Addressing the Achievement Gap

1. Addressing the Achievement Gap

2. Presentation • Factors Contributing to the Achievement Gap • School Based Factors • External Factors • Measuring the Gap • Strategies to Address the Achievement Gap • Adequate Resources to Address Achievement Gap

3. Contributing Factors School Based

4. Low Expectations • Most researchers agree that expectations have an effect on achievement. • It is important to be clear that there is no debate that NAN First Nation students have the same intellectual capacity range as any students anywhere in Canada. • However, expectations for student achievement are often lowered by education staff in NAN First Nation operated schools.

5. Cultural relevancy • A strong relationship exists between language, culture and learning. Language and culture shape reality in different ways. • Schools that successfully infuse First Nation language and culture throughout all aspects of the school décor and programming will be more successful in educating those students. • Achieving this objective is obviously greatly aided by having qualified First Nation staff at all levels throughout the school.

6. Education facilities • The current backlog in school construction across NAN First Nations and the issues impacting the off-reserve First Nation operated schools are clearly significant contributing factors to the current Achievement Gap • School facilities can have a profound impact on both teacher and student outcomes. • The vast majority of First Nation schools are neither configured nor retrofitted to meet the current standards for school safety • The lack of quality teacher accommodation is a significant recruitment and retention issue which directly impacts teacher effectiveness and therefore student achievement.

7. Applied vs Academic credits • The secondary schools in NAN can issue Ontario credits by registering as private schools with the Ministry of Education and being inspected by a Ministry supervisory officer. • However, because of resource restraints in the ISC funding model (including by funding secondary students at the same rate as elementary) - First Nation secondary school credits are only offered at the applied, not the academic level in the majority of NAN First Nation high school programs.   • The Ontario Education Quality and Accountability Office data confirms a 40-percent gap in test performance between students in Applied and Academic courses • Not having academic credits also makes entry to post-secondary programs much more difficult.

8. Instructional leadership • There is a clear link between school leadership and student achievement • Instructional leadership is second only to teaching quality among school-related factors in its impact on student learning. Lack of effective instructional leadership negatively impacts the Achievement Gap. • Ensuring that principals have appropriate certification through the Ontario Ministry of Education courses and the experience required to be effective in a First Nation environment - is an ongoing challenge for many NAN communities.

9. Instructional Staff • Teachers are the core of any education system. • Recruitment and retention of qualified and experienced staff for NAN First Nation schools is a continuing and significant issue. • It is critical in the early grades to have qualified staff - both teachers and teacher assistants – in the primary program. Students who do have the foundational information by the end of Grade 3 may never catch-up as most literacy and numeracy series are sequential

10. Professional Development • Quality professional development improves the quality of education being provided for students and improves teacher retention. • Professional growth is an objective of the vast majority of teachers. Professional growth is the product of two things – professional experience and professional development. There is a world of difference between ten years of experience versus one year of experience ten times over. • Providing relevant professional development for teachers working in remote and isolated communities is expensive and challenging. However, a lack of professional growth opportunities is one of the key reasons cited by teachers who resign from First Nation teaching positions.

11. Materials – Equipment - Technology • Relevant education materials, equipment and technology-based resources are critical components in today’s effective education programs. For reasons of geography, technological infrastructure and funding, too often First Nation schools in Nishnawbe Aski Nation do not have adequate access to these education program supports. •  Most current literacy and numeracy programs assume access to technology and much of the core and supplementary components of these programs rely on such access. • Limited access to technology also has a direct impact on teaching effectiveness and therefore on the achievement gap.

12. Student Interest & Effort • Successful students understand that they are, at least in part, responsible for their education. This means being interested, putting forth the effort and attending regularly. • Lack of student interest and effort manifests itself in two ways. • First in attendance. Students who are not interested in school are far more likely not to attend than those that are. • Second is achievement. Students who do not put forth the effort will in most cases not achieve the same results as those students who do.

13. Family Support • Parental expectations dramatically affect student interest and effort in school. Students from families that encourage students and make it clear that they value education, generally achieve better results and stay in school longer than those from families who are ambivalent about the value of education. • Many NAN parents are suffering from the inter-generational impact of residential schools and the Sixties Scoop. Through no fault of their own, they lack the knowledge and skills to support and reinforce student learning. • The statistics on addiction issues in many NAN First Nations are staggering. Addicted parents are not in a position to provide the support, encouragement and in some situations – the basic necessities – for students to be effective learners.

14. Access to Second Level Services • The majority of First Nation schools in NAN have limited access to the supervisory, consultant and technical support services enjoyed by their provincial counterparts. There are two fundamental reasons for this – availability and cost. • It is difficult to locate consultants willing to travel to provide services in NAN schools particularly those schools which are isolated. • Second level organizations, KERC for example, are not adequately funded to deliver second level services to First Nations at the scope and frequency found in provincial systems. Purchase of second level services from providers is much more expensive both for reasons of travel and accommodation and, often, increased fees.

15. Access to Third Level Services • Third level services are those supports and products provided by Ministries of Education for school boards and schools. Their role includes but is not limited to implementation of legislation and regulations, curriculum development, curriculum guides, education research, funding guidelines, standardized testing, specialized schools (schools for the blind and deaf), teacher qualifications and issuance of diplomas. • Indigenous Services does not fund third level services so First Nation are forced to use Ministry documents which often are not be relevant for their students.

16. School Improvement Plans • School Improvement Plans (SIPs) are important foundational documents to organize and provide direction for school improvement. • They target areas within all areas of the school operations, include strategies for addressing areas where improvements are required and establish measures to evaluate progress towards the needed improvements. • Funding needs to be available not only to carry out SIPs on a regular basis, but also to implement activities required to make the recommended improvements.

17. Contributing Factors External

18. Education Funding • Years of chronic under-funding of First Nation education is one of the key contributors to the current Achievement Gap in First Nations of NAN schools. Without adequate resources for both salary and non-salary budget components, NAN First Nation elementary and secondary schools have been unable to provide the full range education programs and services that are normally found in provincial schools. • Achieving comparability with provincial funding levels will not necessarily enable First Nations to effectively address the Achievement Gap, particularly given that there is not a comparable achievement gap in the Provincial system, and therefore they do not have to take such a wide gap into consideration when calculating their base funding.

19. Recruitment, Retention, Salaries & Teacher Pension Plan • The inadequate funding levels generated by the Band Operated Funding Formula (BOFF) are being improved through the joint AFN-ISC Funding Transformation exercise. This will enable First Nations, among other priorities, to begin to address the inequity between salaries and benefits paid to education staff in the provincial system and what First Nations can provide. • A related issue is pension plans for First Nation teachers. First Nations can join the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTTP) as employers and thereby offer their teachers access to OTTP but securing federal funding for the employer’s contribution required by OTTP remains a significant hurdle.

20. Access to Health & Social Services • Remote communities do not enjoy the same level of community Health and Social Services as their urban counterparts. • Few communities have a coordinated or team approach among service providers to allow for comparable wrap-around support for students. • Community-based access to specialists is rare and often requires trips by students out of the community, thus negatively impacting student time in school.

21. Access to Child Care Services • Many students with children face significant problems in finding appropriate and consistent child care in their communities. • Consequently, these students are often early drop outs or infrequent attenders.

22. Diet & Nutrition • The extreme cost of groceries in most NAN First Nations impacts the quality of diet that children are receiving. • Where communities are able to provide breakfast and/or lunch programs, there is a clear positive impact on learning. • However, these programs are not funded under the current ISC funding model forcing communities to seek funding elsewhere and when that funding is not available, they cannot provide the programs at all.

23. Student Mobility • For many reasons, student mobility is an ongoing challenge for both students and the First Nation schools. • Many families are forced to temporarily relocate for reasons of health, employment, lack of reserve housing, or for their parents’ post-secondary education. • The transition between First Nation schools and Provincially-funded schools is often difficult for students.

24. Housing • Housing shortages in most NAN First Nations result in significant overcrowding for many families, taking away individual privacy. • For many students it is virtually impossible to find a place in the home to do homework. • Overcrowding also makes it difficult for parents to become involved at home in their student’s learning.

25. Student Transportation • There are three significant and related issues with respect to student transportation on-reserve - safety, funding and equipment. • While vans used on-reserve for student transportation generally have seat belts available for students, most of buses do not. Having seat belts on school buses in Ontario may become law soon requiring school buses to be retrofitted by September 1, 2020. • Many drivers of school buses on-reserve do not have the proper training or licences to do so. Road conditions in most communities are poor impacting both safety, repair cost and early replacement. • Funding is an ongoing issue for student transportation with no clear application of funding guidelines nor modifications to meet local conditions particularly those conditions experienced during the winter months. • Equipment purchase and equipment maintenance is a struggle particularly for remote communities.

26. Measuring the achievement gap

27. Achievement gap • The term “achievement gap” refers to any significant and persistent disparity in academic performance or educational attainment between different groups of students. • In this presentation the achievement gap referenced is that between students attending First Nation schools and students attending schools in the Provincial system.

28. EQAO • The most widely used measure to determine an achievement gap is disparities in test scores. In Ontario, the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) assessments of Reading, Writing and Mathematics​ are administered to all Grade 3, 6, 9 and 10 students. • ISC now requires First Nations to administer and report results of EQAO testing as a condition of their funding agreements. • It is not clear that EQAO results submitted to ISC are summarized or aggregated in a manner that would provide an overall data product indicating the achievement levels, and hence achievement gap, for students attending First Nation schools. Requests for this type of summary data from ISC were not successful.

29. Closing the Gap • Despite restrictions in available testing data, there is significant evidence, including that completed by the federal government’s Office of the Auditor General, that the achievement gap is so significant that closing it will take very significant time and supplementary funding. • The federal government’s inability to help improve life for Indigenous people in Canada, including education, was termed an “incomprehensible failure,” by the former auditor general, Michael Ferguson.

30. Educational Parity • From discussions with First Nation education staff, provincial receiving schools and from limited access to EQAO results, the anecdotal evidence is that the average achievement gap at the end of Grade 8 in literacy and numeracy is at least three grade levels. • Achievement Gap funding – supplementary to Provincial Comparability funding - will be required achievement parity is achieved and maintained.

31. Addressing the gap

32. What is the Achievement Gap? • “Achievement Gap” describes the difference in academic performance between students who are in different groups. • For purposes of this presentation, the different groups are First Nation students attending on-reserve schools and non-Native students attending provincially funded schools. • Students in these two groups perform differently on tests, earn different grades, take different courses, dropout at different rates, and demonstrate different high school completion rates. These differences make up the Achievement Gap. 

33. Student Capacity • There is an important cautionary note that needs to be acknowledged with respect to individual First Nation students. • The current Achievement Gap is not caused by First Nation students having less inherent capacity to succeed than their provincial counterparts. Rather it is an education system that has been chronically underfunded and underserviced that has failed them. • The bottom line is this. First Nation students may have an achievement gap – but it is not an intellectual or ability to learn gap. So, for the majority, programming must be provided that recognizes and challenges their intellectual capacity and does not assume they are not capable of meeting provincially equivalent educational norms

34. Intervention Support Programs (ISP) • Assistance in the development of Intervention Support Programs (ISPs) should be available to enable schools to develop targeted strategies to improve student achievement levels and reduce the achievement gap. • Such plans should be developed in partnership among the community, the Education Committee and the School and should be able to benefit from access to requisite testing and programming specialists. • They should not be subject to ISC approval.

35. Tiered intervention model

36. ISP Funding • It is important that the Intervention Support Program plans identify incremental resource requirements. While some elements within an ISP can be actioned without additional resources or with resources internally reallocated, funding needs to be available to address many of the activities specifically directed to underperforming students and schools. • The intent of intervention is not to undermine local control of education as exercised in the First Nation but rather to assist schools that are experiencing difficulty in raising the performance of underachieving students. This requires effective school and student needs assessments and plans

37. Relationship to Special Education • The strategies to address the delivery of Special Education services and strategies to address the Achievement Gap can overlap. • But it is important to remember that the Achievement Gap is system failure and needs to be addressed as such with system wide initiatives. • Special Education services are individually directed and respond to a student’s specific learning needs

38. Strategies • The following are not set out in any order of priority. It is clear that many categories are interdependent, requiring more than one area to be addressed to achieve desired results. The strategies are grouped in categories modified from the U.S. National Education Association framework for addressing the Achievement Gap. • Supportive Schools • Student Well Being • Student Assessments & Records • Classroom Learning Supports & Strategies • Cultural Relevance • Funding and Resources • Extended Learning Opportunities • Staff Quality • Family and Community Support • Second & Third Level Services

39. School Wide Responsibility • Closing the Achievement Gap must be a school-wide responsibility. The adopted strategies should be well communicated, understood and supported by all staff – both teaching and non-teaching. • Given that the Closing the Achievement Gap is multi-year initiative, and given the significant staff turnover in NAN First Nation schools, ensuring that new staff are provided appropriate orientation and understanding of the Achievement Gap strategies and the expectations to implement these strategies in their classrooms is critical to sustained progress. • Achievement Gap strategies should be incorporated as key components in the School Improvement Plan. Reporting on progress – both anecdotal and achievement testing – should be widely distributed within the school and community. Improvements should be celebrated.

40. High Expectations • There is no question that First Nation students have the same innate ability to learn as their non-Native counterparts. It is acknowledged that there are a myriad of challenges facing both students and teaching staff in First Nation communities. • However, too often, teaching staff view these challenges as a rationale for lowering their expectations for student achievement. Research is clear that students are more likely to meet expectations than not, regardless of whether these expectations are good, bad, correct, or misguided. • When teacher expectation is low, students inevitably will live down to these reduced expectation levels.

41. Focus on Literacy & Numeracy • Literacy and numeracy include the capacity to understand and use language, signs, numbers, symbols and images for learning, communicating and creating. They should be embedded in learning experiences across all subject areas, and in learning and life outside of school. • The successful First Nation Student Success Program (FNSSP) provided funding for activities to improve literacy and numeracy for First Nation students. As students enter the school system, there must be a strong focus on the development of reading and writing skills. • This is true for all students and particularly true for students whose first language is a Native language.

42. Learning Environment • Students learn better when they view the learning environment as positive and supportive. A positive environment is one in which students feel a sense of belonging, trust others, and feel encouraged to tackle challenges, take risks, and ask questions. • Such an environment provides relevant content, clear learning goals and feedback, opportunities to build social skills, and strategies to help students succeed. Basically, students are not able to learn to the best of their ability in a disorganized or threatening environment. •  An important element in the learning environment is the physical condition of the school and classroom. This is a significant and ongoing issue in many NAN communities who are forced to contend with undersized, outdated and often unsafe physical learning environments.

43. School Leadership Teams • One way to improve practices is to create a school team that will structure and lead processes designed to transform teaching and learning. Research has shown that teaming is the most frequently advocated structure for implementing school reform initiatives because it helps to facilitate rapid and sustained change. • Using a team approach is also a practical way to ensure that the many tasks that must take place in a successful school are executed efficiently and effectively. • For First Nation schools, such teams also ensure that the strategies adopted for addressing the Achievement Gap are brought forward into the next school year such that new staff are orientated to the focus on closing the gap and are provided training on the strategies being used to do so.

44. School Evaluations • School evaluations are an opportunity to make real and meaningful improvements in the quality of the education program offered in the community. They should include a comprehensive evaluation of the school including student performance, curriculum, special education services, school climate, staff, administration and governance. • The evaluation should be both community and school based. All segments of the community - parents, students, elders, leaders and the learning staff – need to be involved for an evaluation to be effective and accurate. Only by building ownership over the evaluation study and related products, will meaningful change to the quality of education in a community occur. • It is important that the evaluation not only provide a list of conclusions and recommendations but that it also include a community based action plan for school improvement. Evaluations should be undertaken on a regular basis and include an analysis on progress toward closing the Achievement Gap.

45. Historical Cultural Context • Education systems are not value neutral. Instead what is taught, and how it is taught reflects cultural values. For First Nations, it is critical that the content, the methodology and the learning environment of their schools reflect the history, culture and languages of their people. • The history of First Nations people in Canada from the Residential School system, the Sixties Scoop and the ongoing racism experienced by NAN students in towns and cities across Northern Ontario, all have contributed to an inter-generational and ongoing cultural and emotional challenge for NAN students. • It is important, therefore, that NAN First Nation education systems counter this legacy by infusing First Nation culture and language throughout the school and the school program. Culture should be reflected in all aspects of the education experience for students including school décor, curriculum, teaching methodology and school events.

46. Native Language Instruction • Native language is a subject area in the majority of NAN First Nation schools. However, there are several ongoing challenges with the effective delivery of Native language programming including shortage of qualified Native language teachers and a lack of appropriate curriculum materials. • There is a tendency to consider that immersion and dual language programming should be for the best students and not those with a significant achievement gap on the basis that the latter group should be focussed on basics. Education research generally does not support this conclusion. • In fact, immersion and dual language programming for students with an achievement gap can actually be a positive contributor to closing the gap. The importance of cultural confidence and pride can help create the personal confidence and motivation which contribute to academic success.

47. Native Role Models • It is important for all students to have educational and career objectives. For many students with achievement gaps, there is a disbelief that they can be successful and achieve their life dreams. Having both local and NAN-wide First Nation role models who have realized personal success, and who can provide their stories to all students can be an important motivator. • In this regard, the cultural role models, Elders specifically, can both comfort and motivate learners. Regular access to Elders by students has been proven to be emotionally and culturally beneficial for students. Elder programs in NNEC schools for example have significantly contributed to student well-being and retention.

48. Community & Cultural History • Having a sense of place and belonging to that place is emotionally supportive for all students. To contribute to this, inclusion of local community history and the cultural underpinnings of the community as an integral component in the school curriculum is very beneficial. • Land based activities also enhance cultural values and an understanding of traditional practices. Realizing the connection of self to the environment - the land, the animals, the water – is critical in comprehending the Indigenous world view and the connectivity to all things natural. • Knowing that they fit somewhere is an important contributor to student success.

49. Locally Developed Culture Courses • Locally developed courses at both the elementary and secondary level are important to reflect the community, it’s culture and language in a way that is community specific. • In addition to the obvious benefits for student in being able to learn about their community, language and culture, it is an opportunity to broaden community engagement, particularly from Elders both in the development and delivery of the courses.

50. Student Well Being • Wellbeing and learning are inseparable. Student resilience and wellbeing are essential for both academic and social development, and are enhanced by safe, supportive and respectful learning environments. Schools share this responsibility with the whole community. • Evidence is clear that there are strong linkages between student safety, wellbeing and learning outcomes. These factors are important and applicable in First Nation communities and perhaps even more so, where students must leave their communities and attend school in urban centres. For these students, wellbeing becomes a greater challenge.