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Education Action: Toronto's
Online Clearing House December 15, 2013 Outcomes Based Education and Standardized Tests: Simply Bad Ideas Jump Math: Creativity that Works First Nations Curriculum That Also Speaks to the Rest of Us The Colour of Poverty Canada’s Colour-Coded Labour Market Race, Gender and Ontario’s “Growing Gap” The Young and the Jobless Cutbacks and Commercialism in Ontario Schools Bill 122 and the Centralization of Education Bargaining “Choice” and the Dismemberment of English and American Schools Writing for Children that Really Connects Finding Your Way as a High School English Teacher A “People’s School” in Somalia |
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Dear Friends,
You may have noticed the growing public criticism directed at standardized testing and its government and business promoters. Following this trend, People For Education (Ontario’s major parent organization) is now calling for more “dialogue” on the issue and suggesting that we might “broaden the Canadian definition of [measured] school success by expanding the indicators we use to measure progress.” At P4E’s last conference, they tell us, “participants agreed that what is measured influences policy, funding and public expectations for our schools” Shouldn’t we do more, they ask, to “recognize health (physical, mental, social, emotional), creativity, citizenship and positive school climate as essential components of a strong education?” The premier, who has her ear to the ground on such matters, couldn’t agree more. At a recent conference of educators, hosted by the York Region District School Board, she too is now “looking for public input on how to make education go beyond the 3 Rs.” That doesn’t mean, of course, “moving away from standardized testing in reading, writing and math.” What we need to do instead, she goes on to say, is “to find space to focus on higher order skills like creativity, collaboration, community and critical thinking.” The premier and P4E are clearly at one on this extension of what they understand as measureable skills – troubling as that might be – but what is even more disturbing is that they seem to be taking their direction – as they often have in the past – from Michael Fullan, the central ideologue and enforcer of standardized testing and its policing of Outcomes Based Education ((OBE) or the Expectations Curriculum) as it is experienced in Ontario. Fullan (who has a massive international reach as a promoter of standardized-test led curricula) is, as far as we know, still calling the shots at the Ministry of Education, though his term as “Special Policy Adviser in Education to the Premier of Ontario” may be ending this year. Fullan’s 2012 book, Putting Faces on the Data (written with Lyn Sharratt), moves us clearly into the new line of defense of standardized testing reflected in P4E’s approach and that of Premier Wynne. In Putting Faces on the Data, Fullan and Sharratt, take great pains to load a progressive rhetoric on top of their emphasis on test scores. Throughout the book, they insist that there is some kind of humanist connection to data production (overwhelmingly test-score production) as they “delve into the role of data in a deep human way” – what “putting the faces on the data” is supposed to mean. They are attempting, they tell us, to “personalize data for all students so that each is treated as a real person and helped to learn according to his or her individual needs.” As we might expect, however, they present not a scrap of evidence that they are able to do this, not one concrete example. It’s pure dissociated rhetoric, designed to manipulate teachers (via its “moral imperative”) into increasing their efforts to teach to the test (or its template) as well as to cover their tracks from wary parents. The old defense, it’s worth remembering, simply set out “quality for all” as the big reason for a test-score production focus in our schools. “Standardized tests”, we were told, “policed quality teaching.” It was a “big lie,” but it was told a lot and it caught on, especially in marginalized communities (where a false hope resided that perhaps their kids could be persuaded to master such tests and climb what ladders there were available to them). These communities are now starting to catch on, as we would also expect, and this shift in public awareness makes test-score hustlers like Fullan nervous, and they begin to build new defenses. Of course, standardized tests have never had anything to do with quality, as professional middle-class parents have always understood, though they have increasingly kept quiet about it; far too many have come to see standardized-test success as another leg up in the academic competition arena. These tests also don’t help teachers one bit in planning curriculum or in helping students strengthen their work. In survey after survey, teachers continue to make this point. It’s far better to think of standardized tests as part of a “junk food” curriculum: once you bite through the frosting of “quality”, you find there’s nothing of substance there. And the new rhetorical additions of progressive “quality” don’t add any more substance -- whether they come from P4E or the premier, as above, or from Fullan and Sharratt’s more complete list of “meaningful and rich tasks,” “rich authentic tasks,” “core standards,” “high-yield practices,” “higher-order thinking skills,” “strong emotional connection [… and] commitment,” “humanizing the teaching,” “critical thinking,” “big ideas,” “inquiry based learning,” “every child has the right to be known and literate,” “ ‘thick’ learning,” “all encompassing skills,” “higher-order and metacognitive skills,” etc.). In the real context of our schools, these quality lists are a very bad joke. They float in the air, thoroughly unconnected to any serious curriculum development. Nowhere is this disconnect more evident than in our early literacy and math programs, decimated by OBE and its testing regime and gutted of any real meaning for little kids. This is, unfortunately, where Fullan’s determination – his “moral imperative” – to “stay the course” with his neo-liberal reforms is most intense and most destructive. “Junk food” curriculum/testing dominates the educational focus on our youngest (however much progressive slush defends the program). And, at the same time, it offers new avenues for educational privatization. (See the attached article from New Zealand by Allan Alach on this increased privatization, particularly in Australia, England, Canada, USA, Sweden, Norway and New Zealand.) This approach to the teaching of early literacy and math in our schools is especially disastrous in our poor and racialized communities. They get the worst of the Fullan regime. Like all little kids, poor kids and racialized kids expect meaning and pleasure in their work; they haven’t learned to suck up alienated labour, and they do it badly. Their parents understand this all too well, though most despair of finding a way to change their children’s experience in school. Instead of hearing more rhetoric about extending “quality measurements,” most parents in these communities would be delighted to have their children coming home from school knowing how to read and write and do math well and being pleased about the experience. They don’t need an “extension” on what is already failing their children. This failure is not so evident in the schools for wealthier children, because there’s more room for teachers – with powerful parent support – to move out of the OBE/Standardized Test straight jacket. It’s important to remember in this context – looking, for example, at Premier Wynne’s “focus on higher order skills like creativity, collaboration, community and critical thinking” – that these dimensions of our humanity aren’t “skills.” They lie at the centre of our Being. They can’t be separated off, like typing skills or horse back riding (however much such skills might be part of a life). Literacy and math also aren’t skills, as Fullan and Co. would have us believe. Skill sets are part of these activities, but are not central. Technique in writing is primarily supportive of what a child has to say. Phonics comes along the way in reading, as good Whole Language teachers always understood, before what was becoming an exceptionally effective program was undercut and then crushed by Ministry and Board bureaucrats. Good technique in mathematics (as John Meighton’s extraordinary “small steps” approach in math development shows) can still rely centrally on students’ imaginative and creative possibilities. In this context, the current hand-wringing over Ontario declining math scores is completely wrong-headed; it’s the nature of the program, not the scores that we need to worry about. (To remind you of Mighton’s good work, we’re attaching a Globe and Mail piece, which gives us a glimpse into how his program works in practice. We’re also attaching his recent response in the Toronto Star to the current furor over the decline in Ontario math scores.) Overall we learn to read and write and do math well because there is something important or engaging to read and write about or in doing the math. At the risk of appearing pretentious in this soulless neo-liberal climate, our own language (if we let it) holds our Being safe – holds safe our souls, our spirits, our character, our loves. When we lose our own language (the language we honestly own) – as OBE and standardized testing insist our children do – we lose what is most precious to us. We can’t find ourselves without it. This is why our First Nations are so despairing about the loss of their languages. And this is why the fight to change our schools has to be centred on promoting the deepest respect possible for the Being (the humanity) of our children, which means, academically, the deepest respect possible for the words they want to say, to read and to write – how they want to take in and express their understanding of the social and natural worlds around them. Regie Routman’s advice to teachers to teachers is worth remembering: “Trust your own literacy – /What you do/in your life and in your classroom,/What you know/in your mind and heart and bones,/ What you believe/And what you’ve researched and observed.” The main function of these tests – to go over this ground a bit further – is to impose external, abstract, one-dimensional answers (integrated with imposed curriculum “outcomes”) on children. The examined child is never allowed to move out of his or her experience to a broader expression or understanding of the world around them. No individual student judgment can be made. The tests (like the curriculum) assume no continuity of a child’s spirit or soul as they move into adult life. They recognize no building of genuine character, no creation over time of the individual ground on which we all need to stand to become more fully human. They “expect” the most shallow of mechanical responses from children. You can pretend, as Fullan and Sharratt do, that standardized testing might link to individual student fulfillment, but you can’t show any evidence of it. The reason is clear as a bell. Because these tests – and the curriculum they police – do not, as we’ve indicated, respect the individuality of the children on which they are imposed; they reflect a profound lack of care for children. They move in exactly the opposite direction of individual fulfillment. All those negatives (above) are built in to this form of testing and curriculum. Quoting a J. Hattie with approval, Fullan and Sharratt tell us, “[A teacher’s] role is to change students from what they are to what we want them to be, what we want them to know and understand….”(p. 120). That’s exactly what someone who respects and cares for children does not want. Instead, their respect and care is there to help a child become more of “who they are,” not “what we want them to be.” As adults there are, of course, things we want our children “to know and understand” as they grow up. But, at the same time, we want them to make their own individual judgments about the merits of what they are being told. We want to hear from them about what they think is “really useful knowledge.” We want them to be themselves. What Fullan and Co. are covering up with this new progressive rhetoric, is the Ministry’s consistent and long-term emphasis on “human capital” production (embedded in the “junk food” curriculum). The fragmentation of consciousness produced by OBE and its standardized tests mirrors the fragmentation of consciousness (and absence of human meaning) most of our children will face in their adult workplaces and which they already experience in the commercial culture that surrounds them. It’s not a pretty picture. We would expect the premier to go along with this cover up, but not P4E, whose members – progressive and thoughtful – know a lot better than most what a disaster OBE and its testing has been for Ontario schools. They know that the current curriculum framework and testing regime should be scrapped. They know how bad it is for kids and teachers. It’s hard to know why they don’t say so plainly. Hopefully our teacher unions are starting to take up this issue seriously, after many years of mild critiques backed up by teacher surveys showing overwhelming dissatisfaction with OBE and its testing regime. But the pattern isn’t clear. They still don’t seem to be able to take on directly the province’s standardized testing regime. Consider, for example, the document produced by the province’s Elementary Teachers’ Federation (ETFO) for the 2011 provincial election entitled Building Better Schools, which is still in play among its members. Its Introduction starts badly by linking the strength of the Ontario school system with being a “top-scoring performer on international and pan-Canadian assessments in reading, mathematics and science.” A page later, however, it tells us that “teachers are spending increasing amounts of time collecting assessment data related to EQAO to feed the government’s insatiable appetite for evidence that its myriad top-down initiatives are leading to improved standardized test scores. Consequently, not all students receive a balanced curriculum that pays sufficient attention to social studies, science, the arts, or health and physical education.” The answer to this problem, unfortunately, is to simply “scale back on the literacy and numeracy initiatives,” and to introduce more “random testing,” not scrap such tests entirely, which is what we would guess the authors of this position paper would prefer. Once you’re prepared to live with random testing, your argument for a system-wide alternative slips away. ETFO goes on to stress the importance of “immediate teacher feedback” as part of a testing “balance” with instruction, but can’t move on to recommend substantial changes in the assessment system its members now experience. What should follow, of course, is a systematic extension of “immediate teacher feedback” into a long-term process in which teachers and parents engage with what students actually do in school – the reading, the writing, the projects, the experiments, etc. – and assess how students can build on what they have already done and how the program as a whole can be strengthened. The good news from the ETFO front is that they are moving more clearly in the right direction in resisting Outcomes Based Education (with it’s intense focus on reading, writing and math and the scores produced). They rightly want more “balance between literacy and numeracy and other subjects including science, social studies, the arts and physical and health education.” Equally important, they tell us, is the need to reduce the fragmentation of the curriculum. ETFO wants “to reduce the number of prescribed elements,” which “on average establishes about 500 specific expectations for each elementary grade.” “Teachers,” they argue, “need more opportunities to delve more deeply into specific areas, take advantage of open-ended enquiry, plan for experiential learning, and develop activities that are both student- and teacher-centred. It is important to move away from a highly-prescribed set of expectations and to identify broad, core educational outcomes.” So long as those “outcomes” are understood as good solid work (not test score production of any sort) and honest student engagement, this is a great beginning for our elementary teachers to take on the province on curriculum issues. Now if they could put their minds to a broad assessment policy that linked with this humane understanding of curriculum, they’d really have a place to stand. Just in case you might be thinking that the new progressive rhetoric from the premier and Michael Fullan might be something more than rhetoric – that the politicians and bureaucrats running our school system might somehow be mellowing on the need to intensify test-score production – here’s the latest directive from Donna Quan, the new hard-nosed director at the Toronto District School Board. It tells a very different story. Quan, it’s important to recognize, should be seen as an Education Ministry bureaucrat, though officially she works for the thoroughly defanged TDSB and is responsible to its largely powerless trustees. Her marching orders come from Queen’s Park. Here’s what’s on top of her priorities for the coming year as part of a four year Action Plan (2013-2017): By June 2014 there will be a 10% increase as follows:This is what official “progressivism” means in practice: Intensifying test score production. “The rest,” as someone once said, “is window dressing.” It’s not easy these days to come to grips with an alternative to the present curriculum and testing order in our schools. The energy and cunning of this province’s educational authorities is sometimes astonishing. It’s hard to grasp how hard they work at such destructive tasks and how powerful they are in the real life of our schools. In this context, the genuinely progressive side of education needs all the allies it can find. One very important – and largely unnoticed – set of allies in our struggle for a humane and purposeful education is our First Nations. Most of the time, among those who care for and respect children, there’s solid support for a largely self-contained and community-controlled Aboriginal curriculum and assessment procedures. Most of us believe these communities should have the freedom to raise their kids in their own way. What we often forget, however, is that Aboriginal educators have a lot to say about what’s good for all kids, not just First Nations kids. A very fine example can be found in a literature review of indigenous knowledge and pedagogy prepared by Marie Battiste for the National Working Group on Education and the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs. Dr. Battiste is currently Academic Director for the Aboriginal Education Research Centre at the University of Saskatchewan, and her review (attached below) is an inspiration for all of us in understanding where a great curriculum has to begin. To this review, we want to add Susan Dion’s exceptionally helpful report on the Urban Aboriginal Education Pilot Project at the TDSB. It’s no surprise that the project’s research “confirms what Aboriginal parents, educators, and students already knew: institutions of formal schooling, including the TDSB, are failing to provide Aboriginal students with the educational environment and experiences they require to achieve success.” But it’s a remarkably solid and thoughtful piece of work, well worth your reading. Finally, from the CCPA, we are attaching the latest study of poverty among Canada’s indigenous children by David Macdonald and Daniel Wilson. It’s a key document in coming to grips with what it means for Aboriginal education when 50% of status First Nations Children live below the poverty line. Poverty (and the racism and sexism that often comes with it) hurts all kids, of course. To keep you in touch with the continuing impact of poverty and racism and sexism in the society, particularly its impact on the young, we’re attaching a number of documents sent out by Colour of Poverty-Colour of Change, an organization that works hard to keep this complex reality on the front burner of public debate. These documents include Racial Equality, Human Dignity and Social Justice Advocacy and A Four–Point Plan for Racial Justice. They’ve also sent along, from the Canadian Centre for Policy alternatives, Sheila Block and Grace-Edward Galabuzi, Canada’s Colour-Coded Labour Market, and Sheila Block, Ontario’s Growing Gap: The Role of Race and Gender. To these we’re adding CCPA-Ontario’s study The Young and Jobless: Youth Unemployment in Ontario by Sean Geobey. The cutbacks in wages and jobs, we see above, are part of the same corporate logic that produces cutbacks in public services, including the current squeeze on board finances. And these education cutbacks, in turn, produce more pressure for commercialization in local schools, especially in poor neighbourhoods. This is the point made (below) by Anne Borden and Trevor Norris from The Campaign for Commercial Free Schools. They call on the TDSB to start enforcing the guidelines for commercial activities already on the books. The current negotiating structures for Ontario’s teachers and education workers remains something of a mystery following the introduction of Bill 122. It looks like a lot more centralization of bargaining, with our school board associations linking arms with the province in facing our teachers and education workers across the bargaining table. There’s no question that the overwhelming economic power on the “employer” side of the table will be the province, but it will be interesting to see how much influence the board associations will have in the backroom and how much local bargaining will be permitted or encouraged. We’ll know much more in January when the various players in these up-coming negotiations will be presenting briefs to a standing committee at the Provincial Legislature, which will be dealing with the bill. As an introduction to where these briefs begin, we’re attaching ETFO’s very helpful overview of “Bill 122, the School Boards Collective Bargaining Act, 2013.” Increasing the centralization of bargaining is just one of the current neo-liberal initiatives in restructuring the governance of Ontario education. There are pressures on many fronts to undercut public education and its capacity for democratic accountability. What our Ontario school system will eventually look like from such initiatives is hard to say, but we can get a pretty good sense of what we might be in for from what’s happening in England and the U.S. Take, for example, the increase in “choice” and “diversity” of schools currently being promoted by administrators at the TDSB. Where does that take us? In England, as Stephen Bell writes (below), the choice and diversity agenda is dismembering the country’s school system. “We are moving back,” he says, “to an incoherent and haphazard jigsaw of providers - charities, foundations, social enterprises and faith and community groups - monitored at arm's length by the central state [with] private providers … waiting in the wings for the opportunity to profit from running schools. Local democratic oversight has been almost totally displaced.” And in the U.S., as Stan Karp reminds us, “at the level of state and federal education policy, charters are providing a reform cover for eroding the public school system and an investment opportunity for those who see education as a business rather than a fundamental institution of democratic civic life.” On a brighter note, we’re offering two avenues into opening up a genuine literature program – one for small children and one for a diverse high school audience. In the review below from Monthly Review – “Yesterday Shows Another Day Is Here” – Amy Schrager Lang and Daniel Lang/Levitsky remind us of the extraordinary work of two great children’s authors (Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss) who not only understood the need to speak for “children’s autonomy and intelligence,” but also found a way to open up for children concrete issues of equity and justice. In the second piece, from Rethinking Schools, high school English teacher Michele Kennedy takes us on an engaging curriculum journey, in which she decides “to trust myself, my education, and my own experiences when making critical decisions about what will work for everyone in our increasingly diverse school, not just those whose parents are able to show up for Back to School Night.” Finally, we are very pleased to introduce you to an extraordinary education initiative in Somalia developed here in Toronto under the leadership of Mohamed Ali Aden. It's called "Himilo" ("hope" in Somali) and has built a "people's school" that educates local children from grade 1 through high school, while at night, the building is used for continued adult education classes, teaching locals how to write, read and master basic math skills. It also reaches out to a local orphanage, covering more than 80 percent of school fees for all of the 1,000 orphans as well for poor families. The school is in Galkayo, an area classified as unsafe and dangerous and so largely ignored by international aid organizations. As there can be no government help, the school has had to be built and maintained by large numbers of small donations. If there is any way you can contribute, please contact Mohamed Ali Aden at mohamedaaden@hotmail.com. Don’t forget: Back issues of Education Action: Toronto’s Clearing House can be found on our website: educationactiontoronto.com. And, if you know anyone or any group who might be interested in receiving articles from us, please send us along their emails. In solidarity, |
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The Neoliberal Propaganda To Sell Education Privatization Alklan Alach Don’t be sucked into believing the rhetoric about ‘raising achievement.’ There is another unspoken agenda – the privatisation of the profitable areas of schooling for ideological reasons. Welcome to the mixed ownership model of education. New Zealand Education Ltd., shareholders including News Corp., Pearson Group, Microsoft, McGraw Hill and the rest of the usual corporates. Profit mining – too bad about the best interests of New Zealand children’s education. Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg, a peripatetic campaigner for true child centred education, has described the neo-liberal takeover of education as the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) There is little in the current government’s education policies that is not a direct steal from GERM. The rationale for GERM in Australia, England, Canada, USA, Sweden, Norway and New Zealand (the key players) is identical: schools are failing and that the country needs to improve its ranking on international tests of dubious value.
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First Step in Learning Math Is Getting Over the Anxiety Andrea Gordon Here’s the equation that best sums up my personal history with math: me + numbers = anxiety. On second thought, make that anxiety squared. Our rocky relationship goes back more than four decades to long division in Grade 4. It ends with a mark of 57 in my final term of high school. Other than balancing the chequebook, counting heads on my children’s field trips and tripling recipes, I’ve done my best to avoid math ever since. Far easier to give up and rationalize that I simply don’t have “a math brain.” I have a reading-and-writing brain: pass me the crossword, you can have the Sudoku. John Mighton doesn’t buy it, though. The Toronto mathematician, playwright and titan of tutoring has no tolerance for negative math talk or the notion that the world is divided into two groups: those who can do math and those who can’t.
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Canada needs a Revolution in Math Education
John Mighton …To progress as a society, we must recognize that there is such a thing as intellectual poverty. Children can enjoy doing math as much as they enjoy making art or playing sports. It’s fun to overcome challenges and thrilling to discover or understand something that is beautiful, useful or new. Children love solving puzzles, seeing patterns and making connections. They have a sense of wonder that is only diminished by failure. If we could keep a record, even for a day, of all of the opportunities for emotional and intellectual engagement with the world that are lost when a child decides he is not smart enough to keep up with his peers, we would finally understand the staggering impact of intellectual poverty.
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Indigenous Knowledge and
Pedagogy In First Nations Education Marie Battiste …Whether or not it has been acknowledged by the Eurocentric mainstream, Indigenous knowledge has alwayof empowerment by Indigenous people. The task for Indigenous academics has been to affirm ans existed. The recognition and intellectual activation of Indigenous knowledge today is an act d activate the holistic paradigm of Indigenous knowledge to reveal the wealth and richness of indigenous languages, worldviews, teachings and experiences, all of which have been systematically excluded from contemporary educational institutions and from Eurocentric knowledge systems. Through this act of self-determination, Indigenous academics are developing new analyses and methodologies to decolonize themselves, their communities, and their institutions.
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Decolonizing Our Schools: Aboriginal
Education at the Toronto District School Board Susan D. Dion, Krista Johnson, Carla M. Rice Our research confirms what Aborginal parents, educators, and students already knew: institutions of formal schooling, including the TDSB, are failing to provide Aboriginal students with the educational environment and experiences they require to achieve success. Students in urban settings confront particular problems since they may not be recognized as Aboriginal or, if recognized at all, may be expected to have access to and be willing to share cultural knowledge. Furthermore, they may not see themselves represented in the curriculum or the teaching population and are encouraged to attend to attend school in spite of a long, negative, and hurtful relationship between Aboriginal people and schooling. School Board administrators, teachers, and other Board employees in urban settings also confront particular challenges, such as recognizing Aboriginal student populations, delivering programs when students are frequently dispersed across a range of schools, lacking the requisite knowledge for teaching Aboriginal subject material, and engaging families and communities who may be understandably resistant to formal educational institutions.
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Poverty or Prosperity:
Indigenous Children in Canada David Macdonald and Daniel Wilson As the most vulnerable members of any community, children have a fundamental right to protection and survival. This right is broadly acknowledged. For children living in poverty, the vulnerability runs much deeper. It is well established that poverty is linked to a variety of physical, social and economic disadvantages later in life. Children living in poverty require great- er support to live and to fulfil their potential, a challenge that can only be met with assistance from the broader community. Despite repeated promises from federal and provincial governments to address the issue — including a 1989 commitment by all Parliamentarians to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000 — Canada ranks 25th among the 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development with regard to child poverty. Recent modest declines in rates cannot hide the fact that over a million children in Canada still live in poverty. More troubling, however, is the reality facing Indigenous children in Canada. Based on data from the 2006 census, this study found that the average child poverty rate for all children in Canada is 17%, while the average child poverty rate for all Indigenous children is more than twice that figure, at 40%.
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Racial Equity, Human Dignity
and Social Justice Advocacy Colour of Poverty – Colour of Change
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A Four Point Plan for Racial Justice Colour of Poverty – Colour of Change Given the critical political moment in which we now find ourselves in Ontario – with both Federal and Provincial budgets near on the horizon – we at the Colour of Poverty-Colour of Change believe that it is both particularly timely and critical that we work together – ALL Ontarians – to focus needed attention on this growing inequality in the province – a "colour-coded" inequity and disparity that is ever more characterized by ethno-racial inequality – an inequality of learning outcomes, of health status, of employment opportunity and income prospects, of life chances generally and ultimately of life outcomes! As the Hon. Alvin Curling and Hon. Roy McMurtry found in their Report – commissioned by the Provincial government – the 2008 Review of the Roots of Youth Violence – “Racism is becoming a more serious and entrenched problem than it was in the past because Ontario is not dealing with it.” The Report powerfully calls on the province to effectively articulate its commitment to anti-racism and address this urgent issue as a major priority. The Provincial Government in particular now has an opportunity to begin to redress this growing “colour-coded” inequality – and toward that end – Colour of Poverty-Colour of Change proposes the following "Four Point Plan for Racial Justice" – a plan that brings both a racial justice lens to our understanding of shared community as well as a racial equity approach to our economic and social priority setting efforts – in order to achieve a healthy and sustainable future for ALL Ontarians.
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Canada’s Colour Coded Labour Market Sheila Block and Grace-Edward Galabuzi …The data show that if there is work to do, racialized Canadians are willing to do it: 67.3% of racialized Canadians are in the labour force — slightly higher than non- racialized Canadians (66.7%). Though they’re more willing to work, all racialized groups—except those who identify as Japanese and Filipino—tend to find themselves on the unemployment line more often than non-racialized Canadians. Racialized men are 24% more likely to be unemployed than non-racialized men. Racialized women have it worse: They’re 48% more likely to be unemployed than non-racialized men. This may contribute to the fact that racialized women earn 55.6% of the income of non-racialized men. The Census data makes clear: Between 2000 and 2005, during the one of the best economic growth periods for Canada, racialized workers contributed to that eco- nomic growth but they didn’t enjoy the benefits.
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The Young and the Jobless:
Youth Unemployment in Ontario
Sean Geobey The global recession of 2008-09 took a heavy toll on all Ontarians. The overall unemployment rate shot up and the number of employed Ontarians plummeted. As bad as it was, a separate story was unfolding for the prov- ince’s youngest workers. As with previous recessions, Ontario’s youngest workers were dealt the toughest blow. They experienced higher levels of unemployment during the recession and their employment numbers were not only worse than adult employment numbers, they took a nosedive. The big story is that five years after the Great Recession, youth remain largely shut out of Ontario’s slow economic recovery. The Help Wanted signs might have re-emerged, but Ontario’s young workers find themselves on the outside looking in — and the province’s current youth employment strategy isn’t fast enough nor robust enough to turn things around.
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Cutbacks and Commercialism in Ontario Schools Anne Borden and Trevor Norris Administrators in wealthy schools may justify the culture of fundraising (which takes enormous time and energy away from educational activities) by arguing that their school needs the money. But by ignoring existing guidelines, they are contributing to a system of economic inequality, where sustainable public funding has begun to fade from the dialogue altogether. The lack of appropriate public funding has led to the greater corporatization of schools -- and the disparity in learning opportunities between a school in Forest Hill and a school in Regent Park. No child should feel that his or her education hinges on the sale of a Cadbury chocolate bar, or a large handout from a wealthy sponsor (or parent). Education is for every child. It’s time we all stand up and fight for it.
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BILL 122, the School Boards Collective
Bargaining Act, 2013 – An Overview Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario Bill 122 mandates a system of two-tier bargaining at central and local tables for teacher and occasional teacher bargaining units represented by ETFO. There is also potential central bargaining for DECE, ESP, and PSP locals… ETFO’s CONCERNS ABOUT BILL 122:
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The Disintegration of the
English School System Stephen Ball The English education system is being dismembered. Gradually but purposefully first New Labour and now the coalition government have been unpicking and disarticulating the national system of state schooling. With free schools and academies of various kinds, faith schools, studio schools and university technical colleges, the school system is beginning to resemble the patchwork of uneven and unequal provision that existed prior to the 1870 Education Act. At the same time, we are moving back to an incoherent and haphazard jigsaw of providers - charities, foundations, social enterprises and faith and community groups - monitored at arm's length by the central state. Furthermore, private providers are waiting in the wings for the opportunity to profit from running schools. Local democratic oversight has been almost totally displaced. Our relationship to schools is being modelled on that of the privatised utilities - we are individual customers, who can switch provider if we are unhappy, in theory, and complain to the national watchdog if we feel badly served - but with no direct, local participation or involvement, no say in our children's education.
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Charter Schools and the Future of Public Education Stan Karp It has become impossible to separate the rapid expansion of charter networks from efforts to privatize public education. Those who believe that business models and market reforms hold the key to solving educational problems have made great strides in attaching their agenda to the urgent need of communities who have too often been poorly served by the current system. But left to its own bottom line logic, the market will do for education what it has done for housing, health care, and employment: create fabulous profits and opportunities for a few, and unequal access and outcomes for the many. [The U.S.] has already had more than enough experience with separate and unequal school systems. The counterfeit claim that charter privatization is part of a new “civil rights movement,” addressing the deep and historic inequality that surrounds our schools, is belied by the real impact of rapid charter growth in cities across the country. At the level of state and federal education policy, charters are providing a reform cover for eroding the public school system and an investment opportunity for those who see education as a business rather than a fundamental institution of democratic civic life. It's time to put the brakes on charter expansion and refocus public policy on providing excellent public schools for all.
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Yesterday Shows Another Day Is Here Amy Schrager and Daniel Rosza Lang/Levitsky Once you were children. If you did not read The Carrot Seed or Harold and the Purple Crayon, probably your children or your friends’ children did. You might have learned internationalism from The Big World and the Little House, or cultural relativism from Who’s Upside Down? or freethinking and obstinacy from Barnaby. If you did not, it is likely your friends and future comrades did. What you might not have learned is that all these children’s books (and many other progressive favorites) were authored by one or the other or both members of a couple whose left politics inflected their work. Philip Nel—the editor, with Julia L. Mickenberg, of Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature, author of several books on Dr. Seuss, and keeper of the Crockett Johnson Homepage—has devoted himself to rescuing twentieth-century radical children’s literature and its authors from relative oblivion. While the subjects of his latest book, Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature, are not exactly obscure—Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon, Krauss’s—A Hole Is to Dig, and their collaboration The Carrot Seed (among many others) remain perennial favorites—their politics have been largely ignored. Pay no attention to the bulk of the subtitle: Krauss and Johnson’s marriage hardly seems unlikely, and they eluded the FBI mainly by virtue of never having been specific targets of the Red Scare. They did, however, transform children’s literature. And what’s more, they exemplify rank-and-file participation in the array of left movements centered on the Communist Party from the 1930s to the ‘50s. The relationship between these facts is of no small consequence.
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Of Mice and Marginalization Michele Kenney … It wasn't until the end of the unit that I asked myself if the African American students' behavior wasn't a clear signal that something was wrong with my teaching. I started to realize that the behaviors that I had interpreted as apathy or just downright naughtiness–the attendance issues, the lack of engagement–were a more conscious refusal to engage in a novel and curriculum that didn't speak to them. If Crooks, the only African American character in the book, lacked the ability to fight back for himself, these kids were more than ready to act on his behalf by texting, napping, or hijacking my bathroom passes and voting with their feet. Finally, the unit was over and I sat down to grade essays. The assignment was to explore a theme in the novel, a typical 10th-grade essay. Normally, I love reading student papers, but these nearly put me to sleep. My progress grading them slowed to a death march because I needed so many breaks between essays to work up the courage to return. The writing was skimpy and dry, as if my students had treated this as just another academic hoop to jump through. Plus, I realized that five essays out of 75 contained whole sections lifted from the internet, something that had rarely happened to me before. After a little detective work and a few tough conversations, I came to the conclusion that plagiarism is just what happens when you open a can of curriculum and assign 60 15-year-olds a generic essay subject. What did I expect? The internet is not only a great place for teachers to mooch free lesson plans; it's also a great place for students to find trite essays on Of Mice and Men, The Crucible, or any other reading in the high school canon. It was too tempting to copy and paste. Before the essays came in, I felt guilty about marginalizing the girls and African American students, but the uninspired writing I got about Of Mice and Men convinced me that this unit had done a disservice to all of my students. I learned my lesson and decided to move on.
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All in the Name of Himilo Mohamed Ali Aden …. The civil war had been going on for nearly two decades. I doubt anyone thought the war would last as long as it has. I realized that there is an entire generation that has been born during the conflict; thousands of children who would have never experienced peace, nor seen the inside of a classroom. Who will lead the country? What experiences and education will shape the next chapter for Somalia? Inspiration comes from education and the belief that the cycle of destruction can be stopped through books and knowledge. The schoolhouse could do what war cannot – give children hope. Hope in Somali is Himilo. With the support of likeminded individuals in the Diaspora, we founded HIMILO International Civic Development Agency (HICDA), a Canadian charitable organization that focuses on building schools, caring for orphans, extending emergency relief and much more in the war-torn country.
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