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The Ontario ContextThe following sections examine the development of the school council initiative in Ontario, from their original conception within The Royal Commission on Learning, their launch in 1995, through their early training and development, and through multiple provincial consultation processes and reports. The Royal Commission on Learning In late 1994, the RCL delivered their final report, For the Love of Learning. The first of four main engines of reform recommended by the RCL was a new alliance between home, school, and the community. The RCL suggested that the trend towards assigning the responsibility for addressing all new knowledge and emerging societal issues on the school system be stopped and even reversed. Schools, argued the RCL, cannot be isolated, self-contained institutions, and teachers cannot be expected to be experts in every field, act as psychologists and social workers, and co-ordinate all of the new activities expected of the school. School community councils with significant parent representation were recommended to help organize and mobilize community resources to “allow teachers to concentrate on better academic teaching [not to place more demands on teachers]. Inevitably and reasonably, the council would want to advise the principal on general matters relating to improving the school, and the wise principal would seek and heed its advice” (RCL, 1995, p. 50). The councils recommended by the RCL were not councils of governance but instruments for community capacity building. Policy Program Memorandum 122 The year 1995 was a pivotal one in Ontario, as it was the year that Policy Program Memorandum (PPM) 122 (Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, 1995) was in preparation for release. The year also saw the printed release of the RCL report For the Love of Learning, and Epstein’s (1995) organizing framework. Unfortunately, PPM 122 did not appear to capture the best of either report, and instead launched the more structural elements of the school council reform initiative. It was a progressive move in establishing a broader dialogue between educators and noneducators, however, it did not leverage the most up-to-date developments in the thinking around how to stimulate effective types of parental involvement. In fact, one might argue that it officially recognized one form of parental involvement (participating in decision making) while inferentially discounting other forms of involvement that both parents and educators knew intuitively to be important. During the 1995 implementation of school councils, the exclusion of forms of involvement such as volunteering and fundraising caused some confusion over the purpose and role of school councils (Denne Public School Transition Team discussion, personal communication, February 1996). In 1996, Fullan and Quinn demonstrated considerable foresight as they described two eventual outcomes for the school council system: a structurally compliant outcome or something that would lead to capacity building at the local level. Simply achieving structural compliance by “having” a school council would accomplish nothing, Fullan and Quinn claimed. One might argue that PPM 122 and the subsequent Regulations 612 and 613 (2000) were primarily concerned with the formation and structural compliance of school councils. Fullan and Quinn expressed their disappointment in the manner in which the work of the RCL was applied in practice: Look what has happened so far with the Ontario Royal Commission’s (Love of Learning) recommendations on school councils (released in January 1995). The Commission’s analysis and report took some pains to stress that their recommendations involved councils as one of the key “engines” of reform, which would be part and parcel of mobilizing schools and community resources to help address the daunting task of teaching all students in today’s different environment. Instead, policy initiatives appear stalled at the superficial, structural requirement of installing councils in each school. (Fullan & Quinn, 1996, p. 2) Fullan and Quinn described school councils moving beyond structural compliance to building capacity. They suggested that a school council focused on stimulating the six different types of involvement identified by Epstein could achieve something of consequence. Fullan and Quinn (1996) write: What does make a difference is the multiple forms of particular involvement, deliberately fostered, developed, and supported. … At least six types of involvement working in concert are needed to make a difference: 1. parenting skills (improve home environments) 2. communicating (two-way, school to home, home to school) 3. volunteering or parent aides (recruit and organize parent help) 4. learning at home (specific home-tutoring assistance) 5. decision making (involve parents and develop parent leaders) 6. collaborating with community agencies (identify and interpret community services) Note that involvement in decision-making is only one of the six forms (and a skilled one at that). Moreover, these forms of involvement do not happen by accident or even by invitation. They happen by explicit strategic intervention. In other words, both parents and educators need education and training in their new roles and new role relationships in order to become effective. (Fullan & Quinn, 1996, p. 3) The Education Improvement Commission In 1998, the EIC in Ontario conducted an extensive review of the developing research on parental involvement and conducted a province-wide consultation with parents, educators, and other interested parties, specifically related to how school councils were having an impact. The report entitled The Road Ahead III: A Report on the Role of School Councils summarized the status of school councils, how people were responding to their new roles and responsibilities, and how they might move forward to become more effective. Research indicates that school councils are more effective if they are given a mandate that is clear and meaningful. Many school councils in the province have been hampered by a lack of clarity about their purpose. ... The background statement of PPM 122 indicates that school councils were established to increase the level of parental and community involvement in the education of Ontario’s young people. … we believe that the purpose of school councils is to improve student learning and that parental and community involvement is one of the means to achieving this purpose. (EIC, 1998, p. 7) The EIC report highlighted three specific areas in which school councils might move forward to focus on improved student learning. 1. Fostering parental and community involvement in education. 2. Participating in the school improvement planning process. 3. Influencing decisions made by Principals, school boards and the Ministry of Education and Training. (EIC, 1998, pp. 11-13) Similar to the RCL report, the EIC report provided direction to educators, administrators, parent groups, and school councils about the need to focus on involving parents in education, but the report was not clear regarding “how” they might go about the task of organizing and stimulating effective forms of parental involvement. In 2000, however, the EIC released a resource to stimulate the development of site-based school improvement plans, School Improvement Planning, A Handbook for Principals, Teachers and School Councils (EIC, 2000). The handbook recognized and endorsed Epstein’s conceptual organizer for use at the site level to stimulate effective forms of parental involvement. When the EIC mandate ended just after this handbook was published, adoption and use of the new school improvement planning process was left up to individual boards and schools. This handbook was the first Ontario publication to provide direction to Ontario’s principals and school councils about how to stimulate effective forms of parental and community involvement. It provided clear direction to local site-based teams, including administrators, teachers, parents, and school councils on how to collaborate in stimulating parental involvement through locally developed action plans. The handbook continues in limited use following the closure of EIC, the group that initially championed the development of the guidebook. Regulations 612 and 613 Ontario Regulations 612 and 613 were issued in 2000 to further clarify some of the language, roles, and responsibilities surrounding school councils, principals, and district school boards. One of the advances made in this publication was the explicit statement of a purpose for school councils, “The purpose of school councils is, through the active participation of parents, to improve pupil achievement and to enhance the accountability of the education system to parents” (p.1). Further language in the regulations recognized that many school councils were involved in fundraising activities and provided clarifying language around the handling of money. Beyond these advances, much of the language in the regulations placed further emphasis on achieving structural compliance and advising principals on a number of governance type matters. The regulations did not provide direction to boards, principals, or school councils about how school councils might most effectively achieve their purpose of “improving pupil achievement” (p.1). The regulation failed to explicitly reference the EIC handbook on school improvement planning, which was available to provide guidance to school council participants on how they might focus on this purpose. Responsibility for the school council change initiative was rooted with the principals, as evidenced by Regulation 613. The regulations required school boards and principals to seek the views of school councils on a variety of matters and to report back to school councils on advice received. The Limited Definition of Parental Involvement While Ontario’s school councils were originally intended as a tool to foster parental and community involvement, direction to that effect was referenced only in the background of PPM 122 (1995) and again in the recommendations of The Road Ahead III by the EIC (1998). However, formal direction to that effect was not referenced in the provincial regulations to school councils or to other parent groups. As discussed earlier, many schools council and parent groups have not received the training and tools to develop the skills required to take on this kind of responsibility (Kerr, 2000). Language in PPM 122 and Regulation 612 directed school council participants to focus more on governance issues rather than fostering the types of parental involvement known to lead to improved student learning. Through a focus on structural compliance and an implicit endorsement of one type of involvement (i.e., participating in decision making) over the other more effective forms of involvement, participants may have been led to believe that being part of a school council or attending school council meetings is the most desirable form of parental involvement. There continue to be many school councils that believe that one of their main goals is to involve more parents in a school council or to seek attendance at a school council meeting as a goal in and of itself (Thurston, 2001). Rather than understanding that there are only a small percentage of parents who wish to take part in this type of involvement, lower levels of participation on a school council is sometimes viewed as a sign of apathy by both parents and educators. To some degree, this official recognition of one type of involvement misdirected the efforts of many well-meaning individuals and unintentionally created conditions for conflict between educators and noneducators. Rather than focus on stimulating parental involvement within the balance of the school community, conditions were created for school councils to believe that their primary purpose is to play a role in governing the school and to engage more parents from within the community in this activity. Recommendations of the Parent Voice in Education Project A province-wide consultation of parents was held in early 2005 on behalf of the Minister of Education for Ontario. The project was led by a group of parents with a long history of involvement in the education system in Ontario. A provincial policy on parental involvement was one of the group’s key recommendations, along with key supporting mechanisms at the provincial, board, and school levels. Tri-level support for an educational priority is a concept that Fullan (2004, 2005a, 2005b) recognizes as an essential ingredient for success. Supporting mechanisms include an Office of Parental Involvement within the Ministry of Education in Ontario to both advance parental involvement and support the continued development of school councils, assignment of direct responsibility for advancing parental involvement to Directors of Education or their senior delegates, and board level support for parents, principals, and teachers and school councils such as training and development and opportunities for local information sharing. At the school level, changing the priorities of school councils was one of the recommendations of the Ontario Parent Voice in Education Project. The project recommendation stated that school councils place an increased level of focus on stimulating parental involvement within their school community. The group recommended that school councils: A) Create an action plan at the beginning of the school year to address gaps or opportunities for parental participation; this plan should be reviewed half way through the school year. B) Publish an annual evaluation of parental involvement in their school and recommend strategies for increasing parental involvement (e.g. information, training, translations, etc.). C) Have a specific focus on engaging parents and fostering parental involvement generally within their school communities. (PVEP, 2005, p. 24) Similar to the RCL (1995) and EIC (1998) reports, the PVEP (2005) report was not clear about “how” organizers might go about the task of organizing and stimulating effective and helpful forms of parental involvement. The PVEP did reference the handbook developed by the EIC as a tool providing clear direction to local site-based teams on how to “collaborate in stimulating a range of effective types of parental involvement through locally developed action plans” (PVEP, p.13). As noted earlier, this recognizes and leverages the framework of Epstein. |
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