Never before in Alberta has getting voters to the polls been more critical, as Monday’s provincial election is tighter than any electoral poll can possibly determine.
It’s expected, for example, that a number of close ridings could be won or lost by margins of around 100 ballots, not a few thousand.
This is why the United Conservative Party’s (UCP) Danielle Smith and NDP leader Rachel Notley are spending the final hours before the polls open Monday getting their ground game as impeccable as possible so that no voter in one of the battleground ridings falls between the cracks.
It’s that close.
Up for grabs are seats in Calgary, in constituencies surrounding Edmonton, and in ridings like Lethbridge-East and Banff-Kananaskis.
Mandi Johnson, senior campaign strategist at Crestview Strategies and a former UCP staffer, stressed again that some hotly contested seats could come down to just 100 or more ballots.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if both parties are throwing a ton of resources at the get-out-the-vote efforts in five to 10 ridings,” she told Postmedia,
Still, she argued the NDP has a difficult path to victory, since the party will need to pick up most seats in Calgary, whereas Smith likely only needs to retain four to eight seats in the city.
“It’s a lot easier climb for Smith than for Notley,” said Johnson.
Leah Ward, vice-president at Wellington Advocacy and former director of communications for Notley, said the NDP counted at least 8,000 volunteers at the midway point of the campaign.
Ward said over the last four years, the New Democrat leader has made it more socially acceptable for people to declare their support for the NDP, a major shift that’s attracted volunteers who want to knock on doors.
Notley is also relying on former Conservative voters to lend her their vote, making direct appeals ahead of election day.
“It is possible that low voter turnout indicates that Rachel’s invitation was not accepted, but those former Conservative voters are still too uncomfortable with Smith to turn out.
It could also be the case — as traditional thinking suggests — that high voter turnout indicates an election change,” Ward told Postmedia in its campaign wrap-up.
As of Saturday, at 3 p.m., hours before advance polls were set to close, Elections Alberta had counted 697,908 votes, which surpassed the 696,000 total of early ballots in 2019.
It’s unclear whether that will translate into a total turnout as high as that of 2019, when 67.5% of those eligible — or 1.9 million Albertans — voted.
In the final stretch, Smith and Notley have been crisscrossing the province in a last-ditch effort to secure votes, especially in the battleground of Calgary.
The tight two-party race means on top of the final push of big, public rallies, both campaigns are focusing their resources on door knocking, targeted social media ads, messaging and calling supporters to remind them to vote, and even offering transportation to the polls if necessary.
In an interview Sunday with The West Block‘s host Mercedes Stephenson, Notley talked about her campaign platform, including how she would work with the federal government if elected.
The West Block asked for an interview with Smith, apparently repeatedly, but her campaign declined.
“The Albertans that I talk to, do not want to leave Canada. They want to lead Canada,” Notley said.
“And the way to do that is to go and negotiate with strengths and ability and thoughtfulness for the best outcomes for the province,” she said. “ And that’s work that hasn’t been happening for the last three and a half years and Albertans (with the UCP) have been losing opportunities, losing investment dollars as a result.”
The polls open at 9 a.m MT. It could be a nail-biter.
Toronto’s York University claimed in its recently released “Decolonizing, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy” document that Christianity fuels colonialism – and referred to the religion practiced by millions of Canadians as an “ideology.”
York’s anti-Christian statement comes amid hate crimes against Catholics being on the rise in Canada, and Christianity continuing to be the world’s most persecuted religion.
In its recently released "Decolonizing, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy", York University claims that colonialism is *fuelled* by Christianity. The taxpayer funded university also calls Christianity an "ideology" as opposed to a religion. #CampusWatchpic.twitter.com/URDbkVH9L6
The university report claims colonialism “is driven by an excessive need for power and control of land, people and resources to achieve economic gain” and that colonialism “dominates all aspects of life.”
“Colonialization is violent, and in many countries, including Canada, it is ongoing. Colonialism is built on racial hierarchies that justify the displacement, enslavement and forced assimilation of colonized peoples,” reads page 9 of the document.
The report then lumps Christianity, describing the religion as an ideology, with “white supremacy, capitalism and imperialism.”
“Fuelled by specific ideologies, including white supremacy, Christianity, capitalism and imperialism, colonialism depends on the judging of people Indigenous to the lands being colonized as inferior and requires the colonizers to assert superiority as justification for their actions,” the report reads.
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity Director Ryan Eras told True North that York’s claim is more ironic than surprising, noting that “the very idea of the university – which York seems to have no difficulty self-identifying as – is inherently Christian.”
Eras added that Christian missionaries have fought to end unjust practices around the world, citing the example of William Carey, who laboured for equal treatment of men and women in India, with his work for the abolition of the traditional cultural practices of widow-burning (sati) and sex-selective infanticide.
He also noted that “diversity is only valuable insofar as it participates in and contributes to unity.”
York Deputy spokesperson Yanni Dagonas defended the university’s claim that colonialism is fueled by Christianity in an email to True North.
“Decolonization is foundational to this work and requires a deeper understanding of colonialism, including an acknowledgement of the systems of ideological power that created it, including religiously Christian organizations that have historically oppressed Indigenous peoples,” said Dagonas.
“This should not be seen as commentary on individuals of Christian faith, but rather as a recognition of the responsibility to examine traditional power structures and to address unfair treatment of any community member within these structures.”
Dagonas added that “York is proud to welcome students from many religious backgrounds, including Christian students. We remain committed to providing a safe environment for our community to live and learn” and that the university “condemns all forms of discrimination, racism and hate, which are contrary to our foundational values as an institution.”
The 2021 Canadian census found that a large number of Indigenous Canadians identify as Christian, with many being Catholic and Anglican. In Quebec, more than half of Indigenous peoples identify as Catholic.
The Gospel Coalition also notes that many survivors of residential schools continue to practice Christianity.
York’s “Decolonizing, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy” document also touches on the implementation of several woke initiatives and policies in the pursuit of EDI ideology, including “creating spaces for equity-deserving groups”, as well as dedicated spaces for what it calls “chest-feeding.”
The university also wants social justice training to cover “microaggressions” like “misgendering,” as well as how to “disrupt whiteness.” The document also discusses engaging in more equity hiring.
When it comes to healthcare debt, Canadians were well ahead of their commonwealth cousins, who also have a universal healthcare system.
The poll published by Compare the Market, which surveyed the average healthcare debt held by residents of Canada, Australia and the United States, found that the average Canadian held $8,214 in debt due to healthcare costs, largely as a result of dental care and prescription medication.
In comparison, Australians had an average healthcare debt of $2,839.
The United States came in with the highest level of debt, averaging $12,765 per person in Canadian currency.
A total of over 3,000 adults from Canada, Australia and the United States were surveyed by the poll to achieve its results.
Canadians were also more likely to say that they would go into debt to pay for medical services for themselves or loved ones. A total of 17.5% of Canadians said they have gone into debt for healthcare, while 15.5% of Australians said the same. In the United States, 27.3% have taken on debt for healthcare.
“Canadian responses by age-group followed a similar trend to Australia, with the younger age groups being more likely to incur debt for healthcare bills. However, while the likelihood of going into debt for medical bills lessened steadily for older Australians, Canadians in the 45-54 age bracket plateaued out between 12% and 15%,” researchers wrote.
As concerns about the state of healthcare in Canada mount, British Columbia has resorted to sending cancer patients for specific treatments in the US due to a shortage of providers in Canada.
Beginning on May 29, some patients will have the option to receive radiation therapy in Bellingham, Washington, just south of the province’s border with the US.
A recent report by the Montreal Economic Institute found that many of Canada’s healthcare problems, such as long surgery waitlists, could be fixed by embracing “duplicate” private healthcare options.
Over the last few years, the NDP and their allies have fought tooth-and-nail against the UCP’s K-6 curriculum rewrite, with deputy leader Sarah Hoffman claiming it “outdated” and would set “Alberta education…back 50 years.” If elected, the NDP has promised to scrap the new curriculum and start the process of drafting another one all over again. This comes after more than a decade of curriculum drafting under successive governments of different political stripes.
I’m a Grade Two teacher in Calgary, so this issue has a special resonance for me. I teach the new curriculum every day. Based on my classroom experience, I can tell you that it reflects time-tested best practices in teaching as well as the latest research in math and literacy education. That might surprise you.
After all, there’s been a steady drumbeat of criticism and negative coverage ever since the new curriculum was launched. Once you have heard so many inaccurate or misleading claims about this curriculum, it can be hard to assess it fairly or to understand why anyone – much less a teacher – might like it.
That’s why I’ve offered this two-part series as a second opinion to what you may have heard elsewhere.
Earlier this week, I set out some reasons why the new K-6 math curriculum is a good one and explained why I think it would it would be risky to allow the NDP to replace it. In this piece, I’ll discuss how the curriculum that the UCP delivered is best for supporting K-6 students in developing their reading skills and lay out some concerns about what an NDP replacement might look like in this all-important domain.
Let’s start with very early reading, the kind of thing mostly covered in the primary grades.
The last decade has seen the growth of a movement known as the Science of Reading, which emphasizes the importance of phonics. Phonics is just teaching young children how to sound out the words they are reading. It’s hard to believe, but when I was in teacher’s college a decade ago, this was not the approach we were taught.
Instead, the fad at the time was “balanced literacy” – immersing kids in text, helping them read through pictures, and hoping they just kind of picked up the rules of the English language by osmosis. The vision underlying the balanced literacy approach is one of the classrooms where kids are free to explore with minimal teacher guidance. However, this leaves many kids floundering, especially those whose parents don’t have the time or resources to make up for the gaps that schools are creating. There are some kids who seem to learn how to decode words as if by magic, but most kids need explicit instruction and practice in phonics, and all kids benefit from it.
Luckily, Alberta’s new elementary reading curriculum is one of the world’s best at implementing the Science of Reading. Based on the work of scholars like Dr. George Georgiou, the director of the Reading Research Laboratory at the University of Alberta, it includes a clear guide for teachers about which skills and concepts should be taught and in what order. It suggests great resources for teaching phonics skills and then letting kids practice them.
Jurisdictions that have implemented similar curricula have seen student performance improve measurably. For example, England implemented a phonics-rich early reading curriculum in 2012 and has since improved its score to be fourth in the world on the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, surpassing peer jurisdictions that have not focussed deliberately on phonics. The next generation of Alberta schoolkids will benefit from this new curriculum’s focus on what’s proven to work in teaching early reading, but only if it remains in place.
(As an aside: If you’re interested in learning more about the Science of Reading and why phonics teaching needs to be explicit and systematic in the early grades, I recommend checking out the “Sold a Story” podcast from American Public Media, or the Right to Read Inquiry Report from the Ontario Human Rights Commission).
A secondary aspect of the Science of Reading is a renewed focus on the importance of background knowledge to reading comprehension. Once you know how to sound out and read the words on the page, the second most important thing for understanding what you’re reading is already knowing something about the topic. Here’s an example: imagine you’re reading a passage about Canada’s historic fur trade. Wouldn’t you be better placed to understand it if you had in your mind some sense of Canada’s geography, the appearance and behaviour of different fur-bearing animals, and the ways of life of various Indigenous peoples and European explorers? Of course you would, which is why reading comprehension relies on students developing a rich and broad knowledge base.
The new Alberta science and social studies curricula help to create such a knowledge base. They include many topics that teachers are expected to cover with their students. They encourage teachers to actually teach those topics, rather than just letting kids loose to “discover, inquire, and explore” on an iPad or Chromebook – another all too common and completely ineffective teaching fad these days, and one which the new curriculum implicitly discourages. For example, students in Grade Two will be taught about Ancient Greece, Rome, and China, among other topics. I’ve taught these topics to my own students and I can tell you: (1) the kids love them, (2) you can integrate this learning with every other subject area, including writing, math, and the arts, and (3) the knowledge and vocabulary they develop gives students a useful frame of reference for tackling other texts.
The new K-6 curriculum is modern, in that it reflects insights from the cognitive science of learning, and time-tested, in that so many of those insights reflect what good teachers have always known. Kids, especially young ones, should actually be taught things, not just be left free to explore on their own. While there can be tweaks here and there, and there will always be some bumps in the implementation phase, Albertans can be proud of the curriculum the UCP has delivered for them.
But as I’ve noted, the NDP has promised to trash it.
They falsely claimed that it doesn’t include appropriate Indigenous or Francophone content. But if you just click through and read it, you’ll see such content included, and often emphasised, from Grade One onward. For example, in Grade One, students are to be taught about Indigenous creation stories and their pre-contact ways of life, while in Grade Three, they are introduced to the story of Madeline de Verchères, a heroine of New France. Such content is woven throughout the curriculum as it continues from grade to grade.
This kind of criticism is typical of the NDP approach to curriculum development. It’s lazy, overheated, and ill-informed.
They smear advocates of knowledge-rich curricula as “eurocentric” and “racist” and promise to “decolonize” curricula, while ignoring the evidence that Alberta’s diverse, knowledge-rich curricula are best-placed to support students’ reading, particularly for students who are most marginalized.
A just-released study from Colorado supports this view. Researchers found that children randomly assigned to schools that adopted the “Core Knowledge Sequence” – a similar approach to Alberta’s – dramatically outperformed their peers in schools without such a focus on developing students’ background knowledge. The positive effect was even more pronounced for children of colour and of a lower socio-economic status. If all children in the United States experienced the same boost that these Colorado kids experienced from a knowledge-rich curriculum, then the U.S. would rank in the world’s top five school systems for reading. It’s a massive effect size, and it bodes well for Alberta if we continue implementing the UCP’s new, knowledge-rich curriculum.
But if that new curriculum was replaced, just what would the NDP replace it with? Details are sparse.
When it comes to specifics, the NDP has promised to translate the curriculum into Somali and Filipino and create alternative programs, seemingly more to appeal to certain voters than out of any genuine sense that this would support many children’s learning. Beyond that, they’ve promised more consultations, more spending, more delays, and more space for discredited “discovery learning” approaches.
One wonders if they would look to NDP-governed British Columbia, where an “inquiry-based” curriculum leaves massive gaps in student learning. Or perhaps they would do as their progressive peers in other jurisdictions have, deemphasizing rigour and merit in order to boost perceived equity and encourage children into social and political activism.
Their calls to “decolonize” curriculum are similarly unhelpful and nonspecific. Both English and French are colonial languages in this part of the world, are they to go? Or will we just teach those languages less so that we have more time for the kids to inquire (read: fool around) on the class iPads?
It’s enough to leave you worried.
I personally know passionately progressive educators who are immersed in world of the Science of Reading and are aghast at the NDP’s approach. They know that the NDP’s criticisms of the new Alberta curriculum are largely invalid and have told that to the politicians they usually support, all to no avail. Those educators are torn as they approach the ballot box this election.
The NDP has turned its back on high-quality teaching and is playing politics with the curriculum. Albertans should take that into account as they consider which candidates will show the responsibility and common sense to insist on maintaining, implementing, and improving the solid K-6 curriculum that Alberta is already lucky to have.
While Olivia Chow continues to enjoy a significant lead in recent polls for the Toronto mayorship, it appears the former NDP MP may have a new challenger.
A recent poll from Mainstreet Research has found that Chow still leads the pack with 35% of voters planning to vote for her, up from 30% in last week’s Mainstreet poll.
It appears the race for Chow’s top challenger has been heating up, as Anthony Furey, who is currently on leave as True North’s VP of content and editorial, has been gaining in the polls with 9% support, up from 7% in last week’s polls.
Meanwhile, Mark Saunders is currently polling at 12%, up by 2 points compared to last week and Ana Bailao is polling at 16%, down five points from last week’s poll.
Progressive candidate from Toronto – St. Paul’s Josh Matlow has seen his support slip four points from last week’s Mainstreet poll, as he now sits at 10% support.
Beaches – East York councillor Brad Bradford is polling at 6%.
Furey has been excluded from a few of the campaign’s main debate stages, as recently the Toronto Board of Trade and Ontario’s public broadcaster TVO hosted a Toronto mayoral debate without extending an invite to the former journalist.
Despite Bradford polling lower than Furey, the councillor has been included in all major debates while Furey was excluded from these same debates.
Toronto voters will elect a new mayor on June 26, with advance polls opening June 8-13.
Mainstreet Research conducted their survey of 838 Toronto voters by phone over the May 24-25 period. The poll has a margin of error of ±3.4%, 19 times out of 20.
York University professor Vidya Shah is being accused of racism after going on a tirade on Thursday, claiming protocol, professionalism and conflict management are used by “whiteness” to “institutionalize lies, denials and cover-ups.”
The “anti-racist” education scholar made the claim on Twitter, while tweeting about disrupting “whiteness in leadership.”
I often get asked how to disrupt whiteness in leadership. My simple answer is to tell the truth and speak your truth. Whiteness institutionalizes lies, denials, & cover-ups and calls it "protocol", "professionalism", & "conflict management". No, it's dishonesty.
“I often get asked how to disrupt whiteness in leadership. My simple answer is to tell the truth and speak your truth,” said Shah. “Whiteness institutionalizes lies, denials, & cover-ups and calls it ‘protocol’, ‘professionalism’, & ‘conflict management’. No, it’s dishonesty.”
Shah went on to say that “honesty has different consequences depending on positionalities and positions. Honesty that challenges institutional innocence, benevolence & success is punished. Covering up truths to maintain the ‘image’ of innocence, benevolence & success is protected. That’s whiteness.”
Shah was criticized for her tirade, including by Quilette senior editor Jonathan Kay who told True North that “Racism Is a Problem everywhere. But Canada is among the most ‘anti-racist’ places on earth. And a lot of us are tired of being gaslit by well-paid academics who make their livings pretending that we live in some ‘whiteness’-contaminated genocide state.”
“When I go to baseball games or disc golf or board game tournaments, or my volunteer gig at a food bank, you never hear a single human being spew this toxic ‘whiteness’ crap,” he added. “Real life is full of people of different skin colors, having fun and helping each other.”
Kay believes “the biggest source of publicly accepted racism in our country is now performative academic anti-racism. And it’s obscene that our tax dollars pay for it.”
Many on Twitter accused Shah of racism and race baiting. The professor opted to turn off replies amid being Ratioed.
True North reached out to Shah to ask her what are the institutionalized lies, denials and cover-ups that she claims “whiteness” passes off as protocol, professionalism, and conflict management, but she did not respond in time for publication.
The Assistant Professor at York’s Faculty of Education is described on the university’s website as “an educator, scholar and activist committed to equity and racial justice in the service of liberatory education.”
Her biography also notes that her research “explores anti-racist and decolonial approaches to leadership in schools, communities, and school districts,” as well as “educational barriers to the success and well-being of Black, Indigenous, and racialized students.”
She teaches several courses at York, including one titled “Educating for Activism” and another titled “Teaching for Diverse & Equitable Classrooms in Ontario.”
Shah also headsThe UnLeading Project, described as “a call to reclaim and redefine leadership,” a podcast that touches on social justice. She has published several publications touching on “whiteness” and racial justice in education.
In 2021, Shah wrote an article titledThe Colour of Wellbeing: How do we ensure the wellbeing and success of BIPOC students and K-12 staff? In which she called for race, gender, sexuality, abilities, social class, and faith to be placed “at the center of approaches to student and staff wellbeing.”
She also co-authored an article with fellow York University education scholar Carl E. James titledWhy critical race theory should inform schools.
As the final week of the 2023 Alberta provincial election campaign comes to a close, Rachel Emmanuel is joined by Canadian Taxpayers Federation Alberta Director Kris Sims, Crestview Strategies Senior Campaign Strategist Evan Menzies, and UCP Senior Campaign Advisor Erika Barootes to discuss the top campaign moments of the week.
UCP leader Danielle Smith announced that her reelected government would force future governments to hold a referendum if they want to increase personal taxes or taxes on job creators. She also hosted a massive rally outside Calgary on Thursday night.
We’ll also discuss the advanced polls and polling numbers. And finally, the panel will give their election predictions.
Election Watch, a special edition of the Alberta Roundup, will run for the four-week election campaign. Tune in now!
The other day, I made my way to a local ice arena, took the elevator to the second-floor lobby, and waited in a set-up area until my number was called to get my Covid-19 booster shot.
I think it was Shot No. 5.
I never got into the Covid-19 hypodermic argument, nor will I. And I never saw the reason for it coming to a head in the form of a Freedom Convoy last February which turned downtown Ottawa into a no-go zone of truck-horn din and shouting activists.
While I give them props, it just wasn’t up my alley. I marched on the U.S. consulate in Toronto many times to protest the Vietnam War and filled my activist boots way back in my college days.
Meeting young women was a fringe benefit. Remember, this was the long-haired late 1960s. It was all about drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll.
Now the reason I got a Covid-19 booster shot—the fifth, as I pointed out—was because I have a stack of comorbidities, a word that becomes second nature to anyone with close to my stack of ailments: Heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer (prostate), possible lung cancer new), and all the smaller maladies that come with being 73 with a history of too many contact sports and poor(er) medicine.
I am one of the few I know who has never had the disease.
Luck? Smart protection routines? The lockdown? Or the injections? I couldn’t care an iota.
I just know I never became infected.
Now, Ottawa’s pandemic trends are mostly low and stable, said Ottawa public health (OPH). It wasn’t always like this. At the height of the pandemic, the two emergency wards at Ottawa General’s two campuses were chock-a-block with serious COVID-19 issues, and multiple deaths a week were a common statistic.
Those were scary days.
Today, we are apparently in the ebb.
OPH has not indicated any concerning trend since early this year, which is similar to the wider region outside of Ottawa.
Experts still recommend people wear masks indoors, and staying up to date with vaccines can also help protect vulnerable people.
Data from the research team shows, as of the most recent update May 22, the average coronavirus wastewater level in Ottawa has been low and stable for about two weeks.
This average generally stayed within the same range for a year, so this month has broken that trend.
It’s currently at its lowest reading since February 2022.
The number of Ottawa residents in local hospitals for Covid-19 has been slowly dropping. The number was eight in Friday’s update, with no patients in ICU.
The city’s weekly average test positivity rate, which sits around 13%, has been rising for a week based on about 80 tests a day. It’s currently seen by OPH as moderate.
Ottawa has a stable six active Covid outbreaks, which OPH considers low.
The health unit reported 36 more Covid cases since Tuesday and three more Covid deaths, bringing its 2023 total to 76 people.
So, it’s not as if the pandemic has disappeared, or is over.
Still, only a very small percentage of Ottawans wear masks while in indoor retail outlets. In fact, it’s next to none.
As of the most recent weekly update, 85% of Ottawa residents had at least one Covid vaccine dose, 82% had at least two, 56% at least three and 31% at least four.
A lone Pickering, Ontario city councillor is under fire for taking a stand against gender ideology by wanting to restrict drag queen entertainment to those over the age of 19.
Councillor Lisa Robinson has sparked the ire of the LGBTQ community and her fellow city council after she voted against a motion in support of pride events throughout Pickering and the Durham Region.
“I support (LGBTQ) citizens, but what I don’t support at this time is not being inclusive of all people,” said Robinson at Monday’s meeting.
“Elected officials are supposed to be neutral. We should not be putting one group ahead of the other because that shows a hierarchy and it is not fair to the other residents.”
Robinson wants to limit flags at government buildings only to official municipal, provincial or national flags.
“When we put somebody’s flag up there in the sky, it creates a hierarchy,” said Robinson.
“No other flag should be flown at a government office other than government flags. That means the provincial, that means the municipality and that means the federal. That’s what should be flown here at all government offices, to show neutrality.”
A video posted to social media shows Robinson telling a crowd of angry parents outside of a Durham Region District School Board meeting that she hopes to introduce a motion to City Council which would place an age limit to drag queen events.
“To me, a drag show or a pride event is an adult live performance,” Robinson told Durham Radio News.
“These drag performers, they get paid to perform and the only ones that can go and see them in any other place would be at a bar or some kind of an event like that, and you have to be over the age of 19.”
“If they want to drop it down to the age of 15, I’m sure a lot of parents would find that that would also be an acceptable age,” she continued.
According to Robinson, she has heard concerns from constituents surrounding the controversial events which have prompted her to take action.
Drag queen events for children have become a common occurrence in Ontario.
Nearly half a dozen libraries have partnered with the Durham Children’s Aid Society to put on drag queen performances for kids, including Oshawa Public Libraries, Whitby Public Library, Pickering Public library, Brock Libraries and elsewhere.
Mailers, speeches, and commercials from the Alberta NDP tout their commitment to writing another, more-modern curriculum for the education system. This comes after more than a decade of curriculum-writing, first under the PCs, then under the NDP, and finally under the United Conservatives, who delivered and are implementing a new, high-quality K-6 curriculum that reflects best teaching practices and insights from the cognitive science of learning.
That’s the curriculum the NDP has fiercely opposed, with deputy leader Sarah Hoffman calling it “outdated” and likely to “set Alberta education…back 50 years.” After decades of delay, debate, and rewriting, we finally have a new, high-quality curriculum, but the NDP has promised to scrap it and replace it with their so-called modern curriculum.
I’m a Grade Two teacher in Calgary, so I’ve followed this debate closely.
I doubt that an NDP replacement curriculum would serve Alberta students nearly as well as what we have now. In fact, there’s reason to be concerned that an NDP curriculum would mark a return to the bad old days of disproven teaching fads like discovery math, “they’ll just figure it out” in early reading, and weak, surface-level teaching in history, geography, and science.
Alberta voters deserve to know what kids stand to lose if the NDP is elected and allowed to do the curriculum rewrite they’ve promised, so in this piece and one coming out tomorrow, I’ll lay out the stakes of this election for curriculum.
Let’s start with math.
In the last decade, parents and advocates have spoken up with their concerns that too many teachers were straying too far away from the basics, which meant that kids were not being given the necessary foundations for understanding. Notably, too many elementary teachers were avoiding having students memorize their basic math facts (e.g., the times tables), which are critical to success in all other math domains.
Likewise, there was too much emphasis on “discovery math,” which is basically encouraging students to struggle towards understanding while teaching them skills incidentally, and not enough direct instruction, which is when the teacher shows how to do something, the class practices together, and then individual students apply and are assessed on the skill or concept.
De-emphasizing arithmetic facts and direct instruction were both popular teaching fads in the early 2000s – after all, they seem to give kids more freedom, make school more fun, and reduce the role of the teacher as the authoritative imparter of knowledge and skills – but they have failed wherever they have been tried.
These teaching fads always lead to worse performance on assessments and decreased math confidence among young children, which then sets them up for even worse math performance later on.
What works?
Well, in my Grade Two classroom, I introduce students to skills and concepts in a logical sequence, provide them with direct instruction and intentional practice in those skills, help them memorize their math facts, and guide them through more complex application problems with increasing independence as they gain the skills they need to complete them. This approach is in line with the new K-3 curriculum introduced by the UCP, which encourages math fact memorization, explicit, direct instruction in certain key algorithms, and guided practice that aims for mastery.
Unfortunately, that approach has been attacked – mostly on the basis that “it’s too hard” and “it’s too teacher-led” – by the NDP and some of their allies in the teacher’s unions.
The NDP has promised to scrap the curriculum and return to the drawing board.
That would mean years more uncertainty in math teaching and likely a continued decline in math understanding. After more than a decade spent revising and rewriting curricula, we finally have a high-quality math curriculum that reflects best practices and avoids teaching fads. It would be risky to rewrite it, as there’s no indication that the NDP would be guided by proven methods or the science of learning.
In fact, their commitment to progressive approaches to education suggests they might make math less rigorous and more political, copying their peers in other jurisdictions.
Students would be better served by staying on track with what we have now, especially as the province works with math resource experts like JUMP Math to create effective curriculum-aligned textbooks, workbooks, and lesson plans. This new curriculum and the aligned resources have already helped to deliver a massive boost in scores in Fort Vermilion, one of the first school divisions to fully implement it.
If the NDP’s approach is risky in math, it’s downright irresponsible in reading, English language arts, and the content areas like social studies and science. I’ll cover that in the next instalment of this series, coming out in True North this weekend.
As they prepare to vote, Albertans should know that a well-written K-6 math curriculum hangs in the balance. We can either choose to move forward with what works, or risk returning to discredited, ineffective teaching practices that leave students behind.
