The courts are with the immersion parents

It would seem that the ill-advised decision by the New Brunswick government to scrap early French immersion has also been deemed insufficiently informed! Today, Justice Hugh McLellan of the NB Court of Queen's Bench ruled that insufficient time had been allowed for debate on the changes. Not surprisingly, he also ruled that this was not a Charter case, since it does not impinge upon the right of either language community to educate their children in their mother tongue.

It will be interesting to see what the next steps are in this process, as we move into the judicial review process ordered by McLellan!

Note: My apologies for a prolonged absence. I just moved, and my life has been in boxes. Regular blogging should resume shortly!

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Literacy scores: Spin those results, Kelly Lamrock!

Interesting. The new literacy and math scores for Canadian teenagers were reported today with Quebec leading the pack, followed by Ontario.

I wonder how Kelly Lamrock, currently the president of the Council of Ministers of Education Canada (and ironically the person who is quoted in the Globe story), will spin these results which show that the the top three scoring provinces for literacy are: Quebec, Ontario, Alberta. All of these, you'll note, are provinces which offer early French immersion programs, and start their core French early. It would seem, in my less-than-humble opinion, that these provinces aren't suffering for their decision to follow best practices in second-language education.

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Lamrock to the Globe: "French Immurshun is why our kidz kant reed gud"

The Globe and Mail ran an editorial over the weekend which was highly critical of New Brunswick's decision to cancel early French immersion. Kelly Lamrock replies in a Letter to the Editor (possibly behind the subscribers wall).

Among other preposterous claims, Lamrock states that "Early immersion teaches too few children and those who struggle with or don't take immersion wind up in the same class. This is called "streaming" and we've paid the price with last-in-Canada literacy scores."

I've already noted the fact that one solution to this problem is to actually devote resources to helping special needs children in immersion programs. Another would be to actually implement the government's own rules that state that immersion classes are supposed to be comparable in size to other classes in the school boards.

But the bigger issue is this. Shawn Graham and the Liberals campaigned in the last election on promises to improve literacy scores in the province, which the OECD has found to be among the lowest in the country. Statistics Canada produced similar results.

But here are a few problems with Lamrock's argument. Alberta has one of the highest rates of literacy and one of the best arrays of immersion programs in the country. In fact, French immersion is offered in every province in the country. So how, exactly, are we supposed to believe that French immersion is the bogeyman of literacy?

Secondly, Lamrock's plan calls for intensive French in Grade 5, and then giving parents the option of putting their children into late immersion. Won't this also produce the "streaming" effect that Lamrock fears? Does he think that a full 70% of anglophone parents will opt for immersion to reach his targets for bilingualism?

Finally, I wonder if Kelly Lamrock is fully aware of how much money his government receives from the federal government under the Official Languages in Education Program, which is tied to enrollments in programs such as French immersion. New Brunswick's Action Plan certainly doesn't seem to say anything about slashing immersion. Of course, that was the Lord government who negotiated this agreement - one wonders how federal officials will respond to the scorched earth approach proposed by Lamrock.

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French immersion, Special Education and Elitism

Try again, Kelly Lamrock. The latest line being spun by New Brunswick's Education Minister is that early French immersion needs to be cut in order to allow the province to devote more resources to children with special education needs, who are heavilly concentrated in the English-only stream.

Once again, the minister is muddled on cause and effect, and proposing a half-baked solution. He is certainly correct that children with special education needs are concentrated in the English-only stream, rather than in French immersion. But his explanation for why this situation exists is that Immersion is a program for the elite, and that children with special needs are streamed out of the program. The reality is somewhat different. Having spoken with French immersion and FSL teachers in New Brunswick, I know that the bigger problem is that the New Brunswick Department of Education has concentrated its special education specialists in the English-only program, and doesn't assign them, by and large, to French immersion schools. Teachers in the French immersion schools are therefore deprived of the resources to help address the needs of these children.

Studies of French immersion education, meanwhile, have determined that children with special needs can thrive in an immersion environment, if they are given comparable supports to those students in the English-only program. If Lamrock is truly committed to dealing with the apparent streaming of special needs students out of French immersion, he would find a way to dedicate more resources to special needs children in the immersion stream, so their parents would not have to switch them out. One way of making this possible, incidentally, would be through the federal grants provided to all provinces under the Official Languages in Education Program, which provides support for the additional costs associated with second language instruction and minority language education. New Brunswick could make a strong case for the financial costs of addressing these special needs in the immersion stream. Let's hope that someone in the province starts thinking creatively and logically about how to solve the very real problems in the education system, rather than adopting a slash-and-burn policy that could destroy the progress that has been made in the last four decades.

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"My job isn't to make people of doctorates feel good" - Kelly Lamrock

This quote, from New Brunswick's education minister in today's Globe and Mail seems to confirm my worst fears about what is driving the decision to can early French immersion in New Brunswick. While Lamrock goes on to say that his job is to "look at reports, all the information, and make a decision on what's best for all kids. That's what I've done," his anti-intellectual bias seems pretty clear from his recent statements.

If Lamrock were indeed looking at "all the information" he'd see that there is a strong consensus in favour of early immersion as a better route to language fluency than late immersion, and certainly very little support for a complete absence of second language instruction prior to grade 5. He would also see that almost every study done of English-language competencies of French immersion students shows that these students perform as well, if not better, than their counter-parts in the English-only stream once they reach Grade 4 (English is usually not introduced as a school subject in early immersion until after the first two years). So, much as opponents of immersion and bilingualism may rail against the supposed detrimental effects that immersion has on first language competencies, their grievances simply aren't borne out by the research!

And one more thing - Mr. Lamrock is wrong. His job is to make people with doctorates feel good. Otherwise, New Brunswick's universities and economy will continue to deteriorate. His government will have a hard time maintaining a stable university system if educated parents are increasingly fleeing the province in droves. It is hard enough to retain university-educated New Brunswickers. His decision is going to make things worse.

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French immersion and Core French in New Brunswick to be slashed

I'm shocked over the full extent of cuts to French-as-a-second-language instruction announced in New Brunswick today. Not only is the province doing away with its early immersion programs that commenced in Grade 1 (which had been hinted at earlier), but it's also slashing core French-as-a-second-language as well, delaying any introduction to the French language until Grade 5. Understandably, the official opposition and parents groups such as Canadian Parents for French are outraged. Canadian Parents for French New Brunswick has some very interesting and troubling observations about the report that led to this decision here.

I am gobsmacked by this decision. Virtually all of the studies that I've read on second-language acquisition stress the idea that it is best to start children as early as possible on their second language. But it appears that someone has managed to put a study on Education Minister Kelly Lamrock's desk that justifies his decision. I can't help but wonder if this is a cost-cutting measure disguised as a pedagogic decision. Itinerant FSL specialists who teach the core French courses represent an additional cost for school boards, who will now only have to pay for the regular teachers to give instruction in art and phys-ed. French immersion requires small class sizes, which again, can be expensive.

The stated rationale for the decision - that 91% of students who began French immersion had dropped out by the end of high school - doesn't necessarily strike me as a good reason to switch from early immersion to late immersion that starts in Grade 6. Rather, it suggests that there are more systemic problems with the manner in which the curriculum is structured. Indeed, one could just as easily make the case that large numbers of students drop math and science once they fulfill their high school requirements, and yet we aren't seeing proposals to remedy this situation by starting students in intensive math at the Grade 5 level.

There is something rotten in the province of New Brunswick, and it smacks of double-speak. Eliminating early exposure to the French language is highly unlikely to produce a province in which 70% of high school graduates speak fluent French. Quebec, after years of prohibiting English-as-a-second-language classes for francophone students prior to Grade 4, has finally returned to a system of starting second language classes in Grade 1. Why, one must ask, is New Brunswick heading in the other direction?

Update: It wasn't always like this in New Brunswick. For a bit of history on how the New Brunswick government once viewed French immersion, I've added this post.

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