The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Shelley Svidal

The ATA News posed that question to Frank Bruseker as he headed into his sixth year as president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association.

Sitting back in his second-floor office in Barnett House, Bruseker is quick to identify "Real Learning First," the Association’s action plan on accountability, as a top priority. The 2008 Annual Representative Assembly approved $251,000 for implementation of the action plan, which focuses on Alberta Education’s overall approach to accountability and the way in which that approach tends to undermine teachers’ professional role in assessing and evaluating students.

"It really talks about what we think should be in place for evaluating student work and providing feedback and the whole notion of evaluation for learning as opposed to evaluation of learning," he says. "It’s something that teachers have been doing for years, and what we’re trying to convince the government to do now is to get in step with where we are as a profession."

The Association hopes to influence the government to change the provincial achievement testing program, beginning with Grade 3 achievement tests, Bruseker says. That process began this summer when the Association invited Minister of Education Dave Hancock to Summer Conference to listen to David Berliner, Regents Professor of Education at Arizona State University, describe an approach to student assessment, evaluation and reporting that focuses on improving learning opportunities. After hearing Berliner and chatting with delegates, Hancock now appears to recognize that, while Grade 3 achievement tests are useful in predicting which students will graduate from Grade 12, they are not useful when it comes to helping students succeed in school, Bruseker says.

He points out that, in 2006, Premier Ed Stelmach assigned then minister of education Ron Liepert three mandates—to initiate negotiations on options for a reasonable long-term solution to teachers’ unfunded pension liability, to explore options to provide children with access to early learning opportunities and to develop a strategy to improve Alberta’s high school completion rates. The latter two mandates remain outstanding, and according to research described in The Price We Pay: Economic and Social Consequences of Inadequate Education (2007), there are at least five significant actions the government should undertake to improve high school completion rates, Bruseker says.

First, it should complete the Class Size Initiative, ensuring that the class size targets recommended by Alberta’s Commission on Learning are achieved in kindergarten to Grade 3. Second, it should downsize high schools as research proves that smaller high schools have better graduation rates than "big warehouses where we pack 2,500 students in." Third, it should focus on early childhood intervention programs. Fourth, it should work with parents in the early grades. And fifth, it should increase teachers’ salaries.

Bruseker suggests that the achievement of five-year collective agreements across the province makes Hancock’s job easier. "We know how the pay increases will be achieved—through the average weekly earnings calculation—so any additional funding the government puts into education can go straight into classrooms to help students," Bruseker says. "That, I think, is a very powerful argument for the minister of education to use with his colleagues and provides a real opportunity for us to work on improving the education system across the province, which, of course, is part of our mandate under the Teaching Profession Act."

Bruseker has attended three meetings of the Alberta Education/ATA Consultation Committee established under the memorandum of agreement to discuss issues related to the stability of the education system, enhancement of professional practice and strengthening of the relationship between the Association and the government. In addition to Bruseker, the committee consists of Hancock, Deputy Minister of Education Keray Henke and Association Executive Secretary Gordon Thomas. To date, the committee has discussed two issues—Grade 3 achievement tests and marketing the teaching profession to attract and retain the teachers Alberta will need in the coming years. Bruseker points out that not only are school jurisdictions currently facing teacher shortages at some grade levels and in some subject areas but the Association also expects to lose almost one-third of its members to retirement over the next five years.

Already, the Association is seeing a real growth in demand for its Beginning Teachers’ Conferences. At the Beginning Teachers’ Conference held in Edmonton last month, Bruseker sat down with a group of beginning teachers only to discover there was only one native-born Albertan in the group. Both the province and the profession are changing, he says, and Alberta universities cannot keep pace with the demand. More teachers are coming to Alberta from other provinces, especially the Maritimes, and the trend shows no signs of abating. Government and the profession must focus on retention as well as recruitment of beginning teachers.

Bruseker has worked with four ministers of education during his tenure as Association president. He has given each of the four—Lyle Oberg, Gene Zwozdesky, Liepert and Hancock—a three-part recipe for success. "Make sure that our pay keeps pace with or slightly ahead of inflation, solve the pension issue and ensure that classroom conditions are what teachers and students both need to have optimum learning conditions. If you look after those three things—pay, pensions and classroom conditions—you will have happy teachers going off to school and working with their students, and you’ll see the success rates improving," Bruseker told them.

"Pay is something that is settled for now at least, and 97.5 per cent of teachers voted in favour of that formula. The pension issue has been resolved. But what we still need to work on is classroom conditions. Do we have the resources in the classrooms in terms of textbooks, reading materials, maps, laboratory equipment for science, manipulatives in math and that sort of thing? Do we have the teacher aides? Do we have the librarians and the guidance counsellors? That’s where we, as an Association and with government, really need to focus our efforts in order to build that third limb of the tripod of pay, pensions and classroom conditions to get a really first-rate education system."

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