A Message from
Education Action: Toronto


February 22, 2012
Deconstructing Drummond
Rising Tuition Fees in Ontario
Enrolment: a Key Issue for School Closings
Fees and Fundraising widening the Opportunity Gap at the TDSB
Bureaucratic Overviews at the Ministry and the TDSB
The New Face of Special Ed for Poor and Racialized Students
Lessons in Equity and Excellence from the Finns
Dear Friends,

With the recommendations of the Drummond Report now in front us – ushering in a new era of provincial "austerity" – we are guaranteed even higher levels of education cutbacks and private costs to parents and students. We are attaching a number of documents – brought together through the newly formed Ontario office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) – to give you an overall sense of what Drummond is driving at in his report and to open up avenues of resistance to what he (and the McGuinty government) have in mind for the future of social services in Ontario. In addition, here's a link to Toby Sanger's blog on the Drummond report: http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2012/02/15/could-mcguintys-cuts-be-worse-than-harris/ You can find Drummond's full report by Googling Commission on the Reform of Ontario's Public Services.

As these documents make clear, this is a moment demanding much tougher resistance on the part of all the progressive forces in Ontario education.

The attached CCPA report Under Pressure: The impact of rising tuition fees on Ontario families by David Macdonald and Erika Shaker provides a disturbing picture of where the tuition pressure is right now in Ontario and how bad it's liable to get. The authors call for a much more equitable financing structure for our universities.

With this increased financial pressure, the prospect of more school closings is before us with greater urgency. One of the arguments that often support closing a neighbourhood school is that it is a logical response to declining enrolment. What we especially have to keep in mind when we hear this argument is that enrolment patterns are cyclical, and that we can expect enrolment to rise. "Over the next five years," says the Ontario Finance Ministry, "the number of children aged 0–14 will be relatively stable around 2.2 million, before rising more rapidly to almost 2.9 million by 2036." Closing a neighbourhood school now may, in fact, result in a lack of school space not many years from now as well as new costs for the new space that will be required. The arrival of full-day kindergarten makes this possibility even more likely. Two attached enrolment reports help make this point and they are worth reading. In this context, we are also attaching David Clandfield's brief notes on School Closings and Schools as Community Hubs, including his "Arguments pro and con school closings."

We are also attaching two recent documents on fees and fund-raising in the TDSB. They show how provincial cutbacks have increased the pressure to raise money at the local school level and, as a result, have widened the resources gap between rich and poor schools. The first document is a complete list of the fundraising efforts of all TDSB schools. In the 2008-09 school year the fundraising results extend from Witney Jr. P.S. at $349,915 to Rose Ave. Jr. P.S. at $1406. This list, it's worth noting, doesn't give you a full picture of the gap between rich and poor schools. In part because of loose accounting methods, but also because there are a number of richer schools (the estimate is 30) that have private trust funds on the side raising money for their school. The second document, a report from Social Planning Toronto, provides a fine background analysis for this list. It's called "Public System, Private Money: Fees, Fundraising and Equity in the Toronto District School Board." It's essential reading.

While the financial squeeze on our education institutions continues to grow, at the same time destructive neo-liberal pressures on curriculum, pedagogy, profiling and bottom streaming are also on the rise.

With this in mind, we are attaching two overviews of Ministry and TDSB realities as they are set out by the bureaucrats who run our educational institutions. You have to read between the lines and beneath the rhetoric, but it's clear they have no intention of backing away from an intensified "human capital" agenda policed by standardized testing.

David Clandfield's response to the most recent TDSB Special Education Report (attached in our last message and re-attached here) indicates just how social-class and racial divisions in our society are reproduced within what appears to many people as a humanitarian effort to accommodate children with disabilities. After a cautionary introduction into this political minefield for democratic socialists, he will show what that Research Report reveals of how the Special Education apparatus works within the broader "human capital" agenda of neo-liberalism. Within this series of short articles, the discussion will range from the definitions of exceptionality and special needs, the massive infrastructure of psychological assessments, the assignment of Individual Education Plans (IEPs), and the early recourse to streaming through "congregated" classes, and the alternatives that are worth fighting for.

Finally, Doug Little, in his review of Finnish Lessons by Pasi Sahlberg, makes the point that equity and excellence go together in making a successful school system. The Finns have given us a fine practical argument to stop the "human capital" curriculum, the standardized testing, the bottom streaming, and the continuing harassment of our classroom teachers. As Little writes, this book by Sahlberg "is a one source punch to the solar plexus of the corporate reform movement." Take time to order it.

One last word: Check out Save Our Schools Camberra. It's a fine Australian website on the neo-liberal agenda in education and what to do about it.

In solidarity,

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

Deconstructing Drummond: First Responses

Below is a collection of six documents – brought together by the Ontario office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives — responding to the recent report of the Drummond Commission.

Click here to download:
1. Jim Stanford - Recession, Deficits and Austerity
2. CUPE Ontario - Austerity Won't Work
3. People-for-Education - Increasing the Gap
4. Hugh Mackenzie - Powerpoint - Deficit Zombies
5. Jim Stanford - Powerpoint - Deconstructing Drummond
6. Armine Yalnizyan - Powerpoint - The Real Debt to Our Children

Under Pressure: The impact of rising tuition fees on Ontario families
David Macdonald and Erika Shaker


The burden of paying for an expensive university education is a burden that falls not only on students; it falls heavily (and increasingly) on Ontario parents as well.

However, in addition to steadily rising tuition fees, Ontario families are facing their own challenges including record high household debt and years of stagnant incomes. As a result, paying for university on top of existing financial pressures can come with significant consequences which are not often factored into the analysis of the rising costs of higher education.

Rather than focusing exclusively on students, this report aims to paint a more comprehensive picture of how Ontario families are coping with the impact of rising tuition fees within a broader context which includes the reality of stagnant incomes and household debt. As families are often an important source of financing for university education, this report also examines some of the additional burdens families are taking on due to rising tuition fees.

It is not only families who suffer as tuition fees increase; Ontario society as a whole is worse off as new professionals, saddled with debt, are unable to contribute as much to society because their priority is repaying the money they have borrowed from the government and their families to finance their education. This repayment often takes precedent over their desire and ability to fully participate financially, politically or socially in their communities.

The situation becomes more serious as the debt loads increase: medical school graduates may find themselves less likely to choose family practice over more lucrative areas of specialization; new lawyers may decide human rights law, legal aid or a community legal practice are less fiscally prudent decisions than the pursuit of corporate law. Given the current shortage of family physicians, these choices are not without impact for all residents of Ontario.

As this report will demonstrate, the system of financing higher education is becoming more regressive for families, less equitable and, by inadequately addressing financial barriers, is providing diminished opportunities for people to reach their potential and contribute to society at the levels of which they are capable. By increasingly downloading onto families and exploiting the parental desire to provide for their children, Ontario is severely hampering its economic and educational potential.

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
7. Macdonald and Shaker - The Impact of Rising Tuition Fees on Ontario families"

Enrolment: a Key Issue for School Closings

Click here to download:
8. Ontario Populations Projections Update 2010 – 2036 and its 49 Census Divisions. Spring 2011. Based on the 2006 Census. Ontario Ministry of Finance.
9. TDSB Enrolment Projections to 2036
10. David Clandfield - School Closings and Schools as Community Hubs, including "Arguments pro and con school closings."

Public System, Private Money:
Fees, Fundraising and Equity in the Toronto District School Board
A Report prepared by Lesley Johnston, et al, for Social Planning Toronto


School fees and fundraising activities create unequal opportunities for students in schools and between schools, and make our public school system less inclusive and accessible. Marginalized students suffer. The amount of money entering school boards through grants meant to assist vulnerable students, such as the Learning Opportunities Grant, is often used to balance budget shortfalls across the system. Meanwhile, private money entering schools through fees and fundraising is kept in the schools that raise the money.

Our report examines inequities across the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). In our analysis of data obtained by the response to a Toronto Star Freedom of Information request on school-generated funds (Winsa and Rushowy, 2011) and data released by the TDSB, we discovered that fees and fundraising amounts in the TDSB vary significantly by socio-economic variables and geographic location. The schools where students are most likely to have the lowest socio-economic status generated far less in school-generated funds than the wealthier schools, while wealthier schools charged higher fees than poorer schools. While this means students who can least afford to pay are charged less, they do not have access to the same experiences as their peers, perpetuating inequities in student opportunities and outcomes across our public school system.

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
11. Lesley Johnston, et al, Public System, Private Money

Bureaucratic Overviews at the Ministry and the TDSB

Click HERE to download:
12. Results-based Plan Briefing Book 2011/12 Ontario Ministry of Education
13. 2010-2011 TDSB Vision of Hope

Revisiting Special Education
David Clandfield


In December 2010, a Research Report was published by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) with the blandest of bland titles: Special Education: Structural Overview and Student Demographics by Robert S. Brown and Gillian Parekh (hereafter referred to as Brown-Parekh). As more people became aware of its revealing contents, it eventually came to the TDSB's Inner City Advisory Committee, which has a mandate to consider the education of marginalized communities, especially those in poor and racialized neighbourhoods. A working group was formed with a mandate to report back in the spring of 2012. In the meantime, one of the group's members, David Clandfield, shares his initial thoughts about the politics of Special Education and what we have learned from the Brown-Parekh Report, which is also attached.

Click here to download and continue reading:
14. David Clandfield – Revisiting Special Education
15. Brown and Parekh – Special Education Report

Finnish Lessons Proves that the World's Best System is Based on Excellence and Equity
Doug Little


In fact Finland's education system proves that a system primarily based on equity leads directly to excellence and clearly outperforms systems based on competition, privatization and testing. For many years, Finland has led the PISA reading results from the OECD to the point where education tours to Finland are creating a tourism boom.

Finnish Lessons by Pasi Sahlberg is a one-source punch to the solar plexus of the corporate reform movement. Finland is famous for the lack of standardized testing except for a matriculation exam. There are almost no private schools and almost no streaming until after 16 years age, roughly grade 10. This works like compound interest when combined with free post-secondary education, free nutritious meals served in schools, and a situation where almost all teachers have at least one master's degree and most have two.

Sahlberg points out that the Finnish system concentrates on instruction not on assessment standards. There is almost no grade level repeating or ability grouping below grade 10. In order to make sure that math and science are not afterthoughts, 16% of teachers have their MA in math and 10% have an MSc.

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Doug Little - Finnish Lessons
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