Education Action: Toronto

Kids need to feel safe in school. And no matter what your perspective on education or the Ministry that runs it in this province, there won’t be much disagreement about the fact that adults who work in schools have a responsibility to do something when students don’t feel safe. Behavior like bullying, slurs against groups, harassment, and violence of any kind must be confronted.

The Student Achievement and School Board Governance Act that received Royal Assent on December 15 is not quite as bad as the original. But that’s a bit like saying losing your shoes isn’t as bad as losing your shirt.

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Someone needs to watch the watchers according to Hugh Mackenzie in the recently released report from Centre for Policy Alternatives “ No Time for Complacency – Education Funding Reality Check”. The Provincial Government has been so busy pointing the finger at schools, boards and educators as it demands accountability for just about everything, it has missed a key factor – provincial funding runs the system. The province just isn’t providing adequate funding and needs supervision – a new job perhaps for the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO).

Interest is growing in the potential role of schools as community hubs. To see a set of slides that accompanied a public presentation to the Inner City Advisory Committee of the Toronto District School Board on November 17, 2009 by David Clandfield, click here. Click on your browser’s return key to return here afterwards.

We draw your attention to this presentation on the history and political meaning of the current obsession with high-stakes mass testing in the USA. It is a timely reminder of our duty to find alternative forms of assessment and accountability and provides, in our view, an excellent point of departure for the next round in the struggle to overturn this dehumanization of children’s learning in Ontario. Click here

There was a time when calling for a curriculum that emphasized critical literacies was thought of as progressive, radical, even subversive.

But these terms have been co-opted into mainstream educational policy. They are even used by governments and political parties that were once deeply hostile to these ideas.

How could this happen and what can we do about it?

The Toronto District School Board has just cut somewhere in the
neighbourhood of $30 million from its 2009-2010 operating budget.
The savagery of these cuts is primarily the result of a flawed
provincial funding formula introduced by Mike Harris and continued in
its essentials by Dalton McGuinty. In these notes, Hugh Mackenzie
outlines just how destructive this formula has been, especially for
large urban boards like the TDSB. He also proposes some key principles
which must govern the TDSB respond to this funding crisis.