Proposed fall break a hot topic for Edmonton parents
An Edmonton Public Schools’ survey that asks if students should sacrifice a week of summer holidays in exchange for a fall break has prompted record response from the public, says a school division spokeswoman. Nearly 4,500 people have answered the online survey since it opened Oct. 14, Jane Sterling said Tuesday.

City schools count up the cash
Edmonton’s two main school boards found out they will immediately receive a total of $18.6 million in new money out of the $107 million in education funding Premier Alison Redford restored this week.

Also worth noting:

Tidy test scores not true indicators of real learning – Letters to Editor –  The Edmonton Journal
Our new Premier Alison Redford has committed to ending Grade 3 and 6 provincial achievement exams while offering “regular but sensitive measurements of academic performance and expected outcomes.” The case against standardized testing goes something like this: it’s not that standardized test scores don’t tell us anything. A child’s test score is a reliable and accurate way of assessing the size of the houses near a school. This means that too many tests are reporting on what children bring to school and not necessarily what they learn at school. It’s also important to note that a correct answer on a test does not necessarily signal understanding, and a wrong answer does not necessarily signal an absence of understanding. Real learning is really messy. Standardized tests are nothing if not tidy. See the problem? The bane of reducing learning to a test score is that it inevitably overvalues whatever can be quantified and undervalues what cannot. This is why any attempt to reduce learning to numbers is at best unhelpful and at worst harmful, and anyone who calls the process of reducing the messiness of teaching and learning to a tidy test score a “public service” is neglectfully ignorant, wilfully blind or outright lying.  -  Joe Bower, Red Deer

We want to see new hires – Letters to Editor – The Edmonton Journal
Re: “City schools count up the cash; Restored $18.6M in provincial funds expected to have tangible impact in system, minister says,” The Journal, Oct. 15. I was delighted to see that Alberta Education is going to hold school boards accountable for these new funds and that more teachers will be in classrooms. As of Oct. 15, about 15 per cent of the school year has been completed. Since this money is coming later in the school year, boards will even be able to add more teachers than if these teachers started on the first day of school. Albertans want to see that this new money results in more teachers in classrooms. Why not post on Alberta Education’s website the amount of money each school board receives, the number of new teachers hired and the number of new classrooms since Sept. 1?  – Gary Marcellus, retired teacher, Edmonton