When Bad Research Leads to Bad Policy: The Case of New Brunswick

Shamelessly lifted from Matt and Diana: “This opinion piece was in response to EFI policy development in NB. It was written by Philip Oreopolous who is an Associate Professor of Economics, University of British Columbia and a University of Toronto Research Fellow, Canadian Institute For Advanced Research. It was written just before the decision was announced on August 5th.” Download PDF.

The Ombudsman’s Report is out

and can be downloaded here. It presents quite a story.

As one correspondent just wrote, “Oh, I could kiss Bernard Richard!”

Update: In this Canadian Press story picked up by canadaeast.com, M. Richard is quoted as saying, “In my time in public life, I have never seen a worse example of public engagement than this process.”

The Miramichi Reader would seem to agree.

Now let’s all take some advice from Janice Harvey.

A Response to Minister Lamrock’s Justifications for His FSL Plan

[from CEC:]

In recent days, Minister Lamrock has been circulating the following text to justify his plans for French education in NB. A team of us from the Citizens for Educational Choice have taken on the task of annotating the Minister’s argument, pointing out errors in fact and argumentation. Although the details are to be found in the following pages, some general points arise repeatedly.

1. The Minister misuses French language learning scholarship. For example, his many misrepresentations of the ideas of Dr. Fred Genesee of McGill has resulted in a letter from Dr. Genesee explaining the problems. If the Minister wants the benefit of experts in FSL, he should assign them with the task of devising an FSL plan for the province or, at very least, heed their warnings regarding the Croll and Lee recommendations.
2. The Minister seems to persist in misunderstanding the nature of French immersion. In this text he presents it as a challenge that suits higher-achieving students; whereas we understand from the works of Dr. Dicks, Dr. Genesee and others, and from the experience of other provinces such as Nova Scotia, that EFI can be accessible to nearly all children.
3. The Minister erroneously argues that the many studies before Croll and Lee support his innovations: they simply do not, and we encourage all to read these reports and determine the truth for themselves. In fact, since the Scraba report of 2002, NB has been encouraged to improve participation and retention in EFI by increasing the resources required to support students within the EFI program.
4. The Minister argues weakly against this less disruptive and more standard solution: he claims that it cannot be done because it has not been done or because a fully detailed plan for this approach does not exist.
5. The Minister frequently suggests that any report or expert opinion which supports an entry point for French immersion later than the current grade one entry point also lends support to his plan for immersion to begin only in grade 6 because such opinions support a ‘later’ date. We believe that if he were to consult with the authors of these reports, he would find that they consider the grade 6 entry point which he proposes to be quite worse than the grade 2 or grade 3 entry points that some experts advise.
6. Finally, in the title of the piece and throughout, the Minister wishes to suggest that the past two months have been a time of ’study’, which should now conclude in a decision. We hope our comments will show that the Minister and Croll and Lee are very far from having studied the topic well, and that the decisions made in haste and ignorance thus far should be delayed so that a true and careful course can be plotted for this important aspect of our province’s public education system.

Below you will find the Minister’s original text in italics and our critique in plain text following each point he makes.

Read CEC’s

excellent, excellent commentary in the T-J, “The other side on education.” Very useful for countering Lamrock’s misinformation.

Go now, do not pass go,

and read Diana Hamilton and Matt Litvak’s excellent commentary, “Flawed report, flawed conclusion,” published this morning in the T-J.

FYI

have started a separate page to list the many critics of the Lamrock plan and/or the Croll/Lee report. In most cases there is a link to a news story or media release. Please let me know, in the comments or via email, of any I have missed.

From the Fredericton demonstration:

Interesting

editorial in the Kings County Record. It begins:

By now Education Minister Kelly Lamrock should have learned a valuable political lesson. By this point, he should have discovered that you can mess with a lot of things and still survive to stand up in the Legislature another day.

By now he should have realized that you can mess with people’s roads, you can mess with people’s taxes, you can even mess with people’s jobs and still survive, but the thing that will bring them out fighting like cornered dogs, that one thing you cannot do is mess with people’s kids.

All I can add is, grrrr!

If you aren’t reading

the comments sections after the online news articles, you’re missing half the fun. Cut and pasted from one such comment by Tyler Durden:

A list of those who support EFI removal:

• Kelly Lamrock
• Doug Willms

A partial list of those who oppose the Lamrock plan:

• The Commissioner of Official Languages, NB
• The Commissioner of Official Languages, Canada
• The Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers
• Canadian Institute for Research on Linguistic Minorities
• The Center for Research on Education at the Université de Moncton
• The Second Language Research Institute of Canada
• Liberal Party Riding Association Presidents in Kings-East, Tantramar, and Nigadoo-Chaleur.
• Co-Author of the Official Languages Act Robert Pichette
• Political Scientist and Liberal Party Strategist Donald Savoie
• Association Canadienne des Professeurs D’Immersion
• L’Association des enseignantes et des enseignants francophones du
• Nouveau-Brunswick (AEFNB),
• Consortium of Universities Advising the Canadian Association of Immersion Teachers
• Association Francophone des Parents du NB
• Canadian Parents for French
• Paul Zed, Liberal MP
• Saint John Mayor and City Council

Update (Apr 15/08): I have added a page that lists critics of the Lamrock plan and/or the Croll/Lee report.

From

Diana Hamilton and Matt Litvak’s blog:

Drs. Jimmy Borque and Rodrique Landry, directors of the Centre de recherche et de développement en éducation and de l’Institut canadien de recherche sur les minorités linguistiques, respectively, held a press conference on their evaluation of Minister Lamrock’s decision to terminate Early French Immersion in NB Anglophone schools. They concluded that the Croll and Lee report, the report that was the basis of Minister Lamrock’s decision, was severely flawed. They suggested that whatever the goal, the policy developed cannot be said to be research-based. They challenged the Minister to submit the report to a panel of experts for further review

Read all about it, en français, or listen to Radio Canada.

Despite

Kelly Lamrock’s reported comment that concern about FSL is confined to “yuppies” in Fredericton and Moncton, people in the Mirimichi seem interested, if the slew of articles in the Mirimichi Leader is any indication, including Patricia Lee wading in and the Minister’s multi-part series. See in particular Alison Ménard’s excellent open letter and Raissa Marks’ guest editorial which concludes, “I leave you with one more question, Mr. Premier. Are you prepared to lose the next election on this issue?”

My mother was wrong!

She always told me, “you get what you pay for.” How, then, can it be that the shelved Rehorick report, written by four experts, cost $30,000, while the Croll/Lee report cost the Dept. of Education the taxpayer $180,000?

Gosh, I wish I were Kelly Lamrock’s friend. (Though admittedly, that possibility is looking less and less likely.)

Okay,

here’s my question: how can Kelly Lamrock, with a straight face, impugn the integrity of Bernard Richard, when he has himself scrapped a report that contradicted his own pre-existing position and commissioned another from a long-standing advocate of that position and a family friend? And why, when we are on the topic of integrity and ethics, is anyone still listening to Doug Willms on this issue? His mind was made up about early French immersion long ago so he is hardly impartial, and his company enjoys contracts from the Dept. of Education so he is hardly disinterested. Then there is Kelly Lamrock himself, a man who insults and dismisses those who don’t agree with him, who arrogantly refuses to listen to anyone who doesn’t parrot back his own ideas, and who is willing to trash the N.B. education system for the sake of some test scores that he thinks will ensure his electoral success in 2010.

Perhaps it’s Botox.

So the academic community

is pretty well united, barring an anomaly or two, in their condemnation of the Croll/Lee report and the Lamrock plan: Members of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UNB Fredericton sent a letter to NB Ombudsman Bernard Richard. And on Monday, there will be a press conference at UdeM.
See both documents below the fold:

News flash: Kelly Lamrock is Acting Premier; Shawn Graham on extended vacation

I mean, how else can one explain the following form email from the Premier’s office? It sounds like it’s directly from Minister Lamrock’s crib notes of a few weeks ago:

Thank you for your email concerning French Second Language Programs.

The decision to change the way French Second Language (FSL) programs are being delivered in this province was a difficult one. It was premised on the need to make two things happen. First, we want to ensure all students have the opportunity to gain proficiency in French. Second, we want to ensure New Brunswick students’ achievement in literacy, mathematics and science is on par with other Canadian students. Our students consistently score lower than those of all other provinces on PISA, (Programme for International Student Assessment). Given this, and the fact that only 34% of our anglophone students reach the provincial target for French proficiency, there was no option but to undertake a major reform. To ignore this situation would be unconscionable.

After careful consideration, the Department of Education has decided to move to a more comprehensive approach whereby all students will receive seven years of instruction in a quality second language program.

This will be achieved through the Intensive French (IF) program provided in grade 5 whereby all students receive an initial, intensive exposure to French, followed by parents and students having the choice in grade 6 of either the Post Intensive program or Late French Immersion.

There are several advantages of initial exposure to French in grade 5. By that grade, students will have a firm foundation in English literacy skills and will also have acquired the building blocks of numeracy in their first language. First language mastery provides a solid foundation for learning subsequent languages. An additional benefit of freeing a thirty-minute period daily in grades 1 through 4 will be the chance to offer students art, music, increased literacy, physical education and enrichment opportunities. Finally, mastery of basic French through IF in grade 5 will help students and parents to make informed decisions concerning the French program option that will best meet their needs in grade 6.

The announced reform will result in more students achieving better results, not only in second language learning, but in literacy and mathematics and other subjects.

Further information regarding French Second Language Programs and a complete list of improvements may be found at http://www.gnb.ca/0000/eng-cu-e.asp.

Thank you for taking the time to express your views on this important subject.

Sincerely,
Shawn Graham

Go below the fold for excellent responses from Sarah Touchie, Sarah Ingalls, and Paula & Raymond Small: