consideration, rapid declines in enrolment necessarily mean that there is much excess space in schools across the province. Closing schools is always a challenge; nobody wants to lose their local school. However keeping even a smaller elementary school open costs something like $250,000 a year that could be reallocated to other purposes.

Schools should not be closed if they are a considerable distance from the next school; putting students, especially in elementary school years, on long bus rides is undesirable. But most of the excess space in the province is not in small and remote schools. It will be in towns or small cities that have five schools but only need three, or have nine but only need five. In these cases, students would have minimal or no transportation requirements if there were fewer schools. Enrolment data suggest that there could be a significant number of such schools across the province that could be closed and students relocated to other schools quite nearby.

The province should not expect school boards to carry the load for all these closings without support. Boards should, of course, lead the necessary local planning and consultation, but the department should indicate the overall policy direction clearly and should provide materials that will help boards explain to parents and communities the financial implications of these choices. The province might also consider some incentives, such as providing some funds for renovation of schools to accommodate students from nearby schools that are closing. It may also be necessary to relax some of the current rules around closings. While there should always be real and meaningful community

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consultation around school consolidation, processes that have long minimum timelines make it harder to take the necessary steps. Also, school closing processes have to be designed to draw attention to system-wide issues as well, such as the opportunity costs of maintaining extra school space against enriched programming, otherwise no community would ever agree to close a school.

Community use of schools: It makes much sense to have school facilities used more extensively for a range of related purposes, from community recreation to associated services to child care. This is especially the case in rural areas where such facilities are often limited. The barriers to such shared use are mainly administrative rather than practical, having to do with different mandates, funding systems, procedures and the like. It is likely that a small incentive program would overcome many of those obstacles, and could be financed by savings from elimination of current duplicate programs or could be funded from some of the savings from school consolidation. The province should experiment with allowing school boards and other partners to recapture funds freed by more effective use of facilities.

Another possibility is sharing of facilities between the secondary and post-secondary sector. Some high school vocational facilities are perfectly adequate for college or technical training purposes and some college facilities might be suitable for use by high schools. Some schools would also be good potential facilities for post-secondary or adult education programs. These possibilities should be actively pursued, especially where they can replace the use of other, more expensive facilities.

Although there is much talk about more collaboration among departments of government or service systems, such as health or community services, experience over the last twenty years has shown that it is extraordinarily difficult to make this happen in a meaningful way. Differences in professional approaches, funding systems, privacy provisions, and other factors make me pessimistic that a great deal can be accomplished in this area, though it is still worth making efforts, especially at the local level, to try to build these connections.

ImplementationPutting ideas forward is one thing, putting them into practice is quite another. Education has a long history of ideas hailed as desirable but never implemented in more than a few schools if at all, or implemented but not sustained for more than a few years. Most systems are trying to do too many things at once while not devoting enough attention to any of them for real lasting change.

I have already suggested in this report that Nova Scotia should prioritize a small number of key objectives and reduce the total number of initiatives. This in itself will support implementation. It is also important to have some measures of progress and to make those broadly available so that everyone can judge the degree of progress. Most important, however, is to redirect the work of both the department and the school board administrations from the usual focus on administrative matters to a focus on addressing priorities related to student outcomes. This is not a small challenge; it implies different actions by leaders but also different organizational structures and

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practices, since most educational organizations are not structured to support sustained improvement. When they try to do so they find that they do not have the expertise, do not have the necessary data, do not have or know how to build the skill of working with schools and teachers, do not have the policy infrastructure, and so on. One of the main tasks in Nova Scotia would be to look at these implementation issues across the entire system. The department should convene various groups of actors on an ongoing basis to monitor progress in this regard, but one of the best indicators will be regular feedback from principals and teachers as to whether they are experiencing a more coherent approach actually focused on priorities for learning.

It will also be important to gather data from students and parents on their views about their experience with schools. The department should work with school boards to develop survey instruments that can provide regular feedback on students’ sense of engagement with school and on parents’ satisfaction with school responsiveness.

ConclusionNova Scotia has a good public school system which has served the province well. However any system, no matter how good, can get better. In Nova Scotia this imperative is coupled with the very real fiscal and demographic challenges facing the province. Getting better does not necessarily depend on more money, though of course money is one important aspect. I also recognize that it is easy for an outsider to come along and make proposals; much harder for those on the ground to do the real work of design and implementation. My hope is that the ideas and suggestions in this report will lead to an even stronger and more effective system of public education for all the people of Nova Scotia.

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NotesNote 1: Expectations

In education, it is easy to fall into the mindset that we know who can and cannot be successful. These predictions are often based on a number of factors we consider to be indicative of future success (e.g. present performance, socioeconomic status). We should be wary of making these predictions for a number of reasons. First, it can have a debilitating effect on practice. Ample evidence has shown that low expectations of individuals or groups of students can alter teacher behaviour in ways that negatively affect students (Brophy and Good, 1970; Brophy, 1983; Cooper and Good, 1983; Kuklinski and Weinstein, 2000; St. George, 1983; Weinstein, 2002). Secondly, evidence shows that people overestimate their ability to predict the future and resist evidence showing that their predictions are often wrong (Munro, 2004). Even instruments that involve multiple predictors of dropping out of school can fail to identify many students who really need assistance or can misidentify students as being ‘at risk’ (Gleason and Dynarski, 2002).

Another perspective on expectations comes from the research on resilience (Terrisse, 2000). This research, often using powerful longitudinal data bases, finds that most children seen to be at-risk are able nonetheless to obtain positive educational and life outcomes. As Garmezy put it, “The evidence is sturdy that many children and adults do overcome life’s difficulties.” (1991, p. 421). The development of resilience as a positive approach to managing risk is to be welcomed because it focuses attention on strengths and capacities rather than weaknesses and limitations (Benard, 1997). Current thinking about resilience, similar to thinking about risk, has moved beyond the idea that these are properties of individuals towards seeing them as ecological characteristics of individuals in particular contexts, an approach that underlies the analysis in this paper.

Masten (2001) provides a very thorough and thoughtful review of the research. She concludes:

The great surprise of resilience research is the ordinariness of the phenomena. Resilience appears to be a common phenomenon that results in most cases from the operation of basic human adaptational systems. If those systems are protected and in good working order, development is robust even in the face of severe adversity … (Masten, 2001, p. 227).

But most importantly, there is substantial evidence that belies the myth that certain groups of people cannot learn and achieve at very high levels. Manitoba’s Access Programs have shown this to be true for a number of people from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially Aboriginals (Levin and Alcorn, 2000; Sloane-Seale, Wallace and Levin, 2004). The program recruited adults from inner-city and remote northern communities who were motivated but did not meet normal entrance requirements. By providing financial, academic, and personal support, over a thousand students, all of whom were originally considered inadmissible, were able to successfully graduate and become professionals and role models in their communities. The Pathways to Education

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program, which started in Toronto, has enrolled thousands of students in ‘at-risk’ neighbourhoods, who historically have had low success rates. By receiving mentoring and supports, students in these neighbourhoods have increased their success rates dramatically. For example, Pathways’ first five cohorts in Toronto (over 850 students) came from communities that had a historical high school graduation rate of 42 percent and a post-secondary enrolment rate of 20 percent. By providing mentoring and supports, these rates have increased to 86 percent and 62 percent respectively, both above school board and provincial averages (Boston Consulting Group, 2011). Evidence from the US comes from so called “90/90/90” schools where 90 percent or more of the students are from low income families, 90 percent or more of the students are members of ethnic minority groups and yet 90 percent or more of the students achieve at the district or state academic standards (Reeves, 2000). All this evidence suggests that many people are capable of achieving significantly more than we or they expect with the right support and motivation. Their current level of underachievement represents a significant loss of talent to our society (Livingstone, 2004).

Note 2: Resources

Norton Grubb (2009) argues that in education, resources fall under one of four categories: simple, compound, complex, and abstract. Simple resources are those that often receive the most attention in education. These are things like class size, average teacher salary, specific curriculum materials, and computers. On their own, simple resources are often insufficient to improve student learning. Compound resources are those that contain multiple elements and thus have a more significant impact. So while smaller class sizes by itself is a simple resource, smaller class sizes plus professional development on improved teaching is a compound resource. Complex resources are those that have a significant impact on student learning, but are difficult to create and are almost impossible to buy with money. This includes things like effective pedagogical approaches and strong leadership. Districts with higher spending do not necessarily have these at higher levels. They must be fostered by administrators and teachers working collaboratively over time. Abstract resources while undoubtedly having a significant impact on student learning, are often hard to detect and measure. These include teacher-student relations, curricular coherence, pedagogical consistency, as well as trust and stability among students, teachers, administrators, and district leaders. These resources cannot be easily bought and higher spending does not necessarily increase them. Instead, they are embedded in the many personal relationships of schooling and must be constructed collectively.

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Note 3: Research

In his book, Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, John Hattie (2009) presents the results of over 15 years of research on the influences on student achievement. The book synthesizes over 800 meta-analyses representing over 50,000 studies involving over 200 million students. It represents the largest ever evidence based research into what actually works in schools to improve student learning. Some of the factors found to have the greatest positive impact on student achievement were provision of formative assessments, reciprocal teaching, an emphasis on feedback and quality of teacher-student relationships. The factors found to have the least impact (or even a negative impact) on student achievement included grade retention, student control over learning, multi-grade/age classes, ability grouping, and teacher education programs.

Note 4: Grade Retention

The evidence on the effects of grade retention suggests it is not an effective intervention strategy for bringing under-achieving students up to standard. While there have been a small number of studies showing some positive effects of retention (e.g. Greene and Winters, 2004; Eide and Showalter, 2001; Alexander, Entwisle and Dauber, 1994), most studies have failed to find evidence that retention improves long term student achievement and in fact many have shown it to be harmful. The existing literature shows a significant association between grade retention and lower levels of long term student achievement (Byrd and Weitzman, 1994; Heubert and Hauser, 1999; Holmes, 1989; McCoy and Reynolds, 1999). Years after repeating a grade, students who are retained have significantly lower achievement than similar students who were not retained. Many of these students never catch up to socially promoted peers with similarly low test scores. There also appears to be a strong correlation between grade retention and the probability of dropping out of school. A review of these findings appears in Temple, Reynolds, and Ou (2004). Even after controlling for previous achievement, compared to similarly low achieving students who are socially promoted, students who are retained are significantly more likely to drop out of school (Alexander, Entwisle, and Dauber, 2003; Alexander, Entwisle, and Kabbani, 2001; Ensminger and Slusarick, 1992; Grissom and Shepard, 1989; Jimerson, 1999; Roderick, 1994; Temple, Reynolds and Miedel, 2000). In many studies, dropout rates for retained students often exceed those of comparable promoted students by 50 percent or more (Jimerson, Anderson, and Whipple, 2002).

In terms of retention rates, a study by the US Department of Education found that retention rates of K–8 students averaged between 9 and 11 percent from 1996 to 2007 (Planty et al., 2009). A separate study on students ages 16–19 found that from 1995 to 2004 retention rates averaged between 4 and 6 percent for students who had completed high school, 12–20 percent for students currently enrolled in high school and 21–34 percent for students who dropped out of high school (US Department of Education, 2006).

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Note 5: Special Education Programs

Considering the size and importance of the special education system, there is remarkably little evidence on the effects of special education placement on students. We were only able to locate two studies that tried to assess outcomes for students in special education (and they did not reference other research in the area). This study (Hanushek, Rivkin, and Kain, 1998 and 2002) analyzed data from five cohorts of students from Texas, representing over one million students in total. Performance was measured on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills state test. The study found small gains in mathematics achievement for those in special education:

The average special education program significantly boosts mathematics achievement of special-education students, particularly those classified as learning-disabled or emotionally disturbed, while not detracting from regular-education students (2002, p. 584)

Another study (Ewing, 2009) using similar methodology involving 396,828 students in North Carolina found:

Students with disabilities made significantly larger gains when enrolled in special education programs than when enrolled in general education programs, and gains were found for most of the subgroups of special education students examined in the study (p. i)

However the gains were not compared to the additional costs of special education.

In terms of other outcome measures, studies have shown some inadvertent effects of special education programs. McGee (2011) found that although students in special education programs graduate at a higher rate than students with comparable cognitive abilities, after graduation these students are less likely to be employed or enrolled in post-secondary education. A posited reason for this was that schools are making it easier for students in special education programs to graduate and have an incentive to do so as they are more costly to educate.

Regarding students with behavioural problems, a review by Müller (2010) found that placing students with aggressive or delinquent behaviours in separate classes with other students having similar issues can result in negative peer influence and thus worsen individual problem behaviour.

Note 6: Educational Assistants

Assigning educational assistants (also referred to as teaching assistants or paraprofessionals) has become an increasingly common response in supporting students with special needs. Many educational assistants (EAs) have life experiences, personal characteristics, and education credentials that make them highly valued by both parents and teachers (Chopra and French, 2004; Suter and Giangreco, 2009; Daniels and McBride, 2001; French and Chopra, 1999). However despite these positive perceptions, the evidence on the actual impact of EAs on students is less encouraging. The largest ever study of EAs called the Deployment and Impact of Support Staff, conducted in the

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UK over a five year period, found no positive effects of EA support on the academic progress of students. In fact, the study found that students receiving the most EA support made less academic progress than similar students who received little or no EA support, even after controlling for factors like prior attainment and degree of special education needs (Webster et al., 2010). The study also found that the use of EAs resulted in students having less interaction with both teachers and their peers. This can reduce the opportunity to develop peer relationships as well as prevent teachers from getting to know the student, thus possibly accounting for the negative effects on academic progress (Giangreco, 2010). Evidence from the US on the use of EAs has found similar inadvertent effects as well as others, including students developing an unnecessary dependence on the EA and being stigmatized by their peers (Broer, Doyle and Giangreco, 2005; Carter, Sisco, Brown, Brickham and Al-Khabbaz, 2008; Tews and Lepart, 2008). So thus while parents and teachers often support the use of EAs in the classroom, they have not been shown to have positive effects on students and in fact may have negative ones.

Note 7: Online Learning

Online learning, while not a panacea, has the potential to be a beneficial component of students’ K–12 learning experience. Most research on online learning has been conducted at the post-secondary level, although there does exist some research on the effects of online learning in K–12 students. A meta-analysis conducted by the US Department of Education (which included post-secondary studies) concluded that classes with online learning components (whether taught completely or partly online), produced stronger student learning outcomes than did classes with solely face-to-face instruction (Means, Tomaya, Murphy, Bakia, and Jones, 2009). The meta-analysis also found that instruction that combined both online and face-to-face elements produced the strongest gains in student learning outcomes compared to classes offered solely online or face-to-face. Of those that are conducted purely online, the strongest student gains were found in classes where instruction was collaborative or instructor-led compared to those in which students worked independently. A 2005 review of studies on online K–12 learning, conducted by the North Central Regional Education Laboratory, concluded that academic performance in online high schools and/or online high school courses appears to be at least equivalent to academic performance in traditional or face-to-face courses (Smith, Clark, and Blomeyer, 2005). These positive findings should be tempered however, as one of the significant problems with online learning is the issue of attrition. In the post-secondary setting, the literature shows that attrition rates are higher in online courses compared to those offered face-to-face (Carr, 2000; Moody, 2004). Of particular concern is that online learning students may drop out more frequently in high school than in college (Roblyer, 1999). Trouble self-pacing without assistance appears to play a significant role in student attrition in online courses (Kim, 2004). Thus while online learning offers potential benefits, if it is to be successful it appears that teachers must continue to play a key role in facilitating student learning.

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Note 8: Dual Credits

In addition to Ontario and Manitoba, dual credit programs exist in British Columbia, Alberta, and New Brunswick. Most research on dual credit programs has been conducted in the US, where dual credit (or “early college”) programs exist in 24 states as well as the District of Columbia. Targeted at low income youth, English language learners, visible minorities, and others that are underrepresented in higher education, the programs have been quite successful. In schools with early college programs, attendance rates averaged 94 percent in 2009, the average grade to grade promotion rate was 85 percent and proficiency on state assessments was 7 percent higher in both reading and mathematics compared to similar high schools in their local districts (Hoffman and Vargas, 2010). In addition, after spending four years in schools with early college programs, 44 percent of students earned at least a year of transferable post-secondary credit and 25 percent earned two full years of transferable post-secondary credit. Upon graduation, 86 percent of students enrolled immediately in post-secondary education (Hoffman and Vargas, 2010). Schools with early college programs have also been found to have reduced absences, suspensions, and higher rates of academic engagement (Edmunds et al., 2010).

Note 9: Teacher Attrition

The costs of teacher attrition can be immense. These include the cost of separation, cost of replacement staffing, net replacement pay, cost of training, and value of lost productivity (Milanowski and Odden, 2007). Separation costs are those associated with the teacher leaving the school or school district. These include the departing employee’s time, sick leave, and vacation pay as well as other administrative costs involved with a departing employee such as documenting files and inputting the required information into data systems. Replacement staffing costs include direct recruitment and selection expenditures as well as associated staff time. Net replacement pay is the difference in compensation between the worker who left and the replacement, which can be a cost savings when an inexperienced worker is hired to replace an experienced one. Training costs include orientation, induction, and training to a standard level that is needed for adequate performance. These include the cost of materials, mentoring, and formal on the job training. The value of lost productivity is the productivity difference between the replacement worker and the worker who left. For teachers this cost is especially salient as teachers tend to have lower productivity, in terms of student achievement, in their first years of teaching compared to later in their careers (Boyd, Grossman, Lankford, Loeb and Wyckaff, 2006; Hanushek, Kain, O’Brien and Rivkin, 2005; Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain, 2005; Kane, Rockoff and Staiger, 2006; Rice, 2003; Goldhaber and Anthony, 2003). An analysis by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future put the cost of teacher attrition at between $39,250 to $78,570 per teacher, with teachers in urban schools being at the higher end of the spectrum (Carroll, 2007). Based on these figures, it is estimated that teacher attrition costs the US over $7 billion per year.

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