Shahriar Behmanesh on Facebook Shahriar Behmanesh
Biography
This is a reality that is palpable to parents and teachers, but it is also corroborated by the numbers. In the last 10 years, B.C. has seen the fastest decline in learning in Canada, especially with regards to language and math proficiency.
At the same time, education inequality keeps increasing; the difference between the top and bottom student has never been wider. SD73 is not immune to these trends. I would be the first one to tell you that a meaningful education goes far beyond test scores. What it represents is far more consequential.
We have small window in children’s most formative years to develop their critical thinking skills, aptitude, work ethic and conscientiousness, not only to better their own lives but make a meaningful contribution to society. There is a human element here. When children can’t read or do basic math, we have failed collectively.
These outcomes did not come out of the blue. They were proceeded directly by top-down changes. We need a school board, superintendent down, that supports appropriate learning standards and guided education. Our advocacy needs to be focused on returning to knowledge and outcome-based education. The number one priority of the schools should be learning.
Reason for running
As your school trustee, I will engage the school board to make two broad changes:
a) Although I have been very critical of the curriculum changes that were made 10 years ago, there are private schools, including ones in Kamloops, that do a very good job teaching using B.C. curriculum because of how they approach it. The new curriculum lacks adequate “prescribed modules” and clear indication on learning standards. Operationally from the superintended down, we need to prioritize appropriate learning standards and guided education. Where possible, we need to provide proper assessments to find students falling behind and provide support.
b) Our advocacy with the ministry needs to be lasered in on explaining why our proficiency is falling so rapidly. For several years now, the ministry requires the districts to write a learning report showing trends in scores and what we are doing about it. We need to explicitly indicate in these learning reports that the drop in scores occurred right after the ministry made these changes. No amount of learning reports is going to change that, and all the money we spend on literacy and numeracy programs since then have been necessary Band-Aids. Just as we advocate for capital funding and special-needs education funding, we need to advocate to obvious changes from the ministry that will improve learning for all our students.
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