Education Action: Toronto

In the wake of unprecedented anti-union legislation many Wisconsin teachers are starting the 2011 school year without the right negotiate future collective agreements for anything other than salaries, which will leave them with no mechanism or organized voice to speak on behalf of the needs of the students they teach. This is thanks to the passage of the Budget Repair Bill, (now referred to as Act 10) introduced by the state’s Republican Governor, Scott Walker.

Well the dust has settled in the Ontario . Thank heaven for small mercies, the Tories, who had a huge lead in the spring, totally blew it and allowed the McGuinty Liberals to squeeze out a minority government missing a majority by one seat. Both Hudak the Tory and Horwath the NDP leader substantially improved their seat count at the Liberal expense but neither could deliver the knock-out punch.

A round of nine public P.A.R.T. meetings, held in rapid succession this fall announced the arrival of 10 Elementary Alternative Learning Opportunity (EALO) schools. At most of the meetings, TDSB staff outnumbered any parents and community members who came. Interestingly, in every meeting, the same explanation was given for why each site had been especially selected to receive its new program. It was because the site had enough space to accommodate it. Two of the schools selected, Shoreham P.S. in Jane-Finch and Highland Jr. P.S. in Scarborough, had narrowly escaped closure when they were involved previously in unsuccessful A.R.C.s

Love them or hate them, the proposals collectively known as “school reform” are mostly top-down policies: divert public money to quasi-private charter schools, pit states against one another in a race for federal education dollars, offer rewards when test scores go up, fire the teachers or close the schools when they don’t.

Implementing the IPRC process in the middle and higher elementary grades does not reflect the more recent philosophy of early interventions. Current educational research cautions that by the middle years of elementary school, changing ‘at risk’ status can be quite difficult (Alexander, Entwistle, & Kabbani, 2001). Moreover, the relative inactivity of the IPRC process in the secondary panel, while acceptable in the 1970’s when most students did not finish high school, is less practical in today’s excelling educational environment. There is an expectation of stability in the current IPRC system. Focusing on identification in the middle years of elementary school works best in a system where students will continue in the same schools in elementary and then progress into board secondary schools. Student mobility is has become a trademark of the TDSB, where a majority of students in Grade 12 started their education outside the board.

Committee Reports are often not fascinating reading, Yet, the 2010 TDSB Draft Report of the Achievement Gap Task Force came out with an unexpected zinger when it spoke about so-called “racialized groups” of students across Toronto. As it said, an
“…achievement gap for these groups has existed since the 1980’s.These students have the lowest family income levels and are more likely to live in the most socio-economically disadvantaged areas of the city.”
What a truly pitiable situation! After 30 years it is the same result. Surely this cries out for something beyond system tweaks and some new programs.

The timing couldn’t have been better.

Fed up with the gradual strangulation of pedagogy in the service of politics across the United States, five thousand people rallied in Washington this weekend calling for an end to standardized testing and other polices diminishing public education. Organized by the parents’ and educators’ group Save Our Schools the rally was part of a 4 day series of workshops bearing titles like “Winning the Testing War” and “Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline.”

For over a decade we have watched the corporatization of schools and fierce economic rationalism that entails. In Ontario successive governments vastly increased the size and inaccessibility of school boards as they reduced the power and usefulness of the people elected to oversee them.

Teachers know that results on high-stakes testing are not a fair indicator of school success. Schools don’t teach just numeracy and literacy. And, by any estimate, these subject areas don’t represent more than a fraction of the curriculum.
Although no teacher would be foolish enough to claim that exams in two subject areas represent the sum of a child’s learning in all subjects over three years, this is what is sold to the public by both the government and the media. The government boasts about improved Education and Quality Accountability Office (EQAO) results; oversimplified headlines and sound bites do the rest.
From Education Forum Click here to read the rest of Gord Bambrick’s article

by Janet Bojti

Program Area Review Team committees (P.A.R.T.s) and Accommodation Review Committees (A.R.C.s) were few in number from Sept 2010 to June 2011 when compared to the previous year. The TDSB reduced activity to stall the process until after the Provincial Election on Oct. 6th, 2011 in the hopes of eliminating the importance of school closings as an election issue. Toronto neighbourhoods can look forward to an onslaught of school closings in 2012.

By David Clandfield
This is the first of a series of articles on education finance and governance policy in Toronto that will eventually be worked into book form for Education Action: Toronto.

On my walk home from a doctor’s appointment one morning recently, I passed two inner city schools of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). One carried a big billboard announcing the school’s Facilities Renewal program (in a 10-year-old building with a 7-year-old yard). The words “Investing in Children” leapt from the billboard in bold type. Justification for spending taxpayers’ money on school buildings? The other carried a big announcement about an upcoming PART meeting for its family of schools. The TDSB’s Program Area Review Team process (the acronym was not explained on the notice) involves public consultation meetings to help the Board re-organize its programs in a group of neighbourhood schools. The process is viewed by many as the harbinger of a decision to close one of the schools in the group. That school building and its grounds can then be leased out or sold off. Saving taxpayers’ money by cashing in the investment in children?