Education Action: Toronto's
Online Clearing House


February 21, 2013
Standardized Testing: Back on the Table
What now with Premier Wynne?
Rethinking Democracy
The Future of Québec Student Militancy
Teachers and the Struggle to Kill Bill 115
What does Chris Spence mean?
The Path to Better Childcare in Ontario

Dear Friends,

You'll notice that we have a new name for our regular (irregular) "messages." We now call it a "clearing house" for articles we think might be useful for local education activists because this is mostly what we have been doing anyway and we have now decided that we should not only be clear about this, but also make a bigger effort to widen our scope, especially here in Ontario. We can't promise all our pieces will be up-to-date, but we do hope they'll strengthen our knowledge of what's happening to our schools and help build an alternative to the current neo-liberal order. So the next time you read a piece you think might be useful (particularly if it lets us know what's happening in other parts of the province), please send it on, with, if possible, two or three lines of introduction. Or write us yourself and let us know what's happening in your part of Ontario. We'll make certain the writing goes out to our list and finds a place on our website (http://educationactiontoronto.com/).

With this expansion, we could really use a little extra money. Education Action: Toronto is entirely volunteer run, but there are, of course, expenses here and there. What we need the money for right now is to improve our communication outreach and our website. If you can come up with a small donation, we'd be very grateful. Please send it to Education Action: Toronto, 1698 Gerrard St. East, Toronto, ON. M4L 2B2. This is our first, and very limited, fundraising effort, and we don't expect to do much of it in the future. We wish we could give you a tax receipt, but our politics, as you will know, don't allow charitable status. We hope you can find a way to help.

You can also give us a hand in expanding our email list. We'd welcome any lists of friends or colleagues, whom you think might use this clearing house. If they don't want it, they can, of course, disconnect right away.

The Old Issues Keep on Coming

Somehow, given the continuing distaste for standardized testing among our teachers and the growing piles of research detailing its destructiveness of good teaching, you might think the place of standardized testing in our schools would be diminished. The opposite, unfortunately, is the case, as Michael Fullan's call to "launch the next stage of Ontario's Education Agenda" makes abundantly clear. Of course, there is that wild possibility that Kathleen Wynne might revert to her long-time opposition to such testing and move Fullan out of his central role in province's education planning. This prospect is hardly likely, given that Wynne seemingly had little trouble following Fullan's line when she was Minister of Education. We expect her to continue doing what she is told on this file. Still, there is a lottery-like hope that the Liberals might be persuaded by teacher union pressure to lay off the test-score obsession of their last nine years in office. During the first round of the latest negotiations, the Catholic Teachers Union (OECTA) managed to win more teacher control of classroom testing, though we don't know how that is working out in practice. This victory is a small but very important step in the right direction, and it might function to help leverage more reform in the future — random sample testing, say, as opposed to the current EQAO every student testing. (Random testing still has a very destructive impact, but it's a lot better than what we have.) Maybe something will happen on this front if the current minority government is hoping to work out something progressive with the NDP as well as with the province's teachers. Maybe it's a moment where a little extra effort might go a long way.

It's worth noting that the issue of standardized testing is once again before the Inner City Committee of the TDSB, and it remains a constant thorn in the side of our teacher organizations and our more active parent organizations. With the hope of moving forward on this issue, we are attaching critiques of standardized testing from the Toronto Teachers Federation, the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, and the Ontario Teachers Federation as well as from three American sources: from Alfie Kohn (well-known in Ontario for his accessable and trenchant analysis of these tests), from Monty Neill (bringing to bear Fair Test's understanding of the broader role of standardized testing for capitalist schooling), and from the editors of Rethinking Schools, who have kindly lent us their entire issue on this subject, focused on the impact of such tests on poor and racialized students. (We ask our readers not to distribute this issue widely and we encourage you all to subscribe. In our experience, Rethinking Schools is the best classroom teacher magazine in the English-speaking world. You can reach them at www.rethinkingschools.org.) We are also re-attaching Michael Fullan's plans for the future of Ontario education, in case you missed them the last time; it's pretty scary stuff.

Doug Little's blog on the politics of education, especially here in Ontario, is always a good read. You can reach him at www.thelittleeducationreport.com. We thought you might like to see his comments on what we can expect in education from our new premier. He offers some fine unsolicited advice, including doing away with the "rotting corpse" of EQAO.

There is a worldwide struggle for democracy going on at present and, perhaps, its leading theoretician is Samir Amin, the director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. We've attached his recent article "The Democratic Fraud and the Universalist Alternative" (from Monthly Review, another extraordinarily valuable magazine to be found at www.monthlyreview.org and very much worth a subscription). Amin's article is primarily concerned with issues of democracy in the global south, but its reach incorporates countries like Canada in the global north. What's important for us to recognize is that our own struggles for greater school democracy (alongside those of greater equality in education) within the Canadian nation state link not only with Canadian struggles for democracy and equality in other areas of life, but also to struggles within other nation states to preserve local sovereignty (in opposition to globalizing capitalism) and to strengthen local forms of democracy and social justice.

The issues of democracy and equality continue to be at the centre of the Québec student protest against tuition fees, which broadened into a much larger and more inclusive social justice struggle in opposition to neo-liberal austerity. As promised, we are keeping you in touch with this Québec movement. Two articles by Ethan Cox and Rob Green (from Our Schools/Our Selves) provide valuable further context for this student uprising, while the article by Xavier Lafrance and Alan Sears applies useful lessons from the Québec student strike in coming battles around education, particularly post-secondary education.

We are also, as promised, keeping you in touch with the current battle between Ontario's teachers and the provincial government. Articles by Doug Nesbitt, Michael Laxer and Murray Cooke offer further background to this struggle, while Dudley Paul brings the experience of the Chicago teachers strike to bear on what an ongoing strategy for teacher success might look like.

Chris Spence, the former director of the Toronto District School Board, who was brought down by plagiarism charges, has filled a lot of media space over the last month or so. Much of it has not been very helpful. But the attached piece by Desmond Cole seems to us to have caught the issue of Spence's fall exactly as it should be presented.

Finally, child care continues to be a fundamental problem facing Ontario, as both the Harris and McGuinty governments reversed progressive directions for non-profit childcare begun in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In the attached document — The Path to Better Child Care in Ontario — Martha Friendly and Trish Hennessy call for the Ontario government "to take leadership and go public with child care. Families have been dealing with second best for long enough."

In solidarity,

David Clandfield, George Martell, Faduma Mohamed, Dudley Paul
Education Action: Toronto Editorial Board

Voices from the Classroom
Elementary Teachers of Toronto


Many teachers expressed concerns that teaching to the EQAO was shaping the delivery of curriculum in an essentially negative way. As one relatively new teacher with five years of experience put it, 'the EQAO seems to be taking over as a priority over the curriculum and of course the test is based on the curriculum.' The net effect becomes an education process that gives priority to teaching 'these kids how to read these kind of questions and answers for these kinds of tests.' The group of 11 junior level teachers voiced general agreement when one participant commented on the excessive emphasis on test scores at the expense of other priorities: 'it [has become] not what's best for the kids, but what's best for the scores...

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
ETT — Voices from the Classroom

Adjusting the Optics:
Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting

Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario


In its quest to ensure accountability within an education system that has been centralized in provincial bureaucracy and reformed within a time frame that has forced the system into chaos, the government has lost sight of one thing — the student. The government claims that it undertakes these initiatives in the best interest of students. However, the question remains — how does the student benefit from all of these changes?

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
ETFO — Adjusting the Optics

Large-Scale Assessment: A Challenge for Teachers around the World
Vivian McAffrey


... British and Australian teacher unions have launched high-profile public campaigns against large-scale assessments. The 'league tables' that publish school rankings are a particular target. In Australia, a website that uses league tables allows users to compare schools, and it probably served as model for Ontario's School information Finder... A majority of members who voted in an NUT union poll in November 2009 indicated they would be prepared to boycott the tests. St. Paul's School and Eton, two elite independent schools, are joining the unions and are refusing to release their school results for inclusion in the national league tables... In Seoul, South Korea, seven primary and middle school teachers were fired ... for giving students a choice about writing the national tests. The firings prompted the president of the Korean Teachers' and Education Workers Union to go on a hunger strike...

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Vivian McCaffrey — Large-Scale Assessment

A New Vision for Large-Scale Testing in Ontario
Ontario Teachers Federation


The EQAO's mandate has strayed significantly from the original vision for the OLAA as set out by the RCL, which envisioned:
  • sample-based assessment, not universal, extensive and expensive testing;
  • tests that would act as a check on the effectiveness of the curriculum, not as a means of sorting students, or ranking schools — for example, "shopping" for schools;
  • a review of the work and mandate of the OLAA after five years in the expectation that its work might prove redundant rather than requiring the addition of census tests in Grades 6 and 9.
As well, the many initiatives and changes in practice and policy that have occurred since the implementation of the EQAO necessitate a rethinking of the current model of large-scale assessment in Ontario.

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
OTF — A New Vision for Large-Scale Testing in Ontario

Fighting the Tests
Alfie Kohn


Don't let anyone tell you that standardized tests are not accurate measures. The truth of the matter is they offer a remarkably precise method for gauging the size of the houses near the school where the test was administered. Every empirical investigation of this question has found that socioeconomic status (SES) in all its particulars accounts for an overwhelming proportion of the variance in test scores when different schools, towns, or states are compared. Thus ignorance would be the most charitable explanation for why charts are published that rank schools (or towns or states) by these scores — or why anyone would use those rankings to draw conclusions about classroom quality.

However, if this were the only problem with standardized tests, we probably would not have sufficient reason to work for their elimination. After all, one could factor in SES in evaluating test results to determine the "true" score. And one could track a given school's (or district's) results over time; assuming no major demographic changes, a statistically significant shift in scores would then seem to be meaningful.

But here's the problem: even results corrected for SES are not very useful because the tests themselves are inherently flawed. This assessment is borne out by research
finding a statistical association between high scores on standardized tests and relatively shallow thinking...

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Alfie Kohn — Fighting the Tests

Testing: An Essential Tool in the Capitalist Organization of Schooling in the United States
Monty Neill


I have worked at FairTest in Boston for more than 20 years, striving to change the types and uses of standardized testing in the public schools of the United States. My talk will address testing and evaluation in the U.S., another undesirable "gift" from the U.S. to the rest of the world.

FairTest critics often view us as "radical." This always amused me — we are a single issue group dealing with one little piece of the overall system. People calling us radicals seemed to be making a major exaggeration.

But now I am thinking, as I contemplate again the role of testing in shaping education, that perhaps our critics are so vehement because we are radical, in the sense of getting to the root of things. In battling to transform a key tool in the organization of education, we could affect how the system organizes its indispensable process of creating the next generation of labor power. As the production of labor power is central to the system, perhaps what we are doing does strikes at the heart of the system in some way.

Of course, the system can organize education to its ends without standardized tests, but having made them so central, it may not be so easy to do so, and those running the system no doubt do not want to have to go through that change if they can avoid it.

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Monty Neill — Testing: Essential for Capitalist Schooling

Pencils Down: Stop High-Stakes Testing
Rethinking Schools


Every day, teachers are being pressured to compete with each other and push their students over the testing precipice, all in the name of accountability—a word that has become corporate—speak for test, test, test.

On a very different trajectory, Rethinking Schools has assembled two new books that focus on what teachers are really accountable for: the learning, empowerment, and well-being of their students. In this section of the magazine, we are honored to offer five new articles from those books...

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Rethinking Schools — Stop High-Stakes Testing

Great to Excellent: Launching the Next Stage of Ontario's Educational Agenda
Michael Fullan


Now in early 2013, the overall performance of the almost 5,000 schools in the province has dramatically improved on most key measures, and continues to improve. According to international measures and independent expert assessment, Ontario is recognized as and is proven to be the best school system in the English-speaking world — and right up at the top with Finland, Singapore and South Korea...

As Premier Dalton McGuinty leaves office, in this paper we will review key aspects of the journey, and set the tasks for the next phase. Nine years of steady improvement is impressive...

In the first years of the reform, it required relentless focus and leadership on the part of the Premier and the guiding coalition that worked with him. Those of us who have
whole system reform know how easy it is for governments to get distracted from the core learning agenda. Ontario maintained its deep focus as it developed capacity at all levels of the system. Now we see the payoff. While it started out as the government's agenda, it is now the system's agenda — a deep and shared ownership that binds educators and holds them accountable.

Compared to most jurisdictions in the world, and compared to the starting point in 2003, Ontario's strength is its focus and its consistency of practice arising from the new individual and collective capacity that has been established in every corner of the province. It is this triumvirate of focus, consistency of practice, and collective capacity that is our strength. The next phase of the reform is crucial. There are developments in the profession of teaching that might be called the "new pedagogy" that involve fundamental shifts in the roles of teachers and students in becoming "learning partners." These more powerful learning modes could be greatly accelerated by the new technologies that are rapidly coming on the scene...

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Michael Fullan — The Next Stage of Ontario's Educational Agenda

Premier Kathleen Wynne: Now What?
Doug Little


Over the past 15 years, I have kept fairly close contact as Kathleen Wynne went from parent activist to trustee, to MPP, to minister of education. Kathleen is a Liberal and a liberal and well, I'm not, but we both understood in the fight against Mike Harris, there was no room for too much partisanship amongst progressives. She was naturally pulled hither and yon in the political world where principle and pragmatism duke it out for hegemony on a daily basis. Some days you have to take one for the team even if you just argued in caucus or cabinet for the opposite approach.

On the other hand, and I say this as a friend, Kathleen has this maddening mediator's approach to situations that always finds the truth is in the centre. This is what makes her a Liberal and not a social-democrat. I have often told her "Kathleen... sometimes one side is 100% right and the other side is 100% wrong." Arrrgh. Was Mike Harris half right or was he wrong on every issue every single day. I rest my case.

Everyone is expecting miracles on the teacher bargaining front but they may be bitterly disappointed. Kathleen maintains "we have to have a conversation (her favourite word) about that but everyone needs to understand that we must have extra-curricular activities back but there is no money." Classic Kathleen. Sadly, she was water boarded with the austerity Kool Aid of Bay Street, Duncan, Drummond, and the other self-interested losers. Just wait until you see Dwight Duncan's next job. If it doesn't make you vomit you have a tougher constitution than I have.

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Doug Little — Premier Kathleen Wynne: Now What?

The Democratic Fraud and the Universalist Alternative
Samir Amin


The Democratic Fraud Challenges Us to Invent Tomorrow's Democracy

Universal suffrage is a recent conquest, beginning with workers' struggles in a few European countries (England, France, Holland, and Belgium) and then progressively extending throughout the world. Today, everywhere on the planet, it goes without saying that the demand for delegating supreme power to an honestly elected, multiparty assembly defines the democratic aspiration and guarantees its realization—or so it is claimed.

Marx himself put great hopes on such universal suffrage as a possible "peaceful path to socialism." Yet, I have noted that on this score Marx's expectations were refuted by history (cf. Marx et la démocratie).

I think that the reason for the failure of electoral democracy to produce real change is not hard to find: all hitherto existing societies have been based on a dual system of exploitation of labor (in various forms) and of concentration of the state's powers on behalf of the ruling class. This fundamental reality results in a relative "depoliticization/disacculturation" of very large segments of society. And this result, broadly designed and implemented to fulfill the systemic function expected of it, is simultaneously the condition for reproduction of the system without changes other than those it can control and absorb—the condition of its stability. What is called the "grass roots," so to speak, signifies a country in deep slumber. Elections by universal suffrage under these conditions are guaranteed to produce a sure victory for conservatism, albeit sometimes a "reformist" conservatism.

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Samir Amin — The Democratic Fraud and the Universalist Alternative

Nos Casseroles contre la Loi Special
Ethan Cox


In the prescient film Network, Peter Finch hangs out his window and hollers the infamous line "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" It quickly becomes a rallying cry for a population in revolt, leaning out their windows and screaming, because this time, "they" have gone too far. In Québec this spring, nos casseroles was the rallying cry of a population in revolt against a government which had gone too far. People were mad as hell, and they simply weren't going to take it anymore.

Before the passage of Bill 78 (which became Law 12 once it was passed by the National Assembly), the student movement was in tough shape. Crowds at protests were dwindling, and public opinion was in flux after the Charest government had made an "offer" so preposterous it was swiftly rejected by almost all striking students. The mainstream media had been squarely against the students since their strike began in February, and the near constant barrage of snide editorials and dismissive commentary was having the desired effect of turning many citizens against the students. Then Québec Premier Jean Charest made perhaps the single most serious miscalculation of his long political career...

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Ethan Cox — Nos Casseroles contre la Loi Special

The Conflict in Context:
A Québec high school teacher's perspective on
the movement for accessible education

Robert Green


I teach a secondary five level course called 'The Contemporary World' at a public English high school in Montreal. One of the messages I am constantly trying to pass on to my students is that in attempting to understand world events, we should always be wary of overly simplistic formulations. Events do not occur in a vacuum. The historical and political context in which an event occurs always matters.

In recent months, as the student strike in Québec has come to dominate the headlines, I have found myself repeating a very similar message in discussions with students, friends, neighbours and colleagues. The mainstream media has been very successful at framing this conflict in the narrowest of terms; as being strictly about students not wanting to pay a $1,625 tuition increase. With such a simplistic framing of the issue it has been very easy for people to agree with commentators who characterize Québec students as irrational and entitled because they already pay the lowest tuition in Canada...

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Robert Green — The Conflict in Context

Campus Cutacks in the Age of Austerity:
Learning from Québec Students

avier Lafrance and Alan Sears


... [The Québec student strike] is a partial victory, but a real one. At a time when the austerity agenda is rolling on relatively unchallenged, the ... strike offers a crucial lesson in resistance. Yet the knock-on effect of that strike has been relatively limited to date. The Québec student movement has done serious work to reach out to the rest of Canada and elsewhere to share the learning from this incredible mobilization, but at this point the impact has been limited.

This is unfortunate given the desperate need for effective mobilization to halt the austerity agenda in general, and in particular its application to the post-secondary field. The Ontario government is currently implementing a major restructuring of post-secondary education at a quite rapid pace, aiming to shift university mandates toward a market orientation, shift teaching toward on-line courses, continue tuition increases toward the goal of full user-pay, and implement cost-cutting 'productivity' increases. It would take a mobilization at the scale of the Québec student strike to really reverse this agenda, but at this point there are not even many ripples of discontent.

In this article, we will try to discuss some of the ways that we imagine applying lessons from the Québec student strike in coming battles around education, and particularly post-secondary education...

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Xavier Lafrance and Alan Sears — Learning from Quebec Students

Kill Bill 115:
Where is the Ontario Labour Movement Going?

Doug Nesbitt


...Waiting for an election, which could be called any time, has the same demobilizing and diversionary effect as a court challenge. It can't be a substitute for workplace action which is where the membership gains experience, forges a culture of solidarity, and can put immediate pressure on the government. And, if coordinated effectively like the recent Chicago teachers' strike, actions involving the membership could mobilize public support — namely parents and young people — against Bill 115 and austerity in general. Workplace action ought to be seen as complimentary and reinforcing of any electoral and legal challenge to Bill 115. Teachers would be in a far more stronger position vis-à-vis the NDP and placing Bill 115 at the centre of an election if they are in the midst of some form of sustained province-wide job action. In other words, if Bill 115 is going to be defeated at the polls, it means ensuring that the election campaign would be about workers' rights, democratic rights and defence of public services. In this context, the Liberals will be very weak and the Tories on the defensive.

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Doug Nesbitt — Kill Bill 115

Laurel's Lies: The Real Way to Put Ontario Students and Children First
Michael Laxer


The key point is the claim that [Laurel Broten], and the government, "have been left with no other reasonable option". That is simply false.

There is a reasonable option that would put students first and that would also ensure that educators were properly compensated. It is an option that would allow for the reversal of the welfare cuts, in real terms, of the last budget that were supported by the NDP. It is an option that would eliminate any deficit at all.

It is raising taxes.

For far too long we have coddled a middle class philosophy that seeks to grant tax cuts to everyone while still maintaining the services and systems that the middle class cherish. We have indulged the fantasy that you can cut taxes on the middle class and still provide services to the middle class, or anyone else, a fantasy that is demonstrably false.

We seem to think that a top quality public education system is possible, but no one should pay for it.

Previously I have shown that the entire "austerity agenda" and the entire deficit could be reversed immediately by undoing the reckless and economically foolhardy vote getting tax cuts of the last nearly twenty years that are now supported by all political parties. Tax cuts that have endangered all of our existing public services and prevented the creation of new ones, like universal daycare or dental care.

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Michael Laxer — Putting Students and Children First

Teachers' Strikes and the Fight Against Austerity in Ontario
Murray Cooke


On January 3, Ontario Education Minister Laurel Broten announced that she will be imposing concessionary contracts on the province's teachers. This is a drastic attack on collective bargaining rights that the teachers have said they will fight. It follows on the heals of the Liberal minority government's Bill 115, "An Act to Implement Restraint Measures in the Education System," passed last September with the support of the Conservatives.

A province-wide illegal strike across Ontario's public education system in response to the latest attack is a real possibility. To begin to turn back the austerity agenda and defend trade union rights, a determined fightback, including a province-wide walkout, is a necessity. A wider movement of support and solidarity also needs to be built. Unfortunately, there is not much hope that the provincial NDP will be an effective player in such a movement.

The Liberal attacks have clearly ruptured their previous relationship with teachers' unions. Teachers and their allies need to punish the Liberals by supporting the NDP. However, Andrea Horwath and the NDP have been fairly low-profile in the fight against Bill 115. Rather than attempting to contribute to the fight or publicly endorse the teachers' actions, the NDP seems to merely want to pick up the support of disgruntled teachers and parents by default.

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Murray Cooke — Teachers and Austerity

What Can We Learn from Chicago Teachers? Organize
Dudley Paul


Idle No More shows us what it takes for something to get legs. Starting out as a handful of people frustrated that, despite generations of promises, nothing really improves for Native Canadians, the organization grew and managed to catch the media's attention just at the time Attiwapaskat Chief Theresa Spence went on a hunger strike over the disgusting conditions of the people in her community. Suddenly a discussion that Harper's Tories have studiously ignored is on the table, at least for the time being. Timing may be nearly everything, but it certainly helps to have an organization able to take advantage of it.

To those of us interested in improving our schools, health care, working conditions, the safety of our communities and so much else currently enduring a sustained assault by the Harpers, McGuinties and Fords of the world, there is an opportunity out there. Yes Toronto Mayor Rob Ford won his appeal and does not have to vacate his mayoralty and yes maybe Kathleen Wynne will be able to work a deal with the not-ready-for-election NDP and hold off a spring election, but there's going to be one sometime soon; there is no end of people being shafted.

What can we draw from all of this?

In part, we can draw what the Chicago teachers drew from a somewhat similar situation.

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Dudley Paul — Learning from Chicago Teachers

Chris Spence's Debt to the Black Community
Desmond Cole


... We have to be honest about the finite impact black role modelling can have in a society so skewed against black people. This is why Brown's comments are so troubling: they place an inordinate amount of blame on Spence for ruining a promise he could never hope to deliver on his own.

People like Chris Spence can absolutely serve as role models, but theirs is a supporting role in a feature film starring systemic racism, that veritable evil which informs people of African heritage we are born with something to prove. A collective cultural blind-spot pushes us to endow the black TDSB director with racial responsibility we would deem preposterous for someone belonging to the (functionally invisible) white race.

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Desmond Cole — Chris Spence's Debt to the Black Community

The Path to Better Child Care
Martha Friendly and Trish Hennessy


... Most child care in Ontario is still private, with the number of for-profit centres growing. A large body of research shows that child care facilities whose aim is to make profits tend to provide poorer quality, access and accountability than public and non-profit child care programs.

At one time, Ontario was headed in the right direction. In the late-1980s and early-1990s, both the provincial Liberal (Peterson) and NDP (Rae) governments took steps that reduced the relative size of the for-profit child care sector and limited its access to public funding. But these initiatives were reversed, first by Mike Harris' Conservative government and then by the current Liberal government.

As a result of such backward moves, child care in Ontario is being turned more and more into a money-making venture for child care businesses. For-profit child care now represents more than 25 percent of Ontario's child care spaces — a rapid increase since 2001, when it was 17 percent. The number and size of chain operations has been growing, while new mega corporations borrow questionable tactics from Australian and U.S. child care businesses and import them into Ontario.

Click HERE to download and continue reading:
Friendly and Hennessey — The Path to Better Child Care
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