Photo by Ken Smith (Copyright)
BY: Kristin Rushowy and Louise Brown
A groundbreaking report calls on Toronto schools to help their struggling visible minority students, making the achievement gap between children of different backgrounds a priority at Canada’s most diverse school board.
Faced with alarming dropout rates among certain students – notably those of black, Portuguese, Hispanic, aboriginal and Middle Eastern backgrounds – the Toronto school board’s new “achievement gap task force” proposes 19 changes, from having schools tackle the educational barriers faced by their own racial minorities to hiring teachers with demonstrated cultural sensitivity.
The 21-page report also recommends the board examine the feasibility of creating an Africentric high school to complement the Africentric school that began this year from kindergarten to Grade 5. It also suggests consulting with the aboriginal community about designing more aboriginal alternative programs.
“The (suggestions) do represent some very strong thinking points because this achievement gap has been in existence for many years and we’ve not been able to break this particular cycle,” said Lloyd McKell, executive officer of student and community equity.
“We are an excellent school system, and renowned for our work in equity . . . but still when you look at the data, we continue to have this achievement gap.”
The draft report by school board staff and principals is based on demographic data the board collects from its 250,000 students that show how students of different racial backgrounds feel about learning. The data give each school a detailed demographic snapshot of its students so it can pinpoint which groups struggle most.
Research has pegged Toronto’s dropout rate at 42 per cent for students of Portuguese heritage, 39 per cent for Spanish and 40 per cent for blacks, compared to an average of about 25 per cent, with those who speak Chinese as low as 12 per cent.
While the board already uses the data to tackle the achievement gap among high-risk groups across the city, this report calls for local schools to use the information in their own planning. It puts the onus on neighbourhood schools with diverse populations to track gaps faced by their own students, McKell said.
Not every school may have students who face racial barriers to learning, McKell noted, but if a school has a particular group of students who struggle on standardized tests, earn low grades in class or skip school more often, the report suggests those schools offer these students extra support.
The report also proposes the board consider offering incentives to bring culturally sensitive teachers to schools where they are needed, either through additional “release” time to further their own learning, McKell added, or possibly with extra pay, although he noted that could be tricky under collective agreements.
It also suggests all new teachers in their first three years take training in “culturally responsive” instruction through a proposed three-year certificate course.
Education director Chris Spence created the task force in January to tackle the uneven success rate across a board where seven in 10 students are not white. The task force held hearings in March where community members suggested ways to reduce the gaps, and the report now will be circulated for public input, with recommendations to go to trustees after November’s election.
The report hails some schools for already creating programs to help particular racial groups – music and dance clubs to bolster pride among the new waves of Roma children, an African-Canadian student leadership committee, after-school clubs for aboriginal girls. But it warns too many schools fail to motivate minority children for whom “school does not make sense.”
NOTE: Article appeared in parentcentral.ca, May 31 2010.