The Alberta Teachers’ Association

When Premier Alison ­Redford unveiled her new cabinet last spring, Jeff Johnson, MLA for Athabasca–Sturgeon–Redwater, was named Alberta’s new minister of education. He may be new to the education portfolio, but Johnson previously served as minister of infrastructure and as parliamentary assistant to the president of the Treasury Board (Oil Sands Sustainable Development Secretariat). Most notably, he gained valuable experience as cochair of the Inspiring Education steering committee.

Prior to his election as MLA in 2008, Johnson was owner and president of a Xerox sales agency, where he was three times named the Xerox Canada Agent of the Year and was one of six members appointed to the National Agent Council. He was also successful in coaching and managing junior and postcollege hockey teams.

Today, Johnson is tracking what he believes will be the priorities and challenges in Alberta education over the next few years. In the short term, he says he is following up on promises made during the election, most notably investing in schools, continuing discussions with the ATA and the Alberta School Boards Association (ASBA) at the tripartite table, and achieving a long-term provincewide agreement between teachers and school boards (editor’s note: this interview was conducted prior to the October 31 tripartite discussion deadline). He is also shepherding the proposed Education Act through the fall legislature, with adjustments to ensure that it is the best possible legislation. In the long term, Johnson hopes to keep moving forward on transformation and Inspiring Education, as well as ensuring that the most fundamental piece of education—having high-quality educators in front of kids—is maintained.

The ATA News asked Minister Johnson to share his thoughts about some areas of particular concern to teachers and the ATA.

We have a number of strengths, including strong curriculum and assessment practices. We just have to continually improve on those. And curriculum is going to change as we move into the Inspiring Education era, and ­assessment will change along with that, but that’s a process of continual improvement. Obviously, another strength is the quality of our teachers. The funding levels for education in Alberta dwarf any other province. It doesn’t matter if you look at it on a per student basis or per capita basis, or how much we pay teachers, we’re a leader in Canada and a leader in the world. Choice is also a strength; parents will tell you that they value the choices that they have in Alberta, and we need to make sure that that choice continues so we can ensure the system is relevant for parents and kids, because every kid in every community is different.

The committee had a very specific mandate to go out and engage all Albertans, not just what we think of as the traditional stakeholders in education. When I say that, everyone thinks of trustees, parents, students and teachers, but we don’t always think of the senior citizen or the fellow that pumps gas or all of our employers. Every Albertan has a stake in our education system. That was one of the foundational pieces that Mr Hancock gave us as a mandate. The second thing was to find what an educated Albertan looks like in 2023. The third big piece was, now [that] you’ve defined where we need to be in 20 years, tell us what we need to change to get there.

My desire is to see another long-term deal. Because we all know how valuable good teachers are, we want the best teachers in front of our kids. We want to be focused on the kids, and the learning experience, and preparing teachers to be the best they can. In my mind, it’s counterproductive to have 62 different agreements that are renewing every year or every second year, and then that becomes the big focus for school boards and teachers, rather than working on the things that should be our core business. The kids, the learning experience, partnerships and collaborations with the community, employers, postsecondary institutions—these are the places we should be ­concentrating our efforts.

Albertans need assurance that the system and people within the system are doing what they expect them to do. It’s important to have some kind of measurement or standardized assessment to obtain that assurance. The recent "no zero" dialogue points to the fact that every kid in every community is different, and every teacher is different and can have different ideas of how to assess. So there isn’t a one-size-fits-all. Now, what that assessment looks like and how it’s delivered and by whom, we are still trying to work through. There is recognition from the premier and myself that the PATs in their current form are not appropriate. In the future, you will not see the PATs in their current form. I don’t believe the 3, 6 and 9 PATs will all be eliminated at once. I think it’ll be something we phase in as we become better at assessing in line with the new Inspiring Education curriculum.

We always want to hear from the Association and are open to discussing concerns on any matter. Charter schools were created some time ago with the mindset that they would fill a role of potential innovation in the system. The bigger concern for me is how can we take the potential pockets of innovation that are occurring all over the province and plug them into the system? I don’t think we have a clear mechanism to capture these things across the board.