There is an animated version of a talk entitled "Changing Education Paradigms", adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benjamin Franklin award. The talk discusses the history and goals of education and why it's reliance on standardized testing, single grades and single-topic thinking stiffles creativity and lateral thinking.

For more information on Sir Ken's work visit: http://www.sirkenrobinson.com

The "Ottawa Parent's Eduction Network" has sent a questionaire to all candidates. Some responses are available now. While not tied to the Alternative prtogram, the group does ask some relavant questions about parental involvement, accountability and consultation. Two questions that directly concern our community are:

7. Last year, the Board reviewed its Alternative Schools program and its Secondary Gifted program. Despite strong stakeholder support for these programs, Board staff recommended that they either be closed or eventually phased out. As a trustee, what kind of information would you seek and what would kind of questions would you ask in order to come to a decision when staff recommendations are opposed to the views of the community?

16. The Alternative Schools program was reviewed this past year and found by the Board to have many benefits for students. As a trustee, would you ensure not this program is continued and is extended to zones where it’s not currently available?

Annie Kidder of People for Education, a parent-led organization, said testing every single student in Ontario is not necessary.

"The testing drives the system rather than the other way around," said Kidder, adding that policy ends up focusing on one area of learning and skews the whole education system.

Kidder has said assessments should be done by sample testing.

Diane Ravitch, the education historian who built her intellectual reputation battling progressive educators and served in the first Bush administration’s Education Department, is in the final stages of an astonishing, slow-motion about-face on almost every stand she once took on American schooling.

Once outspoken about the power of standardized testing, charter schools and free markets to improve schools, Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She underwent an intellectual crisis, she says, discovering that these strategies, which she now calls faddish trends, were undermining public education. She resigned last year from the boards of two conservative research groups.

In a marathon board meeting that stretched from 6:00 P.M. until after 10:00, the trustees of the Ottawa Carleton District School Board have voted to preserve and strengthen the Alternative program and work to make its practices more widely available. This was the fourth board meeting on this since early January and again was overflowing with alternative families, friends and supporters.

Now that this decision is behind us, the alternative staff, students and parents can get on with strengthening the program and making its tenets and philosophy more widely known and understood. Most importantly, parents in Ottawa can enroll their children in the program with confidence that this program choice will remain for years to come.