Suspensions and streaming disadvantage Black students

Policy changes mark good first step, Jamil Jivani says.

If you met me when I was a teenager, you wouldn’t think I’d be writing an article like this one day. As a high school student, I was suspended for fighting and disrespecting school principals. My grades were bad, and I was labelled illiterate after failing the Grade 10 literacy test. My wardrobe reflected my mindstate: mirroring the gangsters who were marketed to my peer group in music and on television. I was an angry, sad, fatherless boy with no motivation or guidance.

I am far from alone in saying that my teenage years were not my best years. It is a common experience many of us share. Unfortunately, the Ontario school system often holds these years against students, marking them as inferior based on what are objectively difficult times for many young people. If you’re not doing well as a student in Grade 8 or Grade 9, for example, most Ontario schools will stream you into “applied” courses that limit your post-secondary education options upon graduation. This also stigmatizes skilled trades and other important opportunities by associating them with lower achievement, as opposed to specialization.

But what if, like me, you discover your academic strengths later, after you start high school? Well, you are simply out of luck, as far as the public school system is concerned. You will probably never know what you could have accomplished in different circumstances.

Education policy is also partly at fault for why some students are delayed in discovering their academic strengths. For example, students who have behavioural issues like I did are punished by sending them home via out-of-school suspensions. Yes, Ontario schools take struggling students out of their learning environment, pushing them further away from a school community they likely already feel disengaged from.

Certainly, some behaviour should warrant a stern response, such as violent or criminal behaviour. However, Ontario schools also suspend hundreds of children under the age of nine each year. Some of them have even been suspended more than once by the time they reach Grade 3. Are these young children a threat? No. And by suspending them at such an early age, Ontario schools hold them back from the very beginning of their education journey. Is it a surprise, then, that some of these kids aren’t going to keep up with their peer group in grades 8 or 9? Streaming these kids into applied courses just continues a lengthy series of disadvantages.

Harsh realities of education in Ontario will impact kids of all backgrounds, ethnicities, and income levels. But we know that the status quo uniquely disadvantages Black students. For this reason, the education system should be at the top of the list for any efforts to address “systemic racism.”

The recent Review of the Peel District

School Board, which has led to significant upheaval in the governance of Peel schools, documents how Black students are disproportionately affected by suspensions and streaming. Black students make up 22.5 per cent of suspensions in Peel, despite being 10.2 per cent of the Peel student population. And it is difficult to determine why this disproportionality exists because specific reasons are not recorded by Peel schools in the majority of cases. Unsurprisingly, given this suspension data, Black students make up 21.7 per cent of Peel students streamed into applied courses, which means a larger proportion of Black students have their post-secondary options limited.

The public school system should be the great equalizer, giving each child a chance to realize his or her potential. But it isn’t. And for as long as Ontario schools operate a system made up of such obvious, objective inequalities, then Ontario schools are laying a foundation for racial inequality in all other forms: employment, poverty, police interactions, incarceration, child welfare, and much more.

As the current historical and cultural moment has revealed, many changes are needed to achieve a more fair, more just society. Let’s not get lost in the loftiness of this task, but instead focus on the specific tangible actions that can be taken. Changing provincial policies on suspensions and streaming marks a big step in the right direction.

Jamil Jivani is Ontario’s Advocate for Community Opportunities and managing director of Road Home Research & Analysis. See his opinion piece online at nationalpost.com.