Confusing differentiation with adverse discrimination - false logic

George Abbott has picked up on a mistaken theme from a few Victoria parents and a few Victoria Trustees and is now suggesting he might eliminate sections of the School Act related to class composition. The notion is that limiting the number of students with special needs for any particular class is "discriminatory". He, and the Victoria parents and Trustees, fail to understand that differentiating for the purpose of equal opportunity is not adverse discrimination. It is rather a form of targeting funding to ensure students with disabilities receive adequate service.

In response to a letter to Abbott from our Board, I wrote the following:


Dear Trustees:

We are writing to comment on your letter supporting the position of the Victoria Confederacy of Parent Advisory Councils that the School Act be revised to eliminate limits on the number of students with special needs in each class.

The logic of VCPAC is flawed. The entire system of designation and designated funding is “discriminatory” in the sense VCPAC references. Students are identified and funding is allotted in a manner based on the designation. Thus funding is allotted through a discriminatory manner.

However, this is done to ensure equity of opportunity, which is the fundamental principle. Every child should have an equal opportunity to reach their educational potential, regardless of whether this costs more for a particular child.

Creating limits on the number of students with special needs in any one class creates a positive discriminatory effect on funding by ensuring that every student with special needs receives adequate teacher time. If a teacher is responsible for preparing individual student learning plans for more students with special needs, each student gets less time. The purpose of the limit is to ensure a teacher is in fact able to provide the modified or adapted learning plan within the hours of the day available to them. The richness and quality of the plan and the instruction is better the fewer students the teacher is responsible for.

No student is ever guaranteed to be in a particular class with a particular teacher. Constitutional rights of integration apply to a neighbourhood school, not a particular classroom within that school. The fact that a student with special needs is not in the class of their choice is no different than if a student without special needs is not in a class of their choice. A student may not be in a particular class for a whole variety of reasons, many of which relate to particular student characteristics for both students with and without designated special needs. Classes are constructed for gender balance, based on behaviour characteristics of particular students, based on the educational needs of particular students, and so forth. This happens regardless of designation. All students, in this sense, receive “discriminatory” treatment. Classes are always constructed based on an assessment of the individual characteristics of the students.

The rationale for the limit on students with a designation is that the designation itself guarantees a certain level of instructional support beyond what is provided to students without a designation. This is time consuming. An individual teacher simply does not have time to meet the outcomes of an individual education plan if they are responsible for too many plans.

The limits and designations are not wrong because they organize classrooms based on the needs of students. In fact, this is their strength. They allow increased funding, and increased teacher time to go to those students who need it the most, as identified through the designation process. They also ensure that a teacher is not overwhelmed with workload and this impacts every student the teacher enrolls.

Finally, one function of the limits is to identify for government the funding levels required. Without limits, funding shortages simply result in overwhelmed teachers who are unable to provide the same level of service to students. This is the situation we find ourselves in today, with strict limits having been removed from our collective agreement.

We need stricter limits, not fewer limits. We need more funding, not more false “flexibility”. A return of strict limits would enable schools to establish classes in which the teachers could actually meet all the needs of their students.

We ask that you reconsider your decision and rescind your letter

Is Bill 33 discriminatory?

The Victoria Confederacy of Parent Advisory Councils (VCPAC) has taken the position that Bill 33 is discriminatory. In addition, they lobbied the Greater Victoria School District to refrain from publishing statistics on how many classes exceed the limits in Bill 33 of more than three students with special needs. Prior to this year, Victoria has reported every year that over 300 classes exceed these limits.

The VCPAC set of questions to Trustee candidates running for the Board included this question:

"VCPAC’s position on limiting the number of students of any particular classification from being included in a classroom is that it is discriminatory. If the classification was ethnicity, VCPAC believes that everyone would recognize the practice for what it truly is; prejudice. Do you believe that the practice of discriminating against a group of students for the purpose of lobbying the government for additional funding is justified? Based on your answer, how can the publishing of statistics about classrooms that have more than three students with individual education plans be acceptable?"

It saddens me terribly that VCPAC takes this position. Unwittingly, they are supporting fewer resources for schools and students, and fewer opportunities for those students who need them the most. Moreover, they are suggesting that parents and the public be denied the information about the class organization in their schools.

EQUITY VERSUS EQUALITY

At the heart of the error is a failure to distinguish between equity and equality. I believe that every student deserves an equal opportunity to be successful. The reality is that what each student needs to be successful is different. What a student with Autism needs is different from what a student who is gifted needs. Some students require supports that cost more money, some require less. Some students come to our schools living in poverty, and some come with many resources provided by their parents and families. Funding should not be equal - it should be targeted. It should be organized to ensure that every student gets adequate funding for their particular needs. This will be different for different students.

It is a mistake to think that an equal amount of resources should be directed towards each student. Students who have been designated with a physical or learning disability deserve extra. They deserve additional resources to ensure that by the end of their schooling, they have had an equal opportunity to be successful. If we acknowledge that students learn at different rates and in different ways, then we must acknowledge that it will take different amounts of resources to educate each child.

When teachers had "class composition" limits in their collective agreement, this was to ensure adequate resources for those students who were identified through testing as requiring additional resources. Teachers work on average 49 hours per week. If 10 of those hours are available for preparation, assessment and assistance to students who require extra support, individualized lessons, and more one-on-one teacher time, then it makes a big difference if the teacher has three of those students in a class versus nine. If there are three students requiring additional support, the teacher has 3 hours per week to devote to each student. If there are nine students requiring additional support, the teacher has 1 hour per week per student. Thus, placing a "limit" on the class composition has one sole purpose - to ensure a minimal standard for each student requiring additional support.

When those limits are exceeded, that support is not there. The teacher can't simply find more and more hours in a week. The result is that each student suffers. This is what is happening in the 300 classes that are over the limit every year in Victoria schools. Teacher time is a finite resource, and when a teacher has more students to teach, or more students with additional needs to teach, the allocation of time per student decreases.

If the limit of three students per class were actually observed, there would be more classes, with more teachers. Every child in the entire system would benefit.

Resources in school systems should not be assigned equally to every student. They should be organized to prioritize resources to those students who require additional assistance and extra planning and time. This is not "equal", but it is the most "equitable".

Is this discriminatory? Not in the sense that racism or sexism is discriminatory, as the VCPAC suggests. Its purpose is not to further disenfranchise those already behind in learning. In fact it is the opposite. Its purpose is to ensure that those who come to school requiring more resources to be successful automatically have those resources.

Is this "prejudice"? Absolutely not. It is differential treatment for the purpose of enhancing services to those who need additional learning resources. Without such differential treatment, students with special needs would not be successful and would not have equal and fair opportunity to an education. This differential treatment is for the very purpose of eliminating prejudicial treatment with respect to access to a full and complete education.

Prior to the 1980's, children with special needs were segregated into separate schools. When parents first contested this discriminatory treatment of students with special needs under the Charter of Rights, the Courts recognized each child's right to an equal educational opportunity. They found that all students must have access to an equal educational opportunity in their home (neighborhood) school. This meant that in some schools, for some students, extra money was spent. If a student in a wheelchair needed an elevator, that school installed an elevator - no matter if this is an expenditure above and beyond the normal school budget. The Courts understood that for equal opportunity to occur, there would be a need for differentiated spending.

Class composition limits such as those in Bill 33 and in previous contract language serve the same purpose. They ensure additional time and resources for students with special needs so that inclusion is meaningful and real. They require that resources are redirected so that enough classes are set so that every class has a teacher with the time to focus on each and every student, including those with special needs.

VCPAC should reconsider their approach. They are doing a dis-service to those children for whom they should most be advocating for. They are hiding information from the public when they should be trying to ensure open and transparent governance by our Trustees. They are inadvertently supporting a position that will lead to less funding and less support for all students. 

BC government proposal for class composition is "rationing"

I hope no-one is fooled by the BC Government proposal to address class composition announced in yesterday's Throne speech. It is unfair, unequal, and perhaps unconstitutional. See the announcement here: http://www2.news.gov.bc.ca/news_releases_2009-2013/2011EDUC0082-001253.htm

The government has proposed a limited fund to address supporting students with special needs and class composition. The amount in the fund would be in the "tens" of millions. This is a far cry from the $275 million per year removed in 2002 (which is more like $330 million in today's dollars). It is insulting to both teachers and the students of BC that this government thinks it is OK to "remedy" their mistake with just one tenth the amount of funding. Probably the only reason there is any money on the table is because a BC Supreme Court found their actions in 2002 unconstitutional. But the courts also identified $275 million per year as the amount removed. If the government can afford $930 million on Smart Meters, then it can afford $330 million for students and public education.

Equally as problematic is the process of a "fund". In my view, once a child is designated with specific learning needs, they have a constitutional right to educational services that meet their specific learning needs. But in the "fund" model, a limited (and too small) amount of funding would be available so that only some of the students' needs would be met. Teachers and/or parents would have to "apply" for funding and state their case about why their situation was the "neediest". Under this model, some students would be denied services. Teachers and parents would have to spend time "making the case" for services AFTER they had already gone through the process of testing and designation and writing an individual education plan. Only some students and classrooms would be funded.

The School Act states that every individual education plan must be implemented. This is how it should be. Once specific needs have been identified and a plan to address those needs is developed, that plan should be fully funded in order to implement it properly. This includes a suitable classroom composition and class size to ensure the teacher has time to address the plan. It also includes adequate numbers of specialist teachers to provide individual one-on-one teaching.

Prior to the Liberals changing the special education funding formula and removing class size limits in 2002, this is basically how it worked. Different designations resulted in different levels of funding and often were specifically assigned to a particular child. Class size limits and class composition limits ensured that for every class, the variety of needs in the class and the size of the class was manageable for the teacher. Ratios of specialist teachers to students ensured each specialist teacher would have adequate time to spend with each student on their caseload.

When these protections were stripped away, students and teachers paid the price. Students no longer were automatically provided the services they needed. Teachers were overwhelmed with complex needs and larger classes and a massive increase in workload.

The government needs to ensure that every single child has their needs fully met. This cannot be done through a competitive "fund" that would end up serving only the "neediest". Such a system is simply the "rationing" of an inadequate provision of educational services. And such a competitive symptom will ultimately pit students, parents, teachers and administrators against each other, as each advocates for different sets of students. So on top of failing to provide adequate supports, this system would exacerbate relationships and create an unhealthy competitive climate.

Imagine the equivalent in health care. You are tested and identified with an illness. But your family doctor is forced to apply and "make the case" for you to receive specialist services from a limited "fund". We don't run our health care system this way and we shouldn't run our schools this way either.