Madsen's Musings

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Wait- someone already said that. Let’s try that again.

I have taught in two BC school districts, and despite sharing a curriculum, guided by the same provincial government body and functioning under the same funding system, they’re worlds apart.

I love teaching history and one of my favourite things to teach is the Enlightenment. I tell my students that my job is to turn them into intellectual giants. Some seem interested at this prospect. Some genuinely wonder if I’m up to that kind of challenge. Some just role their eyes as only a disinterested teenager can. For me, the Enlightenment is that pivotal shift in history where human beings embraced the power of reason. I have a degree in French literature (really!), so I’ll whip out a Victor Hugo quote here (translated, of course):

“The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge.”

In 2022 Canada, we like to think of ourselves as enlightened. Canadians are nice, fair people. We value equality. We value education. We want our citizens to “live in light.” But does our reality line up with our aspirations?

The BC Ministry of Education proudly states on their website that they have a “clear mandate, to enable every learner to maximize their potential.” Furthermore, they declare that this commitment is “regardless of their background or where they live in B.C. … enabling equity of access to quality education for every student.” But even they do acknowledge that they are not yet reaching this goal: “significant differences exist between schools across the province.” 

The ministry identifies five principles to direct us to the goal of graduating “educated citizens.” Under the heading of “future orientation,” they state they “encourage the use of technology.” Notice the wording. It is not required. Because to require it would put the ministry in a potentially difficult situation: they’d have to ensure proper infrastructure. While the official line is to “encourage” technology, the curriculum clearly requires it- beyond the obvious Applied Design Skills and Technology. Literary Studies 10: “Access information for diverse purposes and from a variety of sources.” Obviously in 2022 this requires the internet. English Language Arts 12, a course mandatory for graduation: “Use writing and design processes to plan, develop, and create engaging and meaningful texts for a variety of purposes and audiences.” Again, in 2022, this surely must include digital texts. 

In the world of inquiry, we start with a hunch. This was my hunch: There is tremendous inequity in terms of access to technology in British Columbia. I spent 16 years teaching in North Vancouver, then moved to Grand Forks for eight, and am now back in North Van. So I have experienced both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum.

However, after digging a little deeper— “new learning” in inquiry parlance— I find my hunch is only kinda accurate. This is why we dig deeper.😊

There is disparity across communities in BC. However, my hunch was predicated on disparities in spending by districts. But in reality, this disparity exists because of parents’ varying abilities to subsidize their children’s education. 

It turns out sucky access to meaningful technology use is widespread, because, as we said, the ministry only encourages use of technology. If you were to ask a ministry representative, they would tell you that they disperse funds to BC’s 60 locally elected Boards of Education who make allocation decisions based on “local spending priorities.”  Sounds like passing the buck. (Pun not intended.)

To move my research beyond my own two school districts, I decided to drill down on the 2021/2022 budget for Coquitlam (SD43). School districts can pay for technology either out of their general operating budget or from their capital fund budget. SD43 received $303,743,095 in block grant funding, and through other sources (international students, facility rentals, etc.) brought their operating budget up to $324,201,551. (This includes the regular per student funding as well as additional funds to support special needs, Indigenous students and adult education. There is also funding for “geographical factors.” For example, it costs more to heat and cool a school in the Interior. Rural districts also need to provide bussing to school.) However, salaries and benefits— the biggest expense in a school district— ate up $296,797,438, over 90% of the budget. (This was on the high side due to COVID-19 absences). That leaves around $27 000 000 to provide all remaining services and make all remaining purchases for the students of Coquitlam. That year they had around 31,147 students. This really doesn’t give school districts much wiggle room, or room to chase those “local spending priorities.” Beyond the block budget, the Capital Fund Budget specifically covers “land, buildings, computer hardware and software, vehicles and equipment,” but at just under $17 000 000, does not provide enough revenue to even meet projected expenses. The bottom line is that school districts do not have a lot of money, already have almost 90% of it committed to salaries, and have a lot of needs to meet with that limited money.

I also looked at Vernon’s (SD22) Technology Plan. It is a 50 page document and looks very much like the documents from my own district: a lot of committee work, planning, and recommendations (including a recommendation for an annual dollar amount of $845000). It all sounds good. We’re doing the work. We’re making a plan. It’s a three year plan. We want to align technology with our goals. We have bulleted points summarizing our practice. Ditto innovation. Blah, blah, blah…  I have been involved in this process too many times and have been in the BC education system for too long to think that this fancy report means the students in Vernon get enough technology from their school district.

The bottom line is, according to a look at school technology funding in The Vancouver Sun, “there is no equity across the province, both in terms of access to technology and teachers’ ability and willingness to embrace it.” Because the government does not “directly fund technology in schools,” a BC student’s access depends on where they go to school. Is it a school where the parents have the time and expertise to fundraise? Are the parents comfortable fundraising? Is it a community that has the financial capacity to raise adequate funds? Do they have a teacher who will even use the iPad cart once it’s purchased? Because there is “no baseline level for technology in classrooms mandated by the provincial government,” teachers classrooms vary widely, from no tech to some tech to lotsa tech. Some teachers don’t have access. Some teachers simply opt not to use it because they  don’t know how to use it or choose not to. As I predicted, the official government response is that they “provide operating grants each year to school districts, and they have the autonomy to decide whether to spend it on new technology” (Sherlock, 2015).

But is it a choice?!

When I lived in Grand Forks, I wanted better, regular access to technology than I could get with the shared resources, so I applied for and received three grants: two each from SET-BC for 10 iPads, and then $10 000 from Best Buy to purchase additional iPads and a set of Chromebooks. So kids in my classes got daily, meaningful (I hope) access to and experience with technology. But what about the rest of the students in that school? Access wasn’t even equitable within a school: it depended on who their teacher was. Grand Forks is a community with considerable poverty and therefore limited fundraising capacity. (Of course I’m sure this helped with my success in receiving grant money.) Many kids don’t have access to devices at home, or have limited access because multiple people are sharing one device, as we learned when COVID hit. The district loaned out every laptop and Chromebook it had, but there were still kids without. Some didn’t even have wifi. I had one student who had to get in his truck and drive into town to a friend’s to access their wifi— and because of isolation protocols had to remain in his truck, learning on his phone.

Then there’s West Vancouver, “the richest place in Canada.” West Vancouver schools use the Google Suite for Education and therefore require students to have access to a Chromebook or laptop. In a community with “an average household net worth of $4.5 million” (Naraghi, 2019), this isn’t a very big ask. But for those rare West Vancouver families who cannot afford to purchase a device for their children, there is a process to borrow a device from the district. I attended a PSA day conference in West Vancouver a number of years ago where Superintendent Chris Kennedy was the keynote speaker. In a Q&A session afterwards, I asked him how many West Vancouver students needed to borrow a device. His answer was “one or two per school.” At that rate, it is obviously feasible for West Van to make this offer. Grand Forks, clearly, cannot. 

I’m old enough that I was teaching on 9/11, a school day seared into my memory. On that day I was lucky enough to have already scheduled my students to be using the iBooks (remember those bricks?!) and my students were able to watch history unfold live on the internet. We had school laptops in 2001, not because the school district had purchased them, but because the PAC had. Every year our family of schools PAC held a fundraising auction that raised around $100 000. So we had laptops. (And vans for our PE program.) When I arrived in Grand Forks in 2014, they still didn’t have laptops. 

I teach in a 1-to-1 program in North Vancouver where a personal iPad is required for every class. However, a family’s inability to purchase a device will not keep a student from being able to join the program; the district will loan one to a family in need. We currently have approximately 175 students in the program, and two require a device loan from the school. Again, Seycove can make this offer because, like West Vancouver, the clear majority of families have means. Innovative programs like ours can exist in communities with means because the schools themselves will not have to provide 1-to-1 device access. In a community like Grand Forks, a program like this simply could not run. Kind of makes the ministry’s proclamation of equitable access “regardless of [students’] background or where they live in B.C” ring hollow. 

Last year the professional focus of my school (GFSS) was on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), looking to focus on learning design and environments to plan for the success of all students. Technology makes this all the easier as it offers adaptive learning (such as voice to text), different ways of learning (audio and video to complement traditional text), and a wider variety of resources. However, many of my colleagues were really frustrated at this initiative because they did not have regular access to technology in the classes. I remember one colleague sarcastically saying something like, “Well, I’ll plan for the success of all students on Tuesday because that’s when the Chromebooks are available. Not sure what I can do on Wednesday and Thursday.” We can explore great pedagogy like UDL that seeks to offer equity in education to all students, but we need the means of implementing it. 

Anecdotally, I reached out to teacher friends in four districts (Burnaby, Kelowna, other North Vancouver schools, and Vancouver). Unsurprisingly, no one feels there is adequate access to technology in their local schools. Unfortunately, I am left largely relying on anecdotal evidence because it is virtually impossible to find hard numbers on access to technology in schools. It’s not published. No where does it say: this school with x number of students has x number of devices. It seems to me, if districts thought their technology was adequate for 21st century student needs, they’d be shouting it from the rooftops.  I would also love to know how much schools rely on kids using their own devices and how many students get left out because their families can’t afford devices. But that’s not published.

But you know what information kept popping up as I tried to find concrete information on tech in schools? Organizations that are trying to help subsidize our schools with donations of technology. Very telling that they exist:

• SET-BC
• Computers for School
• Best Buy
• BC for Technology Learning Society

If you were to investigate official policy in BC, you might get the impression that we were on track. The ministry website would have you believe every student has equal opportunity to become and “educated citizen.” I have always believed education has the potential to be the great equalizer, but we’re not realizing that potential in BC. We have all seen some version of this meme:

 

The reality in BC is, the tall kid is from West Van and he’s the one who has the boxes to stand on. The short kid is from Grand Forks and he is the one standing on the ground.

 

References:

AZ Quotes. (n.d.). Victor Hugo quote. AZ Quotes. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://www.azquotes.com/quote/613172 

CAST. (2022, September 2). The UDL guidelines. UDL. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://udlguidelines.cast.org/?utm_source=castsite&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=none&utm_content=footer

Coquitlam School District. (2022). Learning for a Lifetime- Budget and Fiscal Plan 2022/23-2024/25. Budget 2022-2023 – School District no. 43 (Coquitlam). Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://www.sd43.bc.ca/budget/Pages/Budget-2022-2023.aspx 

Gill, A. (2019, October 30). An answer to that viral equality meme. AIER. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://www.aier.org/article/an-answer-to-that-viral-equality-meme/ 

Naraghi, A. (2019,  August 8). Canada’s richest communities 2019. Macleans.ca. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://www.macleans.ca/economy/money-economy/canadas-richest-communities-2019/ 

Networks of Inquiry and Indigenous Education. (2022). Spiral of inquiry. Networks of Inquiry and Indigenous Education. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://noiie.ca/spiral-of-inquiry/ 

Province of British Columbia. (2022, May 5). Ministry of Education and Child Care. Province of British Columbia. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/organizational-structure/ministries-organizations/ministries/education 

Sherlock, T. (2015, October 2). Standards lacking in public schools’ use of technology. Vancouver Sun. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://vancouversun.com/news/education/standards-lacking-in-public-schools-use-of-technology 

Vernon School District. (2020, April). SD22 technology plan – update 2020 revised – school district 22 Vernon. School District No. 22. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://sd22.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/SD22-Technology-Plan-Update-2020.pdf 

West Vancouver School District. (2022). Digital Resources for Students. West Vancouver Schools. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://westvancouverschools.ca/digital-resources