FINAL REPORT Secondary School Reformfcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~icec/cfreport1.pdf · FINAL REPORT...

FINAL REPORT

Secondary School Reform:

The Experiences and Interpretations of Teachers and

Administrators in Six Ontario Secondary Schools

May 2002

Principal Investigators:

Andy Hargreaves, Co-director(International Centre for Educational Change)

and

Paul Shaw(Peel-University Partnership)

Dean Fink (Educational Consultant)Corrie Giles (Educational Consultant)

Shawn Moore (Research Officer)

Project jointly funded by The Ontario Ministry of Education and Training under the BlockTransfer Grant Program to OISE/UT and the Peel Board of Education

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TABLE OF CONTENTSPAGE NOS.

I - UNDERSTANDING LARGE-SCALE, LEGISLATEDSECONDARY SCHOOL REFORM..............................................3

Introduction ....................................................................................... 4Policy Context .................................................................................... 5The New Orthodoxy of Educational Change................................. 8Statement of Objectives and Granting Priorities........................ 14Research Strategy ............................................................................ 15Organization of the Report ............................................................ 18

2 - SCHOOL PROFILES ...........................................................19The School Sample......................................................................... 20Stewart Heights Secondary School ............................................... 21North Ridge Secondary School ..................................................... 23Talisman Park Secondary School.................................................. 24Mountain View Secondary School ............................................... 25Dale Park Secondary School .......................................................... 28Wayvern Secondary School............................................................ 30

3 - STAFF SURVEY..................................................................32Survey Design and Methodology ................................................. 33Teachers’ Experience of Change.................................................... 35Differences Among Schools and Teachers .................................. 82Department Heads’ Experience of Change .................................. 93Strategic Directions......................................................................... 96Summary and Conclusion.............................................................105

4 - LEADERSHIP AND CHANGE .......................................... 108Leadership Literature.....................................................................109Themes.............................................................................................115

5 - BEYOND THE KARAOKE CURRICULUM ........................ 127Moving Forward .............................................................................131Conclusion.......................................................................................138

REFERENCES ........................................................................ 140

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CHAPTER 1

UNDERSTANDING LARGE-SCALE, LEGISLATED SECONDARYSCHOOL REFORM

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INTRODUCTION

This report focuses on the experiences of teachers and administrators in

six secondary schools in the Peel Board of Education as they responded to the

impact of legislated reforms in Ontario. The report presents findings from the

final year of an examination of school change in Ontario through the eyes of

administrators and teachers (1996-2001). Reports on the first four years of this

research are available elsewhere (Hargreaves & Shaw et al, 2000).

This final phase of the project has two interrelated components.

• a survey of all teachers and administrators in the six schools which

elicited their responses to the curriculum and assessment substance

of secondary school reform, as well as to how these legislated

reforms have been implemented. This survey also asked teachers

to identify what kinds of support they needed to help them

implement the curriculum and assessment changes in ways that

promoted improvement in their own schools.

• the establishment of an administrative support network among the

six schools to discuss and disclose how each school was

responding to reform; to share strategies on how to manage reform

more effectively; and to help administrators address their own

intellectual and emotional needs during a turbulent and often

stressful time of change.

The study was supported by the Peel University Partnership between the

Peel Board of Education, York University and the Ontario Institute for Studies in

Education of the University of Toronto and was jointly funded by a Ministry of

Education and Training Transfer Grant and a Peel Board of Education Research

Grant.

In general, as this report will document, the results of our study point to

several important findings.

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• Teachers were evenly divided in their support for the curriculum

substance of legislated educational change in Ontario secondary

schools. The substance of change gets mixed reviews from

teachers.

• Teachers overwhelmingly regarded the way in which legislated

reform has been implemented (its pace, scope, tone and level of

support) as damaging for themselves and their students.

• Teachers overwhelmingly regarded the legislated changes to

teachers’ roles and working conditions as having damaging effects

on their students and themselves.

• Teachers in the one vocational school in our sample reported

almost unanimously that the needs of vocational and special

education students have been tragically neglected or wrongly

addressed by legislated educational reform.

POLICY CONTEXT

In the last five years of the twentieth century, more legislation was passed

on educational change then in all of Ontario’s preceding history (Gidney, 1999).

Educational financing was drastically restructured, provincial grants to school

districts were severely cut, and the district’s discretion to manage its own

finances or raise its own revenue was heavily restricted (Lawton, Bedard &

MacLellan, 2000; Lawton, 1998). The results of these and other budget-saving

measures on teachers’ working conditions and responsibilities were dramatic

and included:

• Increase of required hours of classroom instruction time by 12.5%

for secondary teachers, from 6 to 7 out of 8 teaching periods per

day.

• Accompanying decrease in scheduled planning and preparation

time, including the time to meet with colleagues and individual

students.

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• Severe reduction in number of paid teacher leadership (head of

department and assistant head) positions with no compensating

allocation of extra planning time for those remaining (one of the

most common district-level responses to budget reductions).

• Extensive cutbacks in counselling, special education and teacher

librarian staff (a second common district-level response).

• Proposed legislation of extra-curricular obligations (ultimately

rescinded after professional resistance, public outcry and the

findings of an independent commission).

These measures were accompanied by a set of curriculum and assessment

reforms of remarkable scale and scope.

• Centralization of curriculum design and development into the

Ministry of Education with increased standardization across the

public system.

• Compression of the secondary school curriculum from five to four

years and rapid introduction of a comprehensive new curriculum,

not even “just-in-time”, so that teachers had access to only part of it

by the beginning of the school year.

• Tracking (streaming) of the secondary program into applied and

academic routes (an effective reversal of the previous government’s

destreaming policy).

• Imposition of grade 10 literacy testing which all students had to

pass to graduate, to be followed by grade 9 testing in mathematics.

• Introduction of new report cards, along with computerized systems

of reporting (named E-teacher) that created extensive technical

problems in the first months of implementation.

• A new Teacher Advisory Program — where all students in grades

7-11 were to be assigned a teacher advisor by 2001.

• A range of regulations enforcing school dress codes, imposing zero

tolerance for school violence, and giving teachers power of

automatic student suspension without administrative approval.

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One effect of these cumulative policy changes was to generate a

negotiated agreement between the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training

and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation in 1998 where enhanced

and accelerated early retirement packages were offered to the ageing teaching

sector. Demoralization with reforms and their consequences increased the

number of staff taking early retirement options, which led to a large turnover of

teachers and administrators in the schools.

The school year of 2000-2001, our final year’s work commenced in much

the same way as the previous school year had ended, with an acrimonious

standoff between the Ontario government and the Ontario Secondary School

Teachers’ Federation over the issue of teachers’ workload. Bill 74 (the Education

Accountability Act) effectively added a seventh class responsibility to the

workload of most secondary teachers. In the previous year, an agreement

between the Peel District School Board and its secondary teachers reduced the

class load to six by allowing principals to count other teaching related tasks

towards the increased time requirements of the Ministry. In anticipation of the

2000-01 school year, the Ministry, through a memorandum, closed this ‘loophole’

and defined the extra time as ‘in-class’ time. The Federation responded by

advising its members to refuse all non-teaching functions because of the

increased workload. Schools in September faced teams without coaches, clubs

without sponsors, and concerned and distressed students and parents. At one

point, the Minister of Education threatened to force teachers to participate in

non-teaching activities. Finally, in January 2001, the government appointed a

panel (Task Force on Effective Schools) to suggest solutions to this dilemma.1 In

March 2001, the panel recommended a compromise by suggesting that the

government give time credit to teachers who contribute to extra curricular

activities. In May 2001, the government accepted most of the committee’s

1 Ontario Ministry of Education and Training (June, 2001). It's all about improvement. The report ofthe task force on effective schools. Ontario: Ontario Ministry of Education and Training.

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recommendations, and the teachers’ federation recommended to its members

that they could now assume extra responsibilities for the next school year.

In the midst of this on-going struggle, the Ministry of Education and

Training’s new curriculum and assessment procedures started to be

implemented in grade 10. Students and teachers prepared for a trial of a new

Literacy Test for grade 10. In addition the government called for schools to

implement a Teacher Advisory Program that required teachers to help students

with their annual education plan, to keep track of students’ academic progress,

and to act as a key school contact for communication with parents.2 A new

software program — E-teacher — was designed to facilitate student reporting,

but it contained many frustrating technical flaws. Government requirements of

criminal background checks of all teachers at the teachers’ expense, as well as the

implementation of an election-time promise, obliging teachers to re-certify every

five years through a teacher testing program, affected the climate in which the

government’s reforms were to be realized.

This was the policy context of wide-ranging, rapidly implemented reform

with which teachers and administrators in the six Peel Secondary Schools in our

project endeavoured to carry out their work and respond to the requirements of

change during the final years of our study. Our work focussed on the nature of

their responses to the reforms and the reform process at this significant historical

moment.

THE NEW ORTHODOXY OF EDUCATIONAL CHANGE

Ontario’s educational reforms hold much in common with and in many

respects are modelled directly after large-scale reform initiatives in other key

countries and regions over the previous decade such as New Zealand (Gordon &

Whitty, 1997), England and Wales (Helsby, 1999), the United States (Whitford,

2 Ministry of Education (http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/general/elemsec/aep/planning.html)

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2000; Nelson, 1998), and Alberta (Harrison & Kachur, 1999). The similarity in

patterns of reform across these different contexts amounts to what, elsewhere,

we have described as a new worldwide orthodoxy of educational change

(Hargreaves, Earl, Moore, & Manning, 2001). The major components of this ‘new

orthodoxy’ include:

• High standards — prescription of high standards of learning that all

students (excluding only those with the most severe mental

dysfunctions) are expected to achieve (Tucker & Codding, 1999).

• Centralized curriculum that eliminates the chaos of high school

course options and ensures there is common and consistent

commitment to and coverage of what students should know and be

able to do, and which attains the high standards that are necessary

in today’s society (Levin & Young, 1998).

• Literacy and numeracy, and to a lesser extent science, as prime

targets for reform, and for attaining significantly higher learning

standards (Hill & Crévola, 1999).

• Indicators and rubrics of student achievement and curriculum

planning that enable and require teachers and others to be clear

when standards have been achieved or not (Aschbacher, 1999).

• Aligned assessments that are tightly linked to the prescribed

curriculum, learning standards and indicators — ensuring that

teachers keep their eyes on the prize of high learning standards for

all (Knapp, 2000).

• Consequential accountability where overall school performance in

terms of standard-raising is closely tied to processes of high stakes

accreditation, inspection and testing related to the publication of

performance results (Thayer, 2000).

This new orthodoxy consists of some commendable shifts in educational

thinking. It emphasizes high standards for almost all students, not just a few —

and drives teachers and their schools to strive for excellence with students from

all social backgrounds. It moves the priority in the curriculum from the

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convenience and conventions of what teachers teach, to the quality and character

of what students are expected to learn. It uses assessment as a tail to wag the

new curriculum dog. Last, but not least, a national or statewide curriculum tries

to ensure that irrespective of the school, its locality, its teachers or its leadership,

all students will be pushed to meet the same high standards — that no-one will

be allowed to fall through the cracks.

At the same time, elsewhere, the new educational orthodoxy has carried

some disturbing components that have threatened to undermine its positive

educational goals. Children have been increasingly pushed to do more things

earlier and faster (Elkind, 1997) in a ‘hurried curriculum’ (Dadds, 2000; Guttierez,

2000) that has eliminated students’ voice in the learning process (Rudduck, Day

& Wallace, 1997). The common, standards-based curriculum has often tended to

become a clinical, conventional core programme of study (Tucker & Codding,

1999; Hill & Crévola, 1999) that trivializes the arts (Hargreaves, Earl & Ryan,

1996), puts pressure on optional subjects such as music (Pollard et al, 1994), and

marginalizes working class, minority and disadvantaged students from

engagement with their learning (Cummins, 1998; Nieto, 1998; Siskin, 2001a;

2001b). Ediger (2000) argues that standards based reform actually undermines

standards in creative subjects. Music, for example, is either excluded from the

standards framework (and thereby downgraded in importance), or, when the

subject is included in the standards, is trivialized so that it can be assessed by

pencil and paper methods.

Excessively standardized curricula tend not to recognize that learning is a

social practice, as well as an intellectual one (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Moreover,

McNeil’s (2000) research indicates that standards-based reform in Texas tends to

undermine the creative efforts and successes of magnet schools in reaching and

connecting with the lives of minority students through interdisciplinary teaching

and other measures. Integrated curriculum efforts and curriculum initiatives

that seek to help students apply knowledge to real problems have been casualties

of standards-based reform in other countries too (Hughes, 1997). Other

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casualties include mixed ability teaching (which evidence shows tends to narrow

achievement gaps) (Oakes & Quartz et al., 2000; Gerwitz et al, 1995) and specific

efforts to improve social justice in schools such as anti-racist education (Troyna,

1992).

In many places, standards-based reform has degenerated into a system of

inflexible standardization. Evidence from teachers in New York State, for

example, indicates that schools that are already high performers welcome the

standards since they are already meeting them and do not need to change

(though they insist that the standards will put needed pressure on their less

excellent colleagues elsewhere). Meanwhile, schools in poverty-stricken inner

cities with high proportions of English as a Second Language, racial minority and

Special Education students experience the standards as being beyond their reach,

even with their best efforts. They find them irrelevant at best and distressing at

worst (Hargreaves, in press; Falk & Drayton, 2001).

Teacher deprofessionalization can be associated with many examples of

the prescribed curricula that make up standards-based reform (Dadds, 2000;

Nias, 1991). Deprofessionalized teachers display such symptoms as loss of

confidence (Helsby, 1999), cynical compliance (Woods et al., 1997), and

increasing problems of recruitment into and retention within teaching

(Hargreaves & Evans, 1997), especially in urban areas (Darling-Hammond, 1997).

One of the most consistently commented on features of standards-based

reform in most Anglophone contexts, especially, has been its negative impact on

teachers. Teachers are consistently less enthusiastic about standards-based

reform than school leaders (Whitty, Power & Halpin, 1998). Teachers reported

increases in workload, less time to plan and pay attention to individual students

and an overall intensification of their work (Helsby, 1999) in the face of a ‘deluge

of directives’ (Webb & Vulliamy, 1999) from government mandates. As a result,

teachers also point to feelings of loss of creativity in their work (Jeffrey & Woods,

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1996) and to escalating problems of burnout, dissatisfaction and stress (Troman

& Woods, 2000; Abel & Sewell, 1999).

Secondary school heads of department and other middle level teacher

leaders seem particularly vulnerable to the pressures of standards-based reform.

In a role that is always a hybrid one of being part-teacher, part-leader (Hannay &

Ross, 1999), department heads are always in a position of ambiguity and strain in

how they should define themselves and their work (Schmidt, 2000). Standards-

based reform seems to increase this sense of strain — sometimes to intolerable

levels. Dinham & Scott (1996), for example, have found in their Australian

survey of teacher satisfaction and stress, that department heads currently feel

less satisfied with their work than either classroom teachers or principals.

Reports of time increases in workload among teachers in the United Kingdom in

a two year period in the mid-1990s, showed a much higher increase for

department heads than for other classroom teachers (Rafferty, 1996). Teachers

referred for long-term disability leave as a result of stress also seem to be

concentrated unusually strongly among those in middle-level teacher-leader

positions (Troman & Woods, 2000).

One of the claimed benefits of standards-based reform is that it increases

professional collaboration and strengthens professional community among

teachers. David Hargreaves (1995) argued that National Curriculum reform in

the United Kingdom increased teachers’ engagement in joint curriculum

planning and spawned a “new professionalism” among them as colleagues.

Subsequent longitudinal evidence, however, revealed that these collaborations

were short-lived and unsustainable — dissolving and disappearing when the

immediate pressures of implementation had passed and time-pressured teachers

could return to the priorities of their own classrooms (Helsby, 1999). This

temporary, evanescent engagement with the instrumental demand for

collaboration seems to result not only from the scarcity of time that reform

demands have created for teachers, but also from underlying feelings of loss of

control over the curriculum that has to be planned (Menter et al, 1997).

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Paradoxically, of course, the response to standards-based reform is

typically not a standardized one. Schools with a strong prior record of

innovation and therefore a high capacity to cope with change, for example, seem

better able to redefine reform requirements in ways that support and advance

their own purposes (Evans, 1996). Schools that have built strong professional

communities among their teachers where teachers work closely and confidently

together in pursuit of a common vision focused around improving student

learning, also seem to find ways to rework reform mandates and make them

align with their own purposes (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001; Lieberman, 1996;

Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 1999). Strong connections to innovative colleagues

outside the school through professional networks, as well as within internal

school professional communities, can have the same assertive effect (Lieberman

& Wood, 2002; Swanson, 2000; Lieberman & Mclaughlin, 1992).

Even within schools, teachers differ in their reaction to responses to

reform mandates — creating complicated worlds of micro differences within all

institutions that are the targets of standardized change. We have already seen

how teachers in different subject disciplines are positioned quite differently in

relation to curriculum and assessment changes, depending on whether the

subject is treated as central or peripheral to the reform efforts (Siskin & Little,

1995). Teachers also possess or develop different orientations to change in

general. Studies of the impact of standards-based reforms in the United

Kingdom, for example, have developed typologies of teachers’ varied reactions

that extend from enthusiastic endorsement, through to creative redefinition, and

along to feeling cynically compliant towards or completely defeated by

curriculum and assessment mandates (Pollard et al, 1994; Woods et al, 1997).

Older teachers who are more inclined to be cautious about change in general due

to fading energy, changing life commitments and past disappointments with

prior change efforts (Huberman, 1993) are more likely to experience imposed

change as a process of loss which provokes nostalgia for ways of teaching and of

being a teacher that mandated reforms seem to devalue (Evans, 2000). This

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matter has critical importance when reform is implemented, as in Ontario at the

beginning of the 21st century, in relation to an ageing teacher demographic.

The variations and micro differences in teachers’ and schools’ responses to

standards-based reform are not random or infinite, though. They are certainly

not viable ways to justify saying that when reforms create problems, it’s not the

reform that’s the difficulty, but the teacher or the school. Indeed, the

longitudinal work of Woods and his colleagues regarding the impact of

educational reform in the United Kingdom, reveals that over time, fewer and

fewer teachers feel “professionally enhanced” by the reforms, and more and

more become “cynically compliant” towards or simply defeated by them as they

come to treat their teaching not as a passionately engaged and creative process,

but as one where they simply go through the motions of fulfilling someone else’s

agenda (Woods et al, 1997).

STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES AND GRANTING PRIORITIES

It was with this background of research and experience in mind

concerning the prior impact of standards-based reform on educators in other

jurisdictions that we approached our work with teachers in the six secondary

schools in Peel who participated in the final year of the present study. Our

project objectives in working with teachers in these schools were:

• to foster inquiry and problem-solving strategies and processes that

enabled six secondary schools to develop the capacity to implement

Ontario Secondary School Reform in ways that were compatible

with goals of school improvement in student learning.

• to give senior administrators networking opportunities where they

could provide mutual support and engage in reflective dialogue

with one another in relation to their role in the change process.

• to promote middle level leaders’ understanding and use of

strategies to implement Secondary School Reform in ways that

were consistent with purposes of school improvement.

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• to help school task teams to understand the interrelationships

among Secondary School Reforms and the place of particular

priorities within them.

• to investigate how teachers built an understanding of “best

practice(s)” with regard to secondary reform and to develop their

conceptions of how these changes did and would affect their own

practice.

• to identify strategies with larger groups of teachers within and

beyond the project schools that addressed obstacles to securing and

maintaining such long-term changes.

• to portray positive examples of integrating the secondary school

reform practices and procedures into classroom and school-wide

practice as a basis for wider dissemination.

The study addressed four official Ministry priorities for research funding:

(1) Student Success (achievement under provincial, national and international

tests; opportunities for personal/social growth; preparation for work; quality of

career/education planning; relevance of curriculum to transitions, society,

personal growth, and economic development; vulnerable and at risk students).

(2) Accountability (clarity of assessments). (3) Teacher Preparation and Inservice

(changes to the extent and nature of inservice) (4) Impact of Structural Elements

(administrative efficiencies/inefficiencies; education reform and principal, vice-

principal and administrative roles).

RESEARCH STRATEGY

In light of the evidence we gathered and reviewed from other

jurisdictions, our prior data from and experience in Peel’s participating schools,

and the budget parameters that accompanied the awarding of the grant, we

developed a two-pronged research plan.

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1. Staff Survey

The core of the research design consisted of a Staff Survey (Appendix 1),

which we distributed to all teachers (N=480) in the six project schools in April

2001. The survey was designed to elicit teachers’ interpretations of and responses

to Ontario Secondary School Reform in relation to the curriculum and

assessment substance of the reform mandate; legislated changes in teachers’

work roles and working conditions; and the processes through which these

changes were implemented. The survey also identified teachers’ perceptions of

existing levels of support for implementation and in that sense was also

functional as a needs-assessment instrument for the teachers and administrators

in the schools.

The teacher survey was not designed to provide generalizable results

about teachers’ responses to educational reform across the province as a whole.

The schools where we collected our data were neither randomly chosen nor

geographically dispersed. We also had five years of working collaboratively

with teachers and administrators in these schools and had deliberately

influenced their development. Our purpose was to identify the impact of

Ontario Secondary School Reform on this group of six schools (as a whole and

compared to each other), and to involve teachers and administrators in the

schools collaboratively in the process of interpreting the data and deciding on

strategic courses of action in their schools on the basis of what they learned.

While the results of our survey are not strictly random or statistically

generalizable, however, the experiences of several hundred staff in six secondary

schools in one of Canada’s largest school districts, provides a substantial body of

data on the impact of educational reform, that must be taken seriously.

The schools were not just targets of the research but also involved in it

collaboratively. Thus, the first raw data analysis was presented to a workshop

involving teams of three or four teachers and one administrator from each of the

six schools on June 11, 2001. The purposes of the workshop were:

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• to develop skills of interpreting and analyzing quantitative and

qualitative data resulting from the Staff Survey,

• to participate in evidence-based planning and decision making,

• to build informal networks with colleagues in other schools,

• to use evidence from the Staff Survey to shape school directions,

• to develop school habits of data gathering and use for planning and

decision making,

• to explore future change objective and strategies.

2. Development Support

The second part of our research design concentrated on facilitating

monthly discussions and networking sessions among senior level school

administrators from each of the six project schools. Venues for the meetings

alternated among the project schools. In the half-day meetings, the

administrators reported candidly on developments in their own schools in

relation to Secondary School Reform. They discussed specific concerns including

the implementation of the new standardized curriculum and the Grade 10 Test of

Reading and Writing Skills. They shared more general problems concerning

depressed school morale and intensification of work among their staff. They also

spoke openly about their own intellectual and emotional needs, and problems as

administrators responsible for implementing complex and (from teachers’

viewpoints) often unwanted reform priorities. The Research Team helped

administrators identify planning and management strategies that focused on

developing participatory structures and processes in their schools to address

these issues. The Research Team also provided readings and research articles at

these meetings to support the schools’ efforts to strengthen their capacity to

change. Finally, administrators also assisted significantly in designing the Staff

Survey instrument by piloting it in each of their schools. These monthly

Administrator Meetings were documented through tape recordings and written

analytic notes. The research team gathered Ministry, board and school policy

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documentation, as well as individual school archival records, as part of the total

database.

In addition to the administrator meetings, development support was also

provided to the school through each school being assigned a research team

member to work as a critical friend with the school, and particularly with a

designated teacher leader throughout the period of the project. These

relationships provided specific support for each of the schools — for example, by

facilitating a staff workshop in Wayvern school on developing cross-school

responsibility for literacy, and by coaching the principal and leadership teams

through the school amalgamation and merger process at Dale Park. They also

provided a more continuous, contextual view of each school and its development

in response to the reform agenda. Some of the insights accruing from these

relationships are included in the school profiles provided in the next chapter.

ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT

The remainder of our report is organized into four sections. The next

chapter describes how the six Peel secondary school came to be included in the

project and provides profiles of each of the schools. Chapter 3 then describes the

design and results of the staff survey and responses to Ontario Secondary School

Reform that was administered to all staff in the project schools. Chapter 4

analyzes the data from the cross-school leadership team meetings and examines

the impact of Secondary School Reform from the administrators' perspectives.

The final chapter then draws together the key findings of the study and outlines

some implications for designs of school reform at the policy level, and for those

who deal with the effects of policy in the schools.

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CHAPTER 2

SCHOOL PROFILES

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THE SCHOOL SAMPLE

In 1996, the first year of this 5-year research programme, we determined

the sample of schools through a process of orientation and selection. The project

team, in concert with the Peel Board, publicized the project among all Peel

secondary schools and conducted a two and one half day orientation workshop

in September 3-5, 1996, for teams from 11 interested schools (approximately 10

persons per school team). The project researchers organized this initial school

workshop to develop participants' understandings of the project's goals and

objectives and to build their awareness of its fundamental concepts and

objectives. We introduced collaborative team exercises that focused practically

on key educational change and improvement concepts and how they could be

applied in particular school settings. Participants worked across as well as

within their teams.

The project researchers also collected and summarized participants'

responses about how they had worked in their teams, the issues that were

important for them, and the value that they felt the workshop experience had

had for them. Participants reported that the workshop process of collaboration

contributed to team building, promoted their learning, and helped them forge

professionally meaningful links with colleagues. As a result of their workshop

experience, participants felt encouraged to initiate communication and act as

change agents back in their own schools and to pursue new knowledge and

professional development. We used our analysis of participant feedback to

evaluate participant learning needs in order to design future workshops and to

develop networking strategies among schools.

After the workshop, each school team consulted with other school

colleagues to consider the terms of reference of the project in relation to school

priorities and to decide whether they wanted to participate. We then solicited

applications from those schools who had sent teams to the orientation workshop.

Four schools applied and all four met the criteria that the principal investigators

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determined were essential for the project's long term continuity, viability and

value for the participating schools.

In the fourth year, we expanded our school sample to six — adding Dale

Park and Wayvern. This was possible since two administrators, who had been

part of the original administrators' project networking group were transferred to

other secondary schools in the Peel Board. They, in essence, were able to

transport to their new school environments, as incoming knowledge, the

practical understandings, problem-solving strategies and networking skills that

they had acquired over three years. Accordingly, they expressed a strong

interest in continuing with the project and emphasized its importance to their

effective leadership in new schools — especially in building school capacity and

collaborative working relationships among staff as they engaged in the reform

process. These two administrators said that they had valued highly the

collegiality that had evolved through regular administrators' networking

meetings over three years. Furthermore, they wished to maintain these

professional linkages with administrative colleagues and the project research

staff. The Peel Board gave its full support for the expansion of school sites as it

recognized the importance of sustaining the networking process as a means of

enhancing administrator and staff effectiveness in implementing legislated

reforms.

STEWART HEIGHTS SECONDARY SCHOOL

Stewart Heights is an urban, semestered school of approximately 1500

students and a staff of 98. It has become more culturally diverse over the past six

years due to an increase in multi-family dwellings and increased immigration

from countries such as Hong Kong, India, and parts of the Caribbean. Two

hundred students are bussed from neighbouring communities, some of which

are rural. Although a majority of the staff live in the surrounding community, it

does not yet reflect the school’s diverse student body. Stewart Heights is

engaged in several partnerships with local businesses and universities.

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Before the onset of Secondary School Reform measures and the related

disputes about teachers’ working conditions, the research team's earlier school

improvement initiatives in the second half of the 1990s, were enthusiastically

adopted by the previous principal and his leadership team and were integrated

into an ongoing structure and process of improvement, through the use of the

Peel Board's School Success Programme and other measures — concentrating on

students, climate and community, in particular. Stewart Heights’ principal at the

time was quick to move to action by getting staff to analyze data and to make

action plans on the basis of what they learned. He ensured that all the action

groups and the School Success Team attended all the project team's improvement

workshops and used the networking process to work on school issues and

priorities. He also encouraged staff to initiate a range of changes that made

students feel more included, and parents feel more welcome in the school.

With more time to help staff work through their doubts and difficulties,

Stewart Heights’ former principal and his team may well have been able to

convert the temporary success of short-term innovation into sustainable

improvements. But by the end of the project’s second year, changing

circumstances within the school system, especially rapid demographic turnover

in school leadership, resulted in the promotion and transfer of the entire Stewart

Heights’ senior management team. Stewart Heights’ leadership successors were,

therefore, new to the school and to the roles. The coinciding pressure of a

stepped-up stage of Secondary School Reform and this entire turnover of the

leadership team, led to an abandonment or withdrawal from longer-term

improvement goals and the adoption of more survival-driven preoccupations

organized around implementing external reforms in the new work context. Most

recently, teachers at the increasingly multicultural Stewart Heights have

complained that the new curriculum places "unrealistic expectations” on their

students and, at the same time, hampers their own ability to be effective learners

and knowledge workers.

23

NORTH RIDGE SECONDARY SCHOOL

During the period of the study, North Ridge had over 1600 students and a

staff of approximately 85. Staff turnover was, until recently, very low. The school

offered courses at all levels, served an increasingly diverse population, and had a

growing ESL programme. Academic achievement was a priority objective.

However, some teachers worried about how to reach out more effectively to

those students who were having difficulty with advanced academic coursework

in an environment geared toward college and university aspirations.

When the first interviews were completed in September, 1997, in the early

stages of our research programme, the project's school improvement efforts had

not really taken hold within the school’s professional culture in any deep and

sustained way. This was partly due to a top-down process of decision-making

that made two-way communication between administration and classroom

teachers difficult. Collaboration around issues of teaching and learning occurred

mostly within subject departments, where teachers found professional rapport,

identity and community. Within a political atmosphere of reform that was

becoming increasingly acrimonious between teachers and the Ministry, there

were signs of deteriorating staff morale at North Ridge. Many teachers viewed

the reforms as motivated more by politics (especially a hidden agenda of

privatization) than by a genuine desire to improve public education.

By October 1999, when we conducted focus group interviews, teachers’

anger had turned to anxiety about how to manage their increasing workloads

and diminishing preparation time. Ironically, as the external pressures for

change increased, micro-political tensions diminished somewhat, with many

staff finding a new ‘perspective’ and ‘wanting to do a few things’.

Changes in the administrative team in 1998, involving the appointment of

two new vice principals with particular expertise in curriculum and assessment

change, infused the school’s administration with renewed enthusiasm, optimism

and focus — especially in relation to improving teachers' assessment expertise.

24

Teachers felt that the school’s administration had gelled into more of a team with

a common vision for the school and an open, two-way style of communication.

This new style focused on organizing staff around collaborative learning, inquiry

and problem solving. The effect has been to reduce professional isolation and

give life to the school’s traditional approaches to change.

TALISMAN PARK SECONDARY SCHOOL

Talisman Park is an academic, collegiate-style school that opened in 1920.

Situated in an affluent, well-established neighborhood, the school has

approximately 1200 students and a staff of 75. Staff turnover has been

traditionally low, until recently. Talisman Park is one of the few non-semestered

schools in the board. Over 70% of its students are accepted into universities and

colleges. While the student body has become more culturally and racially diverse

over the last several years, it remains predominately white. At the same time, a

more diverse student population has created some degree of mismatch between

teachers’ and students’ cultural experience. A staff of mostly white, middle class

teachers has been challenged to adapt to the learning needs of students who

bring different socio-economic, family and cultural backgrounds into the

classroom.

Over the last decade, the school has lost some of its small community

identity because of rapid urbanization, population growth and changes to its

boundary. As well, experienced teachers have retired in greater numbers in large

part due to the demographic of an aging teaching force. Also, recent large-scale,

mandated change has affected teachers' morale and commitment to the

profession to the point where early retirement is considered an option. Within

the school there has been some polarization between a ‘clique’ of older

experienced teachers, who have banded together to protect what they cherish,

and younger teachers who are alienated by what they see as a sub-culture of

‘negativism'.

25

The principal, at the outset of the project, was reassigned to Wayvern in

1999 and one of the incumbent vice principals of Mountain View replaced her.

In 1997, there was considerable evidence that staff were responding to the

leadership of the former principal, and beginning to engage willingly and in

many cases enthusiastically in professional discourse. Teachers talked with

pride about the school, its students, and even of the need to become more

involved with the community. In 1999, under the new principal, the evidence

from the focus groups indicated that the staff had become fragmented and were

withdrawing from contact with each other and the community. Gradually, the

notion of school-wide involvement seems to have deteriorated under the weight

of outside pressures and under a leader who seems less vigilant about initiating

and nurturing a collaborative approach to teacher learning and school

improvement. ‘Balkanization’ became ‘fragmentation.’ Moreover, department

heads saw a withdrawal of the ‘good will’ that is necessary to keep schools

moving forward.

While staff dynamics and interaction at Talisman Park indicate some

retrenchment, there are, at the same time, signs of positive outcomes that should

not be overlooked. The new curriculum has been a welcome reform for many

teachers who particularly worked with obsolete course content, especially in the

sciences. The new report card has also received as much praise as criticism. In

addition, the reduction and blending of departments under one head may foster

more subject integration than with traditional structures. In general, however,

the substance and process of Secondary School Reform seem to have been

received very differently at Talisman Park. Frustrations with the latter process of

implementation seem to be defeating the improvement potential of the new

curriculum and assessment initiatives.

MOUNTAIN VIEW SECONDARY SCHOOL

Mountain View is unique among the project schools in terms of its

purpose and student body. It is an 11-year-old vocational school with 541

26

students (436 White; 75 African American; 30 Asian). Staff includes 53 teachers

and seven teaching assistants. Mountain View is the only vocational school in

the district that has shown a steady increase in enrolment in the four years prior

to our study. Teams from Mountain View engaged energetically and

enthusiastically in early school improvement activities with the project team and

prepared significant plans to redirect the course of their school. When they

returned to their school, however, little substantive follow-through seemed to

result from these initial bursts of energy and enthusiasm. As one person

commented, “a thousand things started” which were not necessarily followed

through to completion. Frustrated by inaction at the school level, successive

school improvement teams disintegrated.

Problems of school purpose and internal micro-politics consumed the

school at the time of the 1997 interviews and tended to push all other initiatives,

including the school improvement project, to the margins. Built originally as an

Arts/Drama school to accommodate both Basic and General level programmes,

Mountain View has shifted in the last five years to Basic and Special Basic

programmes to accommodate lower functioning students. Staff frustrations were

heightened by memories of a time when the status of vocational schooling was

not so low and students’ needs at Mountain View were addressed through

integrated, innovative programmes and subsequent opportunities of work. Some

staff remained committed to preparing General Level students for post-

secondary alternatives. Others believed the purpose of the school was to prepare

students for the world of work. While a few held out hope that the school would

be converted to a fully composite school, the Board, it was hoped, would come to

their rescue. Purposes were compounded by uncertainty over reporting and

communication responsibilities. Productive teacher involvement in school issues

occurred informally or at the level of the department.

Teaching at Mountain View was and is challenging. High staff turnover

continues to make the implementation of school-wide goals very difficult.

Teachers described themselves as physically and emotionally fatigued. These

27

feelings were primarily due to the ambiguity concerning the school's purpose as

well as their emotional involvement with challenging students. Secondary

School Reform policies, standards and processes have done little to clarify the

role of vocational schools such as Mountain View.

A great deal of the Secondary School Reform agenda was seen by staff as

excessively standardized as well as incompatible with and insensitive to the

needs of many of its students who would repeatedly fail the Literacy Test, be

unable to graduate, and find jobs even more difficult to obtain. Moreover, cuts in

special education and guidance support, the downsizing and overloading of

middle level leadership, the malfunctioning mandated computer management

system, an accelerated rate of change, and a climate of blame and abuse directed

at teachers, made it increasingly difficult for teachers to serve some of the

district’s most needy and marginalised students adequately or well.

In 1999, the system assigned a new principal to Mountain View and early

evidence is that the school is beginning to move forward. The focus is on dealing

with issues related to school reform and the new principal has moved swiftly to

create systems to prepare the school’s response. She has aligned communication

networks and lines of authority. Policies and procedures have been clarified and

enforced. With her staff, she has reduced the multiple goals she inherited to three

— improved student literacy, a curriculum focused on job skills, and an

enhanced public image for the school. All staff members are involved in one of

three committees that focus on these goals. With this new leadership, there now

appears to be a clear and achievable direction for school improvement, and

broad-based commitment.

At Mountain View, where action to implement change had previously

been missing, an imposed reform context has, in combination with a new

leadership, been able to precipitate it. Staff, however, worry about whether an

institutionalized practice of administrative rotation in the district will rob

Mountain View of its new leader before the changes are embedded in the school.

28

Most recently, the grade 10 Literacy Test has created accountability

pressures on students and teachers that seem unrealistic. Students must pass this

test as a requirement for graduation. According to teachers at Mountain View,

this has resulted in an increase in student anxiety amid teachers' concerns that

the test itself is inappropriate to the needs, abilities and aspirations of their

students.

DALE PARK SECONDARY SCHOOL

Dale Park (1759 students, 113 faculty, 3 vice-principals, 1 principal) was

created in January 2000 from a merger of Orion Collegiate, a small high school

with 500 students, 30 faculty,1 vice-principal and 1 principal, and Stokesay High,

a much larger vocational and technical school 3 kms away (1300 students, 75

faculty, 2 vice-principals and 1 principal). As a result of the merger 20% of the

Orion faculty either retired or applied for positions elsewhere in the district

(although Stokesay had experienced no loss of faculty in the two years prior to

the merger). Staff turnover in Dale Park has settled to about 15% a year, which

includes retirements and promotions to other schools in the district.

Demographically the internal communities of the merged schools were

very different. Orion Collegiate was small, existed in a newer building, had no

special education or vocational students and a largely South Asian (70%),

European (20%) and African/Afro-Caribbean (10%) student population.

Stokesay High required extensive modernization and expansion to accommodate

the Orion students who were joining a more racially diverse student population

(45% South Asian, 40% African/Afro-Caribbean, 10% European, 5% South

American or Chinese). Some 20% (230) of Stokesay students were ‘special

needs’, to many of whom English was a second language.

Dale Park has a graduating class of between 280 and 350 students.

Although ‘drop out’ rates are difficult to estimate in the fluidity of a still largely

vocational and technical student body, some 12-15% of students would move on

to ‘other things’ before graduating. Although 8-10% of the graduating class

29

would not be eligible for a high school diploma, many would return at a latter

date to complete their studies, or access alternative schooling arrangements

through a district supported centre which works closely with Dale Park.

The external community of Dale Park was working class, surrounded by

‘niches’ which few of the community had the resources or opportunity to access.

Disadvantage was related to the area being settled by large numbers of recent

immigrants to Canada who had little grounding in English, and who found it

necessary to hold down two or more jobs. Parents and the community were

supportive of the school, willing to advocate for the students, but tended to

accept government doctrine at face value. The principal found that developing a

deeper understanding with the parents and community of the educational issues

facing the school was an uphill struggle.

The school had no formal business/education partnerships although

Stokesay had built up extensive coop and work experience opportunities over a

number of years prior to the merger. Relationships were strong with local

churches and senior citizens groups, and there is a very successful Trillium

Program, with students working in local feeder elementary schools. Student

teachers have access to the school from local universities, but the school is not

involved in innovative school/university partnerships such as the preservice

student mentoring initiative adopted by other schools in the district. Partnership

discussions have taken place with a local community college, although mutual

resource constraints, the lack of supply teacher money in the school to release

teachers, and the reluctance of teachers to engage in extra-curricular activities in

the present industrial climate in the province, have led to this initiative

stagnating. A technology program with a second local community college has

been much more successful, with students intending to be future technicians and

technical support staff working in the school to increase access and improve the

technical knowledge of faculty and students.

30

WAYVERN SECONDARY SCHOOL

Wayvern School accommodates grades 7-OAC. While, internally,

administration and staff operate as a single, cohesive school, the outside world

perceives two entities. In 2001/02, the grade 7/8 population is 291 with

secondary at 1,474 for a total of 1,765 students. There are 16 elementary staff

including .5 counselor and .5 librarian teacher and 80.5 secondary staff including

3.5 counselors and 1 librarian teacher who is also Head of the Resource

Information Centre. . As enrolment has continued to grow, the principal has had

to turn away a number of flexible boundary applications.

The neighbourhood is socio-economically heterogeneous, leaning towards

lower-middle class. The school is also a regional centre for gifted secondary

students of whom over 300 of the 358 are bussed in. A number of the bussed

students are from higher economic backgrounds. Over 100 nationalities and 55

first languages are represented. One hundred and fifty students qualify for ESL

classes. There is a high success and retention rate and over 80% of students go on

to college and /or university. Wayvern has strong co-op ed. program links with

numerous businesses and agencies. There have always been a large number of

extra curricular activities and students are involved in numerous fundraisers.

In 1999/2000, the Wayvern Programme Committee (consisting of a third

of the school's staff, although no students) discussed several school reform

initiatives. It decided to focus on improving literacy and worked on a writing

curriculum from grade seven to ten. A draft version describes the writing that

should occur across subject areas. In the process, staff became more aware of

literacy initiatives available outside their subject area. ‘DEAR’ (Drop Everything

and Read), for example, was already in place and had been a largely positive

experience for staff and students alike. Yet, staff felt that the new literacy

requirements could, paradoxically, lead to abandonment of successful literacy

practices in their school. Staff are concerned that the EQAO tests and publication

31

of results will create unhealthy competition between schools and lead to teaching

for only a very narrow band of skills and knowledge.

The leadership of the new principal (formally the principal at Talisman

Park), has been crucial in building a collaborative, student-centred culture. While

another school in our sample is concentrating on the grade 10 Literacy Test by

focussing on the 20% of students who can quickly be raised to standards

required for graduation (with the inevitable effect that students with the most

serious literacy problems will receive the least attention), teachers at Wayvern

are addressing deeper, long-term questions of how to improve literacy for all

students, and not just how to improve test scores for a limited number in the

short-term. This critical, student-centred response to reform mandates is the

hallmark of Wayvern's approach to change. However, while the principal has

been instrumental in securing this improvement-centred approach, the

restrictions on her role are great. She faces the need to help her staff have

productive, innovative staff meetings, and she has felt increasing pressure to

“model optimism”, no matter how despairing or exhausted she may be feeling

inside. These demands had created strain on her own health and endurance in

the final year of the project, and she retired from her position in late 2001.

32

CHAPTER 3

STAFF SURVEY

33

SURVEY DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY

One of the two main prongs of our research approach in this project was

to design and administer a survey to all staff in the six schools to elicit teachers’

and administrators’ interpretations of and responses to Ontario Secondary

School Reform measures. Our objective was to gauge the impact of the reforms

among a substantial number of teachers, to determine how they felt about

different aspects of the reform, and to provide data that could help schools move

forward in dealing with and providing better support for the Secondary School

Reform process.

A Staff Survey instrument (Appendix 1) was developed in consultation

with administrators from the six schools who piloted the instrument with small

groups of staff within their schools. The instrument was also examined for face

validity by staff and faculty in the International Centre for Educational Change

and OISE/UT as a whole, who had expertise in survey design.

This survey was directed specifically to the known and future needs of the

teachers in the six project schools, in order to create particular insights of

strategic value to the schools themselves. Since generalization of findings to

schools outside the sample was not the purpose of this survey, external piloting

of instruments that are administered to random samples was not appropriate to

this project's survey approach. In this study, the large teacher sample size

(N=480), participants’ involvement in the survey design, the survey’s

strategically valuable orientation, and the availability of school-by-school

comparisons, provide a reliable basis for generalizability of findings within and

across the six project schools themselves. Our findings are further strengthened

by the high response rate (60%) which is comparable to professional polling

firms that use telephone surveys and mail and systematic follow-up.

While the findings cannot be generalized statistically to other schools and

teachers across Ontario, 60% of classroom teachers of six secondary schools in

34

one large school district contributes a significant grouping that is hard to ignore

in terms of more general implications. Moreover, given that the school

benefitted from the project team’s assistance and support in dealing with change,

including important monthly meetings of dialogue, reflection and support

among the schools’ administrators, it is likely that unsympathetic responses to

reform would be, if anything, stronger in other schools and districts within the

province.

The survey consisted of 55 closed-ended, agree/disagree items arranged

on a four point scale and clustered under five headings: Curriculum; Testing and

Assessment; Communication and Relationships; Self and Work; Resources.

Administrators were asked to complete only the section on Leadership. The last

page of the survey was reserved for optional written comments.

On April 2nd, 2001 the survey was administered to all teachers in the six

project schools in staff meetings on the same day. Completed surveys were

couriered to a central location in one of the project schools, stored securely, and

collected by a member of the research team.

Data were interpreted by the project team and also in collaboration with

groups of three or four staff and an accompanying administrator from each of

the project schools, during a special data interpretation workshop held in one of

the schools on June 11, 2001.

In this workshop, after an introduction by the project team, cross-school

groups examined the survey data by addressing the following questions:

• Are there any clear themes in the data?

• Where do you see agreements, contradictions and disagreements

among respondents?

• What are the implications for practice in schools?

• What further information do you need?

35

Administrators joined the afternoon session, when cross-school teams

reported back to the total group. Finally, individual school teams were asked to

develop a strategic plan for improvement and reform implementation,

addressing the following set of questions:

• What policy directions do the data suggest for your school?

• How do the data speak to your school’s situation?

• What further data do you need to collect before you undertake a

policy initiative?

• What have you learned about data-driven planning?

These focus group discussions, were tape recorded and transcribed, and

the qualitative data arising from them were also analyzed in relation to the

quantitative findings of the Staff Survey. Elaborated interpretations from these

focus group discussions are interspersed with reports of our qualitative findings

at various points in this chapter.

Two hundred and ninety (290) teachers and (40) department heads

answered the 55 closed-ended items across all six schools (approximately 48

teachers and 7 department heads per school). Department heads' and teachers'

responses were analyzed together in school-by-school breakouts, in order to

protect the anonymity of a small, identifiable number of administrators and

department heads. Percentages were rounded to the nearest whole number.

Data have been analyzed with the assistance of the Statistical Package for

the Social Sciences (SPSS). First, we present an analysis of aggregated responses

across all six schools and on a school-by-school basis for items that displayed a

division of opinion. Second, we examine response patterns according to teacher

background information. Third, we compare teachers’ and department heads’

responses. Finally, we summarize strategic directions for school improvement

identified by respondents in the survey analysis workshop.

36

TEACHERS’ EXPERIENCE OF CHANGE

Curriculum

Ontario’s new curriculum — organized into Academic and Applied

streams — is being implemented in stages: grade 9 (1999), grade 10 (2000), grade

11 (2001) and grade 12 (2002). It focuses on reading, writing, spelling, math,

science, and technology in particular. Programs in the arts, physical education,

and other subjects are also part of the reforms. The new curriculum is tied to

province-wide standards that indicate what students should learn, and when. A

standardized report card has been developed, as well.

The ministry has the new curriculum, course-by-course, accessible on its

website as a resource for teachers. However, teachers complained that they did

not have enough lead time to learn the new content and design lesson plans

before having to actually teach it to their students. With this historical policy

context in mind, we developed a series of nine questions designed to probe

teachers' experiences of implementing the new curriculum and its impact on the

teaching and learning process.

Table 1

Teachers' Responses to Curriculum Change

Item

StronglyAgree

%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses

1 The new Academic curriculum is appropriateto the learning needs of my students 4 45 36 15 259

2 The new Grade 9/10 curriculum isdiminishing my range of classroom teachingstrategies

9 39 41 11 255

3 Judging from the students in my classroom,the expectations of the new curriculum arerealistic

3 23 48 27 270

4 The new curriculum makes it more difficultfor me to engage students from differentcultural backgrounds in their learning

17 35 38 10 240

5 The new curriculum has prompted me toexpand the variety of assignments I set for mystudents

5 45 36 15 262

6 I would favour a return to the CommonCurriculum for Grade 9 13 28 38 21 208

7 The new Applied curriculum is appropriate tothe learning needs of my students 3 25 41 32 215

8 I have a clear understanding of the curriculumthat I am required to teach 17 41 29 13 277

37

Interestingly, teachers in the six project schools were not uniformly

opposed to the substance of contemporary curriculum change. Many value the

quality it offers and improvements it makes to students’ learning, and others feel

able to incorporate its demands into their practice without too much difficulty.

Table 1 shows that majority of teachers felt that they understood the new

curriculum (Item #8) and that their range of teaching strategies had not been

diminished (Item#2). Exactly half felt that the new curriculum had led them to

use a wider variety of assignments (Item #5). Nearly half (49%) felt that the

academic curriculum was appropriate for their students (Item#1) and fully 59%

had no wish to return to the previous Grade 9 Common Curriculum (Item #6).

In open-ended responses, a number of teachers (15), acknowledged that “many

of the changes are excellent”, that they had “no difficulty with the reforms...

(with) the clarity and consistency for students; the fairness of the assessment

principles.” The reforms had “much good” attached to them. The new

curriculum was “not bad” and for some teachers it was even “a major

improvement”. Importantly, though, over half (8 out of 15) responses that were

favourably disposed towards the new curriculum came from middle-level

leadership heads, whose positions of responsibility typically incline them to be

more favourably disposed to external reforms (Jeffrey & Woods, 1996).

Teachers in Dale Park, North Ridge, Wayvern and Talisman Park, were

somewhat divided in their opinions regarding the appropriateness of the

academic curriculum to their students’ needs. Responses in Mountain View and

Stewart Heights were clustered more towards the negative pole, dramatically so

in Mountain View where every respondent disagreed with the statement that the

new curriculum was appropriate to the learning needs of their students (Table 2).

38

Table 2

Item #1: The new academic curriculum is appropriate to the learning needs of mystudents.

StronglyAgree

%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses

Talisman Park 3 58 30 9 33

North Ridge - 55 38 8 53

Stewart Heights 2 30 57 11 53

Dale Park 5 48 31 16 62

Wayvern 5 57 29 9 65

Mountain View - - 37 63 30

Stewart Heights’ pattern of response may be explained by the fact that it is

the most culturally diverse school in the sample. Mountain View is a vocational

school, catering to students studying in the applied program, where teachers

clearly do not think that the applied curriculum is appropriate to their students’

needs (Table 3). According to a female teacher from Mountain View,

I have a totally unique perspective in that we're very

polarized. We either strongly agree or strongly disagree with most

of the statements throughout the whole (survey). With curriculum,

we found it was inappropriate and unrealistic for our special needs

students. I mean it was totally inappropriate — it didn't matter

whether it was academic or applied. It doesn't meet our needs.

There isn't enough variety in the teaching methodologies and there

isn't enough variety in the assessment tools to be able to modify for

our students. Our students don't exist as far as secondary school

reform. They're totally negated. They aren't even considered.

They're kind of non-entities. It's very disturbing (Data Analysis

Workshop, June 11/01).

39

Table 3

Item #7: The new applied curriculum is appropriate to the learning needs of mystudents.

StronglyAgree

%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses


North Ridge - 19 38 43 47


Dale Park - 26 43 30 53

Wayvern 4 32 27 38 48

Mountain View - 14 49 37 35

Almost half of all teachers felt that the new grade 9/10 curriculum

diminished their range of classroom teaching strategies, with the strongest

agreement being among staff at Mountain View and Stewart Heights (Table 4).

Table 4

Item #2: The new Grade 9/10 curriculum is diminishing my range of classroomteaching strategies.

StronglyAgree

%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses


North Ridge 4 32 56 8 50


Dale Park 7 32 48 13 60

Wayvern 5 39 42 14 57

Mountain View 11 61 22 6 36

40

Majorities of teachers at all six school sites did not find the expectations of

the new curriculum to be ‘realistic’ based on their knowledge of students’

abilities and interests (Table 5). This majority was 100% at Mountain View, with

the next strongest level of agreement being at Stewart Heights.

Table 5

Item #3: Judging from the students in my classroom, the expectations of the newcurriculum are realistic.

StronglyAgree

%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses




Dale Park 2 24 44 30 63

Wayvern 4 35 43 18 68

Mountain View - - 40 60 35

Teachers were divided over whether the new curriculum made it more or

less difficult to engage students from different backgrounds. This pattern was

consistent despite the level of cultural diversity in the school (Table 6).

Table 6

Item #4: The new curriculum makes it more difficult for me to engage students fromdifferent cultural backgrounds in their learning.

StronglyAgree

%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses




Dale Park 18 30 42 10 60

Wayvern 8 37 45 10 62


41

The new curriculum prompted more than half the teachers overall to

expand their variety of student assignments, with Talisman Park and Mountain

View teachers slightly less likely to answer this item in the affirmative (Table 7).

Table 7

Item #5: The new curriculum has prompted me to expand the variety of assignmentsI set for my students.

StronglyAgree

%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses




Dale Park 3 55 32 10 62

Wayvern 10 45 32 13 62


While majorities of teachers in five of the schools opposed a return to The

Common Curriculum for grade 9 (implying relative support for the current

curriculum), seventy-one percent of teachers at vocational Mountain View were

in favour of just such a policy reinstatement (Table 8).

Table 8

Item #6: I would favour a return to the Common Curriculum for Grade 9.

StronglyAgree

%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%Total

Responses




Dale Park 17 27 38 19 48

Wayvern 9 28 44 20 46


42

Most teachers reported that they had a clear understanding of the

curriculum they were expected to teach and these findings were consistent across

all schools — except for Mountain View, where again 61% disagreed with the

statement (Table 9).

Table 9

Item #8: I have a clear understanding of the curriculum that I am required to teach.

StronglyAgree

%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses


North Ridge 18 42 27 13 55


Dale Park 18 47 20 15 66

Wayvern 15 39 39 8 65


The Community Service component of Secondary School Reform evoked

strongly negative responses with 80% of teachers across all schools reporting that it

was having no positive impact on their students’ learning. Table 10 provides a

school-by-school breakdown for these data.

Table 10

Item #9: The community service component of Secondary School Reform has made apositive difference to my students’ learning.

StronglyAgree

%Agree

%Disagree

%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses

Talisman Park - 21 46 32 28



Dale Park 9 19 35 37 43

Wayvern - 16 45 39 31


43

In summary, quantitative findings in the curriculum area suggest that

while many teachers across the project schools experienced problems with the

new academic and applied curricula from both a teaching and learning

perspective, other teachers did not. Teachers in the vocational setting were

particularly concerned that neither the Academic or Applied programs were

relevant to their students’ needs. The curriculum area of Secondary School

Reform provoking the most negative reaction among all teachers was that of the

Community Service component, which seems to have fallen well short of policy

expectations. In general, teachers at Mountain View were most critical of the

mandated curriculum, compared with their colleagues in the other five project

schools, suggesting a severe mismatch between the Secondary School Reform

agenda and the needs of vocational students.

Testing and Assessment

The second section of the survey focused on issues related to student

testing and new assessment methods (Table 11). This series of questions was

concerned with teachers' support for the policies, their experience in using them,

and their perceptions of their effects on teaching and learning.

Table 11

Teachers' Responses to Changes in Assessment , Reporting and Testing

ItemStrongly

Agree%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses

10I support the new policy changes to studenttesting. 3 20 38 39 266

11The new Grade 10 Test of Reading andWriting Skills promotes my students’improvement.

4 17 35 44 249

12 I understand the new assessment methods. 10 54 26 10 274

13The Grade 10 Test of Reading and WritingSkills has enhanced my confidence as ateacher.

0 10 40 50 233

14 I support the new policy changes to studentassessment. 4 29 39 28 255

15The new Grade 9/10 assessment policies haveimproved my feedback to students about theirlearning.

2 27 42 29 249

16My lower ability students are especiallyanxious about how they will perform on theGrade 10 Test of Reading and Writing Skills.

41 36 14 9 224

44

17 Results of Grade 10 Test of Reading andWriting Skills have helped me identify thelearning needs of students who scored belowprovincial norms.

2 18 38 42 209

18‘E-Teacher’ has improved my process ofmarking. 3 9 30 58 258

19I’ve had time to become comfortable with thenew ways of assessing my students learning,e.g., the new report card.

3 26 31 40 273

20Provincial testing of students makes me moreaccountable. 3 21 37 39 278

21The Grade 10 Test of Reading and WritingSkills, and the preparation required for it,have stimulated my students’ motivation tolearn.

2 10 33 55 240

22Since the introduction of new reportingpolicies, my communication with students hasimproved.

1 14 46 40 266

23My classroom assessment strategies areconsistent with the provincial Grade 10 Test ofReading and Writing Skills.

6 63 22 10 195

24The new Grade 9/10 testing policies havereduced my range of classroom teachingstrategies.

9 37 45 8 238

25I am using a wider range of studentassessment strategies since the introduction ofSecondary School Reform.

3 41 41 15 259

26Since the introduction of new assessmentpolicies, I involve my students more in theassessment process.

3 37 48 12 266

27Since the introduction of new assessmentpolicies, my communication with students hasimproved.

2 20 55 23 262

28I have successfully integrated the skillsrequired for the Grade 10 Test of Reading andWriting Skills into my classroom teaching.

4 48 34 14 208

29Since the introduction of Secondary SchoolReform, I am more confident of myassessment practices.

2 17 57 24 258

The provincial policy context puts the teachers’ responses into historical

perspective. On November 23, 1995, the Minister of Education announced the

introduction of a comprehensive testing program to be monitored through The

Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), which also manages the

province's participation in national and international tests and reports annually

to the Minister and the public on students' performance.

EQAO has subsequently initiated testing for all students in grade 10 using

a provincially developed Test of Reading and Writing Skills. Students must pass

the Test of Reading and Writing Skills (also known as the "Literacy Test") in

order to graduate. Results are recorded on student transcripts and those who fail

the test receive remedial help to prepare them for retesting. The Literacy Test (a

graduating requirement in addition to the 30 credits needed for a high school

45

diploma) evaluates students’ reading and writing skills based on curriculum

expectations in language and communications up to and including Grade 9. ESL

students take the test only when they have reached this level in their language

studies and accommodations are made for students in special education

programs.

Establishing close linkage between curriculum, testing, assessment and

reporting requirements was an integral part of Secondary School Reform from

the outset. The purpose was to institutionalize a standard curriculum along with

normative evaluation of student achievement at all levels in the system. Our

survey sought to identify how teachers had experienced these new testing and

assessment mandates.

In aggregate terms, only 23% of teachers across all six project schools said

that they supported the government’s new policy on student testing, and the

degree of intensity of those who disagreed was pronounced (39% strongly

disagreed). When we disaggregated these data by school, we found that Dale

Park and Wayvern teachers were marginally more likely to support the

statement (Table 12).

Table 12

Item #10: I support the new policy changes to student testing

StronglyAgree

%Agree

%Disagree

%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses




Dale Park 7 32 33 28 60

Wayvern 2 29 41 29 63


46

While 67% of all teachers did not support the new policy changes to student

assessment (Item #14), most said that their assessment strategies were consistent with

the grade 10 Test of Reading and Writing Skills (Item #23) and that they understood the

assessment techniques they were supposed to be using to measure students’

achievement (Item #12). This pattern held for all schools, with the highest percentage

(77%) responding positively at Stewart Heights. Mountain View teachers were evenly

split between agreement and disagreement (Table 13).

Table 13

Item #12: I understand the new assessment methods.

StronglyAgree

%Agree

%Disagree

%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses




Dale Park 8 55 27 11 64

Wayvern 9 58 24 9 66


The new electronic report card (E-teacher) came in for particularly

virulent criticism because of its educational inappropriateness, technical

inadequacy and rushed implementation. Table 11 indicates that, overall, less

than 30% of surveyed teachers felt comfortable with the new report card (Item

#19), only 15% reported that it had improved communication with their students

(Item #22), and a paltry 12% believed it had improved the process of marking

students’ work (Item #18). The cause of these reactions was sometimes straight

disagreement with what the report card was trying to achieve.

For others, the ineptitude of E-teacher was in the implementation design.

E-teacher took too much time to learn and to operate. It distracted valuable

attention from what teachers regarded as more important matters including,

ironically, evaluation of students within the classroom. In their open-ended

survey responses, teachers labelled E-teacher system as “not efficient”, “not

47

supportive”, “not user-friendly”, “always down”, “inadequate, malfunctioning

and diabolical”. One teacher summed up the problems

E-teacher is not efficient for teachers. Much better programs

are available, which have been developed with teacher input.... For

programs such as these, intelligent, usable, understandable

comments must be available, then training to create teacher specific

libraries and departmentally, decisions should be made as to

expectations that will be commented on in each report. The

government’s system is just too much, too fast, with no

accountability by those pushing the changes.

(Wayvern #42)

Some of the most widespread teacher criticisms were reserved for the

Grade 10 Test of Reading and Writing Skills (also referred to as the Grade 10

"literacy" test). At the time of our secondary school survey, it had just been

implemented for the first time. The pattern of teacher responses overwhelmingly

indicated that little value was seen in the test in terms of its contribution to

improving teaching and learning. In Table 11, under 30% felt the test improved

the feedback they gave to their students (Item #15). Just one in five teachers felt

it enabled them to identify students’ learning needs or to help them improve

(Item #17). Meanwhile, nine out of every ten teachers believed the test neither

motivated students to learn (Item #21) nor enhanced their own confidence as

teachers (Item #13). In their open-ended responses, teachers made criticisms of

the poor feedback it provided to students about their own performance, and one

teacher was outraged that the testing agency had lost his son’s test.

Overall, 77% of teachers reported that the Literacy Test had resulted in

heightened anxiety in lower ability students (Item #16, Table 11). This was

especially the experience of teachers in the vocational school setting (Mountain

View) where 87.5% agreed with the statement. A female teacher from Mountain

48

View, in a cross-school focus group, put these survey numbers into human

context by arguing eloquently that,

…In a regular academic school you …have the students who

are going to be successful, who are going to earn their diploma.

(Our) school had a zero pass rate…Our students are identified as

being three grades behind their age appropriateness….They are

being told they cannot receive their diploma…if they do not pass

this Literacy Test…The reality of it is that we were delighted we

had 18 kids who have passed…That's 18 out of 140 Grade 10s that

might ... and hear the word might ... might earn a diploma. How

do you keep a school motivated? How do you keep those students

motivated if you cannot offer them something else? As OISE/UT

representatives, as parents, as good citizens, we need to find these

students something that will give them an alternative to the regular

high school diploma, whether it's a workplace diploma that

identifies that they may not be able to pass the Literacy Test but

they have skills, they do good work, and they work hard. They're

decent people who need to have a future…The Grade 10 (Test of

Reading and Writing Skills) is absolutely inappropriate for them. It

does not motivate them. It (de)motivates them…because they're

anxiety ridden over not passing it…How would you feel?…How

are these students going to feel? They're being bashed every day

with not being successful in the Literacy Test, being told they're

stupid - and that's the word they use to describe

themselves…special needs students, learning disabled students,

culturally diverse students… (Data Analysis Workshop, June

11/01)

Of the 30 open-ended survey responses which mentioned the

inappropriateness of the new curriculum for certain students, 17 of these (more

than half) came from Mountain View teachers. These responses comprised a

49

catalogue of teacher outrage, frustration and despair that the challenging

students they worked so hard to support were not served in the slightest by the

so-called standardized curriculum and assessment changes. Teachers at

Mountain View were vociferous about the curriculum’s complete inapplicability

to their students and its impossibly unrealistic expectations for those students

with severe reading problems or genuine learning disabilities (including two of

the teachers’ own children). They berated the government for setting these

students up for failure, for treating vocational and special needs students and

schools as if they did not exist, and for denying the right to graduate to students

who had already had to endure far too many blows and setbacks in their lives.

Teachers also despaired about the emotional consequences of the reforms for

their students — on the way the reforms made their students feel discouraged,

“hopeless”, even “traumatized”. The moving quotes from Mountain View’s

teachers that follow give just a sense of their indignant reactions to the inflexible

and insensitive application of standardized tests to students who are most in

need.

Literacy Test requirements are politically motivated for the

benefit of politicians and not for the benefit of kids. Should a child

be denied a high school diploma because he/she fails one test?

Special Ed kids have been given a raw deal because of this

requirement and I speak of it as a parent of a learning disabled kid

and of a teacher of special education kids.

Vocational students do not exist in the eyes of the Ministry

of Education or the provincial government. This in spite of the fact

that industry continues to cry out for shortage of skilled workers.

The Literacy Test is useless and detrimental — my son,

dyslexic, failed and all Mountain View students failed the test —

learning disabled students should be exempt from the test and still

get their diploma. How will the government handle the fact that

50

students like my son will get 30 credits and not get his diploma

because of the Literacy Test? Unconstitutional! He has the right to

get a diploma in spite of the bogus Literacy Test.

Too much to assess — not realistic — doesn’t give students a

real report on progress. Doesn’t apply to students with special

needs. (The government Premier) doesn’t acknowledge that special

needs children are a valuable part of society. Our kids have to

perform to the standards of ‘normal’ kids. How fair or just is that?

Special Ed. students have been “psychologically

traumatized” by failing the Grade 10 test and have learned nothing

except that their disability has rendered them hopeless in the

academic mainstream. I’d sue if I were a parent.

In general, teachers at Mountain View and elsewhere did not feel that the

Literacy Test helped them diagnose the learning needs of their students. 80% of

teachers across all schools reported that they were unable to identify the learning

needs of students from the grade 10 Test of Reading and Writing Skills data who

scored below provincial norms (Item #17).

The data also raise questions about whether new testing and assessment

policies have improved communication between teachers and students about

learning. The grade 10 Test of Reading and Writing Skills seems to promote one-

way communication from teacher to student in terms of what students need to

know to score at or above provincial norms. Findings from the survey, and the

workshop, suggest that teachers’ classroom practice is becoming increasingly

oriented to the grade 10 Test of Reading and Writing Skills. The stakes are high

for everyone — the district board, schools, administrators, teachers, students and

parents. The resulting top-down pressure may be squeezing out classroom time

for teaching and learning activities that do not relate directly to the grade 10 Test

of Reading and Writing Skills. Some teachers felt that they were being forced to

51

communicate with their students in test-oriented ways that were less satisfying

for them and their students,

What we’re finding is that, once the students write the test

and once the teachers have an idea of what's on the test…everyone

teaches towards that test. So we shut down the regular curriculum

for two weeks and we’ll teach towards that test to get as many of

these bodies, or what the government thinks is widgets, through

the system so that they'll pass…The English Department has the

stress on them because they’re the ones that it’s going to fall on.

We’re trying to get all of the departments involved…(Male teacher,

Data Analysis Workshop, June 11/01).

Testing, assessment and reporting are core functions in the teaching and

learning process. Policy changes in these areas affect teachers’ practice. The

teachers in our study were more likely to react negatively when they were not

convinced the new policies would improve their teaching or help their particular

students. Mandated reform in education affects not only what teachers know

and how they assess it: it also affects teachers’ communications and

relationships with those around them, that in turn impact on learning.

Communication and Relationships

In our survey, we wanted to identify the effects of mandated reforms on

teachers’ patterns of communication. We also sought to explore the organization,

structures and purposes of teachers’ relationships with colleagues,

administrators, students and parents.

Teachers in all schools reported experiencing deterioration in the quality

of their communication with colleagues. Our data suggest a slide away from

collegiality to professional isolation. Table 14 indicates that large majorities of

teachers across all schools, for example, perceived no improvement in their

communication with colleagues within or outside their departments (Items #30

52

and #35). Moreover, 67% of teachers stated that they now work less

collaboratively with colleagues around issues of student learning. (Item #36).

Table 14

Teachers' Perceptions in Changes in Communication and Relationships

Item StronglyAgree

%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses

30... communication with colleagues within mydepartment has improved. 1 22 44 33 260

31...my reporting of student achievement toparents has improved. 0 20 54 25 272

32...The Teacher Advisor Program has improvedmy relationships with students. 1 6 37 56 275

33...The Annual Education Plan has improvedmy ability to help students develop planningskills.

1 17 31 52 264

34...I am less involved in decision-making in myschool. 24 46 22 9 256

35 ...communication with my colleagues acrossdepartments has improved. 3 13 45 40 270

36...I work more collaboratively with mycolleagues around issues of student learning. 3 30 39 28 269

37 ...I have reduced my involvement in activitiesoutside the classroom. 45 40 10 5 290

38...students have a greater voice in schoolimprovement. 0 11 55 33 243

39...I work well with parents to implement themandates. 1 8 62 29 265

40 ...I have less contact with parents. 12 31 49 9 258

41...my working relationships with schooladministrators have improved. 1 20 62 18 229

One of the most powerful resources that people in almost any

organization have for learning and improving is each other. Sharing ideas and

expertise, providing moral support when dealing with new and difficult

challenges, discussing complex individual cases together — this is the essence of

strong collegiality and the basis of effective professional communities. Strong

professional communities in teaching are not only emotionally rewarding for

teachers (Nias et al, 1992); they are also directly responsible for improving

standards of student learning and achievement results (Rosenholtz, 1989;

Newmann & Wehlage, 1995).

Teaching has a long tradition of isolation and individualism in the

profession that has kept standards down — and teachers have sometimes been

53

blamed for clinging on to this tradition by jealously protecting their professional

autonomy, and by shielding themselves from evaluation and external scrutiny

(Hargreaves, D. 1982; Rosenholtz, 1989). In Ontario, though, many school

districts, often working in partnership with universities, made great strides in the

1980s and early 1990s to develop more collegial cultures of shared planning,

reflection, coaching and mentoring in schools, where teachers worked and

learned more closely together on behalf of their students (e.g. Fullan &

Hargreaves, 1991; Hargreaves, 1994; Fullan, 1993).

Teachers in our study criticized the impact of Ontario Secondary School

Reform not just because it intruded on their individual autonomy, but also

because it took away the benefits and traditions of collegiality and professional

community which they had learned to value over the previous decade.

Elsewhere, there is some evidence that imposed large-scale reform actually

increases collegial planning and interaction, as teachers work in teams to

understand and implement the new curriculum (D. Hargreaves, 1994).

However, these forms of contrived collegiality (Hargreaves, 1994) seem to be

ephemeral, disappearing once the immediate crisis of implementation has passed

and leaders are no longer breathing down their necks (Helsby, 1999). These

patterns of temporarily increased collegiality seem to occur in systems where

cultures of teaching immediately before the reform, are strongly individualistic

and where the collegiality that results from legislated change therefore amounts

to a net gain. This was patently not the case in Ontario’s schools at the time of

Secondary School Reform where legislated change was responsible for a

dramatic loss of highly valued collegiality and professional community among

many teachers. In this regard, 85% of all teachers said that they had reduced their

involvement in activities outside the classroom since the introduction of

Secondary School Reform (Item #37). Seventy per cent were now less inclined to

become involved in school decision-making (Item #34). Moreover, eighty percent

reported that their working relationships with school administrators had not

improved in the context of Secondary School Reform (Item #41).

54

After several years of starting to “think out of the box” as educators, and

to move beyond the traditional “egg-crate” structure of the classroom-based

school (Lortie, 1975), mandated reform was now putting teachers back in the box,

nailing them into classroom coffins of deadened professional learning.

In the open-ended survey responses, reduced opportunities for

professional collaboration was the sixth most frequently mentioned item of

concern across 37 responses — after time, implementation problems, insufficient

or inappropriate professional development, problems of motivation and morale,

and mistrust of the political reasons for change. Most comments referred

generally to how the pace of reform, reduction of support, increases in teachers’

work responsibilities and loss of scheduled time away from the classroom had

led to “no time for collaboration”, “no time for communication with colleagues”,

and less opportunities to “share and implement”, “work together”, “consult”,

“discuss best practices”, “conference with other individuals who are teaching

similar courses” and “prepare and implement the curriculum and assessment

changes with each other”.

The extra teaching load had taken away teachers’ “time and energy for

real and meaningful collaboration necessary to implementation” and made it

almost impossible to work with colleagues “to do the job properly”. Teachers

complained of being just “too tired and too busy to communicate with

colleagues”. In the words of a North Ridge teacher,

The greatest challenge to effective implementation is the lack

of time, individual time and collaborative time, to work on the

preparation of new programs.... No time release, no assistant heads

and the responsibility of teaching 6.67 classes out of 8 (makes it)

impossible to do a thorough, thoughtful job of implementation....

At the end of the day, people just want to go home to do their own

lesson plans and marking.

55

It was exceedingly difficult for teachers to find time to work with

colleagues within their departments to discuss common subject matter. More

than this, a number of teachers complained about how the reforms had actively

created “departmental competitiveness”, making it “difficult to get departments

together to try to attain the same goals” and leaving teachers feeling “isolated by

department”.

Talisman Park is the most traditional of the Ontario schools in our study.

Many of its older staff long nostalgically for its lost golden age of traditional

academic standards, a reform agenda that encouraged local curriculum change

in academic subject disciplines, and the purpose of educating children in a high

status, high achieving and culturally homogeneous community. Under its

previous principal and before the full onslaught of Secondary School Reform, the

staff had begun to work much more collegially to develop a school improvement

agenda that was being tackled cross-departmentally, and to reach out to its more

culturally diverse community. The deluge of directives from Secondary School

Reform, however, along with a new principal who construed his role as one of

devising a minimalist response to its demands in order to protect his staff, led

Talisman Park’s teachers to turn aside from improvement, away from the

community and apart from each other.

One staff member confessed to standing by while a new teacher who had

been assigned the task of organizing Commencement, made a mess of it because

no senior colleagues were prepared to intervene and assist her. Meanwhile, a

coffee circle of embittered, older staff that met before school started each

morning focussed much of its energies on anticipating and complaining about

government policies, confirming that collaboration among the disenchanted is

rarely constructive and demonstrates only that “misery loves company”.

Schooling for a vibrant, creative knowledge economy and for democratic

community depends on teachers being able to work and learn in strong

professional communities. In the six schools we studied, not only has Ontario’s

56

educational reform agenda failed to strengthen professional learning

communities in schools; it has actively undermined them. The tyranny of time

and the dictatorial imposition of unwanted political will in educational reforms

have turned Talisman Park back into an embittered distortion of its lost

traditional self, and reversed the systemic progress that had been made in

changing teachers from a profession of isolated individuals into a community of

engaged colleagues.

Data in Table 14 indicate that turmoil and unhappiness within schools

also affected teachers' relationships with key stakeholders outside the school. For

example, given policy objectives to encourage and facilitate parent involvement,

it was ironic that teachers reported less contact with parents (Item #40),

specifically, a decline in reporting to parents (Item #31), and less satisfactory

working relationships with parents in implementing the new mandates (Item

#39).

The Teacher Advisor Program (Item #32) and the Annual Education Plan

(Item #33) had little positive impact on teachers’ ability to communicate with or

help their students, according to large majorities of respondents. Students were

also perceived by 88% of the teachers as having no greater voice in school

improvement (Item #38).

According to these findings, Secondary School Reform policies that were

aimed directly at enhancing teachers’ relationships with administrators,

colleagues, students and parents were having the opposite effect. Policy that

requires deep, substantive changes in teachers' relationships with key

stakeholders must build in time for teachers to learn to relate differently and

better with others around issues of teaching and learning. A male teacher from

Wayvern expressed teachers’ predicament this way,

At Wayvern…I think the feeling among most teachers is,

given a little more time and a little more effort, a lot of the

curriculum is pretty good (survey data for Wayvern indicated that

57

teachers were evenly split on questions concerning curriculum

substance, process and impact). There's interesting (material). It's

very demanding on the students but the students who are working

hard are doing fine. The Grade 10 (Test of Reading and Writing

Skills) is pretty much a disaster…I was surprised because the

amount of effort that the school has put in, I expected to see a more

positive response from the teachers…I can understand the

Mountain View (staff) feeling because there are a lot students that I

teach who have absolutely no possibility of ever passing the test

and it's hard to be positive about it…(Communication,

Relationships, Self and Work, Resources) is where our school is

very polar, very negative (survey data mostly substantiate this

perception). There is the self-worth part and the feeling about

teaching…If it weren’t for the (teacher) bashing, and the feeling of

no time to do anything…responses (to the survey) would be a lot

better. If we were teaching a little less and working a little less hard

— just trying to keep swimming — we would have much better

things to say (Data Analysis Workshop, June 11/01).

Secondary teachers have encountered complex and wide-ranging new

policy mandates since 1995, when the government introduced Secondary School

Reform. Findings from our survey suggest that the context and process of the

implementation have played a decisive role in shaping teachers' reactions to

change, their capacity to communicate with others about the change process, and

the nature of their relationships with others. Particularly, time to learn,

collaborate with other stakeholders and change their practice is essential to

effective school change and improvement efforts. Yet, there are disconcerting

currents in our survey findings that point to teachers’ gradual withdrawal from

involvement in those relationships outside the classroom that are so vitally

important to student learning and success. Increasing students’ capacity to learn

necessitates increasing teachers’ capacity to learn, not least from each other. In

58

the experience of these six schools, Secondary School Reform seems to have

actively undermined much of that learning.

Self and Work

Mandated school reform affects teachers day-to-day work, and the sense

they develop of themselves through that work as professionals, with motivations,

emotional engagements and feelings of competence.

Items in the ‘self and work’ section of our survey were intended to explore

the effects of educational change on teachers’ senses of professional motivation,

their leadership aspirations, and the balance between their personal and

professional commitments. Thus, this series of items sought to get at emotional

dimensions of change: how teachers felt about themselves and their work as

professionals in the context of new mandated policies. We also wanted to know if

and in what ways teachers’ professional self-image and career goals had changed

since the introduction of Secondary School Reform.

Competence and Quality

Any self-respecting professional finds it hard to admit they might be

becoming less effective. There is no pride to be had in being poor at one’s job;

and only guilt and shame in knowingly neglecting or failing to care for one’s

clients. In the early years of our improvement work with the six secondary

schools, their teachers complained bitterly about erosion of their working

conditions and the climate of disrespect towards themselves and their profession,

which accompanied the government’s reforms. Yet when pushed to say whether

their classroom teaching was suffering, the vast majority of teachers steadfastly

insisted that despite the impact of reform, they were, as dedicated professionals,

still doing quality work with their students.

By the time of our survey, this was no longer true. In the survey’s open-

ended response section, 43 teachers confessed that the quality of their teaching

had declined, that there was less time to mark students’ work properly, that their

59

role had narrowed and their world had shrunk to deal only with the immediate

pressures of the classroom, that they were losing confidence and competence and

that the creativity of their job had gone. Given teachers’, indeed anyone’s general

reluctance to admit to failing, these are almost certainly underestimates. Many

teachers wrote in distressing terms about “not doing the job well”, “not doing an

effective job”, having a “lack of time to do a thorough job”, showing “limited

productivity”, and not having the “quality time to make a positive impact on

students”. They confessed to being “less effective in instruction”, complained

about having “less time for individuals” and “no time for contact with students”

or “to help students in difficulty”, and they deeply “resent(ed) being made to feel

incompetent”, and to having “feelings of inadequacy” because of the

government’s reform process. As one teacher said, “for me to keep my high

standards in class with less time — it seemed, with on-calls, no time — to prepare,

has been a great source of anxiety.” A North Ridge teacher who supported much

of the substance of the reforms, nonetheless poignantly declared:

The challenge also is to lower my standards of perfection

and excellence but I can’t work the way I have in the past. I can’t

do the job the way I used to — making time for students, being

involved in the life of the school as much as I used to be, being

creative with my lessons, supporting my colleagues, keeping up

with professional reading — it’s just not happening to my

satisfaction. It’s a frustration not to be able to meet my professional

goals in these areas. Meeting my own high expectations used to

provide me with a great deal of job satisfaction. At times it is a

pressure and a frustration to know that I must take short cuts. I

don’t always feel that I can do my best work. Reforms are

depleting teacher passion in the current implementation conditions

(North Ridge #24).

The teacher was one of several who felt that Secondary School Reform had

abducted his creative muse. Teachers wrote about having to “teach to the test

60

instead of being creative”, or feeling “forced to leave out interesting exercises” in

the rush to get curriculum covered. One teacher said, “she used to love being

creative: Now I’m too busy to try.” Another wrote despairingly about how

“creativity and enthusiasm have become hopelessness and depression, and a

lethargic outlook has evolved” (Mountain View #2).

The Absence of Integrity

As well as bringing an end to creativity in many places, standards-based

reform has consistently undermined the principle of integrity of many

governments and administrators in terms of their moral sincerity about

introducing changes that will benefit all students. It has also threatened teachers’

professional integrity in terms of having to prepare their students to fulfil

educational purposes they find increasingly hard to justify. One of the critical

factors affecting the success of any change is the presumed credibility of its

source. If the originators of a change are not to be trusted, if their motives are

suspect, people will be less likely to commit to the change, other than through

self-interest or fear. To teachers in our study, the credibility gap in Ontario’s

educational reforms was a yawning chasm. This was the fourth most commonly

cited source of concern in their open-ended survey responses (43).

Of course, imposed, top-down change of any kind rarely evokes favourable

responses from teachers. In a previous study of the emotions of teaching and

educational change conducted in the mid-1990s before Ontario Secondary School

Reforms began to take full effect, teachers generally perceived change as

something that was done to them by Ministries and governments, they were

critical of people in policy who were too far removed to have the necessary

experience and knowledge of teachers’ own working conditions, and they

questioned whether imposed reforms such as detracking would benefit their

students. They were also positively disposed to changes which they initiated

themselves, rather than ones that had been imposed from the outside (Hargreaves

et al, 2002).

61

When the legislated reforms of succeeding governments and

administrations begin to supersede and contradict each other, teachers develop a

cynicism about top-down mandated change in general; about the capricious

nature and flip-flop dynamics of changes that seemed to fulfil only a political

agenda. Among the most cynical teachers in our study were those with the

longest memories

It’s come full circle. First we had the different levels:

advanced, general and enriched (The Ontario credit system in the

1980s; OSIS). Then we had destreaming (Transition Years). So, now

all of a sudden there are no levels at all. However, the enriched

were kept (despite) destreaming — which was antithetical. Then

we got rid of destreaming. Then we were into Transition

Years/Common Curriculum. Now, we are into the Grade nines who

will have two streams in September: the Applied and the Academic

(Secondary School Reform). That is really back to what we had before

(OSIS). So, I don’t find that much has changed. We will have new

programs and hopefully the programs will help — but nothing has

really changed in terms of what goes on in the classroom (Talisman

Park).

While teachers may not particularly like imposed change, this does not

mean they should always be protected from it. Physical punishment would still

exist in many schools and nations had it not been for the force of legislated

change. Women and minorities would not have become more strongly

represented in educational leadership, had it not been for the exertion of

administrative pressure. Some teachers would still be teaching literacy any way

they liked — even when it is ineffective. Effective educational change that

extends beyond a few schools and classrooms will almost always require the

stimulus of some outside pressure as well as the provision of organizational

support (Fullan, 1993; Miles & Huberman, 1984). Without at least some measure

of anxiety or even fear, there is always a risk of complacency, of change having

62

no necessity or urgency, of teachers sometimes pleasing themselves in how they

teach even at the price of their students. While teachers rarely like top-down

change, therefore, some element of it may almost always be desirable and

necessary.

Interestingly, however, less than ten teachers in the open-ended responses

of our most recent survey reported aversion to imposed change in these general

terms. These teachers complained that Secondary School Reform was “top-

down” rather than student-focussed”, that it was “forced from above at a rapid

pace (in a way that) frightens people”. The government’s “single-minded,

autocratic delivery of their proposed changes” also generated “very limited

support of the changes from people who are asked to implement them”. It was

hard “motivating creative individuals in an environment of top-down policy”,

when “teachers (were) never consulted in a real sense.” Teachers felt neither

“consulted” nor “appreciated” by policymakers who “could not convince

teachers that it is the right thing to do”, or secure teacher “buy-in”. Teachers

begged to be involved in change so that government could “listen to our input

and make changes where appropriate”.

However, unlike our own previous work on educational change, and

studies of educational change elsewhere, the majority of teachers’ criticisms of

legislated change did not take issue with top-down change as a general matter of

political insensitivity or misunderstanding. Rather, they attributed the negative

effects of change to governmental manipulation; to its offensive tone and

malicious intent.

The Tone of Change

The literature of educational change commonly addresses the context and

process of change, but does little more than allude to what we want to call its

tone. The tone of educational change is the colour and hue that is cast upon it by

governments, the media, corporate institutions and other groups through the

language they use to describe the nature of the problem to which change is the

63

solution. The tone of change can, for instance, be urgent yet also professionally

respectful, as in the case of Ontario’s Royal Commission on Learning (1994)

which set out a broad agenda for change, but also described teachers as the

“heroes” of the system who must be actively involved in implementing it. Under

Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives, the tone of change represented a dramatic

shift from the previous government.

In their open-ended survey responses, 33 teachers spontaneously referred

to and complained vociferously about the government’s tone. Many were “tired

of being bashed”, “beaten down”, “browbeaten”, “vilified”, “constantly

criticized”, “ramrodded” and given a “hammering” by a “vindictive” and

“arrogant” government and by a governmental leader who, one teacher felt, had

a “vendetta” against the profession. Teachers regretted that the government had

taken an “adversarial position”, that not only demonstrated a “lack of proper

respectful communication”, and “desire for partnership” but was constantly

characterized by “inflammatory statements out of the blue”.

Teachers felt “demeaned” and “degraded” by this “negative propaganda”

and these “deliberate and destructive attacks” on their professionalism. Teachers

felt “unfairly criticized”, they were “sick and tired of being asked to justify (their)

existence”; of “too many assumptions that teachers are not and have never been

professionals”; of “constant government put downs”... that teachers were

“poisoning young minds”; of government mandates to “slander and

deprofessionalize” teachers as a whole. In light of all this, one teacher wondered

whether the government was “determined to make teaching unattractive as a

career option”.

Emotional Fallout

The extensive emotional effects of imposed change on teachers’

motivation and morale in deteriorating working conditions were embalmed and

entombed in professionally demeaning and disparaging tones. Forty-five

teachers reported motivation and morale problems in the open-ended survey

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responses, the fourth most commonly cited issue after time, implementation and

professional development concerns. We scanned the open-ended responses for

emotion or emotion-related language and identified 54 uses of emotional

discourse by teachers — every instance being ultimately negative. Exactly half of

these referred to loss of purpose or personal investment in the work of teaching,

or frustration at not being able to achieve valued purposes because of conditions

and demands created by the government.

Teaching is not only an intellectual or cognitive practice of conveying

knowledge or developing skills among students. It is also and always a moral

and emotional practice of engagement with learning, relationships with students

and adults, and attachment to the purposes and the work that teaching achieves.

Teaching is either a positive emotional practice by design which motivates

teachers to perform at their best with those around them; or it is a negative

emotional practice by neglect where teachers disengage from their teaching and

lose quality in the classroom as a result.

Loss of purpose or inability to achieve purposes because they are

obstructed, unwieldy or unclear, are among the most common causes of negative

emotion (Oatley, 1995). Several teachers wrote heartrendingly about loss of love,

joy, passion and soul in their work because of the impact of governmental

reforms. One teacher who was “tired of being bashed” and had reluctantly

decided to give up her middle level leadership position and retire early,

confided:

I love teaching, and I go home everyday feeling good about

my relations with my classes, feeling energized by my students,

believing that I am helping them to improve and develop their

skills and looking forward to what we (my classes and I) will do

next, but I am tired of being “bashed” by the Premier. So, I have

relinquished my headship for next year and will take retirement on

or before my date, even if that occurs within a semester. That is

65

something I never thought I would even contemplate, let alone

plan to do. That says something. You (whoever read this) have no

idea of the feeling of betrayal I experience — and I know I’m not

alone (North Ridge #20).

Another teacher who felt like leaving the profession because her own

purposes and the purposes of public education were being stolen, described her

reactions in the emotional language of frustration and demoralization (literally

— loss of purpose)

The abundance of change, the lack of time, and the constant

criticism of teachers fueled by the government, and now some of

the community is demoralizing and frustrating. I am seriously

considering leaving the profession. I will question accepting future

leadership opportunities. I’m not bitter, but quite sad for the future

of public education. The needs of teachers and students are not

being met (Talisman Park #23).

A teacher at Stewart Heights echoed these depressing sentiments,

I’m a good teacher. I love teaching and I really enjoy

working with teenagers. But right now I am so depressed about

the politics surrounding teaching, that I sometimes don’t know

how I will go on. If these reforms do this to someone who used to

be active, healthy and optimistic, what are they doing to someone

with reservations about teaching? What will happen to the future

of education in this province? I feel so helpless about the whole

situation, and I’m tired of having to defend the quality of public

education to the public (Stewart Heights #37).

Some teachers could still manage to love aspects of their teaching when

they were with their students in the classroom; but for others, the experience of

loving and liking the job was already fading into the past tense,

66

Since the Secondary School Reform I do not have enough

time to do my job, which I loved, properly. I liked teaching but not

so much any more. Too much time spent on non-teaching

activities, i.e. putting marks (final) into the computers. Not enough

time to discuss history. Contacts with students? There is no time

for it! (Wayvern #23).

Teachers found much of the process of Secondary School Reform “soul

destroying”. They were “distressed to see so much discouragement among

students and staff”. Teachers spoke of demoralization, alienation,

disillusionment and even prostitution of themselves as professionals in the

service of ends they regarded as morally indefensible.

In the face of endless public criticism against which they had no

opportunity to speak in their defence, teachers used the language of shame,

humiliation and abuse to describe how they felt “wounded”, “violated”,

“degraded”, “abused”, “victimized”, “belittled”, “forced” and having their

“hands tied”. While teachers in our earlier studies of emotional responses to

educational change were critical of ‘top-down’ forms of change, no discourse of

abuse was evident in their remarks before the impact of Secondary School

Reforms under Ontario ‘s New Right government (Hargreaves et al, 2002).

In his work on the sociology of shame, Thomas Scheff (1994) argues that

the emotion of shame breaks the basic social bond between people, creating a

distance between them that makes their pursuit of common purposes and shared

goals together impossible. Along with the emotional experiences of

demoralization and loss of purpose, political shaming of teachers did not only

break the social bond between teachers and their government, but it also broke

the bonds between teachers and the public, teachers and their job, and teachers

and their professional selves.

The effects of shaming, demoralization and the sheer exhaustion wrought

by the unsustainable pace of reform reached into teachers’ health and their

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experiences of stress. Teaching became more “difficult and stressful and far less

enjoyable”. Teachers reported feeling “highly stressed and unappreciated”.

Three spoke of specific, clinical health consequences, “Never before have I heard

so much ‘alternative career’ and ‘how can I get sick leave?’ talk.” Another talked

about the “increased absenteeism on staff as people are truly stressed out.” One

confessed that, “stress related medications and needed time for doctor visits

should be calculated since my costs alone are costing the system tremendously —

and I am an eternal optimist!” (North Ridge #23).

Retirement and Resignation

The most devastating emotional effects on teachers that tore their bonds

with their work and their profession asunder, were on teachers’ intentions to

leave teaching before their time was due. In the open-ended survey responses,

ten teachers announced their intention to retire early under conditions of

considerable disillusionment and disappointment about a mission that had

vanished and a job that was losing its meaning. One teacher had “firmly decided

to leave teaching” solely because of Secondary School Reform. Others

“considered leaving... because of (the) consistent negative attitude of

government”, or thought about moving outside the province to a teaching job

elsewhere. Despairingly, they related how they could “only think of the day

when I can retire or find a new vocation”, or would be “leaving the teaching

profession as quickly as I can”, or simply “look(ed) forward to retirement”.

In our quantitative survey results (Table 15), only 14% of teachers

indicated that their commitment to their career as a teacher was deeper since the

introduction of Secondary School Reform (Item #42); a mere 10% felt their

professional self-image had improved with Secondary School Reform (Item #47),

and just 14% believed the balance between their work and their personal life had

improved since the onset of reform (Item #45) Eighty-five per cent of teachers

said they would be more hesitant to seek a leadership position given the effects

of Secondary School Reform (Item #46). Startlingly, in a sample where only 28%

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of teachers were over 50 years old; 73% of the total sample stated that the effects

of Secondary School Reform had motivated them to seek retirement early (Item

#43).

Table 15

Teachers' Perceptions of the Impact of Reforms on Their Selves and Careers

Item StronglyAgree

%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses

42... commitment to my career as a teacher hasdeepened 3 11 49 36 271

43...I have been motivated to seek earlyretirement 41 32 22 5 239

44...I am less likely to advise children of my ownto go into teaching as a career. 45 33 18 5 266

45...the balance between my personal and worklife has improved. 5 9 32 55 277

46...I have become hesitant to seek promotionfor leadership positions. 45 40 11 4 258

47…my self image as a professional hasimproved 3 7 36 55 265

Not everyone would be appalled by this news. Some might rejoice at the

rush to early retirement, believing that the teachers who would be leaving are

old, expensive and in the way. Good riddance to bad rubbish, they might say.

Politicians might welcome an end to expensive salary bills. Others could quote

the research on teachers’ careers which shows that many classroom teachers in

later career are unwilling to commit to profound changes because they have seen

waves of change fail in the past, are losing energy as their bodies begin to

weaken, have growing commitments elsewhere in their lives that demand

increasing attention from them, and feel that the remaining years they have left

are best dedicated to their students in their own classroom, not the school or the

system as a whole (Sikes, Measor & Woods, 1985). Creating a wave of

retirements does the system a favour, not a disservice, these people might argue.

These claims can be challenged. First, not all ageing teachers become

tired, cynical and resistant to change. Whether they do so depends as much on

the qualities of their school as an organization, as on the character of the natural

ageing process. With the right organization and leadership, many teachers

become renewed in later career by embracing new opportunities, mentoring

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younger colleagues, and so on (Huberman, 1993; 1989). More years do not

always mean greater weariness in teaching. Second, retiring too many teachers

too fast removes essential sources of mentoring and professional learning from

the system at a time when large numbers of raw recruits are simultaneously

replacing these older colleagues. Third, even if some teachers should be nudged

into early retirement, there are less morally and emotionally offensive ways to go

about it. The urgency of change can never justify the absence of moral integrity.

Most important of all in this survey study though, is that young teachers

as well as old ones were declaring their sad intention to abandon their

profession. After cataloguing the lack of funds, supplies, technology,

professional development and time to participate in extra curricular activities,

one teacher said that “as a young teacher I am disheartened by this environment

and I will move on professionally to the private sector. There is no joy in

teaching — only a paper trail of grief.” (Wayvern #19). Another indicated that

“as a young teacher”, she would “leave for a better work environment if the

current situation does not end”. (Stewart Heights #13). A colleague at the same

school similarly said, “I am a relatively young teacher but am seriously

considering another profession or part-time teaching. It’s a shame because I love

to teach.” (Stewart Heights #20). The saddest comment of all came from a

relatively new teacher at North Ridge (#28).

As a relatively new teacher, I am seriously concerned about

the future of education in this province both for students and as a

profession. I never thought that I would regret my current career

path but I do and wish I would have done something else with my

3 degrees (BA, B.Ed., MA). There is no joy in being told that you

are a no good freeloading fat cat for 6 years running. I surely

wouldn’t wish this profession on my children nor other family

members. I love working with children but not with this

government. How can you encourage and attract good

(newcomers) in a time of shortage with a government like the one

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currently in power? I would retire tomorrow if I could but

Hallowe’en 2026 will not be here soon enough! Eight years ago, I

never thought that I would think that way. Unfortunately, I am

jaded, tired and disillusioned with what this profession has to offer.

I wish I would have written the LSAT (Law Degree Qualifying

Test) in ’92 because it was easier to get into Law school than

Teacher’s College. This is a worst case scenario that I had no vision

of in 1992!!

This was not the only teacher to say she would not counsel her own

children to join the profession. Seventy-seven per cent of the sample overall

indicated that since the start of Secondary School Reform, they would be less

likely to advise their own children to go into teaching.

One of the most serious challenges facing the public school system and the

teaching profession is the mass exodus from teaching related to the demographic

turnover of teachers in the profession. In April 1998, the government announced

an early retirement window for Ontario teachers, after negotiations between the

province and the Ontario Teachers’ Federation. For a five-year period (1998-

2002), teachers have the option of taking early retirement, if their age plus years

of service is 85 or greater.3 At the same time, an Ontario College of Teachers'

Report (1998) estimates that more than 41,000 of Ontario’s 171,500 qualified

teachers will retire in just five years and more than 78,000 over the next 10 years.

Thus, by 2003, about one in four qualified teachers living in Ontario will retire

and about one in two by 2008. This great historical movement of demographic

retirement and turnover is in part a natural consequence of the ageing Boomer

generation having lived and worked through their professional life cycle. If

3Ministry of Education

(http://mettowas21.edu.gov.on.ca:80/eng/document/nr/00.06/classfs.html).

71

outstanding and highly qualified recruits can be attracted to replace the wave of

those who leave, then this defining historical moment can be an immense

opportunity for professional renewal. A deeply disturbing finding of our work,

then, is that it is not only older teachers who are becoming disillusioned with the

profession, but younger teachers too. Nor are older teachers advising young

adults to fill their shoes — for the professional shoes of teaching are treading

ever-narrowing paths that are being unimaginatively designed by others.

In these conditions, the teaching profession will find it harder and harder

to attract quality candidates with intellect and ingenuity — especially where

other occupations with less regulation and more incentive, are competing for

their talents. Issues of professional and moral integrity may also limit the supply

of candidates who feel called to the work of teaching. For when teachers in our

study, young and old, signaled that they intended to leave the profession, this

was less a result of depleted energy than of lost professional integrity where an

honourable teaching mission was being usurped by the forces of political power.

The Credibility Deficit

One of the factors affecting the success or acceptance of any

communication is the credibility of its source. Even governments that are

operationally inept have a chance of their reforms succeeding if they are

regarded as well-intentioned, educationally sincere, or at least not motivated by

malice. When government politicians are caught inadvertently proclaiming the

necessity of inventing a crisis in education, when it is discovered that salaries of

senior bureaucrats are linked to budget reduction targets, and when a

government’s political leader is seen to be making repeated derogatory attacks

on teachers and their unions, the credibility of reforms and reformers reaches

rock bottom.

In the open-ended section of the teacher survey, 43 respondents raised

questions of mistrust concerning the government’s professed motives in relation

to educational reform. Reform for these teachers had not been about raising

72

standards; only cutting costs. The government’s focus had been on “saving

money, not education”. As a teacher at Talisman Park (#34) put it:

The pretense that these new measures are intended to

improve quality rather than just reduce costs is becoming very

evident and will be clear to all within the next year or two when the

damage is more visible.

The government’s reforms were seen by many as attempts to increase the

free flow of resources from the public to the private sector and to further “a U.S.-

designed corporate imperative”. Several teachers saw them as amounting to a

deliberate attempt at “destroying public education in Ontario” and attacking

democratic, public life itself. To one teacher, the government and its allies were

“malicious masters who seem bent on destroying the very system — perhaps to

benefit privateers — that made the greatest economic boom in Canada/Ontario

history possible!” (North Ridge #37). Other teachers referred to:

The strong belief that the government agenda involves a

major upheaval in the political, social structure of democratic

principles (fought for and nurtured by the “common people”) in

education. Alas ... privatization .... “Big Brother” syndrome — the

criminal background checks, etc. What’s next? (North Ridge #25)

What is the end of education? If it is to produce... cogs for

the corporate environment of the 21st century, then Secondary

School Reform is a smashing success. There is nothing like an

unintellectual, soulless horde of graduates to whet the appetites of

multinationals looking for “skilled” labour. However, if the

purpose of education is to create intelligent, soulful, caring and

perceptive human beings, Secondary School Reform is a disastrous

milestone on the road to a dumbed-down society (North Ridge

#42).

73

I think the government has done what it set out to do. Many

parents are choosing private education. The public system will

become second rate without money and vocal or involved parents

(Stewart Heights #27)

The changes have been too vast and overwhelming to be

done in an effective way. It is as though someone wishes to

demonstrate how broken the system is by not providing the time

and development to be successful (Wayvern #32).

These statements might be dismissed as the unsupported assertions and

unwarranted speculations of teachers engaging in conjectures far beyond their

experience and expertise. They could be regarded as little more than litanies of

retaliatory blaming — and indeed some of the emotional stimulus provoking

them may be exactly of that order. However, there is also a considerable

research literature on the origins and effects of this reform pattern in other parts

of the world that supports these teachers’ critical remarks (Troman & Woods,

2000; Helsby, 1999; Lasky & Sutherland, 2000; Woods et al., 1997; Jeffrey &

Woods, 1996; Webb & Vulliamy, 1993). More important still, the remarks signify

what is personally believed and subjectively true for these teachers — disclosing

a failure of government (be it intended or unintended) to win the trust of the

teaching profession about the motives and morality of imposed educational

change. In these teachers’ eyes, as well as in the eyes of much of the educational

research community, standardized educational reform that is combined with

efforts to worsen teachers’ working conditions, and that is embalmed in

discourses of failure and shame, ultimately precipitates a decline in commitment

to public education and to the overall public good. To paraphrase the revelatory

words of Ontario’s former education minister, it succeeds in being able to change

something by putting an end to its improvement. This is a failure of learning

and a failure of integrity. Our data from teachers in a range of Ontario secondary

schools strongly suggest that the province’s educational reforms at the turn of

the century have modeled neither ingenuity nor integrity.

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Resources

Successful school reform requires adequate human resources (Cheng &

Chan, 2000; Clark, 1999; Jennings, 1999; Stringfield, 1998), material resources

(Williams, 1999; MacNamara et al., 1999) and financial resources (Foster et al.,

2000; Diaz, 1999; Hirth, 1998). Time for ongoing, embedded professional

development opportunities is also essential to implement and sustain change

effectively (Slavin, 2001; Hargreaves, 2000; Wohlstetter & Smith, 2000; Bol et al.,

1998; Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995a; Guskey & Huberman, 1995;

Hargreaves, 1994; Fullan & Hargreaves, 1991).

The quantitative evidence of our study (Table 16) suggests that the

majority of teachers across the six schools, (81%) wanted more money for

textbooks (Item #48); 96% felt the new funding formula provided inadequate

funding for learning materials (Item #50) and 94% of teachers found that their

schools had insufficient funding to meet the needs of all their students (Item #52).

Table 16

Teachers' Perceptions of Resources Support

Item StronglyAgree

%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses

48Since the new funding formula, my school hasmore money for textbooks. 2 17 32 49 218

49I have received adequate professionaldevelopment to help me implement the newcurriculum effectively.

1 18 32 49 280

50Since the new funding formula, my school hasmore money for classroom learning materialssuch as paper, chalk, overheads.

- 4 44 52 242

51Since the introduction of Secondary SchoolReform, I have lost access to counsellingsuport staff.

38 35 32 55 277

52Our school has sufficient funding to meet theneeds of all its students. 2 5 34 60 242

53Since the introduction of Secondary SchoolReform, I have experienced time constraintson my ability to do my job properly.

64 27 6 3 281

54Since the introduction of Secondary SchoolReform, I have less access to academicsupport staff.

47 40 10 4 252

55The Ontario College of Teachers has enhancedteachers’ professional standing. 4 6 26 64 258

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A workshop participant made the following observation,

We've gone out of our way to buy materials at our expense without

government funding to make sure that these kids are going to experience

some level of success in high school (Male teacher, Data Analysis

Workshop, June 11/01).

Adequate professional development on the new curriculum was lacking for 81%

of teachers (Item #49). After problems of time, the ineffectiveness and

inappropriateness of professional development that would assist teachers in

implementing the changes, was one of the most frequently identified themes in

teachers’ open-ended responses — mentioned by 48 respondents. These teachers

described professional development and the loss of professional development days as a

“huge issue”. They claimed to “need more” to “absorb changes” but there was just no

time “to plan, collaborate or learn”.

People who cannot learn, who are prevented from learning, are a loss to their

organizations, and to their organizations’ capacity to improve over time. Deep

professional learning involves more than workshops of inservice training in

government priorities (scarce though these also were). At the very least, implementing

change effectively requires time to understand, learn about and reflect on what the

change involves and requires. Changing successfully as a teacher is hard intellectual

work. Yet many teachers in the open-ended survey responses were frustrated that there

was “no time for reflection to decide upon what worked well, what to change”, no

“time to reflect and plan”, “lack of time to understand the curriculum... to digest and

create new materials”, absence of “clear understanding of all these changes”, and

generally no time to “learn new curriculum”, “to think/plan/evaluate”, “to learn how

to implement”.

Learning to teach better, to be a continuously improving professional, involves

more than implementing other people’s ideas and agendas compliantly. Good teachers

must also be good learners but Ontario’s secondary school reform agenda made it very

76

hard for them to be so. Teachers were so preoccupied with implementing imposed

reforms, they could find no time to discuss or develop their subject with their

colleagues; no time or energy to catch up with their own professional reading and

development; and no opportunity “to grow personally” in their profession. They

regretted and resented “not being able to recharge the battery, to have ownership of my

professional development, not what someone else thinks I should be doing” (Wayvern

#25). To one teacher at North Ridge, intensified, imposed reforms were a travesty to

the teaching profession because the pace of change “negate(d) the creative muse-based

nature of the profession” (North Ridge #37). An exasperated teacher at Stewart Heights

summed up how Ontario’s standardized reforms ruined teachers’ abilities to be

effective learners and knowledge workers.

The primary motivation of the government has been to increase

productivity at the expense of creativity. I do not have time for

professional development, or for casual reading related to my interests in

education. I would love to read more about performance based

assessment, technology, multiple intelligence, etc., but with a single extra

class spend too much time marking. I also do not have the time to fit the

curriculum to the needs of my students (on an individual, personal basis).

What a waste of my intelligence, creativity and leadership potential!

(Stewart Heights #33)

You do not get students to learn well by making their teachers learn badly or by

making it difficult for them to learn at all. Ontario’s Secondary School Reform process

has made a mockery of teachers’ professional learning by reducing formal professional

development time, by creating conditions that give teachers no time to understand or

reflect on what is asked of them, and by replacing intellectual creativity with fearful

compliance.

Because teachers were taking up the slack for the losses in support staff, this

meant less time for their own professional learning and reflection. In this regard, 74%

reported experiencing losses in counseling support (Item #51) and 87% reported lack of

77

academic support (Item #54). A workshop participant captured the view of many

colleagues,

The fact is we don't have enough human resource support…We've

diminished the headships t ime which al lowed for

interaction…Curriculum leaders used to be able to work with department

members, work with young members, work as a cohesive team…That's a

huge loss at a time when implementing such vast changes in curriculum…

Then you take away the support staff, your resource teachers that are out

at the school…We used to have people at the Board office…Resource

teachers are run off their feet and run ragged because they're trying to do

so much with so little. Even within the school, (there’s) reduced secretarial

support and reduced caretaking support. Everywhere we look, there's a

human resource cost in terms of the reduced funding. The envelopes and

not being shuffled in a way that meets the needs of the district or meets

the needs of the school…If you take away all of those human resources

you're going to have less communication with the students and less time

to contact parents and get them involved in the school…I mean they're all

interconnected. As soon as you have less communication with your local

community, your feeder schools, your parents, your students, your

extracurricular time, you're going to end up with teacher bashing. You're

professional image is going to diminish and suffer. So it seemed to us to

be intertwined around the reduction in human resources (Female teacher,

Data Analysis Workshop, June 11/01).

It is now a staple truth of educational change knowledge and wisdom, that

successful and sustainable change requires time for teachers to understand it and to

integrate it into their practice. Similarly, for change to be successful and sustainable, it

needs a prudent focus on a manageable number of key priorities rather than scattered

attempts to change everything; as well as necessary support of sufficient resources,

quality learning materials and adequate professional development (Fullan, 1991; Miles

& Huberman, 1984). Despite government access to world class advice on change

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implementation, almost everything that is known about successful change management

was absent in the speed with which the Ontario government rushed through its reform

agenda, the scope of the issues that the reforms addressed, and the quality and levels of

support that were provided to (or withheld from) teachers responsible for

implementing them.

In our survey, almost all teachers (91%) indicated that they were experiencing

severe time constraints as a result of the changes. In their open-ended responses,

teachers repeatedly protested that the reforms amounted to being “too many changes,

too fast”; “too much, too quickly”; “just so much, so soon”; “too vast and just

overwhelming”. In the four schools outside Mountain View where teachers wrote more

than a phrase or two of open-ended responses about the impact of Secondary School

Reform (Dale Park’s responses were typically very short), only 38 out of 169 teachers

failed to mention time as a problem.

Of course, time is perennially a problem for teachers and few teachers will ever

concede they have enough in their workday. The work of teaching is demanding, it is

never over, there is always more to be done (Hargreaves, 1994). Moreover, change

itself, any change at all, always make demands on people’s existing commitments and it

calls for patience and perseverance in understanding what the change requires, in

working clumsily and less than competently through the change’s first faltering steps,

and in learning how to integrate the changes into existing routines, so they become an

effortless aspect of the new approach to the job. These time demands apply to all

people and all organizations. Teachers are no different.

Advocates of the fast-paced knowledge economy might want to go further and

argue that organizations are necessarily chaotic and demanding for everyone

nowadays. They might even say that instead of complaining about feeling

overwhelmed, and being nostalgic over what they have lost, teachers should be more

forward looking. They should thrive on the chaos and go with the flow. This, after all,

is what today’s knowledge society is all about. Life today is fast for everyone. We are

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all working harder. Perhaps teachers should just stop whining, think out of the box,

deal with the reality of change, or do something else!

The problem, however, is that schools and educational policy systems are

behaving nothing like fast-paced, flexible knowledge organizations. Rather than

thriving on the power of chaos, teachers have been forced to endure the manufactured

chaos of political power. Instead of creating dynamic learning organizations,

educational policy systems like Ontario’s have been cutting costs to create anorexic

public institutions. Teachers in all the schools we studied had to deal with three time-

related reforms:

• a barrage of simultaneously imposed and inescapable changes — a newly

imposed set of curriculum and assessment requirements that arrived late,

in fragments, almost as teachers were walking up the stairs to their

classes; high stakes tests in literacy then mathematics that took several

weeks out of the teachers’ curriculum to prepare their students for taking

them; the introduction of a new advisory and career planning program for

students that would involve all teachers; and the management of a new,

unwieldy, and technologically faulty report card system.

• loss of existing preparation and planning time (including what is needed

to understand and implement the reforms) because of the legislated

requirement that teachers should teach 7 rather than 6 periods out of 8

each day; and loss of professional development days due to further

government economies (and with it, loss of time to deal with the change)

• disappearance of support from the drastically reduced number of

department heads (whose administrative time had also been taken from

them), and from guidance and special education teachers whose numbers

had been cut by a third or more.

In the face of this remarkable increase in pressure, combined with a decimation

of systems of support, teacher after teacher complained of feeling “overwhelmed”,

“overloaded” by “last-minute” changes, and “hurried implementation” that came in

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“multiple demands”, “all at once”. A teacher at North Ridge detailed just what was

required of faculty:

(1) read/understand new documents,

(2) do a gap analysis (of the difference between existing practice and reform

requirements)

(3) collaborate with department members

(4) design new curriculum materials and assessments to ensure skills in place

(5) try to find new resources

(6) use new reporting methods.

A department head at Talisman Park who approved of many of the substantive

changes in curriculum and assessment, felt the tyranny of time personally in terms of

his own capacity to implement the changes effectively:

Having to teach an extra half course has significantly reduced my

prep time and has increased my workload. In addition to this, I feel that I

do not have time to prep adequately or thoroughly. The Teacher

Advisory Program has also taken a great deal of time. No time to learn

the new curriculum! Due to my leadership position at the school, I have

received much training regarding Secondary School Reform. However,

these sessions have been during after-school hours (many hours). I am

confident and knowledgeable about the new curriculum because of this

training, but what about my colleagues? They have received little training

and have been faced with implementing a very challenging curriculum.

Teachers have not been given any time to absorb, learn and plan how all

this info can be transferred into the classroom.... The new curriculum is

not bad, and shouldn’t disappear. The implementation however has been

overwhelming. Lack of time and technology has grossly affected teacher

acceptance as well as student performance (Talisman Park #23).

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Loss of Learning

When teachers have their time stolen from them, one of the most precious things

they lose is the time to learn and to think. A knowledge economy and knowledge-

driven organizations depend on effective brainpower — on understanding, reflection

and creativity. But standardized reforms have taken away teachers’ time to think; and

their imposed, prescriptive requirements have replaced creativity with compliance. An

over-examined professional life is producing an unexamined, unreflective one.

In Ontario, this was most obvious in the inadequate professional development

and training that was provided to support the implementation of Secondary School

Reform. Over 80% of surveyed teachers felt that professional development on

curriculum change had not been adequate. After problems of time, the ineffectiveness

and inappropriateness of professional development that would assist teachers in

implementing the changes, was one of the most frequently mentioned themes in

teachers’ open-ended responses — mentioned by 48 respondents. These teachers

described professional development and the loss of professional development days as a

“huge issue”. They claimed to “need more” to “absorb changes” but there was just no

time “to plan, collaborate or learn”.

Summary

Evidence from our survey and focus groups convincingly supports the

conclusion that Secondary School Reform has failed at the levels of trust, credibility,

infrastructure support and professional development. Even where the substance of

reform is defensible from the perspective of a knowledge economy, the process of its

implementation has been insufficiently responsive to and sometimes wilfully

disregarding of the need for sustainable higher standards of learning to be based on a

professional culture in teaching that feels more rather than less creative and competent,

that is passionately involved in change not emotionally demoralized by it, and that is

able to learn and improve through teamwork and collaboration rather than being

condemned to increasing isolation. While teachers are more inclined to support

reforms when they can see clear relevance for their students' learning needs, what they

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experienced was a testing system that did not help them help their students, a

curriculum that marginalized or ignored those students who were most in need, and an

intolerable workload that led teachers to feel they were failing to give their students the

support they needed. Despite the promise of some of its curriculum substance,

Ontario’s standardized secondary school reforms have largely driven teachers and

students up a blind alley. The first order of business now is to the restore the trust

between policymakers and professionals in teaching that will fuel the energy and

commitment to pursue a more educationally positive journey of change together.

DIFFERENCES AMONG SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS

Teachers and schools do not respond to mandated reform in identical ways or for

identical reasons. Responses which showed a relatively equal distribution between

agree/disagree poles were, therefore, selected out for secondary analysis by key

background variables (Appendix 1)4. In particular, we examined variations in terms of

differences between schools, variations among teachers according to their age, length of

experience, gender, subject orientation and grade level responsibilities; and differences

in response between teachers, administrators and department heads.

School Differences

Given that school improvement efforts are closely linked to school context

(Berends, 2000; Harris & Hopkins, 2000; Proudford, 1994), we selected our school

sample carefully to reflect differences according to type of school (academic, innovative,

vocational); size; location (urban/suburban); diversity in student demographics (race,

ethnicity; cultural background); and community demographics (mobility; socio-

economic status).

Interestingly, there were no marked differences in teachers’ responses across

schools for any of the selected items — except for Mountain View vocational school,

4 Survey items #s 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 12, 14, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 34, 36, 40, 16.

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where teachers’ responses departed sharply from their colleagues in the other five

schools.

Specifically, the academic curriculum was condemned by all Mountain View

teachers as inappropriate to their students’ aptitudes, interests and aspirations.

Mountain View offers only the applied program and is unique among the six schools in

this respect. In comparatively disproportionate numbers, Mountain View teachers

reported that the grade 9/10 curriculum had diminished their range of classroom

teaching strategies. Although staff in Mountain View were just as inclined as teachers

in other schools to find it difficult to engage students from different cultural

backgrounds, or expand their variety of assignments under mandated reforms, they

tended to be more in favour of a return to The Common Curriculum.5 (Table 17).

5 In June 1992, the NDP government announced plans for a ‘seamless’ curriculum from grade1 to 9. TheCommon Curriculum was a policy initiative intended to replace subject-centred structures with acurriculum organized into learning outcomes within four broad areas of study – language, the arts, selfand society, and mathematics, science and technology. The reform was accompanied with tougherstandards and explicit criteria for assessment of students’ performance and reporting progress. In spite ofthe opposition of many secondary teachers, OSSTF, and other segments of the community, and afterconsiderable controversy and many rewrites, a revised version of The Common Curriculum was published.It emphasized an integrated outcomes-based curriculum with a heavy emphasis on equity and socialgoals. Some teachers still found the revised policy outcomes-based curriculum so intricate, vague anddense that they turned to the version written for parents for some clarity (Hargreaves & Earl, 1990;Hargreaves, Earl, Moore & Manning, 2001).

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Table 17

Item #6: I would favour a return to the Common Curriculum for Grade 9.

StronglyAgree

%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses




Dale Park 17 27 38 19 48

Wayvern 9 28 44 20 46


Mountain View teachers were also more likely to report that they had

been unsuccessful in integrating the skills required for the grade 10 Test of

Reading and Writing Skills into their classroom pedagogy (Table 18).

Table 18

Item #28: I have successfully integrated the skills required for the Grade 10 Test ofReading and Writing Skills into my classroom teaching.

StronglyAgree

%

Agree%

Disagree%

StronglyDisagree

%

TotalResponses

Talisman Park - 55 35 10 29


Stewart Heights - 57 34 9 35

Dale Park 11 52 29 9 56

Wayvern 4 53 36 6 47


In other words, Ontario Secondary School Reform evokes similar patterns

of response from teachers in quite different kinds of secondary schools, except in

the case of vocational schools where teachers feel strongly that the reform agenda

neglects the needs of vocational students — those who are already among the

most marginalized, disadvantaged and at-risk within the system.

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Age and Gender

Career stage is an important factor in teachers' attitudes toward teaching

(Pigge & Marso, 2000), responses to changes in work roles (McInnis, 2000;

Hargreaves & Jacka, 1995), orientations to the change process (Bruno, 2000) and

to mandated reform (Slaton et al., 1997), and reactions to occupational stress

(Huberman, 1993; McCormick, 1997; Berger, 1993). Demographically, our sample

represents an older, experienced cohort of teachers. The large majority of

teachers in our sample were into mid-career stage and a substantial number were

51 or older and nearing retirement age at the time of the survey.

All teachers in the youngest age group (21-25) and the oldest age group

(61+) reported that they understood the curriculum, although the actual numbers

are comparatively small. Majorities of teachers in the 31-35 and 36-40 age

categories indicated that they did not understand the new curriculum. At the

same time, majorities of teachers older than 40 years said that they did, with the

highest number of positive responses falling into the 41-45 age bracket (Table 19).

Table 19

Item #8: I have a clear understanding of the curriculum that I am required to teach.

Age Group Agree%

Disagree%

TotalRespondents

(N=298)21-25 100 - 526-30 63 37 2731-35 44 56 2336-40 49 51 3941-45 68 32 5346-50 61 39 6751-55 52 48 6756-60 60 40 1561+ 100 - 2

Four teachers 21-25 years of age agreed that they understood new

assessment methods, while the one teacher in the oldest age group (61+) reported

the opposite. These numbers are too small to detect trends, however. Majorities

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of teachers across all age groupings indicated that they understood the new

assessment methods (Table 20).

Table 20

Item #12: I understand the new assessment methods.

Age Group Agree%

Disagree%

TotalRespondents

(N=298)21-25 100 - 426-30 75 25 2831-35 64 36 2236-40 61 39 3941-45 74 26 5346-50 65 35 6951-55 57 43 6656-60 75 25 1661+ - 100 1

Teachers in the age group 26-30 more often reported expanding their

variety of assignments under the new curriculum, compared to other age

categories (Table 21). Members of this age group were also more inclined to

report that they understood the new curriculum and assessment methods. One

implication from these findings is that the more that teachers understand the

new curriculum and assessment rubrics, the more likely they are to expand the

variety of assignments they offer their students.

Table 21

Item #5: The new curriculum has prompted me to expand the variety of assignmentsI set for my students.

Age Group Agree%

Disagree%

TotalRespondents

(N=298)21-25 50 - 526-30 72 37 2731-35 45 56 2336-40 41 51 3941-45 68 32 5346-50 61 39 6751-55 52 48 6756-60 60 40 1561+ 100 - 2

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There were no other noticeable differences across age groupings in terms

of other survey questions and there was no marked variability in response

patterns for any survey items according to gender.

Total Years Teaching

Findings regarding differences by total years teaching provide some

support for the claim that beginning teachers experience change differently from

their more senior colleagues. Specifically, career stage may be a significant factor

in teachers’ perceptions of reform, their ways of dealing with it, their

instructional practice, and their interactions with colleagues and students

(Guskey & Huberman, 1995; Huberman, 1989). The trends in our data show that

the fewer years of experience that teachers have the more likely they are to

include their students in the new assessment process (Table 22) — again

reflecting how new and less “experienced” teachers’ tend to be more conversant

with, confident and willing to experiment with new forms of assessment.

Table 22

Item #26: Since the introduction of new assessment policies, I involve my studentsmore in the assessment process.

Responses (N=301)Years ofTeaching

StronglyAgree

%Agree

%Disagree

%

StronglyDisagree

%

Total # inAge

Group1-5 8 53 31 8 496-10 3 46 38 13 37

11-15 2 31 51 16 5116-20 4 39 47 10 5121+ 1 27 62 10 113

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