Ontario’s path toward fairer education

The tragic killing of George Floyd in late May has produced a burst of social activism that’s been felt around the world, including here in Canada. The movement’s impulse for change is strong, but it has at times struggled to articulate a practical, forward-looking agenda. Instead, it has increasingly succumbed to fits of iconoclasm that risk undermining the whole enterprise.

That would be a regrettable development, as there are a number of systemic issues in education, housing, policing and elsewhere that demand our collective attention. The public’s support for such reforms is high. But it’s not unlimited.

The risk is that the energy of the moment gets misdirected, public support erodes and we ultimately fail to make meaningful change. It would be a huge missed opportunity, to say the least.

This, it must be emphasized, isn’t a diminishment of the historical injustices that Indigenous, Black and other minority groups have faced. They’re real and should be confronted as a part of a full understanding of our history. But we cannot let ourselves become so consumed by the past that we come to neglect present and future generations.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government has been a positive model in this regard. Its appointment last month of Jamil Jivani — a Yale law graduate, critically acclaimed author and community organizer in Toronto — as chair of the province’s Council on Equality of Opportunity, was a sign that it intended to seize the moment to advance practical policy reforms in the interests of those on the margins of society.

Full disclosure: Jivani is a friend of mine and someone whose opinion and perspective I’ve relied upon as I’ve sought to better understand the unique challenges facing Black-Canadians and other marginalized voices in our society. He’s smart and pragmatic.

As he recently told TVO’s Steve Paikin, his goal isn’t to get bogged down in symbols or theories, but to “give people a chance to earn a living for their families, make a difference in their communities and have a place in our society.”

This week we saw the first step towards such an agenda. Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced a set of educational policy changes that should disproportionately benefit Black and other minority students. The most significant changes relate to what is known as “streaming.”

Streaming, as Jivani outlined in a recent National Post op-ed, refers to how Ontario’s high school system separates students into “academic” and “applied” courses beginning in Grade 9, on the basis of their perceived educational abilities and presumed career path.

Roughly 30 per cent of Grade 9 students in Ontario are enrolled in applied mathematics courses. Yet the percentages differ greatly based on neighbourhood, household income and race.

There are two main problems with Ontario’s current streaming model. The first is that it starts too early. It basically forces 14 and 15 year olds to make life-shaping educational decisions with minimal ability to course correct if one’s circumstances or interests change.

The second is the applied stream doesn’t provide students with a solid vocational education that puts them on a pathway to a career and a better future. “Applied” has too often become shorthand for subpar education and subpar results.

This week’s announcement by the Ford government aims to address the first problem. Streaming will now begin in Grade 11 to permit students more time to think about their futures and realize their potential before choosing an educational pathway. This is a sensible change to extend equality of opportunity in the province.

But the second problem persists. Streaming only works if the non-university stream is a real one. It can’t just be where we put students that we don’t know what to do with until we can dump them into the workforce.

The applied stream must

A SENSIBLE CHANGE TO EXTEND EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY.

become a credible pathway to training and employment for those who don’t intend to pursue conventional post-secondary education. The government ought to massively expand programs that introduce the skilled trades in high school. The goal should be to shift them from ancillary programs that function on the side of high school education to core parts of the curriculum.

This would reorient Ontario’s high school system from what amounts to a university preparatory model that works well for the roughly 70 per cent of students who will continue on to post-secondary education, to a more pluralistic model that better serves every student.

Movement in this direction would be a positive change that would address real inequities in public education. In so doing, it would improve the life chances of students who are ill-served by the status quo.

It’s therefore precisely the kind of change that we ought to be pursuing in this moment of fervour. We shouldn’t miss this window of opportunity. The Ford government’s reforms are a meaningful first step.

Jamil Jivani