A deeper look at the PDSB's “Black Student Success Strategy”

Race-based privileges, lower academic achievement, and disorderly schools

Here is the PDSB’s “Black Student Success Strategy”

Last week, Igor examined the framing of the Black Student Success Strategy (BSSS), and pointed out that the steering committee was under the control of community activists. In today’s post he turns his attention to the historical revision found in the BSSS.

Revisionist History 

By Igor Stravinsky (anonymous Canadian high school teacher)

In my previous post, I explained how a group of woke activists (people who attribute any and all negative outcomes for black people, as a group, compared to other racial groups, to the unseen hand of systemic, or institutional racism) have succeeded in entrenching Critical Theory ideology into the PDSB and have developed the BSSS accordingly.

Today I will be looking at the revisionist history the BSSS provides in support of its aims and objectives.

The PDSB’s journey to creating anti-racist learning and working environments

This is a kind of timeline which is full of unsupported allegations and revisionist history. The facts, in many cases, stand diametrically opposed to the statements made:

2013: Biased, inconsistent, and unstructured hiring processes, along with nepotism and favoritism, undermine the hiring of staff based on skills and abilities, and the hiring of staff from diverse backgrounds.

Back in 2013 hiring of senior administration was by the Director of Education with oversight and approval by the board. Hiring teachers was based on a combination of seniority, qualifications, and performance, and an interview according to Ministry of Education regulations. Was there ever favoritism or nepotism? Obviously. You can never completely eradicate those things in any organization. But the system in place discouraged it. 

The diversity of the teaching staff was gradually evolving. Many younger teachers were racialized. But a teacher’s career usually spans 30 years or more. The demographics of Peel Region had been changing rapidly, though. Unless you are going to fire lots of white teachers every year to make room for racialized ones, this imbalance will persist for many years after the demographic changes have taken place. 

The fact is that even if you did fire legions of white teachers, qualified racialized replacements would not be able to be found. They simply did, and do not exist in those kinds of numbers. But most parents know this does not matter. They want a teacher who cares about kids and wants them to learn and be successful; who has the knowledge and pedagogical skills to get the job done. This is Canada. Most people do not care much about race, or at least they didn’t until recently. Lately the woke activists have been working hard to convince everyone that everything is all about race and other “identities” and Canada is a white supremacist society.  

2015: FIGHTING AN UPHILL BATTLE: Report on the Consultations into the Well-Being of Black Youth in Peel Region (F.A.C.E.S. Report) This report documents Black students' experiences, including: 

Low expectations from teachers 

Teachers want high academic standards but can only hold the expectations the board will support. Black students tend, on average, to attend more sporadically and make a poorer effort than the average. If teachers hold them to high standards, many will fail. A high failure rate among black students would be evidence of racism, under Critical Theory, so that is not acceptable to the board.

Under pressure to pass students, academic (and behavioral) standards have been dropped, especially for low achieving students, a disproportionate number of whom happen to be black. But lower academic expectations are also considered racist! The solution would of course be to improve black student attendance, participation, and effort at schools. But that is beyond the scope of what the schools, on their own, can do, and anyway to suggest that is also considered racist. 

Stereotyping about educational commitment and intellectual abilities

With rare exceptions, teachers keep an open mind and treat students fairly and equally as individuals. This is why black students who attend, participate, and make an effort are successful at any level their intellectual abilities support (which of course varies). Kids who have a negative attitude about school, be they black, white, Asian, or whatever, do not do well. 

But this “colorblindness” is also considered racist. Why are black kids less engaged (on average) at school than whites? Why are Asian kids more engaged (on average) at school than whites? Teachers are not social engineers and cannot be expected to answer these questions. Their job is to do their best to teach a curriculum to every kid who comes into their classroom.

More severe discipline 

For years, black students have been disproportionately engaging in discipline-triggering behaviors, such as skipping classes, being disruptive or disrespectful, right up to serious issues around drugs and violence. And for years, administrators have been urged to be more lenient toward disciplining them, out of fear of being accused of racism. This negative feedback loop results in some students (a disproportionate number of whom are black) acting out even more, knowing that there will not be significant consequences for their behavior. 

Feelings of exclusion 

Students who are struggling academically naturally feel excluded and out of place at school. This is true regardless of race. 

Staff that do not reflect them

The idea that students need teachers of the same race is, well, racist, and is not supported by the evidence. While most teachers in the PDSB are white, the best performing students are Asian. The reality is that less than 4% of Canadians are black. Telling black kids that black people are the only ones they can trust to truly care about them, support them, and recognize their abilities is setting them up for failure in life here. 

The “We Rise Together” action plan is based on the misconceptions and faulty logic above and so has been doomed to fail in improving academic achievement and behavior among black, or any other students. In fact, as noted, it has had the opposite effect. 

2017: TOWARDS RACE EQUITY IN EDUCATION: The Schooling of Black Students in the Greater Toronto Area. 

This report identified the following obstacles for black achievement:

• Streaming: I have previously written extensively about streaming. The fact is the real reason so many black kids ended up in the applied stream is that they were arriving at high school without the prerequisite skills and knowledge to be successful at the academic level. This means that many of them were underperforming at school. This is the issue that needs to be honestly confronted. Blaming it on “white supremacy” and putting low functioning black (or any other) kids in classes for which they are not academically prepared accomplishes nothing. 

  Since this type of streaming has been eliminated (there is still plenty of streaming but that is a topic for another article) teachers have had no choice but to drop standards in an effort to prevent mass course failures. And even when kids do fail, administrators have the last word and will usually grant a credit. As always with “equity”, everyone loses. 

• Over-identification as having special education needs: In an effort to support students who are struggling academically, school boards spend vast amounts of their resources on special programs. The fact that a disproportionate number of black kids need these services is a sure sign that many of them are not getting the same level of support at home as other kids. The last thing you want to do is take those supports away. But pointing that out is called…racist. If you don’t try to help, it’s racist, and if you do try, that is also racist.

• Not supported to go on to university: Black students disproportionately do not excel in academics. As such most do not pursue studies at universities. What school-based supports, which other students get, are they being denied? We are not told because there are, in fact, none. The plan is to give them extra supports that other kids cannot access. That is obviously not fair. 

• Over-policed in schools: A few years ago the Toronto District School Board polled students about their feelings towards the School Resource Officer (SRO) program. These officers had been assigned to many Ontario High Schools following the violent death in a school stairwell of black student Jordan Manners at CW Jeffries High School in Toronto. 

  Although the program had been effective in reducing violent crime in schools and was supported by most school teachers and administrators (including many black ones) and 90% of students, the board took the decision to cancel the program, citing the fact that the presence of the officers made some of the black students feel uncomfortable. The PDSB soon followed suit.

  The result has been a major spike in school violence including beatings, sexual assaults, and murders. What is needed is less violent criminal activity in schools. Until the necessary community supports are in place to make that happen, a police presence will be necessary. If black students are involved with a disproportionate amount of crime, then they will receive a disproportionate amount of interactions with law enforcement. 

2019 WE RISE TOGETHER REPORT (DR. CARL JAMES)

This report once again attributes all the poor outcomes black students are achieving entirely to the school system. There is no acknowledgement of any student, family, community, or broader societal responsibility for the issues these kids are experiencing. This dishonest portrayal ensures that a successful path forward, which would of course include confronting racism, will not be found.

2020 MINISTRY REVIEW OF THE PEEL DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARD

I have written previously about the PDSB review. It was politically motived-undertaken at the insistence of local activists who blamed the school system, entirely, for the high dropout rate, poor academic performance, and high rates of discipline of black students. The conclusions of the report, really foregone conclusions given that the reviewers were themselves race-essentialist activists, were based on a statistically insignificant amount of anecdotal evidence (“lived experiences”). 

On this shaky foundation, a revolution in the way the board conducts its business- from traditional social justice principles such as racial equality, equality of opportunity, academic excellence, fairness, and program diversity to meet diverse student needs were all swept aside in favor of “equity”, “anti-racism”, and “anti-oppression” as defined in my previous post. The result has been nothing short of catastrophic. 

Learning and academic achievement are way down; a toxic, racist, divisive atmosphere has been created; teacher professional learning has been hijacked by activists pedaling “white fragility” and “white supremacy” theories (and collecting a pretty penny in consulting fees) as a replacement for learning about subject based pedagogical practices. Truancy is up, and schools have become disorderly and plagued with crime and violence. 

2020: INVESTIGATION OF THE PEEL DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARD

Many of the PDSB review directives were simply not attainable, for example the expectation that all systemic racism be eliminated within a short timeframe. Since systemic racism is defined as the existence of any kind of measurable difference in outcomes between racial groups, even assuming this is a desirable goal, it would take many years to implement. In reality, the expectations were deliberately made to be unreasonable as a justification to fire most of the senior administration, who did not fully ascribe to all the tenets of critical theory, and balked at taking orders from unelected, self-appointed community leaders and a couple of rogue trustees. 

2021: FOCUS GROUPS WITH BLACK STUDENTS

The small number of students who participated in the focus groups were hand picked by the board. They were students who were relatively unsuccessful in school and had a history of discipline problems. We will never know what the results would have been if a large sample (of say, 2000) randomly selected black students and their parents had been asked open ended questions about their school experience. But the responses they elicited supported the “racist and Colonial” theory of low black achievement. No big surprise there. 

In my next essay, I will be looking at how the BSSS looks in the classroom. Are the expectations being placed on educators reasonable, and, more importantly, will they make schools a place where all students can strive for excellence in a safe and accepting environment? 

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Thanks for reading. For more PDSB analysis from this author, read Waking Up To School Violence

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