2020 11 04

Honourable Adriana LaGrange

Minister of Education
228 Legislature Building
10800 97 Avenue
Edmonton AB T5K 2B6

Dear Minister LaGrange

In my letter of October 1, 2020, I outlined some of Alberta teachers’ concerns with curriculum
processes and other education matters, seeking an opportunity to discuss these matters with
you personally. I reported to the Association’s Provincial Executive Council at its meeting of
October 23–24, 2020 the content of your letter of October 6 in which you indicated that a
meeting with stakeholders would occur at a future date and that the Association would be
invited to participate.

At that meeting, Provincial Executive Council passed the following motion:

That, while recognizing the authority of the Minister of Education to set the Alberta
Programs of Studies, the Association express on behalf of the teachers of Alberta its lack of
confidence in the processes for curriculum development introduced by the Minister of
Education and calls upon the Minister to:
1. Restore the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of
Alberta (Minister of Education) and the Alberta Teachers’ Association that
established a partnership to advance provincial curriculum development;
2. Recognize the central importance of pedagogical considerations grounded in
research in teaching and learning in the design of effective curriculum;
3. Affirm that Curriculum Working Groups will be convened to consider all changes
to previous curriculum drafts and have the latitude in their recommendations to the
Minister to accept, modify or reject, in part or in whole, recommendations made by
members of the Curriculum Advisory Panel affecting the draft curriculum;
4. Affirm that Curriculum Working Groups will have the latitude in their
recommendations to the Minister to accept, modify or reject in part or in whole
modifications made to the draft curriculum by department officials since the last
submission of the Curriculum Working Groups;

. . . continued
LaGrange, 2020 11 04, p 2

5. Affirm that all drafts, support materials, general information and recommendations
provided to the Curriculum Working Groups be publicly released at the time they
are provided to the Curriculum Working Groups;
6. Affirm that all recommendations and submissions made of the Curriculum Working
Groups to the Minister will be publicly released at the time they are submitted.

You will appreciate that the motion reflects the deeply held concerns of teachers regarding the
process and particularly with recommendations that were recently highlighted in news reports
about the submissions made by certain “experts” engaged by your ministry to advise
curriculum development.

In the legislature you have stated that “Frankly, some of these recommendations just aren't
even realistic, especially at the ages that are suggested.” This is hardly a ringing endorsement
of the curriculum advice you are receiving through the process that you yourself put into place.
Your apparent misgivings are shared widely by Albertans, 15,000 of whom, in just over one
week, put their signature to an online petition calling for you to reject the directions being
advocated by Chris Champion and William French, two of the content experts named by your
government to guide curriculum development. Prominent education experts within and outside
the province have also voiced their concerns, noting that the advice that has come to light so
far is not representative of current scholarship.

The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) believes that the best means of maintaining the
culture of educational excellence for which this province is known and celebrated is through
fostering a positive working relationship between the teachers of Alberta as represented by the
ATA and the Government of Alberta. In the past this relationship has been maintained by
successive governments of various political stripes. In this spirit, you will note that Provincial
Executive Council is calling upon you to restore the collaborative partnership that had
previously been established through the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding and that resulted
in the development of draft programs of study that received extraordinary praise from teachers,
parents, academics and the general public of Alberta. The participation of the Association, as
the professional organization representing teachers provides for the effective communication
with and consideration by the real curriculum experts who will have to live and work, day to
day, with the outcome of this process: real classroom teachers.

You and officials in your department have gone to great lengths to state that all the
recommendations would be considered by the Curriculum Working Groups. Further, you have
stated that these groups would be called together to consider the final draft of the program of
studies. Provincial Executive Council is also calling on you to articulate more clearly this
commitment by explicitly guaranteeing that the work of the Curriculum Working Groups will
be entirely transparent. This includes releasing the full set of recommendations made by your
“expert” advisors along with any curriculum rewrites that may have been undertaken by the
department since the last draft was released. Finally, Provincial Executive Council is calling
upon you to ensure that all subsequent recommendations arising out of the Curriculum
Working Groups will be released in their entirety.

. . . continued
LaGrange, 2020 11 04, p 3

Minister, the teachers of Alberta, through their elected representatives, are simply requesting
that they be meaningfully consulted and that some deference be paid to both their practical
expertise and close engagement with curriculum. We are offering to help. We are also
requesting that all processes to arrive at a final curriculum document be fully visible to all
Albertans.

These are entirely reasonable calls to action and your acceptance would go a long way toward
restoring legitimacy to a process that has been damaged and risks being discredited because of
your previous decisions. There is still time and opportunity to do this right.

It is of utmost importance that you act quickly and decisively on this matter in order to restore
the confidence of Alberta’s teachers and that of Albertans in general, in your curriculum
review and drafting process. Teachers are undeniably key to the success of curriculum. They
bring life to the pages of the programs of study as they go about engaging students in their
learning. The contents of this letter are far too important to be ignored and are not appropriate
for discussion at some multi-stakeholder meeting to be held sometime in the indefinite future.

I would have much preferred to communicate all this to you personally, however you have not
been recently disposed to pursuing that approach. Please know that I remain available to meet
with you personally on this issue or with respect to any other issues affecting public education
in the province.

Sincerely

Jason Schilling
President

JCS/mm
cc André Corbould, Deputy Minister, Alberta Education
Provincial Executive Council
Executive Staff