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1. Educating Canada's urban poor children...................................................................................................... 1

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Educating Canada's urban poor children

Author: Maynes, Bill; Foster, Rosemary Publication info: Canadian Journal of Education 25. 2 (2000): 56-61. ProQuest document link Abstract: Across Canada, child poverty is escalating while funding for education is falling. Alberta, where funding for education was reduced by approximately 15.6% from 1993 to 1996, may be the most extreme example (Peters &Richards, 1995), but Ontario is close on Alberta's heels and no province has avoided reductions. Education policy-makers have had no choice but to "balance their budgets." In doing so, they have found themselves in the unenviable position of having to eliminate or "restructure" some existing programs, almost all of which are highly valued by stakeholders in the education system. Educational poverty programs, already a low priority among policy issues (Levin, 1995), are particularly vulnerable. The communities served by such programs tend to have weak political voices, policy makers tend to have little direct knowledge of issues related to inner-city education, and few policy makers are aware of research supporting programs in place (Levin, 1995; W. G. Maynes, 1993b). This last situation is exacerbated because many Canadian programs have been implemented without plans to evaluate their effectiveness (W. G. Maynes, 1993a, pp. 21-22) and because policy makers now tend to dismiss U.S. research on inner-city education as contextually irrelevant to Canadian cities. Third, many programs depend for their existence on large umbrella funding programs. These programs demonstrate a significant strength of decentralization: Authority to decide on resource expenditures and programs is given to those closest to the students served. The decision makers know the culture within which the program is to be offered; they also know the people who will offer the program and the people who will be served, knowledge that a provincial-or district-level bureaucrat could not possibly have. But a risk is associated with this advantage. It is very difficult for school-level staff to have detailed knowledge of successful or unsuccessful practices in other contexts or to be up-to-date with the literature. They cannot be. They are engaged intensely in day-to-day interactions with the many people directly involved with any school serving large numbers of children who live in poverty. So in some Canadian cities, umbrella funding has been used to support programs which appeal to common sense but which research has demonstrated to be relatively ineffective. For example, despite the many studies of U.S. Chapter/Title I programs, which uniformly concluded that additional teacher aides and pull-out remedial programs are not effective (Fashola &Slavin, 1998), such programs have been implemented in some jurisdictions in Canada using umbrella funding. To help local sites use umbrella funding wisely, the School Council of the Island of Montreal, the Toronto Board of Education, and the Winnipeg School Division employ specialists to provide up-to-date information to those responsible for planning school-level programs. They coordinate inner-city programming and program monitoring and evaluation, tasks very difficult for those implementing small single-site programs. Despite Canadian policymakers' tendency to dismiss U.S. research as contextually irrelevant, some of it is too strong to be ignored. The research on long-term benefits of preschool (Head Start) programs is particularly compelling (e.g., Barnett &Boocock, 1998; Schweinhart, Barnes, &Weikart, 1993). Published evidence of the positive effects on student outcomes of "project" or "focus" school initiatives is also convincing (Slavin &Fashola, 1998). Such programs currently exist in some Canadian cities. Montreal and Toronto, for example, have well-established prekindergarten programs, and Toronto has for many years had a well-designed Project School Initiative. Policy makers in districts that support such programs can be confident that there is strong research to justify their doing so. Links: Where can I get this?

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Full Text: Across Canada, child poverty is escalating while funding for education is falling. Alberta, where funding for education was reduced by approximately 15.6% from 1993 to 1996, may be the most extreme example (Peters &Richards, 1995), but Ontario is close on Alberta's heels and no province has avoided reductions. Education policy-makers have had no choice but to "balance their budgets." In doing so, they have found themselves in the unenviable position of having to eliminate or "restructure" some existing programs, almost all of which are highly valued by stakeholders in the education system. Educational poverty programs, already a low priority among policy issues (Levin, 1995), are particularly vulnerable. The communities served by such programs tend to have weak political voices, policy makers tend to have little direct knowledge of issues related to inner-city education, and few policy makers are aware of research supporting programs in place (Levin, 1995; W. G. Maynes, 1993b). This last situation is exacerbated because many Canadian programs have been implemented without plans to evaluate their effectiveness (W. G. Maynes, 1993a, pp. 21-22) and because policy makers now tend to dismiss U.S. research on inner-city education as contextually irrelevant to Canadian cities. In 1996, with support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, we undertook a study with two aims: to ensure that policy makers had more information about Canadian educational poverty programs and to build a data base to support research on them. The results are reported in the Directory of Canadian Educational Poverty Programs (B. Maynes &Foster, 1998). Based on our work, we offer six critical thoughts and questions. CRITICAL THOUGHTS AND QUESTIONS First, the past decade has seen a great increase in the number and diversity of educational poverty programs in Canada, as Canadian educators try to meet the needs of urban poor children. Whether we are embarking upon egalitarian educational practices and policies that will be sustained over time depends in part on the motivation underlying the increase. Lessons from history should give us pause. Beginning with the English Poor Laws of the 1600s, a consistent critique of antipoverty programs is that they have most often been undertaken to quell impending social unrest (see, for example, Waxman, 1983, pp. 74-100), to mollify the poor at times when they were close to, or engaged in, civil disobedience. Consider the parallels with current circumstances in Canada. Poverty is escalating, and the disparity between rich and poor is widening. Both affect the lives of more non-poor Canadians than ever before. Newspapers and other popular media regularly cover poverty-related issues. And many middle-class Canadians come into direct contact, almost daily, with street people, youth gangs, and other victims of poverty. So why have we recently committed more resources to educational poverty programs? Are we making a serious effort to equalize educational opportunities for poor and non-poor children? Or are we, as others have so often done, simply seeking to make society safer for those who are not poor? These are not, of course, mutually exclusive options; motivation is too complex to yield to such reductionism. But we believe it important to think about such questions if we are to understand the future of these programs in our country. Second, 91 of the 145 programs described in the Directory owe their existence to temporary funding. For 66, the funding is for one or two years. Programs that depend on short-term temporary funding have a particularly tenuous existence, and the significant number whose budgets combine relatively small grants from a number of agencies are on even shakier ground. Such a high level of dependence on temporary funding presents formidable challenges to those responsible for educating urban poor children. How, for example, are they to provide the comprehensive, longterm interventions so successful in U.S. urban settings? Third, many programs depend for their existence on large umbrella funding programs. These programs demonstrate a significant strength of decentralization: Authority to decide on resource expenditures and programs is given to those closest to the students served. The decision makers know the culture within which the program is to be offered; they also know the people who will offer the program and the people who will be served, knowledge that a provincial-or district-level bureaucrat could not possibly have. But a risk is associated with this advantage. It is very difficult for school-level staff to have detailed knowledge of successful or unsuccessful practices in other contexts or to be up-to-date with the literature. They cannot be. They are engaged intensely in day-to-day interactions with the many people directly involved with any school serving large numbers of children who live in poverty. So in some Canadian cities, 02 December 2012 Page 2 of 5 ProQuest

umbrella funding has been used to support programs which appeal to common sense but which research has demonstrated to be relatively ineffective. For example, despite the many studies of U.S. Chapter/Title I programs, which uniformly concluded that additional teacher aides and pull-out remedial programs are not effective (Fashola &Slavin, 1998), such programs have been implemented in some jurisdictions in Canada using umbrella funding. To help local sites use umbrella funding wisely, the School Council of the Island of Montreal, the Toronto Board of Education, and the Winnipeg School Division employ specialists to provide upto-date information to those responsible for planning school-level programs. They coordinate inner-city programming and program monitoring and evaluation, tasks very difficult for those implementing small singlesite programs. Fourth, there are few early intervention programs compared to the number of retention/re-entry programs. Only 14 programs described in the Directory address preschool students, whereas 29 aim at retaining or providing re-entry for adolescents. Yet there is convincing evidence that early intervention programs are effective, and the evidence for the success of retention and re-entry programs is weak. Why, then, are retention and re-entry programs twice as numerous? The social problems associated with having a large number of urban poor adolescents dropping out of school are dramatic and affect the lives of the non-poor. Are we simply more disposed to deal with immediate issues that affect our own lives than to assist people who are not yet causing us distress? Fifth, only eight Directory entries describe professional development programs for people who educate children living in poverty. With so few such programs, those who teach poor children may not always have access to professional development aimed at supporting their efforts in the classroom. But recent research is clear. Ongoing professional growth of teachers is crucial to high-quality educational programming (Darling-Hammond, 1996). To be successful, teachers interested in implementing "best practices," such as those described by Knapp et al. (1995), need carefully planned professional development. Finally, there is a dearth of evaluations of educational poverty programs in Canada. Of the 145 programs, only 16 reported systematic evaluations; 34 reported partial evaluations, generally based on self-report data; and 95 reported no evaluation. So too for the collection of outcome data, which could provide evidence that a program results in positive changes for children: None of the 145 programs collected extensive student outcome data, 16 collected some outcome data, 22 collected only perceptual or attitudinal data, and 107 collected no outcome data. That Canadian programs have not been well evaluated makes them more difficult to maintain in challenging political and economic times. But the few systematic evaluations under way are encouraging, especially the one by the School Council of the Island of Montreal. They are based on strong evaluation designs and ask necessary questions about some of the most important programs. Despite Canadian policy-makers' tendency to dismiss U.S. research as contextually irrelevant, some of it is too strong to be ignored. The research on long-term benefits of preschool (Head Start) programs is particularly compelling (e.g., Barnett &Boocock, 1998; Schweinhart, Barnes, &Weikart, 1993). Published evidence of the positive effects on student outcomes of "project" or "focus" school initiatives is also convincing (Slavin &Fashola, 1998). Such programs currently exist in some Canadian cities. Montreal and Toronto, for example, have well-established prekindergarten programs, and Toronto has for many years had a well-designed Project School Initiative. Policy makers in districts that support such programs can be confident that there is strong research to justify their doing so. Studies of what has not worked have also been helpful. Levin (1994) noted that schools serving children who live in poverty have tended to emphasize learners' deficits, a sequential skill mastery curriculum model requiring mastery of basics before any advanced skills can be taught, teacher directed instruction, a heavy focus on classroom management that is uniform across content areas and the use of ability grouping, including supplemental instruction through pull-out programs. (pp. 32-33) The evidence that these strategies are not effective (e.g., Fashola &Slavin, 1998) is so convincing that educators should feel compelled to seek more promising alternatives and policy makers should insist that they do so. The 145 entries in the Directory show that Canadians have a rich experience with educational poverty programming that can be a foundation for educators' and policy makers' decisions. We believe that in the absence of systematic evaluation of these 02 December 2012 Page 3 of 5 ProQuest

Canadian programs, evidence from U.S.-based research can be a helpful -- sometimes necessary -complement to the information we do have. CONCLUSION We are somewhat encouraged by the Canadian programs we studied. The accomplishments of the past 10 years are a good beginning. Continued progress will require educators and policy makers to work together to explore the many complex issues involved in providing high-quality education for children living in poverty. To serve as a catalyst for sustaining and broadening this conversation, we have juxtaposed the encouraging and positive news about current initiatives -- attested to by the 145 programs described in the Directory -- with cautions about the social and economic contexts in which these programs have been introduced. We have raised questions about the motivation underlying the relatively recent increase in educational poverty programming, about how those responsible for educating urban poor children are to know of and implement successfully best practices, and about resources and how they are allocated to call attention to the programs' vulnerability. Thinking about best practices also raises complex issues about resources and program evaluation. These questions are meant to focus attention and help structure a conversation that must continue if schooling is to contribute positively to the lives of poor children. We contend that the progress of the past few years will be sustained only to the extent that educators and policy makers remain in conversation about critical questions such as these. REFERENCES Barnett, W. S., &Boocock, S. S. (1998). Early care and education for children in poverty: Promises, programs and long-term results. Albany: SUNY Press. Darling-Hammond, L. (1996). The right to learn and the advancement of teaching: Research, policy, and practice for democratic education. Educational Researcher, 25(6), 5-17. Fashola, O. S., &Slavin, R. E. (1998). Schoolwide reform models: What works? Phi Delta Kappan, 79, 370-379. Knapp, M. S., with Adelman, N. E., Marder, C., McCollum, H., Needels, M. C., Padilla, C., Shields, P. M., Turnbull, B. J., &Zucker, A. A. (1995). Teaching for meaning in high-poverty classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press. Levin, B. (1994). Poverty and education: Conceptions and misconceptions. In S. B. Lawton, E. Tanenzapf, &R. G. Townsend (Eds.), Proceedings of the international conference linking research and practice (pp. 24-40). Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Levin, B. (1995). Educational responses to poverty. Canadian Journal of Education, 20, 211-224. Maynes, B., &Foster, R. (1998). Directory of Canadian educational poverty programs. Edmonton: University of Alberta, Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Policy Studies. Retrieved March 15, 2001, from the World Wide Web: http://facsrv.educ.ualberta.ca/SSHRC Maynes, W. G. (1993a). Child poverty in Canada: Challenges for educational policymakers. Canadian Review of Social Policy, 33(1), 13-28. Maynes, W. G. (1993b). Educating urban poor children: Narrowing the gap between good intentions and policymaking. Canadian Administrator, 33(1), 1-12. Peters, F., &Richards, D. M. (1995, June). Restructuring education Alberta style. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education, Montreal. Schweinhart, L. J., Barnes, H. V., &Weikart, D. P. (1993). Significant benefits: The High/Scope Perry Preschool Study through age 27. Yipsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press. Slavin, R. E., &Fashola, O. S. (1998). Show me the evidence: Proven and promising programs for America's schools. Thousand Islands, CA: Corwin Press. Waxman, C. I. (1983). The stigma of poverty. New York: Pergamon Press. Subject: Urban schools; Educational intervention; Child poverty Classification: 9172: Canada Publication title: Canadian Journal of Education Volume: 25 Issue: 2 Pages: 56-61 Number of pages: 0

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Publication year: 2000 Publication date: 2000 Year: 2000 Publisher: Canadian Society for the Study of Education Place of publication: Toronto Country of publication: Canada Journal subject: Education ISSN: 03802361 Source type: Scholarly Journals Language of publication: English Document type: PERIODICAL ProQuest document ID: 215382355 Document URL: http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.viu.ca/docview/215382355?accountid=12246 Copyright: Copyright Canadian Society for the Study of Education 2000 Last updated: 2010-06-08 Database: CBCA Education

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