Ashley Tisdale has been fighting Rocky View Schools administrators for three years over what she calls a lack of support for kids needing extra help, and a dearth of accountability and transparency. She has recently called for a top administrator to resign over questionable hiring practices, lack of leadership and overall incompetence.
Until recently she’s conducted a semi-private war, enlisting the support of a handful of like-minded parents and some teachers in writing emails, making phone calls, and attending meetings with administrators and the minister of education’s office.
The teachers she’s spoken to or emailed have so far declined to let their names be used publicly, for fear of retribution.
What she found out from her daughter’s Grade 3 teacher shocked her.
“Over half the class is a full grade behind in math – that was alarming to me,” she said.
She makes it clear the administrators are the problem, not the teachers.
Tisdale decided to take her fight into the open by going to the media a couple of weeks ago after a Cochrane teacher told her that her daughter’s struggles with fundamental math had deteriorated to the point where she often “cried silently at her desk.”
Her daughter is more than a year behind where she should be in math due to ongoing difficulties understanding some core principles, going back to Grade 1. She is not progressing. She is falling further behind each year.
The crux of Tisdale’s argument is elementary students – not just her daughter but many more – who may be falling behind in math or reading, can get caught in a downward spiral if they can’t catch up to the rest of the class by the end of the year, and if not addressed, the deficiencies just get passed along to the next grade, where students are at risk of falling even further behind.
The unavoidable end result of this vicious cycle, according to Tisdale, is the system pumps out students who may have technically completed Grade 12 on paper but still need help and remedial instruction at their own expense before pursuing post-secondary education.
Tisdale has a Master of Science in Literacy and sees the type of student the district is churning out every day in her job as a post-secondary instructor doing high school upgrading for adults. A lot of her students are high school dropouts. They pay $420 a month to get up to speed.
Tisdale sent Supt. Greg Luterbach an email in November, asking about Learning Support Teachers. In it she stated: “After calling each elementary school in Cochrane and speaking to your administrators, I found not a single person in this “specialist” job is certified or has an educational background in literacy or numeracy support. In fact, every person in these roles is a general education teacher therefore none of these schools offer intervention.”
Tisdale told Luterbach she was informed by the principal at her daughter’s school there is no money for academic learning support and Learning Support Teachers are “busy with behaviours.”
“It is evident that your leadership and direction of this division is ineffective, causing our children to suffer," Tisdale said. "You do not have any intervention to close early learning gaps, and you use systems proven to be ineffective.”
RVS turned down The Eagle request for interviews with Luterbach and also with the chair of the board. The communications department sent an email statement they said could be “attributed to Luterbach” saying: “The RVS Education Plan . . . is to advance students’ numeracy and literacy skills. We are committed to using proven, research-based, effective strategies to help students read, write and perform math. Our overall data indicates positive growth in both literacy and numeracy skills.
“While Rocky View Schools does not have a job title called interventionists, our teachers, school-based literacy coaches, learning support teachers, learning specialists and administrators work together to assist students who may need extra support to address learning gaps. Students are assessed using a variety of tools and we identify the students in need of these supports. This may include direct instruction, full class instruction, one-on-one support and small group instruction. Professional learning for our staff has also been extremely valuable, as has the purchase of classroom resources and supplies to implement literacy interventions.”
Tisdale said she often gets ‘non-responses’ from RVS administrators, or answers that contradict other board members.
“We’re just getting stonewalled," she stated. "No one wants to answer specific questions, no one wants to take responsibility. The board has no intention of addressing the issue.”
Parents the last to know – teachers forbidden from including assessments on report cards
The assistant principal at an Airdrie elementary school sent an email in May of 2023 to teachers reminding them of a directive from the RVS board stating they were not to include information on report cards telling parents their kids were below grade level with their reading or numeracy skills.
As an example of Tisdale’s frustration with the lack of transparency at RVS, she cites an email from board chair Fiona Gilbert dated five months after the above email, stating, ”I am not aware of any divisional mandate directing teachers not to share assessment information with parents.”
According to the Rocky View Schools Annual Education Results Report 2023/24, Grade 3 students falling behind grade level in the numeracy assessment were found to be five months behind on average. That data was collected for the first time in 2023.
The same report shows only 27 per cent of Grade 4 students identified as being at risk were at or above grade level for math. For Grade 9, that falls to 16 per cent.
In 2021, 74.7 per cent of RVS parents agreed students had access to appropriate supports and services at school. By 2024, that rating had dropped to 62 per cent.
According to teachers Tisdale has spoken to, there is no math support in her daughter’s school currently and they receive 25 minutes of support daily for language support.
“A support teacher has been coming in a couple times a week but she has been focusing on supporting us with emotional/behaviour and literacy needs at this time mostly,” reads the email from a Cochrane teacher to Tisdale.
She has also spoken to the principal at her daughter’s school on numerous occasions, confirming the situation as described by the teachers-- namely, there is no money for academic learning support and support teachers are “busy with behaviours;” so they are unable to provide the actual teaching support required.
