There is a lot of talk about the Task Force for Teaching Excellence and the recommendations to change and improve education in the province.
Inside the tentative report were a lot of recommendations about how teachers and administrators can improve their practices and strive for excellence through evaluation and ongoing learning.
Now, these are not necessarily bad recommendations, as some have said, considering professionals should be certified, held to high standards, and are expected to be life-long learners.
But nowhere in the depths of the provincially funded report were there recommendations directed at the provincial government to properly fund public education.
Proper funding (today, not in three years) could provide up-to-date high quality learning environments and resources that are severely needed in a growing, evolving province. It would also avoid the hypocrisy of leaving school districts and classrooms lacking funding, materials and infrastructure, and then turning around and funding a task force to improve education.
Alberta Party leader Greg Clark said last week what many are thinking, “(The Government of) Alberta is under-funding education. We don't have enough schools and per-student funding continues to drop, but somehow the province can come up with the money to create a new bureaucracy to evaluate teachers without any evidence that this leads to better student outcomes.”
Wildrose MLA Kerry Towle was in Glendon recently and said the PC party is more than willing to make promises but lacks the meaningful action to back them up.
“They've promised 70 school re-modernization projects, and 50 schools to be built. But not a shovel has hit the ground,” said Towle. “It is not about the (PC party) not having enough money. It's about putting the money in the proper places.”
Despite the pretense of improving education, the scope of the Government of Alberta's task force is much too narrow. Only after examining all aspects of education, including looking critically at the ways it is funded and improving those models, can the province truly say it is striving for excellence in education.
