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Our schools were a mess when it came to student learning in the last years of the Progressive Conservative reign and there are a few troubling signals the New Democrats are on the same path.

That said, Education Minister David Eggen is also saying a few hopeful things, including acknowledging there’s a problem.

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“Obviously, we want to turn it around in terms of math and language,” Eggen says.

It’s great to hear an Alberta education minister finally admit what has been apparent to many parents and teachers for years. Owning up to the bad results is a crucial step in fixing them.

But this is where the troubling signals come.

Educational lingo is always difficult to decode, but Eggen uses a lot of the same phrases as the misguided PCs. Just like the PCs, he talks about the need to focus on teaching “competencies” and in favour of “student-centred” learning.

And just like the PCs, we find Mark Ramsankar, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, which is the government’s full partner in its upcoming, full-scale curriculum rewrite, talking of the need to “slim down” the curriculum, saying what is now taught is “a mile wide but an inch deep.”