How have Doug Ford and the PCs damaged public education in Ontario?
From the Little Education report with thanks as always to Doug Little
The anticipated, totally opportunistic, unnecessary election, nobody asked for, has arrived. Ford wants a mandate while he’s high in the polls. He knows if Poilievre is elected first, he will start doing unpopular things and that may influence Ford’s popularity. Nevertheless, it’s on. Ford is up in the polls despite corruption around the Greenbelt, – the RCMP report is due soon. He built highways to donor’s land and created a mess around the Science Center move, a private wellness center at Ontario Place, unresolved hallway medicine, but his ham-handed and often malicious cuts to education are right up there.
This piece is about the ways Ford has degraded Ontario’s high functioning, public education system through neglect, ideology, underfunding, and a lack of appreciation that public education undergirds the economic, and social well being as well as the individual happiness and fulfillment of all Ontarians. He’s selling us all short. In classic David Letterman style:
Here are the top ten ways Doug Ford has damaged Ontario Education
Number 10) Used Fake Parents to Attack Teachers
In perhaps, the cheesiest, cynical move in decades, Ford’s allies placed full page ads in the Toronto Star, the National Post, and the Globe & Mail from a totally fictitious astroturf group called ‘’Vaughan Working Families’’ using a photo of a model from Poland as the mother, echoing a series of hackneyed PC government talking points about teacher holidays and benefits, during a teacher strike. There were no sources for the alleged data and no contact information for the group. It was almost instantly spotted as fake, not only by the Queen’s Parks journalists, but as well as everybody active in education. It was an amazing example of deep, dark money combined with totally amateur presentation. Clearly, PCs feared the sophisticated Parent-Teacher Alliances like People for Education and the Campaign for Public Education, It’s almost risible if the motive was not so sinister. Check the link below for further details.
Number 9) Forced on-line secondary credits.
In 2019 Ford announced another nefarious fiasco. This plan, unearthed by Press Progress and the Toronto Star, was a scheme to replace thousands of high school teachers by forcing all high school students to take 4 mandatory on-line courses, which would be created by the private sector, creators like Coursera. The ‘’secret plan’’ included the gradual expansion of courses until it covered the whole secondary curriculum.
Ford and former education minister Lecce cited, of all places, a series of mainly southern US states who had adopted this direction like ‘’Alabama’’ . In fact, this was due to an inability or unwillingness of these states to attract enough teachers due to low wages. Most were scrambling to ditch the on-line priority due to plunging test scores. Michigan, where demographics are highly comparable to Ontario, concluded mass on-line mandatory education was a disaster.
Experts swamped Ford with research showing on-line education is vastly inferior to regular, professional, public, face to face teaching. Under heavy incoming fire, Ford relented, and cut the mandatory courses to two. These need to be made fully optional although parents can now opt out.
Number 8) Revisions to health curriculum
The Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne had made changes to the health curriculum that included ‘’sexual orientation and gender identity’’ SOGI for short. This curriculum was generally well received except by some conservative parents, and members of some religious groups, for the first time not simply white Evangelicals, but some Muslims, and other faiths as well. When the PCs won the 2018 election, they scrapped the new health curriculum, basically caving in to homophobia.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4327836/doug-ford-1998-sex-ed-curriculum-dangerous/
Number 7) Ford worsens the repair and maintenance crisis.
To be fair to Ford, he inherited a huge repair backlog from the McGuinty-Wynne Liberals but they also inherited it from the Harris-Eves PCs. Nobody wants to tackle it because there is little political return on a staggering expenditure.
It would cost $31 billion over ten years to both repair and construct the necessary new spaces to accommodate Ontario’s kids. The shortfall right now is about $13B. It’s a liability for sure but think of the paychecks to workers, profits to repair companies all circulating within the Ontario economy. Ford, since his election, is responsible for the
$12B of $20B or more than half on his watch. Ford just cost us half a billion by rushing booze into corner stores early. That would have made a nice dent in the backlog. Wrong priorities.
Number 6) Ford needs to own the growing teacher shortage.
Ontario is experiencing a worsening teacher shortage which is expected to continue at least until 2027. A toxic brew of increased enrollment, boomer teacher retirements, difficulty attracting teachers in some areas, working conditions including large classes, violence, increased parental demands, lack of substitute teachers.
Ford owns this problem now. Every time a premier attacks teachers as overpaid, woke, or uses fake parents groups, the problem gets worse. It has spread from small rural boards to big cities and now affects the Toronto TDSB. Teachers, union organized, professionally trained teachers, built a world class school system in Ontario and are refusing to be blamed for a system that is not perfect. Retention and recruitment is a provincial problem and a provincial responsibility. Teachers refuse to be scapegoats.
Number 5) Attempts to cut Special Ed, Local Priorities
Ford and his ministers consistently play ‘’fun with numbers’’ During negotiations with ETFO and CUPE, the Minister made a big deal about a $148 million pledge to the Local Priorities Grant which funds Special Ed, but this was, in fact, $100M less than previous commitments. The numbers are one issue, the lack of trust is another. If you shake hands on a deal with a Ford minister, you may have to count your fingers.
Number 4) Ford cancels free post secondary for poor kids.
One thing the Wynne Liberal government did right was to make post secondary tuition for free for poor kids. This was in the form of Ontario Students Assistance Grants designed to cover the full cost of tuition. Ford, in an austerity move, eliminated those grants converting to loans across the board. Ford instead, cut tuition for all by 10% but then, failed to fully compensate the schools for the lost revenue. For progressives, this is tragic. The hope has always been to eliminate tuition, as 22 nations have already done. This was at least a significant down payment, which might have been expanded over time.
Number 3) Ford has made numerous attempts to cut the number of teachers.
On top of Ford’s on-line course gambit, discussed in number 9 above, Ford has also made repeated attempts to slip class size increases through, mainly through underfunding. Even The Financial Accountability Officer at Queen’s Park agreed with teachers’ unions that the funding gap with enrolment growth and inflation means a cut of 10 000 jobs. This budget struggle is ongoing.
Number 2) Doug Ford froze funding for higher education.
In 2019, Ford introduced a reckless plan for post secondary, leaving students far worse off. It amounted to a 4% cut in institutional funding, Huge cut in non repayable grants in a shift to loans over grants. He eliminated the 6 month grace period to begin paying loans and even attacked the autonomy of student unions to represent student views. The spin of a 10% cut in tuition was not well received. Student, out-of-pocket expenses overall will increase. The shift from non repayable grants to repayable loans is really a shift of costs onto poorer students. Ford introduced an ‘’opt out clause’’ for student union dues similar to right-to-work laws for workers … .more in the link.
And, finally the Number 1 way the Ford government has damaged Ontario education….
Number 1) Ford has underfunded K12 education by $1500 per student or $3B overall.
This Report wrote extensively on this issue, two issues back. Ford naturally says he increased funding, but when that funding fails to factor in enrolment growth and inflation, it leaves individual K12 students $1500 behind and a $3 billion shortfall across the system while Ford announces $200 giveaways, a $50B tunnel under highway 401, $500 million dollar strictly political speed up of shifting beer and wine to corner stores two years early. See link below.
No matter the complaints from the right, Canada has the second most educated % of people on Earth (slightly behind only S. Korea), highest in the G7,with 58% having a post secondary degree of diploma and Ontario is 40% of Canada.
https://www.thelittleeducationreport.ca/copy-of-home-47
Public education cannot be seen, even by conservatives, as a burden on the budget and the taxpayer. It is an investment in our economy, equality, and human happiness.
What is to be done?
So what should Ontario progressive educators and voters do in this election? We believe it’s time to bite the bullet and simply vote NDP in every riding. If you really want to help, knock on doors, phone canvass, put up Yard signs, or make a donation. When I worked for OSSTF the union position was ‘’strategic voting’’ since the membership was evenly divided. This has proven, over the years, to be a failing strategy since it routinely elects Tories. It’s time for an all in NDP voting strategy. The OLP is only in a position to win a dozen seats but the real damage of the Crombie crew is dividing the progressive vote. Crombie is no Kathleen Wynne. Wynne was at least right some of the time. Crombie is a Tory in a red dress. She openly wants to shift the OLP to the ‘’center’’ which means moving right from bad to worse.
Look at western Canada, especially at the provincial level. The NDP is governing BC and Manitoba, and is the official opposition in Alberta and Saskatchewan. There is one single provincial Liberal seat in Manitoba. Now compare that with Ontario and Nova Scotia where Tories rule due to a divided vote. The provincial Liberals are on life support but just won’t die. Strategic voting has failed and will continue to fail. The west has shown us the path. The Liberals must pass into history so that progressive government is possible at least at the provincial level where education is decided. There is an old Monte Python skit where the Black Plague is ravaging Britain and hay wagons are carting off the dead. One of the bodies keeps protesting that ‘’but I’m not dead yet’’. The collectors pay no attention. I can’t look at that skit without thinking of the Liberals. Abacus Data has the numbers showing when Liberal decline, the second choice is NDP not Tories.
There’s more!
Bonus way Ford has damaged public education:
He invoked the clause in June 2021 to limit third party election financing and was all set to use it again when he decided to take away collective bargaining rights for members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the lowest paid public employees in the province who’d demanded an 11 percent increase on a $39 000 per year salary.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/notwithstanding-clause-ontario-doug-ford-1.6063720