A great site for families looking into “voting mathematics” is www.votepair.ca. The actual purpose of this site is to arrange strategic “vote swapping,” but the arguments presented in favour of this controversial practice (and the comments left by visitors to the site) really do illuminate the issues with our current election model.

While I’m neither encouraging nor discouraging the practice of strategic vote swapping, the mere fact that this practice exists speaks volumes about the practicalities of the current system, and of course, about statistics!

I thought I’d blog about this site because this is just one passionate, dedicated voter running the site out of his home who has made a list of how people could help him out.  One request was for:

Content. Need more engaging, visual content on voting reform and the pair process. Interested in posting stories that illustrate the problems with current electoral system as they surface in the media. Two have been posted on the blog, need lots more.

So, I figured that if your family ended up taking this voting math seriously and wanted to do some interesting research/analysis/models . . . then why not send it to Gerry for inclusion on his website?  It’s not necessarily about supporting his cause; it’s about an educational experience, and educating the public.

Gerry also asked for help with:

 Vote pairing process. Need to finalize exactly how this is going to work. I’ve got a plan, but can use some feedback. Need to get data on strategic voting ridings. Also concerns about phony registrants to think about.

What could be more mathematically delicious then designing a vote-swapping system?!  Tell him you’re a homeschooling family (or co-op) and would like to get the kids involved in this.  Gerry made a point of saying:

To get more involved, email pairvote@gmail.com and let me know what interests you. I’m more interested in a willingness to participate than in ability or experience. Heck, I’m learning lots on-the-job, and so can you.

Again, you need not agree with the goals of the site to get something out of the exercise.  It just occured to me that some families might be doing some really cool math work at home regarding the election.  If it can be put to good use and help voters make informed decisions, then why not?

Also feel free to leave in the comments below how you’re incorporating the mathematics of voting into your homeschooling studies.

McGuinty says studies show that 4-year-olds in full-time learning programs consistently score higher in math and language skills than other students.

If you measure it, they will come

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Yes, we can demonstrate that starting school earlier leads to measurably better performance in school, which may or may not have anything to do with actual academic achievement. The longer you play a game, the better you become at that game. I played a lot of “Frogger” as a kid, but any one who knows me personally can attest to the fact that I have an unexplained fear of crossing streets. Obviously, my skills at maneuvering a pixelated frog through traffic did nothing to bolster my own confidence in crossing the road.

The same can be said about starting kids in school earlier. Yes, they’ll get the hang of spelling tests earlier, perhaps. But, will they become better spellers, or just better at predicting which 10 words the teacher will use in Friday’s dictation? Will they become better readers, or will they learn to choose shorter books so that their list of books read becomes longer more quickly? Some kids easily learn these coping mechanisms, or “rules of the game” which can overshadow or even replace real learning.

More school hurting those who need it most?

Check out the latest offering by Kate Tennier and Helen Ward: More school isn’t always better – “The drive for full-time kindergarten is based on the idea that it’s better for children and necessary for parents — wrong on both counts.” This latest educational scam (which unfortunately was overshadowed in the last provincial election by the Conservative private school funding platform) is still years away from being a done deal.

More school isn’t better. And, that’s not just me talking. With a few hours to kill at the airport last night, I finally got around to reading, in its entirety, Homeschooling: From Extreme to the Mainstream. Contrary to the idea that public schools help level the playing field for the disadvantaged,

Surprisingly, several studies have found that home education may help eliminate the potential negative effects of certain socio-economic factors. . . Home education appears to mitigate the harmful effect of low parental education levels. That is, public schools seem to educate children of poorly educated parents worse than do the poorly educated parents themselves. One study found that students taught at home by mothers who had never finished high school scored a full 55 percentile points higher than public school students from families with comparable education levels.

I think this is one of the most powerful messages of the report because homeschooling is often regarded as an option for the advantaged – either financially or academically. Much of the support for the public system rallies around the necessity to care for the disadvantaged. To be “the great equalizer.” But, it’s never been clearer that our schools are not doing that. And, more time in those schools is not going to do that, either.

As always, we are indebted to Kate, Helen and others who refuse to let us forget that politicians and bureaucrats continue to move forward with bad ideas unless they are stopped, and that we must remain vigilant in keeping the conversations alive. Thanks to them for keeping a very important issue in the public eye.

This morning, I read through comment after comment posted to the Toronto Star’s website indicating that Tory’s platform was a “deal breaker” and that it alone will cause several voters to vote Liberal. I wish that before they did, they’d read Kate’s latest article published in at least two local papers, then decide for themselves which is the lesser of two evils. One will erode the public pocketbook and stands to reduce educational choice by injecting the state into religious education; the other will rob children of meaningful social interaction at a time of key cognitive development.

Please read Kate’s article here and encourage informed debate on these parties’ educational platforms. (And don’t forget there are several other Ontario parties to consider, too!)

With the upcoming Ontario election, the Conservative provincial leader John Tory has decided to make parity of religious funding at the top of his campaign agenda. I only take this issue half-seriously since within his own party he doesn’t even seem to have a lot of support for the idea. So, I don’t expect this to come to fruition, but being kind of a “big deal” I thought it would be interesting to consider the unintended consequences of such a funding policy.

Again, since i don’t even think of it as a serious possibility, I don’t really feel like it’s worth the mental effort to take a vested interest one way or the other. So, I haven’t seriously considered the issue the way most are discussing it. I don’t see public schools as models of unity and tolerance, so I don’t much cling to the idea that our public schools are somehow sacred institutions; I don’t see them as something worthy of funding while private institutions are eroding our social fabric. I also don’t totally buy the “fund one, fund them all” issue because equality isn’t as simple as “treating everyone the same.” And, for a third time, I really don’t think this idea will take off, so I don’t care about debating the two “sides” as we’ve seen them presented in the media.

So, if I’m so uninterested in this issue, why write about it? Because what is terribly fun, interesting and exciting about the thought of this policy actually finding its way into our government is picturing how this would completely shake the foundation of the system we have now.

Thought #1. Why has no one (or have I just not read/listened carefully enough) brought up the fact that religious schools, by very definition according to our current model of education, are private schools. I could almost care less about whether or not a school is deemed religious. What I do care about is putting public money in private pockets. If religious schools want funding, I’d be happy to give it to them through a Board of Education that works the same way our public and Catholic boards work. (Note: Of course, I’m not suggesting that I like boards of education. But, if government money is going to flow, it should flow consistently.) I actually have no problems with a Jewish Board of Ed. (One of my former-students-turned-good-friends informs me that there already is such a thing, but it’s just not public. Looking at the Jewish schools in Toronto, I can believe they’ve got such an infrastructure already in place.) Bottom line is, I’m intimately familiar with private schools. There is absolutely no way I could sleep at night knowing the government was giving money to them.

Could you imagine the outrage if some private schools received student funding and others didn’t? And, it’s the secular private schools, who perhaps more closely resemble the public schools (at least in their secularness and separation of church and state) who would not receive the funding. This just doesn’t seem right.

Thought #2: What’s the criteria for designating a school as “religious?” A couple of religious instruction courses? Religious ceremonies on school property? A letter from a religious official? Imagine your typical small Toronto private school who’s competing for students. The religious school down the street can offer significantly reduced, if not free, tuition. What’s to stop any school from holding a religious class or two and then calling themselves a religious school to get the funding? (Joe asks what’s necessarily wrong with that, but I’ve gotta think there are people who might find that offensive. I do, in principle, and I’m not even religious.) Take it one step further, what’s to stop a school from finding an “easy” religion (by this I mean an obscure believe system from Wikipedia that has few, if any, “rules” or “practices” so that it would be easy to say you’re following that religion) and claiming funding? What’s to stop someone from establishing their own religion then creating a school to “worship” those beliefs?

Thought #3: I actually support the existence of religious schools in the sense that I support everyone’s right to choose the education they want for their children. Perhaps because so many of my personal beliefs are rooted in personal freedoms, I want to believe there will be schools that will refuse funding, and the strings attached, in the event that it’s offered. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that I’m suspicious of the schools who want the funding. When a school, founded on particular beliefs that require it to differentiate itself from a public school, willingly conforms to the same regulations as public schools in exchange for money, it sends the message that the money is more important than the beliefs. This is perhaps another example of me holding people to unreasonable high standards of behaviour. And, I’m sure there are some religious schools out there that are really not that much different from their local public school in their main aspects. So, it’s perhaps not a huge philosophical change to conform to the strings attached to the government funding. I just have a difficult time envisioning how schools that are currently free in many respects would willingly enslave themselves to more restrictions, if they really valued themselves as something different from the public system.

Thought #4: Obviously, the schools with funding will be in a better financial position than the school without. Will this increase conformity? Will more schools feel the pressure to more closely align with the public system in order to receive public money? It would stand to reason that the schools who choose to remain independent are in danger of losing students to cheaper or free alternatives. Will it become more difficult to run or establish a non-religious private school? Will we be left with fewer educational choices?

I’ve always been interested in the mathematics of voting, perhaps even more so than in the election results themselves. A wonderful math activity is to learn about the upcoming Ontario referendum on electoral reform and then use past election data to see how or whether the proposed changes would have affected the outcomes of past elections. You can also find information on other voting systems (using a sample lesson plan with activity sheets or a web-based lecture for example) and discuss concepts such as strategic voting, fairness and representation.

I hope you have as much fun on Oct. 10, 2007 as I do!