Touchy subject to be sure.
My wife is a High School teacher in CBE. Currently running to almost a decade without a permanent contract.
We have had many discussions regarding performance analysis for teachers. It is a difficult task to objectify results in a profession that has a lot of variables involved. I did attempt to think of a solution and it is beyond me.
I do think there issues from the Top down and issues with the Union. My wife has worked with great teachers and also a couple of exceptional bad ones. Bad meaning, they do not even know their own subject matter. How do we get re-mediate those teachers? or do we get rid of them?
And the base of all of this, the Money.
I believe she is extremely fortunate to make the money that she is making even without a permanent contract. Widespread annual raises without performance metrics or training goals. But I digress....
That being said, class sizes are quite large in the core subjects. I believe the CBE is inefficient at the top with the salaries they are paid. They made many mistakes that have cost them financially (just compare to the Catholic School Board). They put money in areas that could go to the core subjects but do not. Art Centered learning and alternative learning such as Robert Thirsk high school. The school she teaches at has class sizes of 8 to 10 in some option classes, while the core subject are hitting 40 students. At a previous school she taught at, there are 5 versions of Science 10!
10
10 AP
10 ACL
14
10 K&E
I believe if they re-focus on the core subjects and pare down the alternative streams, that will free up money for better training, mentoring of teachers to raise the average standards of all teachers. Give the admin staff more to work with and start on quality of teaching instead of quantity.
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