Right now, numerous school boards across Alberta, including Edmonton and Calgary Public, refuse to pilot the language arts curricula, part of a delay-and-destroy campaign against the entire draft K-6 curriculum, seen most starkly in NDP Leader Rachel Notley’s pledge to axe the entire curriculum.
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Are Alberta school trustees actually serious about helping out the huge number of students struggling to learn to read?
Are they aware that about one third of all students and half of Indigenous students read below grade level?
If they are, they can prove it simply by listening to acclaimed child literacy expert George Georgiou of the University of Alberta. They can do as Georgiou urges and move forward on the pilot project for the new K-6 language arts curriculum.
Right now, numerous school boards across Alberta, including Edmonton and Calgary Public, refuse to pilot the language arts curricula, part of a delay-and-destroy campaign against the entire draft K-6 curriculum, seen most starkly in NDP Leader Rachel Notley’s pledge to axe the entire curriculum.
“I am disappointed with this,” Georgiou says of the refusal, which could thwart progress on the new language arts curricula.
“That will hurt the kids in the long run, for sure … it basically deprives the kids from getting what they need to become good readers.”
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Two things can be true at once about this proposed K-6 curriculum. First, parents and educators have serious and legitimate concerns about its social studies curricula. Second, the curriculum puts forward excellent plans to help fix major, ongoing problems in key subjects like math and language arts.
Jason Kenney’s UCP government is too ambitious pushing a full curriculum rewrite on schools hammered hard by the stress of COVID. But school boards don’t have to pilot the social studies curriculum, or all of the subjects. The boards can go ahead with one subject area each, such as in Georgiou’s area of expertise in language arts.
Accolades from the ATA
Why listen to Georgiou? For one thing Notley’s NDP engaged him to work on its 2018 language arts draft curricula. School boards across Canada hire him to consult on teaching training in literacy. Only two years ago the Alberta Teachers’ Association honoured Georgiou with its top ATA Educational Research Award for 2019.
The ATA praised him for his dramatic success in a three-year study of 290 students at 11 Edmonton schools. In Grade 1, 30 per cent of the 290 students were reading below grade level. By Grade 3, after evidence-based instruction and intensive work with the lowest level readers, just 1.4 per cent of them were still below grade level, a “remarkable result,” as the ATA put it.
As excellent as Georgiou’s research was, and as much as it gave hope to parents desperate for their children to learn to read, the real good news is that he is a key architect of this new draft K-6 language arts program. He consulted with top subject area experts around the world, he says. All of the best science and evidenced-based ideas and processes for teaching reading — which are somewhat lacking in our current K-6 language arts curricula — are now embedded in the new draft.
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It is “much improved” over what the NDP proposed in its 2018 K-4 draft curricula, says Georgiou, in that it has a more structured approach to teaching phonetic awareness and other key elements of reading instruction.
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Indeed, the new language arts program is so promising that it’s given hope to parents of children with reading disorders.
“Alberta’s proposed update of the K-3 English language arts curriculum is very encouraging,” reports the advocacy group, Dyslexia Canada.
One Edmonton-area parent, Sarah Sarich, who has two dyslexic children, says the new science-based curricula is a dream come to true that will help all kids who struggle with reading.
As for those who would now throw out the language arts curricula along with the entire K-6 curriculum, Sarich says, “It’s heartbreaking … it would be such a disservice as far as literacy in this province.”
Another parent, Calgary’s Andree Hodge, who has three children who struggle to read, says she can’t understand the ATA’s stance against piloting this Georgiou-led reading program. “The Teachers’ Association applauded him and yet they’re now turning their back on him.”
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How to get out of this mess? If the Kenney government sets aside the social studies curricula that should go a long way in draining the fury from this issue.
At the same time, responsible educational leaders, such as Education Minister Adriana LaGrange, are well-advised to do what’s best for our kids and push ahead in areas like language arts and math, even if there’s ongoing misguided opposition from partisan actors and from an entrenched educational establishment, which resists change.
If the Kenney government fails to proceed, it too will be responsible in years to come when far too many of our students keep failing at math and reading.
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