A Message From Education Action: Toronto

May 19, 2010

A Somali Community Needs Our Help

     For the last 10 years a Queen's Plate Drive community in Etobicoke North - a mostly Somali community - has experienced one of the most blatant examples of social class and racist restructuring of school boundaries we have witnessed in this city. As they tell us in their flyer attached below, it's the kind of thing we might expect "in places like South Africa and Mississippi. We don't expect it in 'multicultural' Toronto."

     In the flyer, the community asks us to join them in a protest at the Toronto District School Board at 6:00 pm, Wednesday, June 23, 2010. They are asking us to "say NO" to the "segregation and hardships" they have experienced in losing their neighbourhood school and to "say YES to genuine social class and racial diversity in public education."

     This is an issue we cannot back away from, if we care at all about social justice in our school system. Please join this community at the TDSB on June 23.

Click HERE to download our Queen's Plate flyer.

    
Alternative Summits

     As we noted in our last message, as part of the Premier's continued assault on public education in Ontario - part of the cutbacks, the centralized micromanaging, and the imposition of a fragmented "human capital" curriculum policed by standardized tests - he has invited four of world's most aggressive standardized-testers and privatizers to a Education Summit in Toronto in September, 2010: Michael Fullan, Michael Barber, Arne Duncan and Andreas Schleicher.

     We want to encourage you all to set up Alternative Summits to the one the Premier is planning - on your street, in your neighbourhood, in your local school council, in community organizations, among groups of students, parents, teachers, school board workers, community activists, in teacher and school board worker unions, throughout the labour movement, wherever there are people who care about what happens to our kids. Figure out what you don't like about what the Premier is offering and come up with your own alternatives. Let others know what you're thinking and send us a copy. We hope to have a website up on this subject by September.

     To help in the discussion at these Alternative Summits, we are going to pass on material dealing with the neo-liberal agenda supported by these four education bureaucrats. Here are two articles we hope you find useful:

     In the first article, Stan Karp looks at the current Barack Obama/Arne Duncan federal education policy, which involves "linking test scores to teacher evaluation and compensation, rapid expansion of charter schools, development of data systems that facilitate remote control of schools and classrooms, and aggressive intervention for schools with low test scores, including closures, firing of staff, and various forms of state and private takeovers." He reminds us that "Duncan's former Chicago boss Paul Valles presided over the reconstitution of the [New Orleans] devastated school system as a grossly unequal network of semi-privatized charters with selective admissions and less privileged Recovery District Schools with class sizes twice as large. Students are no longer guaranteed placement in any school....In a January 2010 interview, Duncan declared, "Let me be really honest. I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that 'we have to do better.'" It is worth noting that Michael Fullan (Premier McGuinty's chief education advisor) was a major player in this "reconstitution" of the New Orleans school system.

Click HERE to download Stan Karp's article.

     In the second article, James Lovett examines the neo-liberal agenda of Michael Barber and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He writes that "the OECD is a global economic think-tank which, though it has not been elected by anyone, uses the combined might of global corporations to heavily influence both economic and social policy throughout the world in favour of creating a more profitable environment for transnational corporations. The OECD's impact," Lovett argues, "is nowhere more evident than in its influence over education reform. While the OECD appears to be strictly concerned with 'school improvement,' all the specific 'improvements,' which come from it are geared towards neo-liberalism: the free trade of education as a commodity on an open market. Writing for the OECD Observer in 2005, Michael Barber, then chief advisor to Tony Blair, provided a typical justification and roadmap for the kinds of reforms that global education agencies, such as McKinsey's Global Education Practice, which Barber now heads, find profitable. It is an agenda for privatization...." It is also an agenda now making a very powerful impact on Ontario schools. Lovett notes that Barber considers Michael Fullan a mentor, while Andreas Schleicher, it is worth mentioning, is the head of indicators and analysis at the OECD's directorate for education.     

Click HERE to download James Lovett's article.

     There are two things, then, we are asking of you.

     Take the time to join the Queen's Plate Somali community in their protest on June 23 at the TDSB. They really need our support if they are to push back the assault on their kids these past 10 years.

     And help us think through our resistance to McGuinty's Education Summit -- by building your own Alternative Summit (however small) or by helping others build one and trying to make it as large as possible.

     In solidarity,

     George Martell and Faduma Mohamed
     Co-chairs Education Action: Toronto


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1698 Gerrard St. East,
Toronto, On. M4L 2B2