students – IPE/BC

Perspectives is an opportunity for Fellows and others to share their ideas in short, accessible essays. IPE/BC Fellows hold a range of views and interests relative to public education.

The Charter for Public Education project: Reflections from a parent on the panel

By Kathy Whittam

My experience as a panel member for the Charter for Public Education was a crash course in how public education works in BC and the many ways in which each community in this province is unique.

It now seems like our Charter journey was a lifetime ago. My stepson was in elementary school at the time. Later, as he was graduating from high school, my daughter began kindergarten. So, my partner and I got to engage with public education all over again. With my daughter now only a few years from finishing high school herself, I can say that public education has been a vastly different experience for each of them. But the big picture perspective I acquired while serving on the Charter panel certainly helped me as I navigated the school years with both.

The Charter experience was profound. I still reflect on all that I learned from the students, teachers, parents, trustees, principals, and community members who participated in the hearings. From a school library in Gibsons, to an auditorium in McBride, to a community hall in Haida Gwaii, to high school classrooms in Fort St John, and many places and spaces in between- each session was highly engaging and deeply meaningful.

Inevitably, the dialogues began with frustration about budget cuts, and the ways in which those in public education system were struggling as a result. But the discussion quickly turned to the goals of public education, the characteristics of an educated person and community, and what our public education system should be providing to learners of all ages. For me, it was always affirming to hear participants describe the role of education as being much broader than simply preparing students to be workers.

I have heard the Charter, created from these rich discussions, critiqued as “motherhood and apple pie” statements, but I struggle to see the problem with that. What could possibly be wrong with developing a positive vision of the public education system with the learners at the center, supported by a broad commitment by all to work together to help all learners reach their full potential?

How can the Charter be used for discussion and advocacy today? I believe it is still a powerful and effective tool, especially when we think about the pressing issues now facing us. The Charter includes the promise that, as a community, we will “prepare learners for a socially responsible life in a free and democratic society, to participate in a world which each generation will shape and build.”

For a truly sustainable future, we urgently need transformative action. It’s very important that all generations be involved in shaping and building a better “normal “than we have ever had before. This is a critical time, in fact, to explore the role of public education in preparing our kids for their part in creating that future.

The promises in the Charter are coupled with the expectation that government “be responsible for fully funding all aspects of a quality education”. What is meant by “fully fund” and “quality education”? Ideally, each community should have a community public school that:

is lead by a principal who is welcoming, supports the staff team, and partners with the community to build connections and opportunities for students.
has teachers and support staff who are passionate about helping their students learn and grow.
has a library in which students can relax, read, and enhance their literacy skills.
offers music, art, play & physical education to fully develop students intellectual, social, physical, and esthetic capacities.
supports families who are struggling so every child is nourished and able to learn and have fun.
is supported by trustees who advocate for the needs of their schools; and,
is provided with funding to meet those needs, so that staff and parents do not have to keep spending valuable time on fundraising and worrying about what is needed next.

It was clear from the engagement in the hearings that talking about what quality education means to us is time very well spent. This was true then and is still the case today. Equally so, the funding to give every student the support they need is money very well invested. Further, I believe that no single top-down approach can meet the needs of every district or community. Instead, it’s time for us to define the quality and support we’re looking for from the bottom up. Just imagine the potential in community members working together on behalf of the public schools in their district, collaborating to build a needs-based budget, identifying priorities, and defining the ways in which public education is key to the well being of their children and youth and their community overall.

As you can see, the Charter project had a significant impact on me. I feel certain that this was also the case for the many people throughout BC who took the time to engage and share their perspectives. I believe that the powerful process and outcome, the Charter for Public Education, have a great deal of wisdom to offer us today.

Kathy Whittam was a member of panel that conducted hearings in many communities around BC and drafted the Charter for Public Education document and report. She is a parent in Vancouver and has a deep commitment to inclusive, quality public education and progressive community engagement.

Perspectives is an opportunity for Fellows and others to share their ideas in short, accessible essays. IPE/BC Fellows hold a range of views and interests relative to public education.

Warning: Privacy concerns for students using cloud computing

By Larry Kuehn

The pandemic has surfaced concerns to which we should long have attended but mostly ignored. One of those is the dangers to the privacy rights of our students posed by cloud computing in our schools. Moving education online for several months has exacerbated these, and the use of technology will continue to expand, even as students return to physical classrooms.

Now an explosive report shouts for us to pay attention while there is still a chance to address the dangers to privacy. It is called “Troubling Clouds—Gaps Affecting Privacy Protection in British Columbia’s K-12 Education System.” The analysis was done by Matthew Levine for the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA). It is particularly timely, with its emphasis on Google’s role in education in the context of the U.S. anti-trust investigation of Google.

The report is available at https://fipa.bc.ca/category/libraries/publications/publication-topics/privacy/

Cloud computing is an all-encompassing aspect of much that we do these days. It is the processing and storing of many of our online activities carried out over the internet, all on server farms that hold the data in a few centers globally, with very few of those in Canada. An increasing number of educational activities are carried out digitally, largely on the cloud.

While online activities raise privacy concerns in the digital lives of all of us, privacy should be a particular worry in relationship to children. Privacy is not only a key element of freedom, but key to the development of autonomy as a person. Young people need the space to explore and develop, without the pressure of surveillance that will affect them the rest of their lives.

The FIPA report looks not just at concerns raised by cloud computing, but also details the use and impact of a particular platform—Google Education, used in many B.C. school districts. Google Education includes the familiar gmail, docs, and the like, but also “Google Classroom.” This is a “learning management system” providing for creating an online classroom, exchange of assignments, and maintaining a record on each student as well as facilitating communication with parents.

All these are necessary aspects of teaching, and Google Education apps and Classroom are “free” to cash-strapped school boards. What could possibly be the problem?

In the era of “surveillance capitalism,” the users of a “free” service (our children) are actually the product, producing data that is the basis of the creation of value and economic return. Google is the biggest player in this market. Google promises that it will not use student data to target ads to them, but it does not identify the other uses for the data. The data from hundreds of millions of students around the globe using Google Classroom—it is available in multiple languages—gives Google the largest collection of data on education which can be used to develop future products—data not available to researchers or educators.

That is the big picture concern. The FIPA report also outlines more specific concerns for individual students. BC legislation aims at protecting privacy and includes provisions that personal data not be held on servers outside of Canada. This is protection against invasive access provided by legislation elsewhere, particularly the U.S., where most data are held—although this protection was waived by Ministerial Order during the pandemic.

This is a concern not just about Google, but also about the many of educational apps and services that are available—both “free” and for a charge—that could be available in our classrooms. All these services, including Google, have user agreements and privacy statements that claim to inform. However, anyone who had tried to read one will know how difficult it is to make sense of what will actually happen with one’s data.

School districts recognize that many of the practices with education apps and the cloud do not meet the conditions required in privacy legislation. Their approach is to ask parents to sign an authorization that in effect waives the privacy rights of their child.

This is not good enough. When a parent signs an authorization, they are expressing trust in the school system to look after the interests of their child as they use these technologies in the cloud. The system is failing to live up to that trust in many of the practices in using technologies in education.

The FIPA report calls for action. The province needs to take responsibility for providing services—it already has infrastructure and expertise that should be available to the education system. The Privacy Commissioner should provide more guidance for the system on complying with the legislation and draw on international expertise available.

School districts should do privacy assessments on all services used, as well as provide training and support to teachers. Above all, they must seek valid, informed and meaningful consent from individuals, i.e. students and guardians, for use of any tools that may compromise privacy.

The protection of privacy is crucial in our increasingly cloud-based education environment.

Larry Kuehn is retired as Director of Research and Technology at the BC Teachers’ Federation. He is a member of the Board of the Institute for Public Education and a member of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association of BC.