Mr. Chairperson (Marcel Laurendeau): Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This section of the Committee of Supply has been dealing with the Estimates of the Department of Education and Training. Would the minister's staff please enter the Chamber at this time.
We are on Resolution 16.2. School Programs (c) Assessment and Evaluations (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits.
Hon. Linda McIntosh (Minister of Education and Training): Mr. Chairman, I have joining us at the table today, in addition to the staff that we have already met, Mr. Norman Mayer, who is director of Assessment and Evaluation for the Department of Education. As well, I have some tablings that were requested at our last session on the summary of desktop management costs for the Manitoba School for the Deaf. I have three copies for the House.
Ms. Jean Friesen (Wolseley): I thank the minister for tabling the desktop management costs for the Manitoba School for the Deaf. I wanted to ask why this was put under the Desktop Management Services, which I understood from earlier responses to questions I had raised, I think, on a number of lines at the beginning of the department, that all of the desktop management cost lines were Systemhouse contract. This one is quite different obviously. Could the minister explain why those costs were not separated out in the Estimates?
Mrs. McIntosh: Because of its uniqueness at the School for the Deaf, Systemhouse will not be doing all of the work there, so that is the explanation.
Ms. Friesen: I understand the explanation. My question is: why was it put under the Desktop Management Services line, when everywhere else in the budget, I was assured at the beginning of Estimates that line represented the Systemhouse budget? So I am not asking about the allocation. I am asking: why is it listed under that line and not separated out when the indication earlier was that that line represented the Systemhouse budget?
Mrs. McIntosh: I want to reiterate that the contract for Systemhouse does not rest with the Department of Education. It is with another government department, but that it would apply to the Department of Education in all instances except for one aspect, that being the portion of the School for the Deaf.
When the Estimates book was first drawn up, it was indicated that we would be using Systemhouse and that is good, because we are pleased with the services there, but as they develop the specific contract for the School for the Deaf, the desktop management contract that fits for all other aspects of the department was for the School for the Deaf better addressed through MERLIN, which is what we are going to be using. Had the Estimates book been printed a bit later, it probably would have been reflected there. We have indicated that Systemhouse is the desktop management that we will be using for the department, and that is true for the whole department except for this one area which is the School for the Deaf, which is an exception because of its unique requirements which do not fit with other aspects of the department but rather stand alone for that particular need.
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As I had indicated, Mr. Chairman, when our staffperson, Mr. Greg Baylis was here and we were talking about Systemhouse, that there are still areas that we are continuing to negotiate. This is one in fact where we now indicate that we will be going with MERLIN. The rest will be negotiated for the rest of the department. I think that will clarify for the member the question that she asked.
Ms. Friesen: To some extent it does clarify it. I understand there is an issue of timing here, but it still leaves me with two questions. One is the minister says that they have negotiated a piece of this for MERLIN now, and I understood her to say that she was continuing negotiations with MERLIN. Does that mean that other parts--wherever I see this line now in the department, I should be ensuring a question that says is this Systemhouse or is it Systemhouse plus?
My second question is at the end of last time, the minister told me that $10,000--and she said do not hold us to that; that is ballpark, fair enough. I would like to know where that $10,000 fits in. I assume it is part of the $76,000 in capital that she has allocated here in the piece that she tabled, but there is a big difference between $76,000 and $10,000. Although I recognize the minister was saying ballpark last time, it is a bit of a different ballpark. I am wondering what the reason for that difference is.
Mrs. McIntosh: We have identified that not all of the work stations in the department will necessarily be covered by the contract. Basically everything except two areas, and those two areas that will likely be excluded will be the Manitoba School for the Deaf, and we will be using MERLIN because of their unique circumstances; and also support for the transferred employees under the Labour Market Development Agreement. It is currently under discussion with the federal government, so it has not been determined. But with the exception of the above two items, the cost for desktop management, as identified in the Estimates supplement, are based consistently on all the information we have previously provided. So the member does not have to ask with each one if it is going to be Systemhouse or MERLIN. Those are the only two exceptions, the first one, School for the Deaf, we know will be done by MERLIN, and the other we are currently discussing with the federal government because it is a matter of devolution. It still has some time left to complete in terms of implementation.
The member had also asked about the costs of capital. Last Thursday we had said that the costs of capital included a server, and the member is correct to have said the ballpark costs would be around $10,000. I was not sure, but in that vicinity. In fact, it is closer to $15,000. This $15,000 is part of the figure shown today of 76.8 that the member referred to. Last day, we only referenced the server when I said $10,000 or thereabouts, which is actually closer to $15,000. It
was in reference to the server, but there also is money for other computer upgrades and you will see that in that 76.8. All the computers and the equipment and everything, of course, is owned by the Manitoba School for the Deaf.
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Ms. Friesen: I do not have any more questions on that. I think we are looking at 16.2. Had we moved to 16.2.(c)? Can you remember formerly whether we had or not?
This is the one section of the department that seems to be expanding at a rapid rate. Some of the percentage increases over the last three years are quite enormous--196 percent, 219 percent, 140 percent, 330 percent. I wonder if the minister could tell us how many new staff she has hired; how many more she intends to hire in this coming year, and what their qualifications are and where they have come from in the sense of academic preparation.
Mr. Peter Dyck, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, in terms of the increase in staff in Assessment and Evaluation, last year we had 45.5, and by the end of this year we will have 61.5, for an increase of 16 staff people, staff positions. In '97-98, we hired seven what we call CRCs, curriculum consultants, but in this case they are in fact assessment consultants hired under that category. We hired seven of those as project leaders. Their general background, I do not have it broken down specifically in terms of who has what degree, and that is what is taking us a bit of time here. For general background, they have graduate level training in assessment and testing. They have previous experience working on testing projects from Manitoba and from outside of Manitoba.
We also have hired, in terms of the total number, some analysts, clerks and programmers. For example, we have hired a statistical analyst. We have hired four people who are skilled at word processing, and we are looking to have in this by the end of the '99 year an additional 16 people working in the branch. They will break down this way. We will have one under a managerial function; we will have in total, by that point, including the people that we used to have--for example, we used to have in '96-97--for example, we had 23 people. Those are there; we are talking about building to 61. So we will have one managerial, 37 people in the professional-technical area, 23 in the support area, and that will give us our total of 61. That is how we see it breaking down. As I indicate, they are mostly graduate level in the assessment, consultant category.
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The details for the end of the year I have in front of me now. We will have, specifically now broken down to the exact number, one co-ordinator, a senior consultant, 16 curriculum consultants, five statistical analysts, one financial analyst, eight people to do program planning, PM2s program planning analysts and three administrative secretarial support. Those are AY3s and one AY2, four computer programmers, 10 people doing word processing and 10 clerks to assist. They will come under the various headings of test development, test administration, document production, et cetera.
Ms. Friesen: Could the minister tell me how many of these have been practicing teachers?
Mrs. McIntosh: As indicated, from the list of people that we have here, the clerks, the computer programmers, those who are skilled in word processing or who are administrative secretarial support or financial analysts or statistical analysts clearly do not require an education degree for the duties which they perform. So they are hired for their expertise in the areas for which they were hired to perform.
Having said that, of course, we do have need for teachers. She asked how many are currently practicing teachers, which is people who are in the field. Of those who are practising--
Ms. Friesen: Well, actually to clarify for the minister, what I had asked was how many had been practising teachers, not how many are practising, but had been practising.
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Mrs. McIntosh: I appreciate the clarification. We have eight who are in lead positions who are educators; we have three others who have worked in the school board offices, at that level in administration; eight who were in the classroom; three who were in the school board, bringing 11 to the number of those who hold education degrees or higher. They serve in the lead categories.
The others, as I indicate, we do not feel that they need to have an education degree to be a clerk or a computer programmer or a statistical analyst but, for those areas where we feel we have needed the education degree, we have 11.
Ms. Friesen: Well, just to clarify then, of the 16 curriculum co-ordinators, does that mean then that only eight have had classroom experience?
Mrs. McIntosh: Sorry, Mr. Chairman, I have said 11 have the experience. I had indicated that eight had classroom experience only and 11 had also administrative experience in a school board office. So 11 have classroom experience. Three of those have also had administrative experience at the school board office level, at the school divisional level. So 11 of the 16.
Ms. Friesen: Could the minister tell me what backgrounds the other curriculum consultants have who have not had classroom experience?
Mr. Chairperson in the Chair
Mrs. McIntosh: I had indicated in my first response, and it is an important distinction, that is why I made the clarification, that while we had some people hired under the curriculum consultant category, they were being hired as assessment people, not as curriculum people. That was the only category under which they fit, so we had hired assessment consultants in that curriculum consultant category, because that fit for pegging them on the scale, but they are assessment experts not curriculum people. The staff is just getting the specific response that the member was looking for which I will have momentarily.
The 11 positions that are educator positions are people who have classroom experience and/or administrative experience. Those 11 are in test development, and they are across the whole branch, not just in one specific portion of it. We will be hiring seven more, which will give us a total of 18 positions in test development.
The other qualifications, the member asked if they were not teachers, then what were they trained as? They are either experts in assessment or in psychometrics and have degrees in those areas, and we will be hiring some more people in psychometrics, with psychometrics training. So those are the three areas which are sought: either educator or assessment or psychometrics, as the three areas of expertise required in test development and test administration.
Just to sum it up then, there are 11 who are former teachers not currently practising but who have recent experience practising in the field--eight of them in test development and three of them in test administration, and they work with colleagues who have background expertise in assessment and psychometrics.
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Ms. Friesen: I am assuming by assessment that the minister means statistics. I am not sure if that is the case. I wonder if the minister could clarify that, and if she could also tell us what psychometrics is. I assume it means the measurement of psyche, which to me sounds like I.Q. tests. Is that the direction the government is going in, and how does psychometrics apply to the kind of exams and tests the government has been developing? So if the minister could answer that. If she could also tell me, how many of the people she has hired are from visible minorities including aboriginal.
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I first want to clarify, the member asked three things. She asked for a definition of psychometrics and what does a psychometrician do, and for a definition of assessment and how we apply it. Then she said: I assume you mean something about I.Q. tests. I did not quite get it, but I need to emphasize again because it seems to be difficult to get through to members opposite the difference between standards and standardized. We are not talking about I.Q. tests, I wish to emphasize that. We have never mentioned I.Q. tests. The member has mentioned I.Q. tests; we have not. We are not talking about I.Q. tests. I.Q. tests will be used in connection with standardized testing which we do not do.
We do standards tests, and to assume that psychometrics refers to I.Q. tests is not correct. We do not use I.Q. tests. We do not use standardized tests. We use standards tests, and that is quite different. I think we have been through this before and I have explained it on numerous occasions. I just wish the record to show that the reference to I.Q. was from the member's assumptions, and it is not a correct assumption. It is important the record show that, because it is an implication that those opposed to standards tests try to leave--and it does a disservice to the whole concept of proper assessment and evaluation to imply that it is back to the old days when you buy a test off the shelf that was standardized, test someone's I.Q. and assume that you had done something significant. If divisions wish to use standardized tests and I.Q. tests, we are certainly not forbidding them. They can do that, but our provincial standards tests are something quite different, and we have been through that before.
In terms of the definitions, by assessment we mean someone who is an expert in assessment would be trained in developing different types of questions, trained in developing scoring keys, trained in the analysis of curriculum and the development of test specifications from that curriculum. It is a very specialized skill. To take a curriculum and draw from it correctly worded questions that will draw from the person being assessed a true indication of how well that curriculum is understood is a very high skill not able to be done by just anyone but needed to be done by someone trained in this area.
Psychometrics is the statistical analysis of test results to see where areas of improvement are necessary, far different from the assumption of an I.Q. test that the member indicated. It is, and I repeat, the statistical analysis of test results to see where areas of improvement are necessary. Psychometricians are experts in identifying techniques that can be applied to any type of test, and that is why those two experts combined with the pedagogical expertise of the trained educator make the three skills required to develop proper standards tests that will be able to serve as effective diagnostic tools. That is quite different from a standardized test that measures an I.Q.
We have 45 staff presently, as I indicated earlier. Six of those are visible minorities; one is aboriginal; 10 are bilingual--French, English.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I think the record will show that my reference to I.Q. tests was a request for clarification. I said: is this the direction the department is going? [interjection] No, the record will show.
Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. Could we wait until one is recognized prior to putting some words on the record so we have everything for Hansard.
The honourable member for Wolseley has the floor at this time.
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Ms. Friesen: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to ask the minister about the cost of moving this section of the department. I understand it is moving to I think it is an area on Dublin, and I wonder if the minister could tell me what the cost of expansion of buildings or offices is.
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, Government Services is doing renovation readying the premises for the move, and we do not have that cost here. I do not know if Government Services would have it, but we will not know our final costs until the end of September when the renovations are complete.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, well, could the minister tell me how much the renovations are estimated at? There must be an estimate in the department's records. Could she tell us what the ongoing rent will be for that area?
Mrs. McIntosh: We do not have an estimate of the renovation costs because it is not our department. We can go, if the member wishes, to Government Services and get the information from them to bring to the Education Estimates. They would probably be better done, though, under the proper government department which is Government Services. So we do not have that information, and we will not probably have it until all the renovations are complete. We will not know that until the net costs are known because the Department of Government Services is looking at overall space use, overall cost, et cetera. For example, in moving Assessment out of 1181 Portage, somebody else will be moving in, and where they will have come from and what cost savings, we do not know. Government Services will know, but we do not.
So the net savings and/or the net cost, depending which way it goes, will be determined by the overall picture, who moves in to take our place, how much they are going to pay, et cetera, et cetera. We do not know that. They do.
The new space will also include some space for marking exams, so we are changing functions as well. We will go over there and have the same functions as we had at 1181, plus we will have permanent marking space, and that is something that the member, I think, will probably be pleased about because before we were renting hotel space, et cetera. This will give us marking space plus storage space for housing exam booklets, and that, for security purposes, is a much improved situation. So if the member wishes us to go to the Department of Government Services to get their financial Estimates to bring to the Estimates of Education, which is slightly unusual and rather bizarre nonetheless, we can do it if that is what she would like us to do. We do not have it here without doing that.
In terms of the rental costs, it is about the same per square foot we estimate, although the square foot costs again would be with Government Services. As I indicated, we are having more space added. There will be approximately an increase of about 240,000, we estimate, for that increased space and for the whole thing, for the existing and for the new space. Again, that is an approximate. We do not know for certain, but that is the ballpark for that, which is something that Education would be paying--that is why we have a ballpark figure for it--but again that will all depend, the final amount that is indicated to us by Government Services when that time comes.
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We can get those answers for the member by the end of this afternoon if she would like us to do that. It might spare Government Services having to answer some questions in their Estimates to do some of their Estimates here, and we are quite willing to get them within the next couple of hours if she wishes.
Ms. Friesen: Yes, I would like those, and I am interested in the cost of renovation. The minister, I think, wanted to introduce some other elements, cost benefit and net savings, as other departments move in to 1181. But I am specifically interested in what the cost of the new is.
So the two questions I am asking of Government Services then, through the minister, in fact is the cost of the renovation of the new space; and, secondly, the continuing rental for the new space. The minister gave me a square footage relationship. I would like to have the dollar amount. What is the rental cost to the department, the estimated cost that will be in these Estimates, presumably in Government Services Estimates, for the coming year?
I assume if it does not take place until September, that that will not be a full year. It will be a partial year, so, if the request could also include the months for which that is effective, that would help us to determine what the overall cost of the expansion of this section of the department has been.
I wanted to ask about the evaluations of the exams. So far we have had a number of, including January events, both mathematics and English exams. I wonder if the minister could table the results, the evaluations I should say, departmental evaluations of the most recent set of exams.
Mrs. McIntosh: You want the departmental evaluations of what?
Ms. Friesen: Sorry, Mr. Chairman, yes, of the exams. I do not mean the results. The minister has published the results, and she has published the provincial means and the provincial averages and breakdown by school division.
What I am interested in is how the department has evaluated those results. The minister said she is hiring or has hired a number of people whose job it is to look at the statistical results of tests. What are those tests telling the department? For example, in mathematics, what has the most recent round of tests told the department about the teaching of mathematics across the province?
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Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, we had noted again that there is still work that needs to be done on problem solving. Just to give the member an example of what we mean by that, problem solving has many components, but we have been able to pull out specific components of problem solving that need extra work in a number of schools.
For example, problem solving that requires multiple steps seems to confuse a number of students. Explaining why a particular course of action has been taken--and this is not a linguistic problem, because these can be shown through pictographs as well as through words. That is an area that we noticed. These are mathematical issues in moving from one step to another that we have noticed is a problem. So if they are having trouble moving from one step to another or in following a logical line of thinking, these are very fundamental to the art and the science of problem solving. We were able to identify that these are problem areas that continue. The failure to elaborate on responses when required was something that we also noticed.
So what we do then and we have begun to do with this particular one is that we have said, having identified a problem which the standards tests allow us to do, we now move into identifying solutions to fit with the correcting of that problem. We developed, in response to this particular issue, a support document which is called the Thinking Framework, and that has been made available to school divisions to assist in that deductive reasoning, logical thinking, multistep problem, solution to a problem that requires multisteps. We have put a much greater emphasis in the curriculum in the teaching of problem solving. We noticed as well and have talked about the fact that we see problem solving as a weakness last year and this, but we also saw that strengths were beginning to build in the testing of mathematics, strengths in patterns, relationships, the way in which patterns evolve, the relationship between items and articles in a pattern. Those were strengths. We noticed weaknesses in shapes and space. Again, strengthening spatial relations, et cetera, will add overall strength to all mathematical understandings including problem solving, so we continue to build on the strengths, identify area of weaknesses and begin to put in solutions for those areas of weakness.
In the English language arts in Senior 4, we noted that students in Manitoba do much better on narrative pieces, stories, that type of thing than on nonnarrative pieces. They do better in narrative than nonnarrative in understanding the material. Students in Manitoba, we noted, have some difficulty in understanding technical language. The understanding of technical language has become very important in the world outside of school, so we need to renew our efforts to help students understand that aspect of communication which had never been previously emphasized in earlier curricula.
We noted as well that, in the Senior 4 Language Arts, in some areas there is difficulty with evaluating and interpreting information that is read. Again, the interpretation is another area that we need to continue working on, although, by and large, students in language arts in Manitoba do very well. You do not have to be sick to get better, and so, while we notice that in language arts students do generally extremely well, we are still able to point out areas of weakness that we can improve in. Of course, we are reaching more and more for perfection.
Specifically we note, for example, that students did better in the mechanics of writing than they did in content, organization or style. These are good things to note. They are helpful for classroom teachers to have, and they continue helping students build towards excellence. In English/Language Arts, we emphasize that, in any workshops that we provide, the area of weaknesses be identified and ideas and helpful hints for teachers be provided to assist them in building strength into the area of weakness.
The Thinking Framework that I mentioned earlier in reference to mathematics is also a very good framework that goes across subject areas. It is useful not just for mathematics but for all subject areas, so that is one that has sort of general application.
Any time, of course, that you improve writing skills, you improve the ability to problem-solve because you are able to better understand the written problem, and any time you improve your ability to solve problems and think logically and have deductive reasoning and so on, you also improve your writing and thinking skills. So the testing in both of those two critical areas, just as A Thinking Framework crosses subject areas, so, too, do the various skills cross backwards and forwards between language arts and mathematics.
But, in short, those are some of the things that we noticed in marking, some of the strengths, some of the weaknesses and some of the corrective measures that are being put in place to address weaknesses. In terms of areas where strength is shown, we encourage continuing with the methodology that is in place to keep that strength strong and to keep building on it and to keep growing.
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Those are also useful for us. Those pieces of knowledge are useful for us, not just in professional development or the documents we prepare for the field, but it also guides us in terms of the things that need to be emphasized and the curriculum in any given year. It guides us as well in the preparation of the examination itself in that we will look if we notice in one year that problem solving was an area of difficulty, then we would make sure in the next set of exams that we did a really thorough assessment of that area to see if improvement had occurred and if the diagnostic offerings had resulted in methodology and other things in the classroom that improved understandings, because the tests measure what is understood and able to be applied.
In that sense, then, we wish to build increased understandings so that greater knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge in the world is created in the classroom.
Ms. Friesen: I wonder if the minister could table the document A Thinking Framework. I am sure she does not have it here, but certainly at the next time. The kind of evaluation that the minister was speaking about in general terms in mathematics and English language arts, could the minister also table the evaluation of each of the exams that has been done so far?
Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, Mr. Chairman, we can table the Thinking Framework, and we will table the interpretation, or what we call the interpretive comments for the tests written in 1997. We do not have all of the '98 ones, obviously, but we will table three sets of each.
Now, the only thing I cannot provide the member is the pupil-by-pupil interpretive. We have a very detailed pupil-by-pupil interpretive comment that goes through the exam, and question by question for every student that has written the exam we identify what we call a student profile. It outlines specifically how every student has done on every question in the exam, outlining areas of weakness, areas that needed improvement. We would prefer not to table the student-by-student profile because it identifies people, et cetera, but we can certainly give her all the other interpretive comments that go school by school, et cetera, and that shows the breakdown, as the member has asked, of our analysis of--pardon me, the deputy has just indicated it would not be school by school. It would be our own analysis here on the interpretive comments on the division, on the province-wide, what we have noticed from the exam, the kinds of things I have just read but the specific detail that the department has done in its analysis, and we can provide that to the member. Those others do exist, as I say, the student-by-student profile which is very fine detail, but this interpretive commentary for 1997, which we will provide, addresses the same things. It says what the overall provincial problems were, where the strengths were in the province, where the areas of weakness occur, and spells it out pretty clearly. I will bring three copies of that next day.
Ms. Friesen: Could the minister tell me where the pupil-by-pupil comments go? Do they go to the classroom teacher, to the school, to the principal, to the superintendent? What is the end result of those? They appear to be extremely detailed. Are they simply kept in the department?
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, this is one of the features of the exams that is well known and one of the integral pieces. It is to be used for diagnostic purposes. It is critical that students know how they did, and every child has a student profile. When those tests are marked, those standards exams are marked, a student profile for every single student who wrote the exam is prepared saying, question by question, where John Smith and Mary Jones on their test got question one correct and showed a very good understanding of spacial relations. Question 2 would be: did not succeed in explaining step 3 of the problem solving. Step 1 and step 2 were explained, while step 3 showed an inability to move easily from one step to the other. Extra work needed on such and such in order to ensure that this skill is picked up. Question by question, in detail, student by student, every exam is analyzed, a diagnostic paper is written called a student profile, which is sent to every school so that every classroom teacher can share it with the parents.
We have heard that some schools have not shared it with the parents. Most schools do, and that is why, I think, most parents strongly support standards tests, because they can see it as the excellent diagnostic tool that it is, but we have heard feedback from the field that some schools, for whatever reason, have chosen not to share those student profiles with the families. These are usually school divisions that do not believe in standards tests and may not do as well because of whatever reason, I do not know, but the profile does go to the school principal to share with the teachers and the parents.
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We have copies in our records, but the main purpose of these is to be diagnostic for the sake of the student. Like the question surprises me. It just does because we have said it so often. I have said it I do not know how many times in Question Period. I have said it every time I have spoken on standards exams. The student profiles go to the schools. Like, the question really surprises me. It is simple. It is almost as obvious as saying do you mark the exam? Well, of course we mark the exam. Well, what do you do with the marks?
The member keeps referring to the fact that we publish the marks as if that is kind of the only reason we have standards exams. The member will say you have standards exams and you mark them and you publish the marks. Publishing the marks is incidental. We only publish the marks because Brandon School Division put us in the position where in order to respond to reporters without having to end up in an FOI request, we had to release results. The upshot of that is that we now release all the results all the time because they are available under Freedom of Information. We know we are going to get asked every year. So the publishing of the results is something now the public seems to like. They see it as an accountability measure and we are pleased to do it because there is nothing to hide here.
But the member constantly says you mark the exams and you publish the results as if that is the reason for marking. The reason for marking is to diagnose how people are able to absorb and apply knowledge. It would be fruitless to do that if you did not provide that information back to the field for use to improve learning as they go through the system or to understand as they exit the system where they may still have areas of learning that they need to work on and areas that they know they can apply with comfort in the world of work or at post-secondary learning.
Teachers get the profile. Parents should get the profile which gives them the data topic by topic as to how the students did. It is not a report card. It is just simply a profile identifying all of these things. It is an excellent diagnostic tool for families and for teachers. Divisions that withhold that information from their students because they do not believe in the principle of testing and therefore they do not want to use any useful information that comes from it will have to be accountable to their public at school board election time. But I think fewer and fewer of them are withholding those student profiles because more and more people understand that is a very integral part of the assessment.
I am really quite surprised the member did not know that because I have said it so often and because it is such an integral part of the whole assessment process. But then again it comes back to the member's lack of support for standards testing, and I believe maybe the lack of understanding of standards testing because the member still thinks it is a standardized test to which an I.Q. test and so on are all part of it when it is completely not. I hope this information that I am providing her about the student profiles which have been there since standards tests came in that maybe at this late date she can understand the significance of that just by knowing that it exists and it has since the beginning.
I have talked to many parents who have gone through their students' profiles, and it has given them an incredibly good insight into the types of things they should be doing at home, the types of stimulation they should be providing at home. I have had parents scooting by the bookstore and picking up those little quizzes and puzzles and so on that are listed as games for students, but are really mathematical understandings that they can use at home to help a teacher by filling in some of the things that were noticed on the student profile as needing work.
Parents have a right to know about the growth and progress of their children, and at the Manitoba Teachers' Society assessment workshop, for that third workshop, the parents talked about the topic "what parents want to know about their children's achievement." The panel felt the teachers were doing an excellent job, but that parents needed to be more involved with their children's education. One common thing expressed in their comments was that parents would like to have four report cards per year instead of three, and that teachers, parents wish, would make more effort to open up the dialogue with parents. Those parents were overwhelmingly in favour of standards tests, as we know most parents are.
Some of the comments expressed were that parents value an absolute standard as opposed to comparison with peers. That is really what we are working on by the student profile; it is an absolute standard, students measuring their own progress against what is attainable. Now members opposite and detractors from standards exams consistently want to say comparing student to student, when we know it is student against the achievable. It is too bad that they keep trying to put it into that context because it is not the right context in which to view these.
So they value this absolute standard against which students can measure themselves. Where their peers are in the measurement is interesting but irrelevant because in a standards exam everybody could get 100 percent. It is not measured on a bell curve the way the old tests are that the member keeps thinking we are doing and keeps implying in the field. The NDP consistently imply in the field that things are still marked on a bell curve, and that some are automatically going to fail, when indeed with our method every student can achieve the gold. Again, it is either a lack of understanding or a conscious decision to misrepresent. I would prefer to think it is an honest misunderstanding, but I do not know how many times we can explain it to get it clear to the detractors.
Provincial tests, standards exams allow teachers to concentrate on what they do best, and that is helping the students do their best. If there were more regular testing in classrooms, standards tests would be perceived by students just like any other activity. In classes where teachers are always assessing and stopping just to check and test and see how things are going, students do not view testing as something very frightening. Where the adults in children's lives encourage them to worry themselves into little knots about tests, then the students will experience anxiety. But students can be taught to study for tests in a positive way that does not produce anxiety, and parents have expressed this. Parents have said they felt that teaching the curriculum so that the tests can do a proper measurement is a positive thing. Teaching to the test, they said, is a positive thing because the test, if properly developed, will assess a student's ability to understand and apply the curricula. The curriculum, presumably, and we know, is developed by master teachers and experts in subject area, carefully worked out.
The member has asked many questions about how curriculum is produced, wanting to assure a highest quality in the curriculum. Having produced a high-quality curriculum, then it seems natural that it would be taught, and the way to determine whether or not it has been taught would be to assess how much the students understand in the curriculum at the end of the learning period. So teaching to the test in this sense, parents said, was a very positive thing because it meant that the test was based on the curriculum, and that the curriculum, which was carefully developed, was being taught. That is what they wanted--that assurance--and we want to provide them with that assurance.
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Just back for a minute on the assessment to Dublin, I have a note just handed to me on the project cost of the move to Dublin, which is $934,000. Now that is for the whole project cost. I do not know what other things come in there in terms of savings or what they are saving by the move, by virtue of where the recycling occurs in terms of who moves into 1181 Portage and what rent they are able to charge there, et cetera. We do know that the '97 rent at 1181 Portage was $58,000; in 1988-89, $258,700. There is an increase in space of 1,400 square metres that we will see when they move the existing operations, plus they add the other functions that have been identified to be housed with Assessment and Evaluation. They will be housed together; whereas previously there was just the one entity, there will now be more than one entity. As we get more information we will provide it on that topic, but I just thought while I had that I would put it in before I forgot it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I wanted to ask the minister about the students who are not passing the standards exams. In mathematics, I think, we are looking at an average number of students passing. I think across the province, the pass rate is 56.4 percent. In English language arts, it is something like 79.6 percent are passing across the province. Which means that obviously 50 percent are not passing in math and 20 percent are not passing in the English language arts.
What are the minister's plans for this group of students? How do we ensure that this group of students stays in school, remains attached to education and makes improvements? Does the minister have a plan for that? The assumption is that in some of these areas, a group of those students will stay. They will take a second exam. A portion of those will pass. A further portion will fail. The concerns that I am hearing, and I am sure the minister has heard--her report on at-risk students tells her exactly this--the concern is for the students who at the moment cannot pass those exams may stay to take a second time but may not stay for a third time, and that these are the students, 10 to 15 percent perhaps, that we are going to lose from the educational system. So presumably the minister has some plans and some advice for school divisions who are facing this problem over the next couple of years. Could she tell us what those plans are?
Mrs. Shirley Render, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair
Mrs. McIntosh: The member asks the question that is right at the heart of this whole issue. She wants to know what will happen to students who now are identified at the end of the year as not knowing enough to pass an exam. I would point out to the member a couple of things. First of all, the curriculum upon which most of these exams are currently based is the same curriculum that has been in place for many, many years. In fact, the member herself has complained about how slow we have been to change curriculum in certain areas. For example, the music curriculum has not changed since 1983. We are soundly criticized for not having upgraded it sooner, et cetera. The Grade 9 curriculum that is currently being brought in is new but, up until now, the testing that occurred on that has been the curriculum that was in place when the New Democrats were in power.
Similarly, the other curriculums, as we are in the process of introducing new curriculum, many of these tests were based upon the old curriculum. The answer is, well, there are several thoughts, maybe just go through them. First, why is it that students taking that same curriculum without a test were passing and, when they were tested, were found to be somewhat lacking in understanding? The question that begs is: is it the provincial exam that caused them to fail by identifying the amount of knowledge they had?
It is a very basic question. Same curriculum, same kinds of students, same teachers, passing the course before without an exam, being given an exam and not passing the exam. What does that say? Is the exam causing the students to fail or is the exam identifying the students who have been graduating in great numbers without knowing their course content? This is what brought us into the whole area of examination of assessment. Because the member knows absolutely--the member is a university professor--the member knows what university professors think and say about the Grade 12 certificate and what it means, has to have heard what they have told me, probably more frequently than I have heard, that students coming in, as Professor Woods said in the math department, if you can guarantee me, Linda, that students could pass this Grade 12 math exam, then I would know at long last that I could begin teaching my first year mathematics at university secure in the knowledge the students did have the necessary information to begin studying at this level. Prior to this, of course, it was all over the map.
We have said all along that time is the variable, learning is the constant. Some students will need more time to absorb and apply the knowledge than others, and that time should be taken. You do nobody a service if you pass them from one grade to another without being ready to learn the stuff that is going to take place in the next grade. You do nobody a service if you graduate them when they do not know the information and they go out into the world with a Grade 12 certificate that most people look at and say: this means nothing. What can you do? They go to university and have to take remedial courses. They go to the workforce, have to be trained by their employers in the fundamental things they should have learned in Grade 12 or Grade 10 or Grade 9 or Grade 6.
So the member has said: what do we do when the exams cause them to fail? I say to the member that the--
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Ms. Friesen: I did not say: when the exams cause them to fail. My question which the minister has been attempting to answer is: what is your plan with those students who are failing now? Fifty percent of the students are not passing the math. Twenty percent of them are not passing the English. The minister must have a plan. What is the plan for those students? That was my question.
The Acting Chairperson (Mrs. Render): I thank the member for Wolseley. As the minister has said, she is correct. To the minister, to complete her answer.
Mrs. McIntosh: The member is correct. I am giving some background. I am addressing the implication; I should be addressing the actual words, but I do feel it is important in answering the question, and I will definitely put on the record the things that we are doing to indicate why it is important that there be testing, even if it means that some students fail the test because over and over and over we hear from the official opposition that children should not be allowed to fail tests because of what it does to their self esteem, what it does to their egos, what it does to how they feel. We should never allow children to fail. They should go through life believing that life does not have moments of failure and that there are never problems to overcome.
We know what their philosophy did to the standards that Manitoba is perceived to have in Canada and around the world, and they are not good. You can talk to almost anybody who suffered under them in terms of employers or post-secondary institutions to know that. We are changing that, and it is with great relief that the field is greeting this.
I also have to indicate, and we will talk about how to address the students that fail the exam and those who pass the exam with gaps in their knowledge, because we do know that students can get 69 and still have fundamental components that they do not understand. They, too, need work. That is why they get an individual student profile saying how they did and what needs correcting, pass or fail. The member should know that up until Grade 12, nowhere yet in the province are the marks on any of these exams worth 50 percent. Even yet today, in Grade 12, they are not worth 50 percent. The most they are worth is 30 percent, so if a student fails the test and as a result fails the year, then they are doing very poorly indeed because the test is not a stand-alone assessment tool. This is the other component that needs to be stressed anytime this topic is discussed.
There are so many aspects to assessment and evaluation, skills portfolios, daily teacher assessment, all of the things that happen in the classroom that teachers do with students, the weekly testing, all of those things will make up 70 percent or more of the final mark. So the member should realize that standards tests are only one part of a student's full evaluation, only one part of a student's final mark.
For those who on the standards tests we are able to identify area of weaknesses, we say that time is the variable, learning is the constant. Some children may take longer indeed to complete the Grade 3 curriculum, and teachers will need to take that extra time with them. Through their differentiated learning skills, they will have to work with that child in the next year to ensure those gaps are filled, and we will do the following things.
We will bring on stream the new curricula with the very general specific outcomes and standards. We are releasing the document that is differentiated instruction. We are doing regional inservices to teach teachers how to use that. We are releasing the profiles to empower school and parent partnerships so the family can work with the students at home as well as the teachers at school. We are requiring school plans. We are bringing in reading recovery. We are instilling a belief that this government has in the ability of children to learn. We are raising the expectations that children can achieve so that people will not say, well, they failed the test, let us give up and we will just by rote teach them the things from last year instead of actually trying to fill in the areas that are identified in the student profiles as needing the work. To go back and just repeat work is meaningless. We need to go and--because we will identify what exactly the areas are that need improvement and use differentiated teaching to get those areas taught. If it takes longer, it takes longer, but at the end of it, you will have somebody who really does understand. How can children believe in themselves if we do not believe in them?
We have seen and we have studies that show that teachers and schools who share the belief that all students are potentially effective learners, regardless of the amount of time it takes, they have a remarkable impact on students at risk. The bottom line, first of all: successful schools and teachers believe in the at-risk student's ability to learn. Despite the belief of many who say they are at risk, you have to change the system for them, they will never be able to learn they are at risk. Despite that, studies have shown that if the teachers and the schools and the parents believe in the at-risk student's ability to learn, they can have success. They can put in effective practices that will work.
Some things such as Reading Recovery, which is a program the member I am sure must be familiar with--I just visited this morning in a school, watching the Reading Recovery Program in progress and seeing a student whose progress was unbelievable since starting the program, just incredible, because Reading Recovery teachers are trained in using effective, individualized, instructional strategies, with the lowest achieving students in Grade 1, so we are starting early with this--trained to analyze, trained to adjust their instruction to ensure students' accelerated learning.
We have established--in terms of money, because the members feel money has a lot to do with things, we have put an extra $10.25 million annually into Students At Risk support programs. We have put in another $250,000 into early identification; another $4.2 million into English Language Enrichment for Native Students. We have put more money into the Level I needs support; another $42 million this past year, for this year that we are, '97-98; another $12.7 million into co-ordinator and clinician support; another $9.1 million into special needs supplementary support. As well, we have put another $30 million into Level II and Level III in the special needs categorical support.
That is money. Money seems to be the thing the member likes to hear about. That is a lot of money we have put into Students At Risk. In addition to that, of course, in that Students At Risk support program, that $10 million we put in specifically for Students At Risk of not being able to learn, that money is targetted to schools identified as having high complements of at risk students.
So we have got a number of those things. The Children and Youth Secretariat is working to develop holistic approaches of prevention, of treatment, rehabilitation and safety of care for children, youth and their families. So if there is a student who is struggling because they have societal problems and we can somehow ameliorate the effects of those problems so that the mind can be freed to concentrate on learning, then this is a very significant step towards improved performance.
We have now a co-ordinated and integrated system of services for children and youth and their families, where the needs of children and youth cross departmental mandates, cross departmental resources. Those are vital for improved learning in schools and for addressing some of the problems that those who may not do well on assessment tests may have.
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We are looking now and we are putting in place full service schools. These are not things that appear on the surface to be directly related to improving a student's test score, but the member herself and the member for St. James (Ms. Mihychuk) and the member for Wellington (Ms. Barrett) have all repeatedly said that students cannot do well if some of these other problems are not addressed for them.
Hence I am showing what we are doing with these other problems because the members opposite themselves say the only way you are going to help some of these students at risk is to bring in some of the things I am talking about, like the $4 million for English Language Enrichment for Native Students. The members opposite have said that for English as a Second Language students the tests are unfair because that may not be their first language, so we bring in the money to address that. So I do not want the member coming back and saying these are not things that will directly answer the question about how students will improve on tests because the member opposite has told me repeatedly these are the types of things that are needed to ensure success on tests, and that in fact if we do not address them, testing will be unfair.
So we are addressing them with the co-ordinated service delivery, community ownership responsibility resourcing structures developed around the needs of the child, schooling services initiative, shared services agreement and all of the money that I identified to all those categories. That, with the work that goes on in the classroom, with classroom teachers who have enhanced skills in differentiated instruction--and that is the one that is universally applauded by the Manitoba Teachers' Society, our handbook on differentiated instruction, which is helping teachers take a student who may have areas of difficulty on a standards exam, identified through the student profile, so the teacher could immediately begin to work with that student.
We have visualized this to the people of Manitoba through six priority areas: essential learning; educational standard and evaluation--accountability is critical to results and applies pressure to the education system, including through provincial standards tests; school effectiveness; parental-community involvement; distance education and technology; teacher education. The gap between the vision articulated by the province and current practices in Manitoba was wide in 1994 when the vision was unveiled. It is narrowing, but there is still an enormous system change that needs to occur, particularly when so many individuals hold beliefs vastly different from those underpinning society's vision and government's vision. That is, many still do not hold beliefs related to results and accountability and increased parental involvement.
But you talked about students who may not be able to pass standards exams. We believe that all students can learn. I said that earlier. We intend, and we are developing curriculum programming, school environments, instructional strategies, and learning resources that respond to the diversity of students in our schools. It is harder to teach this way, but it is more effective and more beneficial in the long run. Those who are skilled in it achieve great satisfaction, both for themselves and for their students.
We have teaching methodologies in place that support so that even the most reluctant learner can succeed. Students who are disabled, struggling, and at risk are a heterogeneous group of learners who do not learn as efficiently as their peers using traditional methodologies and practices. We know that, so we need to put in measures that will assist them. That is what we have been doing; that is what we continue to do; and that is what we are planning for future in wider and wider areas of endeavour.
For adaptations we have, most children with learning difficulties are in the mainstream for a significant part of the day, and teachers have a major role in helping these students be successful in school. But there are some who need adaptations to be able to access information, and we are changing materials, we are changing methods, to allow a different mode of output by the student or allow a different mode of input to the students. We have made adaptations to test materials, adaptations to test procedures to provide more avenues for students who demonstrate their knowledge.
Mr. Chairperson in the Chair
We have, for example, allowed flexible time and flexible setting where we have said maybe a student needs more time to write the exam. Instead of a three-hour exam, maybe a student needs four hours and for various circumstances, maybe visual difficulties, maybe motor control, small muscle motor control problem. So we will extend the time allowed for that student, allow that student to take longer to write the exam. Maybe that person needs more frequent breaks. We will be allowed to stop the exam, start, continue, stop, continue and do the exam that way for various physical reasons or psychological reasons.
Maybe they need a flexible setting. Maybe they need to be tested in a small group setting. Maybe they need to be tested alone verbally rather than in a room written. Maybe they need a test in a special education or resource classroom. Maybe they need to have taped directions as opposed to written directions. Maybe they need Braille or large print or signing of directions. Maybe they need to use a computer, maybe they need to use a scribe. Maybe they need to have a teacher assist them with the interpretation of the language, if English is the second language on a math exam, for example.
These adaptations are useful to helping students succeed on the exams, if their problem is not one of lack of knowledge of the content but inability to use the assessment tool the way most people can use it. So this use of adaptations for assessment purposes does give special consideration to students who have behavioural problems that impede learning. Maybe they cannot sit still, so they do need to get up and wander around and then come back and sit down under supervision. These are allowed in order to ensure fairness to students who may have certain disabilities or problems that require a different approach to the standards exam. It does not mean they are not going to take the standards exam, but it does mean they could get some kind of consideration in how they write it, and this I think is very important.
This process also reduces unnecessary exclusion of students from assessment as such exclusion can place severe limits on students' future opportunities and gives them all equal opportunity to demonstrate what they know, what they can do as part of a proper assessment process. We granted adaptations in June of '97 to 1,428 students in the Grade 3 mathematics standards test. Twenty-one students registered in the Senior 4 English language arts program, none in the Senior 4 provincial math program. That represents percentages in each of those courses of people who required adaptations and were provided them to ease the writing of the exam and make it more meaningful for them and to ensure that we get the content.
The school team may determine, after examining a student, that an exemption altogether from a provincial exam is what needs to happen for a particular student. If the signed consent of students and their parents and the school team are there, then that too can occur. That is a collaborative process that is granted by the school, by those who best know the student. Exemptions from writing standards tests and provincial exams are provided to students who are registered in the modified designated courses, who are in Grades 3 and 6 and require substantial modifications to grade level material, to students who due to their emotional and psychological state may be detrimentally affected by writing a formal test have English as a second language in Grades 3 and 6 and require substantial adaptations to curricula or Senior 1 and Senior 4 students in E-designated courses.
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Those have been there since the beginning and that addresses students who have very unusual circumstances in their lives. We believe all other students have the ability to write standards exams, have the right to be assessed and have the opportunity to have their knowledge assessed properly, so that at their next go-round in the learning situation the areas in which they were deficient can be enhanced, and the student can then learn as they should be learning as opposed to the way it has been, where they go through and to make them feel good, they get passed. They graduate and find, to their horror, that they cannot function in post-secondary education or in the workforce because nobody cared enough about them to find out where they had gaps and to fill in those gaps for them.
So they take the time to fill in the gaps, and while that may take more time, in answer to the member's question, what are we doing, will we take more time--yes. Will we fill in the blanks with differentiated instruction--yes.
They are not failing necessarily because they are incapable of learning or because they have severe learning difficulties. I have just indicated to the member the exemptions we put in place for people in those categories, but if you ask teachers how many of their students they think are not capable of writing a standards exam in Grade 3, for example--we asked that question. How many of your students do you think, teachers of Grade 3 mathematics, will not be able to successfully complete a provincial standards exam, and the answer that came back from the field from teachers currently teaching in the classroom was 5 percent. Five percent, indeed, is about the number that did not write the exam, and others had substantive adaptations made to assist them.
So the people we are talking about have not failed because they lacked the ability to pass; they have failed for other reasons. All of those measures I have written in about the societal things we are going to do, all those things, the differentiated teaching and all of those things are the types of corrective measures the member can see put in place, and I hope that she does not come back and say, well, those are all societal things, because that is what the member has said we need to do to ensure success in standards exams.
Mr. Chairperson: Could I ask the committee, does the honourable member for St. James (Ms. Mihychuk) have leave to ask questions from the front bench? [agreed] The honourable member for St. James is in the Leader of the official opposition's seat. I said that just to identify it for Hansard.
The honourable member for St. James, with leave.
Ms. MaryAnn Mihychuk (St. James): I would like the ability to ask a few questions that relate specifically to assessment and evaluation. I will start maybe with a personal story I was sharing with colleagues, how I am having difficulty helping my son, who is in precalculus in Grade 10. This is after I was fairly successful in a university-educated math program, so I know that it is challenging, which is a positive, but there are other things which hamper his learning ability, and that could be because the curriculum, I understand, is fairly new.
Is the Grade 10 precalculus course being developed at the present time or just has recently been implemented?
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, we are on Assessment and she is talking about Curriculum Development. Staff we have here are Assessment experts, not our developmental, but they all know a lot about each other's information. I just wanted to indicate that we are now off Assessment and on to Curriculum Development, which is a different topic, so just give us a minute. We are supposed to be doing Assessment and--
Mr. Chairperson: Assessment and Evaluation (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits.
Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, but now we are talking about Curriculum Development.
Mr. Chairperson: Which line would that be on?
Mrs. McIntosh: Well, that is 16.2 or something like that--16.2.(d), but that is okay, we will go ahead. Just give us a minute because we do not have the Curriculum Development people here. She is asking about the development of the mathematic curriculum, and that is fine. I am just saying give us a bit of time here.
Some schools might have been piloting this year because we pilot everything the year before we bring it in, so some schools may have been piloting it this year. The full system-wide implementation of new Senior 2 Mathematics will be at the 1998-99 year, which is next year, but it is being piloted. Precalculus math is being piloted in selected schools around the province. I do not know if that is one the member is with or not.
Ms. Mihychuk: This is where it leads into testing and evaluation, of course. This is probably a pilot program in this circumstance. He is at Daniel Mac, and I guess right now there is no textbook and even the answers to the questions for that curriculum have a very high degree of inaccurate responses at the back of the book when you look up the answers to help you go and solve the problem. So not only is there not the theoretical information so that he could refer to a textbook to then refer back, but the workbook that they are using to go through also needs considerable editing.
When the testing is now done on this pilot program, my concern is that perhaps there has not been sufficient preparation. Are certain considerations going to be given to these students because they are in this transition phase? I understand that there is considerable difficulty in this class. There are a couple of classes going through precalculus, and they find it extremely difficult going from the Grade 9 to this new program. Given that this is a test pilot, and given that assessment tools so far have indicated that they are having to struggle a great deal, is some help or provision going to be made for those students?
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Mrs. McIntosh: I should indicate first of all there is no test for Senior 2, not in the pilot stage or in the off-pilot stage. Thus testing occurs at Grades 3, 6, 9, and 12. So there will be no test for this course that she is referring to, other than what the school division and, if it is Winnipeg School Division No. 1, they do divisional testing. At least I believe they were doing divisional testing at one point, but those would not be provincial tests.
The other information, staff is just preparing for me here. You had a question about textbooks and then about a workbook that had incorrect answers in the back. In terms of textual material, I have joining me at the table now, Mr. Chairman, Pat McDonald, Director of Program Development, the staffperson here who deals with this type of question.
In some cases, Mr. Chairman, and I will provide you with the answer to this one in just a moment, people have talked about certain new curricula not having new textual materials when, in effect, in some of those new curriculum we are talking about is a 3 percent to 5 percent adjustment in the curriculum. So you might have a course that is 95 percent the same as it was before, with an added module of information or an updating of information that changes the course content maybe quite dramatically in that one little area. Overall, it only changes the course context about 5 percent, in which case the existing textual material, with the addition of a CD-ROM or some notebooks or some other materials, will provide what is required.
Some people said, well, it is a new curriculum and there is no brand-new textbook when, in effect, the existing textbooks are quite adequate to cover the curriculum, when it is supplemented with the other materials that come in that may not be textbooks. They may be other forms of textual material, so I will just provide this other information to you in a moment here.
The precalculus that we referred to, as I mentioned earlier, is in pilot stage. It is voluntarily being implemented in selected schools. The schools asked to pilot it, so anywhere it is in place, it is in place because the school wishes to be a pilot. Those places have all received copies of the curricula, the cumulative exercises, distance courses, whether they are not a school that requires distance education, the full distance education course materials are made available to any school that is piloting. They do not have to be distance ed to use them.
The existing learning resources for the existing 20S Math curricula have an extremely close match to the new precalculus course and they can be used, as I indicated before, that sometimes the old text material can be used. New learning resources curriculum matched to the new Senior 2 courses reviewed this spring. They will be available in September '98 when the whole system-wide is in place. Those students who are taking the pilot course are taking--I mean, precalculus is precalculus, there are not many ways you can change calculus. There are different methods you can use to teach it, there are different things you can emphasize, but essentially they can have the distance ed curricula, if they want it, and the existing text material are extremely close matched. I do not know if staff have anything else that they wish to have added to that for the member's benefit, but while there is not a particular precalculus text, the existing 20S text is a close match. Couple that with the other help I have cited, there is real resource help available, because departmental staff are also available in pilot stages for assistance, as they are all the time.
Ms. Mihychuk: I did not want to spend too much time on this, and I do not want to move off the line because it was really an evaluation. Our local high school does extensive testing, and I did not mean to imply provincial exams. Just that he was being tested on a regular basis and was concerned about perhaps the effect of that--not the effect of testing. But let us say if we had a group of students who went into that and were not particularly successful, would they be able to then go into the general stream? There used to be 300 Math for the university entrance, and then there used to be a general math, and you could move down so in Grade 11, or that would be S3, would be able to go from that one into the lower, or the general--math for dummies, we used to call it--so can students still do that, move down, let us say, from one to the other? But I know that is not evaluation either. So it is a general constituency, family concern.
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Mrs. McIntosh: In answer to the question, because the courses are changing, there no longer will be a course in math that has the easy way to add, the regular way to add and the hard way to add, and you can move from various levels of difficulty. There are now three different courses in math: there is applied math, consumer math, precalculus. All of those are stand-alone courses. So you do not move down to any one of them, but you could move sideways. If you wanted, you could take them all.
When you get into senior high where you are allowed to specialize more and you want to load up on mathematics because you are going to take a degree in mathematics, you could take consumer math and applied math and precalculus math. They are not considered one inferior to the other; they are measuring different things.
So they are measuring different things. Some are undoubtedly more difficult than others, like the precalculus, which is probably a very difficult course to take for most students. But, depending upon what a student wishes to be, if they wish to become an apprentice and if they wish to enter the trades and become a carpenter, for example, then the applied math, Grade 12 Applied Math, would be essential because it deals with measuring, with distance, with weights and measures and all of those things that would be applied mathematics, the way you would use mathematics in real-life situations. It would be essential for their purposes.
But it would also be a university entrance subject. The are all S courses. Where before when you would have Math S and Math G, they are now all S courses, but they measure different things. So you do not move down, but you can move sideways and take a different math.
Ms. Mihychuk: So, in layman's terms, laywoman's terms, a student would then be required to take a Grade 10 Applied Math, perhaps, in the next year, if he wished to change directions? Or could you go to Grade 11 Applied Math?
Mrs. McIntosh: They would not be required to, but they could if they wanted to. Mr. Chairman, I think if I go through a little example it might help clarify the way it will be working.
If a student did not pass, say, a student was taking 20S Precalculus and did not pass the test, then what? That person can either, if they wished to get credit in 20S Precalculus, they could repeat the course or, if they decided that they did not care to have that particular math class as a credit, they could take a different 20S Math course. They are all 20S Math courses: 20S Precalculus, 20S Applied. So they could either repeat the 20S Precalculus or they could take a different 20S course.
Some divisions will have policies that they put in place that would apply, but this is what the province is saying that the province will allow. The department would allow students to move from any math course at Senior 2 or Senior 3 to a different math course at Senior 3 or Senior 4. The school divisions can set prerequisites if they wish. We are saying that if you did not pass Calculus 20S and you wanted to take Precalculus 30S, the province says you can do that. Your school division may say: no, we insist you get 20S first, but we are saying that you can. It is important to remember that our policy is that of a shared responsibility for assessment, so the province will administer standards exams, for example. We will develop the standards exams; we will develop the standards testing program. The local school has a very significant role. They can decide things like prerequisites, et cetera. We are saying that you can move, if you wish to, from any math course at Senior 2 and Senior 3 to a different math course at Senior 3 or Senior 4. For example, you could take 20S Applied Math and 30S Precalculus. You might have a very difficult time. Your school division may well insist you have a prerequisite there. You could reverse it. But most schools will probably set prerequisites. We are saying as well that you have to have mathematics to graduate and you have to have language arts to graduate at the senior level, at the uppermost level in order to graduate. What order you take them in, whether you load up on them and take all of them, I mean, your division will probably allow you more credits than are required for graduation.
We have students who have graduated with incredible numbers of credits, like almost unbelievable numbers of credits that you would not think a person could possibly squeeze in in three years of high school, or four years if they started at Grade 9. We are also saying that people can come back after they graduate and take an additional four credits if they wish to, if they feel they wished they had taken a certain course in high school that when they graduated they did not have at their fingertips for knowledge purposes. Is there another area there that they would like shown?
The department policy is that a student needs to earn a credit in one Senior 2 Math before moving into Senior 3 Math. So you have to have at least one of the Senior 2 Mathematics to move into the Senior 3 Math. Just to give an example, you could earn a Senior 2 Precalculus Math and then take Senior 3 Applied Math without ever having taken Senior 2 Applied Math. You could switch back and forth, but most divisions will probably set prerequirements and many will probably say, in fact the vast majority I think will be saying, that in order to take Senior 4 precalculus, you should have Senior 3 precalculus because to do otherwise is to really challenge yourself.
Having said that, there are some very superbright kids in gifted categories who are loading up on certain specialty courses who may wish to be able to do this and challenge the exam. Our goal here is not to prohibit them from doing that. If, in their opinion and their teacher's opinion, they have the ability to it, we do not wish to prohibit them from that choice. So the system is designed to try and accommodate the struggling learner plus the superhigh achiever.
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Ms. Mihychuk: I just wanted to continue on my colleague's questions about staffing in terms of this branch, and I am wondering if the minister could indicate if we anticipate to see further growth beyond '99, and when are we going to max out? I know that there is a number of provincial exams that are being developed, and as we continue with the program, when will we reach our maximum, I guess is my question, and how many staff would we anticipate will be needed when we are in a full provincial exam program for Manitoba?
Mrs. Shirley Render, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair
Mrs. McIntosh: We anticipate moving to 61 staff by the end of next year. That is not our full complement, however, because we are into the years, the early 2000s, before we reach our full complement. We know that we will have extra staff added en route to that. I do not have exact numbers, but I could probably get projections as to what is expected if that is acceptable because it is too early to say exactly. We may find out that we can do things with fewer people than projected or whatever. So maybe I could get that from staff what we project by the time we finally have everything fully up and running.
We expect by the years 2001, 2002, that we will likely have added close to another 20 staff. Again, it is just a projection, and we are finding that we are making some adjustments. For example, with Grade 6 and Grade 9 now, we have decided that we will allow some local marking. We had said before that we wanted only central marking, because we know central marking gives greater consistency. But the field had indicated a number of arenas where there were some benefits to going to local marking that we felt had sufficient merit that they weighed, so that in the middle years, we felt we should do some.
If we go, say, to divisional marking on a rotating basis for math and language arts locally, we will enable more teachers to take part in the assessment process which has a professional development component to it, and we will have less time out of the classroom by teachers. Teachers had said they felt it was a very high professional development exercise, and that by having central marking, they were prohibiting some teachers from taking part. Parents had said--teachers as well--but primarily parents, that by having it centrally marked, we had to pull teachers out of the classroom for too long, send them into the city.
We felt those were good points. So science and math at Grades 6 and 9 will be marked centrally, but math and L.A. at Grades 6 and 9 will be done locally. As we make adjustments like those, it will impact the number of staff we are going to require in the department ultimately. So that is why I say we think about 20 more, but it could be a little less. Not sure.
Ms. Mihychuk: It seems to me that one of the advantages for taking an exam is having the ability to review that exam and going through the areas that you maybe had problems with. Is it possible to get the exams back and know how you did on those questions on a provincial exam?
Mrs. McIntosh: Several things here. We mail out to every school a full student profile for each student saying John Jones on the Grade 3 math test, on question 1 showed he really understood spatial relations; on question 2 showed he needs more help in problem solving, because he could not successfully move from one step to another. So they get a full student profile for every student who wrote the test saying where they did well, where they did poorly, and what things need to be done to improve that student's strengths or improve the student's weaknesses and build upon the strengths. Well, I guess, we want to improve strengths, too.
Secondly, we do not mail the tests out for two reasons although any parent can certainly get a copy of the test if they want a photocopy. They can get a photocopy if they want one, but the tests themselves have no markings on them, so even mailing back the test does not tell the parent anything. The papers are not marked, they are not touched with marks in any way. The paper stays clean; the marking is done on a separate sheet. So it is marked by one tester, goes to another tester, marked again. The two marks are compared to see if the two testers marked the same. If they did not, then it goes to a third marker who then checks to see why there was disparity between the two.
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So the marks or the comments about the questions are on separate pieces of paper, which are then compiled into the student profile and mailed to every school. So we can mail the paper back if the parents maybe want to take a look at the questions or whatever, but there is no writing on the paper from a marker's perspective. They could see what the questions were and what the answers were, but they will not see any marks or any other person's writing on it.
We keep them for a year, and the reason we keep them for a year is in case there is an appeal. We have the original paper there that people can appeal if they say, well, I do not think that sounds right, I do not think that is what Johnny did on his test or whatever, and so we keep them there, but we do provide the information that most people require. However, if parents or schools or anybody that is directly affected, like the teacher or the school division or the parents want a copy of the test, they can write in. We ask them to pay so much per page, just to keep the cost down. So they pay a nominal fee, essentially, to cover the cost of photocopying and postage, and we will mail them a photocopy of the whole thing so they can have access to it.
The whole field knows that they can get copies of their child's standards tests and the schools know as well that they could obtain them, as we said, for the cost of photocopying and mailing, just the processing costs, but we have not had very many requests. We have had a few people request copies, but mostly the student profile satisfies the need. The student profile is the key, but they can get them and we have not had very many asked and it has not been a subject of concern, particularly, at least not that I am aware of.
So, in summary, marks and comments are not placed directly on the student's paper. We use a double blind system of marking so that it is conceivable that the paper might have to go to six or seven people before an actual determination is made. Hence that is why there is nothing written on the paper, because everything is done on separate sheets to ensure that double blind or triple blind security is there. I do not know if that answers your question or not.
Ms. Mihychuk: It is fairly common that after you take a test or an exam in a less formal setting that you would get your marked exam back and then have an opportunity to go through the questions one by one. Often teachers will go through the whole exam saying this is how you solve the problem. Is that the process now used on provincial exams? Do teachers have a copy of the test and would go through it with students, and do they then have the student evaluation or whatever it is called, student profile, so a teacher would be able to virtually figure out how the student did on that test? I guess, is there a follow-up to the exam? Do teachers go through the exam step by step so that at least students would have an understanding of where they maybe saw the shortfalls. I think that is an important part of the learning process. If that is not done, then we are really just doing a testing tool rather than a learning experience.
Mrs. McIntosh: Madam Chairman, that is, of course, the main purpose behind standards exams. The prime purpose is a diagnostic tool. The secondary purpose is to alert, at the exit level in Grade 12, post-secondary learning institutions and employers what understandings that student has. That is a very key component, as well, as the universities have told us. I mean we have year one in place at the University of Manitoba, because this problem was not addressed years ago. Everybody knows it and everybody is challenged by it.
But the way this would work, the way it is supposed to be working, the way in many places it is working, and the way it will be working in areas where it is not yet working this way, is that the student profiles go out to every school. The teachers are expected to sit down with the families and the student and say: Here is Joe; Joe has shown on this test, by virtue of this exclusive analysis of his exam and his exam alone, he has trouble with deductive reasoning; he does not understand.
Like if you say to Joe: all hoodlums wear black leather jackets; I wear a black leather jacket, therefore, I am a hoodlum, Joe does not understand what is wrong with that statement, because his deductive-reasoning powers need work. Because this will take place--the exam is written in May; the results come back in June--the family and Joe then can work on that over the summer at the next year.
This is where differentiated teaching comes in. It is why it is so critical that the handbook we sent out be utilized. It is why some teachers are upset about standards exams, and it is why some teachers embrace them. Because this means then for next year, that student profile goes to the receiving teacher, and that receiving teacher knows a lot more than that receiving teacher ever used to know, which is Johnny got 60 on math. That receiving teacher knows exactly what work that teacher has to do with Johnny to ensure a more full understanding of math. Using differentiated teaching techniques, that teacher may have to work on different things with different students in that class to meet the challenge of ensuring that Johnny goes through that year without gaps in learning, or Joe, or whatever the student's name is.
It is a big challenge, but it is extremely exciting, because it recognizes the uniqueness of each student; it individualizes an educational plan indirectly for each student. It gives high school students in many respects the kinds of opportunities that elementary students have had.
We found this when we started talking about differentiated instruction that with elementary teachers, many, if not most, have automatically been doing this for years. They put people into small groups; they work on extra things; they have individualized plans for students. They do it very well. At the high school level where we have evolved into more of a lecture format, over time and over history at the high school level, we have approached in many ways a university-type model in some classes where it is a lecture, audience-type teaching method. We are saying that that is going to change with standards tests and that the senior years' teachers are going to have to operate with methodology more like the primary school teachers.
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So it is a challenge. It is more work in the beginning, but I think that, once the techniques are comfortably in place, it will be much more satisfying because students will begin to do better. It is the detailed, analytical, synthesized piece of the student profile that is needed to meet and work meaningfully with the child and the parent in that fall period that starts when school starts in September. So the follow-up is critical. Without the follow-up, then all we have is a measurement that we can say: is this not interesting for information for the public in terms of accountability? The students have learned the desired outcomes by the end of Grade 9. That is interesting and it shows our accountability, but it does not do the important thing, which is to go on and use that as a diagnostic tool, which is the single most, main, important purpose of standards exams. The rest is the incidental part, although it is nice to be accountable and being accountable is important. The primary purpose is to enhance the students' ability to learn more, absorb more, and apply more knowledge to a measurable standard that will stand them well in the world outside of school.
These were things that were told us very loudly and very clearly in the first two Parents' Forums that were held by my predecessor. Five hundred parents at random said we need this in our system. It has been a long time to put in place. It is a slow, gruelling process, requires a lot of change. Change is always unsettling, but I believe it is good change. I believe that, as more and more people really understand the full impact and the benefits of it, it is a change that is being seen more and more as welcome, not just by parents who welcome it from the beginning, but also by educators.
There was a period--and we are just coming out of it--when educators were nervous about this. That was relayed in some school divisions. Boards were nervous about it. Where boards were nervous and educators were nervous, that was passed on to parents who became nervous. Quite the opposite occurred in divisions where boards and educators embraced it. Parents were very positive. The high level of success in those divisions with those who embraced the change is really quite amazing compared to those who resisted it. We are now seeing that turning; those divisions that were saying that we do not think we can stomach this change are slowly coming around to saying: well, gee, yeah, we are seeing what is happening in other divisions and maybe we were overly cautious. Maybe we were overly frightened, and maybe we should rethink our position on this, because it seems to be working really well where it is working, and those kids are soaring, and ours are not. So it is coming around to acceptance, but it all came back in the beginning to parents' insistence that this occur, and we agreed with them. The more I see it, the more I agree.
Ms. Mihychuk: Just on the same topic, is it possible for a student to take a provincial exam, perhaps have a bad day for whatever reason--and that happens to all of us; at least it happens to me--and not be successful on the exam? Is it possible to retake that exam in a fairly short term, or do you have to go to the next semestered window or opportunity? Can you apply to the province to redo the exam?
Mrs. McIntosh: We do not have a rewrite policy. Our position right now is that in most of the cases, a student who gets a failing grade on a subject, the failing grade would be a combination of the standards exam and the year's work. The failing grade would normally imply that there is still bodies of knowledge or areas of knowledge that needed to be acquired, and therefore it would be worth resuming the studies until that knowledge was obtained.
Coming back to our time is the variable learning is the constant. You keep right on learning. It may take you a bit longer in some cases; you may be able to do it in a shorter period of time in others. But the other thing that is important to recognize that in no case, at the present time and even in the future, will a standards exam be worth more than half of the course. The most it might be on our present schedule will be that, ultimately, there will be two subjects where it would be worth 50 percent of the course, but the others are all like 30 percent, et cetera, so even failing a standards exam does not mean failing the grade.
If you have been having a good year and just a bad day, then it is not likely that you would fail the grade or fail that course, because if you are having a good year the other assessment tools would kick in and promote you. It may lower your mark. Many students now who have marks that are lower than they would like on divisional exams, because a lot of divisions have had exams in the last 10 years, students graduate with a divisional mark that is based upon half exam and half the year's work. If they want to raise the mark, they will come back and repeat the exam at the next round of exams.
We could put in a rewrite exams, but that would again be an extra cost, and I think in very few exceptions, very rarely would there be an instance where more time should not be taken. In those events, students can appeal the mark, like, it can be appealed, but not rewritten.
The Acting Chairperson (Mrs. Render): The honourable member for St. James, and I caution her to keep an eye on the clock. We are just about out of time. A very quick question.
Ms. Mihychuk: I have a very quick question and that is: does the minister anticipate or plan to make the student profiles available to parents? These are discretionary, up to the school or the teacher or parents have access, so, at a parent-teacher interview, you would get these profiles available?
Mrs. McIntosh: Right now the student profiles go to the schools, go to the teachers, and it is expected and encouraged that they would share those results with the parents. We have stopped short of ordering them simply because so many people have said you should not be ordering the schools to do this, do not order the teachers to do this, do not make the teachers do that. If they share the results with the parents, the parents might get mad at them, whatever, do not make them do it.
So we are assuming that they will because it is something that parents deserve to have. But having said that, parents have access to their children's file; they have that right, and this information is stuff that should be in the childeren's file. Now we can make it compulsory that they share. I think in most cases they do. It would be a very rare division that would not share that information with the child's parent. That would be most unusual and most unfair, I think.
The Acting Chairperson (Mrs. Render): The hour being 6 p.m., committee rise. Call in the Speaker.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Penner): The hour being 6 p.m., this House is adjourned and stands adjourned until 1:30 p.m. tomorrow (Tuesday).