Minister fires at academics
French immersion Report called biased, flawed and misleading by professors
MONCTON - Professors criticizing the math and methods of the Croll-Lee report on French immersion are missing the point, according to Education Minister Kelly Lamrock.
A handful of academics have argued in recent weeks that Lamrock's decision to eliminate early French immersion is based on faulty logic and incorrect numbers.
On Monday, two Université de Moncton professors held a public presentation, as 21 University of New Brunswick profs posted a complaint letter to Ombudsman Bernard Richard.
The report is biased, its reasoning flawed and its conclusions misleading, argued Moncton professors Jimmy Bourque of the Centre for Research and Development in Education and Rodrigue Landry of the Canadian Research Institute on Linguistic Minorities.
They pointed to advanced proficiency rates in early immersion students of 42 per cent in 2006, more than four times those of late immersion. While late immersion achieved a 95-per-cent success rate at achieving intermediate proficiency, targeting a lower level of proficiency led Landry to declare that "excellence is no longer an option."
Lamrock fired back on Tuesday, saying "taking excellence out of the system is excluding 80 per cent of kids from learning a second language and streaming half the kids into classes where they can't learn literacy skills."
Lamrock said that by picking apart numbers in the report, people are missing the broader point: he wants more students to graduate with French skills.
The new system will replace universal core French and optional early immersion from Grade 1 with a Grade 5 intensive program for all students, and optional late immersion from Grade 6.
"It's a universal model teaching all kids French instead of a few," said Lamrock. "You can't reach 70-per-cent bilingualism if your most effective program (early immersion) only includes 20 per cent of the population."
Professors have also questioned the report's 16.9-per-cent attrition rate for early immersion, saying the numbers are inexact because they don't follow a cohort of students from year to year.
Joseph Dicks, director of the Second Language Research Institute of Canada at UNB, calculated that report authors Jim Croll and Patricia Lee under-estimated attrition rates in early immersion.
Bourque and Landry cited another analysis by Mount Allison University biologist Diana Hamilton and Matthew Litvak of UNB Saint John that found they over-estimated it.
They also referred to Hamilton and Litvak's finding that if early immersion is eliminated, the rate of students in special education programs would drop from 5.4 per non-immersion classroom to 4.25 per classroom.
Bourque and Landry said that decrease is not significant enough to axe early immersion.
But "whether you have 18 or 22 (per cent attrition rates)"¦ I would not subject kids to another year of streamed classrooms based on that intervention," Lamrock replied, adding he believes even a small reduction in special needs students per classroom is significant.
Doug Willms, director of the Canadian Research Institute for Social Policy at UNB, is a proponent of the plan, but acknowledged Croll and Lee mistakenly called their calculations "attrition rates."
But, in a statement issued Tuesday, he said much more than one report went into Lamrock's decision.
"I do not recall a single instance when politicians have commissioned a report and acted on it as though it were the single source of evidence," Willms wrote. "Ultimately political decisions are made on the basis of several reports and consultations, with a view to providing the best policies and programs for the majority while safeguarding the rights of our most vulnerable citizens.
"The critics of Croll and Lee are naïve to assume that the report carried so much weight."
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If this whole issue wasn't so serious, the predictability of Lamrock's attacks would be funny.
Deep in the bunker, 300 meters beneath the Legislature our premier is in heated discussion with his loyal cabinet and MLA’s.
“Okay everyone repeat after me, kids come first, kids come first, self-sufficiency, self-sufficiency. Come on say it loud, say it proud. Let’s hear some enthusiasm. Come on, a little desk thumping, some hear, hear,” exhorts S.
“Ladies and gentleman, I think we’re making some progress. A week has passed and we still haven’t been pressed on the details of the plan. K, would you please bring us up to date?” requests S.
“We’ll I know it’s hard to believe sir, but I’m actually at a loss for words. We’ll not exactly. It’s more that I’m at a loss for ideas. I have my underlings on the file, but they still haven’t figured out how to fit the square pegs in the round holes.”
Continues...
“Well, S, like I’ve always said, class size is irrelevant. My plan envisions putting 36 or 38 kids in a class. The teacher can handle it because there will be three or four additional mini-teachers able to assist. What’s a mini-teacher you ask? We’ll you didn’t think we’d just dump those little elite kids in there with nothing to stimulate them. They’re all so gifted that they’ll take to teaching like a fish, well you know the rest. Soon, we may not even need teachers, well not so many of them anyway. Think of the money we’ll save. Also I’ve been thinking about assessments. You know, if we lower the standards of our tests, well get higher scores. It is genius, a truly capital idea. But even better, when it comes to measures against other jurisdictions, we’ll just cunningly slip our kids a different and easier one. No one will ever know.”
Continues
“I don’t really know. I mean I don’t actually know much about teaching or education. Maybe, I should visit a class or something like that, but that’s all so tacky. You know those places are sort of dirty and noisy and they’re filled with kids. Eighty % of them keep falling through the cracks in those horrible old buildings. Some of them are so wide and deep that I could disappear in one. No, it’s better that I stay here in the bunker.”
“Well, okay K. I understand your discomfort. Why don’t you make a Tim’s run instead? Double, doubles for all, and pick up a dozen Boston Creams for yourself.”
Lamrock keeps repeating that 20% make use of the EFI system. I suppose this only counting those who were lucky enough to find courses in French that suited their program all the way through High School and could convince their school administrators to examine them for French competency. Stats Canada finds over 30% are in EFI in New Brunswick.
Finally, we should note that, even according to the C&L statistics, eliminating EFI will only decrease the number of kids on modified programs per programs by just over 1 per classroom. Supporters of this project should realize, then, that there will be no real change in the classrooms of the province, as implied.