AIMS author Dr. Paul Bennett discusses adopting the Nova Scotia Tuition Support Program (TSP) throughout Atlantic Canada and provides a New Brunswick example of Riverbend Community School in Moncton. Bennett examines how the TSP has been implemented since 2004, and provides eight recommendations for Atlantic Canada.
Feeding the education machine has a way of calming the waters. By investing $24.5 million more into the Nova Scotia school system, the Liberal government honoured its election commitment, placated the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union, and elicited barely a peep out of the core P-12 education interests. The stakes are high going into the upcoming round of Nova Scotia teacher salary negotiations. Based upon U.S. research findings, these eight key salary provisions add up to almost 20 per cent of all primary and secondary school spending. That’s about $200 million in Nova Scotia dollars. With that mu
AIMS Fellow Michael Zwaagstra discusses how teachers should be able to say what they think when writing report cards, and suggests that Minister Casey needs to reject her departments ideology and empower teachers to use their own judgement.
News 95.7, The Rick Howe Show interviews AIMS Fellow Michael Zwaagstra discussing teacher’s comments section of report cards.
Jacques Poitras (CBC News), discusses different viewpoints of policy 409 and school closures. The Rural Schools Coalition wants the government to suspend policy 409, but Minister Rousselle suggests that the government has to respect the policy
NB Education minister has vowed to take action after learning French- and English-speaking students have been travelling on the same school bus. Under a long-standing policy the provincial government claims it is constitutionally mandated to provide separate buses for anglophones and francophones. Dominic Cardy, leader of the provincial New Democratic Party, disagrees. “A local-level compromise — that was apparently entirely agreeable to the parents and the community — is now being ditched because someone is playing politics,” he said. A January report by the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies raised alarms these costs were rising disproportionately, citing separate buses as a cause. “Few politicians or school officials have dared to even ask if the sharing of bus services, on a larger scale, might result in significant savings to provincial taxpayers,” it said. In the 2014-15 school year, New Brunswick will spend $64.8-million to bus 90,000 students, or about $72
AIMS author Paul Bennett outlines a strategy for reducing the prevalence of snow days in Nova Scotia, which entails preparing out-of-school work plans for students to complete from home.
On the heels of an opinion piece authored by Paul Bennett, New Brunswick's Minister of Education Serge Rouselle makes it a point to say that snow days have become an issue in the province and one that needs a solution sooner than later.
Writing for the Aurora Newspaper, Josh Pennell discusses a letter to the editor and an article quoting educator, author, and AIMS Fellow in Education Policy Michael Zwaagstra, who ridiculed the local policy of teachers not being able to give zeros or fail students for incomplete work.
In a letter to the editor of the Province, an individual from British Columbia discusses an opinion piece published by AIMS Fellow in Education Policy Michael Zwaagstra.