These two are fearful that, after governing for 5 years, they will soon be held accountable, hoisted on their own petard, as it were, by an EQAO standardized testing regime initiated under the previous Tory government of Mike Harris in the 1990s. 

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Their new attempt to shift the blame for underfunding the system for 5 years, away from their own culpability and onto school boards and by extension, teachers and other educators is without a hint of irony, it is called, The Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act. It literally will not change a thing but it may buy the PCs time, they are hoping, even another election. 

 

This newsletter is not a fan of standardized testing in any form. It's a mugs game, but let's play it out on their terms. Even the very conservative Fraser Institute, a research front for corporate Canada, acknowledges that on the widely understood, OECD sponsored Program

 for International Student Assessment or PISA, Alberta and Ontario rank first in Canada in reading, and Canada often ranks first in the world in reading. When Canada is not actually first it is in the top three in the western world within a point or two behind Finland and Estonia. Canada (and Ontario) readers at 15 years of age, when tested, are far and away the best readers in the G7 and second only to Japan in math amongst all G7 nations. A powerful case exists that Ontario (and Alberta) are the best readers on the planet. 

 

Within Canada, Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and BC are 85% of the Canadian population and, both individually and collectively, all are way above any G7 nation or any western nation. The main problem in Canadian education lies in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Atlantic Canada. The latter have basically the same caliber of teachers, and the same curriculum. They score lower for one simple reason. Those in lower socio-economic groups always score lower. The deplorable state of indigenous Canadians education weighs heavily on the Saskatchewan and Manitoba results, to remind us that treatment of FNs is our original sin. 

 

The issue around literacy has never really been about phonics or whole language or balanced literacy. Under any of these systems, 90% learn to read naturally and 10% struggle. That 10% is overwhelmingly poor. On the prairies they are often indigenous, in the big cities they may be racialized but not always. In Atlantic Canada they may be involved in traditional primary extraction like logging or fishing, but the common denominator is economic poverty. 

 

In Ontario, 87% of high school students graduate. I don’t know what people expect the upper limit is on graduating but we must be rapidly approaching the maximum. Each year 15,000 students fail to graduate. All educational sociological studies show us that these students are overwhelmingly poor kids. 

 

 In Canada, 57% of us, aged 25-64 years old, have post secondary education, university, college or trades. This is the world’s highest post secondary graduation level. It is interesting that second and third place go to Russia and Israel. 

 

At what point do we actually say that EQAO is wildly out of step with every other data point we have, be it International PISA test results, high school graduation rates, post secondary completion rates, that all indicated that Canada, has one of the very best education system in the world and Ontario is a leader within Canada? When do we recalibrate the EQAO tests or abandon this useless, destructive system altogether?

 

Still, for some, there is this nagging 15,000 per year that do not graduate after 5 years. We are well aware of the schools they attend, the neighborhoods they live in and the socio-economic status of their parents. 

 

David Berliner, professor emeritus from University of Arizona is the acknowledged expert on the education of poor American children. After a lifetime of study that tracks the almost one to one relationship between poverty and low educational achievement, you could probably summarize his only recommendation to solve this seemingly unsolvable problem in 5 words - “pay their parents more money”. The solution to the issue of poor kids doing badly in school involves ending poverty. 

 

Readers might ask, that’s all well and good but what do we do before the revolution, to raise achievement levels as high as possible within our capitalist system, such as it is? A few recommendations come to mind.

 

1. Restore per pupil allocation to a minimum of pre-covid 2018 levels in real inflation adjusted dollars. Money will never solve this problem on its own, but it helps. OSSTF President, Karen Littlewood was recently quoted at Queen’s Park Ontario Legislature pointing out that, in real terms, every Ontario student has been cut by $1200 since 2018. 

 

2. Implement the new $10/day childcare system ASAP, as closely integrated with the public system as possible. Data as far back as the Perry Study from Ypsilante Michigan, shows the strong effects of ECE related childcare. 

 

3. Destream the Ontario high school system to Grade 12 carefully over a roughly 4-5 year timeline. Within destreamed systems, more students go further. Is it a silver bullet? No. Does it make a significant improvement? Yes. 

 

4. The big one remains “pay their parents more money”. Ford, Lecce, and many premiers are moving in the opposite direction, slow rolling improvements to the minimum wage, failing to consider a Basic Minimum Income, fighting unionization of service industries, fighting raises to EI, or Ontario Works (welfare) and ODSP.  

 

Here is another very good article by William Paul on the same subject, with a slightly different take.

 

https://educationactiontoronto.com/articles/the-better-schools-and-student-outcome-act-crushing-whats-broken/
 

The Land Grab Aspects of the New Proposed Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act

 

To add insult to injury, Ford and Lecce have made a big move against school boards rights to control their own property - a right they have had since before Confederation. Traditionally, in Ontario, when a new school was to be built, the local board and the province put up 50% of the cost each with one supplying the land and the other supplying the building. This meant that even centuries later, if a school was sold, each would get 50% back. The control, however, was left with the school board to decide if a school was surplus to its needs.

 

Schools have been moved back and forth, between the 4 types of school boards in Ontario (English public, English catholic, French public and French catholic) on a board to board deal. Boards have learned over the years that 7-8 years rent on a school building is about the same money as they would receive from a sale, and they retain the asset. Also, with the boom in condo construction in recent years, it is very difficult to predict where development might go and whether a mothballed school might be needed again. It has happened on the Toronto waterfront already. 

 

Now, the Ford government has inserted themselves into the process. They will decide if a school is surplus, and whether another of the 4 boards needs the facility. If not they want to control the sale for such purposes as housing or Long Term Care uses. 

 

This is one more bone headed policy, that will lead to schools with no mortgages  and few carrying costs, being sold off to private developers and then when the same area needs a new school, they will need bussing or the prohibitive much higher cost of new land assembly, and construction costs.