End to streaming starts with Grade 9 math
Fall 2021 will also see new curriculum for teens, Lecce says
Grade 9 math will be the first subject to be destreamed in Ontario, starting in 2021 — meaning no more applied-level math classes that, if taken, leave teens with almost no chance of going to university.
“If the system is broken, they can’t achieve their goals,” Premier Doug Ford said Thursday at Queen’s Park, noting that just half of Black students in the province’s high schools are in the post-secondary-bound academic level courses.
“Our Black, Indigenous and racialized students face more social and economic barriers to success than their fellow students,” Ford also said. “And that’s just not right. They deserve the same shot at their dreams as any other young person their age.”
The province’s move to destream — which educators have urged for decades, saying the practice disproportionately disadvantages Black and racialized students — was first revealed by the Star.
It is part of a new education equity strategy that will also ban most suspensions for children in kindergarten to Grade 3 and see stricter punishments for teachers who make racist comments.
“I want to make something crystal clear: Racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia and any kind of hate whatsoever has no place in our classrooms,” Ford said. “Any teacher who engages in this type of behaviour or who makes hateful slurs, they’re done. They’re gone.”
Education Minister Stephen Lecce said with a new elementary math curriculum this fall, and updated lessons for Grade 9 math coming in 2021, “that will be the first curriculum in Ontario that will be destreamed for Grade 9.”
“Ontario is the only province in the country that streams in Grade 9,” Lecce said, noting that the OECD, which represents developed nations, “has recommended moving streaming to later, Grade 10 or 11; we’ll be moving that back. And I think, to be quite honest with you, this is going to open a conversation about streaming and the efficacy of streaming.”
He noted that the Toronto District School Board began merging academic and applied courses two years ago, and “what they have seen is they maintain the integrity of learning for those students that were in the academic stream, if you will, as likewise, while lifting up the performance of those students who are in the applied stream,” which is backed up by testing data.
“And so, the fact is, they both can be achieved.”
He did not provide specifics on other courses that might be destreamed, but some Toronto schools have done so for English or French.
Experts have applauded the move but say, for it to work, students will need to be in smaller classes and have extra supports.
Advocacy and research group People for Education, using school board data, found that students who take Grade 9 applied math have just a small chance of going to university. In Toronto alone, just 21 per cent of teens who took that class went to college and only three per cent to university.