A recent press release by the Ontario Government recognizing the province’s top educators reminded me a of a link I came across last year about the McGuinty government’s plan to increase high school success rates. While the provincial Liberals see this as a good trend, I am worried by the numbers they show for secondary education:

60.5 per cent of Ontario students earned 16 or more credits by the end of their second year of high school in 2005 and are on track to graduate in four years.

While I am, in no way, encouraging students to rush through their education, the fact that only 60% of Ontario students are on track to graduate worries me quite a bit. That’s why I was glad to see the Ministry of Education introduce their six ways to transform high school in this province last year.

Though I’m not an expert in the domain of public education, I thought I might offer some thoughts on each of these six ways, having gone through two separate secondary education systems in this country some years ago.

Student Success Teams
While the concept behind the Student Success Team is good, the implementation will need to be effective, and it doesn’t look like it will be when you see the structures in place. What this strategy does is put an added task on the already heavy task list of the guidance counselors and principals, and ‘Student Success’ teachers will most likely be classroom teachers as well, instead of being dedicated to the Student Success Team.

While the Student Success Team has a mandate to support struggling students and provide them with more options for learning, all other students not identified by the team must request support from the team in order to get more information about these options: not easy to do when there has been little done to increase awareness about the program in actual high schools.

Expanded Co-op Credit
Increasing the emphasis on co-operative education is one of the smartest moves the government can make, and allowing students to have more co-op credits count for graduation is a step in the right direction. Co-op — as it has been proven within the university setting — not only provides students with valuable work experience, but equips them with the contacts and confidence to engage in the job market. The next logical step for the McGuinty government, if they can mobilize enough employers, is to get co-op to be a compulsory part of the high school experience.

Specialist High Skills Major
Not every student wants to study philosophy or chemical engineering in university or college. For years, training for students interested in emerging industries such as hospitality and tourism and manufacturing have been largely ignored in the secondary school system. While this is still in pilot phases, I do hope that the specialist high skills major will help target students in these domains and assist them in discovering possible career outlets in non-traditional academic sectors.

Dual Credit Program
It is clear that a lot of the learning that happens in the classroom — either in high school classes or co-op — carries over into learning that students will pursue in their colleges, apprenticeships, or universities. Recognizing this fact was an important step for the Ontario government, and now allowing students to count this learning as credit equivalents for both secondary school and their further pursuits will encourage the building of behaviors that foster continuous learning past the high school arena.

Lighthouse Projects
To be honest, I don’t know much about alternative education strategies and credit recovery programs in the province, but the general principle behind the Lighthouse Projects — which are supposed to provide students having difficulty acquiring credits with the tools necessary to continue their education — seems to rooted in sound theory.

Grade 8-9 Transition
While the transition between middle school and secondary school has the potential to be difficult, I’m not sure problems in the early years of high school are necessarily tied to the problems of adjusting to a new educational system; instead, at that age, students have to deal with issues outside the classroom that would have a large impact on their performance in their courses. While it is valiant for the government to consecrate more teachers and resources to this transition period, what the Ministry of Education needs to do is liaise with other ministries and organizations in order to mitigate problems caused by social pressures.

Overall, I think this is a good start for the Ministry of Education: it gives students options to customize their education in order to learn the way they feel is best suited for their future goals. Of course, it needs to be implemented effectively to have any impact at all on the success rates of students across the province, but it’s a good start. As my friend Striatic says on Twitter: “I think this is really good stuff. Seems to give students more flexibility in terms of what they want to get out of school. It’s all in the execution though.”