Critical Social Justice Ideology in Education

The De-streaming Debacle

This is a guest post by an anonymous PDSB high school teacher, code named: Igor Stravinsky.

Preamble

The Ontario government recently directed Ontario high schools to de-stream. This was the direct result of the application of Critical Social Justice principles (derived from Critical Race Theory) to the public education system. What is “de-streaming”, exactly, and what impact will it have on learning? These are more complex questions than meet the eye. To answer them, we would have to answer basic questions about the purpose of public education and what we can reasonably expect the public education system, on its own, to do. Since there has never been a clear consensus on either of these matters, the system has lurched back and forth from one pedagogical paradigm to the other.

Streaming 1.0

In the 1970’s the high schools were set up with three pathways for grade 9 students: Advanced, for students considering university, general, for those headed for community college or apprenticeship programs etc., and basic for students who struggled with academics and needed remedial help to consolidate the elementary curriculum before presumably moving on to more advanced courses and then the workforce.

Choosing between these pathways was not considered a high stakes proposition. It was whatever seemed most appropriate for the student. That fact was that good paying jobs with good benefits were relatively easy to find at that time. Society had a secure social safety net. The main concern of educators then was that students find work which they personally found rewarding in some way or at least was a good match for the student’s personality. A student could take whatever courses he or she wanted (there were two mandatory English credits- that was it!) and just needed to earn 26 credits to get a grade 12 diploma (students going on to university had to attend grade 13 and obtain 6 more credits).

But by the 1980s the nature of work had started to change. Kids could no longer graduate from high school and expect to get a job with a good salary and benefits doing mindless assembly-line work. Manufacturing was becoming increasingly mechanized and automated. It was becoming increasingly clear that the good paying jobs of the future would demand a well-educated workforce. Simply letting kids take whatever high school courses interested them no longer seemed adequate to prepare the workers of the 1980’s and beyond. More and more courses became mandatory. And enrolling in general or basic level courses was increasingly seen as a limiting factor for future student success. People began to think that grade 9 was too young to separate kids into advanced, general, and basic level streams.

Give them another year and see what happens, was the thinking. Perhaps they will flourish in their new high school environment. Maybe some of these seemingly less bright kids were in fact just “late bloomers”. This led to the first bout of de-streaming of grade 9.

De-streaming 1.0

There was really no empirical evidence to suggest this would work, but grade 9, although still physically held in high school buildings, was to be considered part of elementary school under this scheme. As such, students were all put in the same courses- there was no advanced level or general level or basic level, just like grade 8. They could not fail a subject. They either passed or failed the entire year, and as you can guess few failed. All you needed was 50% in four of your 8 subjects and you were passed on to grade 10 “en masse”.

It quickly became apparent that this was a very bad idea. The range of academic ability and prerequisite knowledge in the de-streamed grade 9 classes was unwieldy. Overall student achievement dropped. Teachers struggled to meet the needs of such a diverse range of learners. Students were arriving in grade 10 underprepared. After a few short years the system was re-streamed again, but with different labels.

Streaming 2.0

The de-streaming experiment had not worked, but going back to the old system was a political nonstarter. The government and education leaders could not acknowledge a return to the previous model which was viewed as limiting to student success.

Under the new re-streamed system, students could sign up for “academic” or “applied” courses. “Vocational” AKA “locally developed” or “essentials” courses also existed at some schools but students had to be identified to be offered these regional remedial programs. In reality, the old advanced, general, and basic level classes had just been re-labelled, albeit it gussied up with fancy new evaluation categories and associated rubrics. But the spin was that both academic and applied courses were equally rigorous and represented equally valid pathways to success. Changing pathways was possible, although it could be much more difficult to move “up” than “down”. The remedial programs were downplayed. They did not even have distinct course codes or an official curriculum. Their purpose was to ensure that students who did not possess the necessary academic aptitude to pass regular courses could nevertheless earn a diploma. Of course, what the student could do with a diploma earned by taking locally developed, essentials courses was very limited.

As before, it was up to the parents to choose which pathway was best for their child, but the teachers did make recommendations which were generally followed by parents. In fact, the teachers almost always “erred up”- a student who was supposed to have a small chance at success at the academic level was pointed in that direction. The thought was that if he or she struggled, they could always drop down (you would of course never hear it put like that!). The result was a large number of relatively weak students in the academic classes. This of course impacted the way the courses were taught. It was not possible to challenge the strongest students. Conditions were ripe for the private sector to pounce! Enter the regional programs.

Regional Programs

You are a parent in the 1990s and your son or daughter is a high academic achiever. You want a rigorous and challenging learning environment for him or her so that he or she will be well prepared for university. But you can see that the public school system is not set up to encourage kids to strive for true excellence, but rather to reward mediocrity and achieve high course pass and graduation rates.

You could look at a private school. But they are really expensive, and unless it is one of the best, it may not actually be any better (possibly worse!) than a public school. But what if you could have it both ways? For a minimal cost, enroll your child in what amounts to an elite and exclusive private school within the local public school?

There are many such programs but the two best known are the International Baccalaureate program (IB) and the Advanced Placement program (AP). These programs are run out of public schools but are set up by third-party private and for-profit entities. Students usually pay a modest tuition, although some school boards pay some or all of the costs (foisting it onto all students).

These programs are in effect a fourth, higher stream of classes. Technically they are “academic” level and carry the same course codes, but in reality, since the students must be academic high-achievers to be admitted, the teacher is free to challenge the students without the impediment of spending large amounts of time and energy with struggling students who do not have the prerequisites. The curriculum is accordingly much more rigorous. Ask any teacher who has taught one of the regional program classes and they will tell you the difference between that and a regular “academic” class is like night and day.

So the system had reached a kind of equilibrium: High achieving students could apply for one of the regional programs or cruise through the academic level courses. Students who were looking at community college could take the applied level courses. And kids who really needed extra support and could not manage the academic or applied level curriculum were offered vocational level programs. The system chugged along and course pass and graduation rates, the metric school boards really care about the most, continued to rise. The dirty little secret was that kids could get a diploma without doing much or learning a whole lot. And often, that diploma was good for much.

Then Critical Race Theory arrived on the Ontario Education scene. This would be a game changer.

De-streaming 2.0

By 2015, it had been clear for a long time that students who identified as male and black had been underachieving in Ontario schools. Based on the principles of traditional liberal anti-racism, it was assumed that these students were facing obstacles that were impeding their scholastic achievement and leading them to engage in negative behaviours. These obstacles represented unequal opportunities, and equality of opportunity is the cornerstone of traditional liberal social justice. The difficulty was determining exactly what these obstacles were, and, once that was determined, what to do about it.

It was generally assumed that the school system itself was partly culpable. It was said that teachers and school administrators had lower expectations for black youth, for example. There was almost certainly some truth to these allegations. But the consensus among teachers was that it was a complex problem and there were a range of social, cultural, and systemic issues at play. It was tacitly acknowledged that while it had to do its part, the school system could not solve the problem on its own because this was a pan-societal problem. Nevertheless, it had to try. Various initiatives were taken but with little measurable cumulative effect.

The application of CSJ principles

This all changed in 2020 with release of the Peel District School Board Review. A small group of black parents and their allies had been accusing the PDSB of racism over the poorer academic achievement and higher discipline rates of black male youth. High profile incidents of racist violence against black men (mostly in the USA but some in Canada as well) by the police provided a backdrop to contend that the problems black youth were facing in PDSB schools were in fact entirely the fault of allegedly racist teachers and administrators who were (perhaps unwitting) actors in a “white supremacist” system. This was the basic conclusion of the PDSB review.

But a careful reading of that report will reveal that it is based on a relatively small amount of anecdotal evidence (“lived experiences). The allegation that the PDSB was a hotbed of white supremacy does not align with the reality that no racial group other than black males was underperforming or over disciplined relative to white kids. In fact, the highest performing demographic was Asians. But according to the principles of Critical Social Justice, the very fact that a disproportionate number of black male youth were underperforming academically and receiving a disproportionate amount of discipline was proof, in and of itself, that there must be racism against these kids. No other factors were even considered. To suggest that any other cause my have been contributing to this was, according to the new orthodoxy, racist.

One of the allegations of the report was that black boys were being “streamed” (forced) into applied level courses. They also complained that a disproportionate number of these boys ended up in vocational programs. In fact, it was entirely up to the parents what stream the student selected. As mentioned previously, vocational programs are actually considered a regional program and students had to be identified and parents had to apply to have the students placed into them. Nevertheless, the idea that there was a diabolical plan to somehow force these black boys into courses that were beneath their academic abilities gained traction and, in typical CSJ fashion, any suggestion that there may be another explanation was attacked as racist. So at that point, streaming had been inexorably linked to racism and anyone who did not support de-streaming was considered to be a racist.

With the powerful forces of CSJ backing de-streaming, the Doug Ford government saw an opportunity: A cost-free way to align itself with left-leaning CSJ- enthusiastic school trustees and community activists. They would score a lot of political points and the Liberals and NDP would not be able to out-flank them to the political left (of course, the PCs have the political right in their pocket). Ford knows that this initiative will degrade and discredit a pandemic-battered system. That is perfect from his point of view, as he wants to calve off and privatise as much of the system as he can. There is a lot of money to be made by private interests if some or most of the public education system goes private. That is why Ford has been pushing so hard for larger classes and online learning and suppressing teacher wages through legislation.

As for the school boards, they have bought the farm on CSJ principles. Their leaders, be they trustees or senior administrators, have wrested power from moderates by backing CSJ community supporters and to continue to enjoy the support of the “woke” crowd they know they have to push ahead with destreaming, the only large-scale tangible thing they have actually done so far, to prove their allegiance to CSJ ideology. They would probably be happy to have more resources invested into the project and would privately agree that the problems I have identified below are real but they also know no money is coming so they feel they just have to move forward. In a few years time, when all of this comes crashing to earth as students entering university are badly un-prepared, they will blame it on the pandemic or point the finger at the teachers for failing to make it work. Also, many of those people will have moved on to bigger and better things with plenty of lines added to their resumes about their “equity accomplishments”.

So Ford gave de-streaming the green light and school boards, especially the PDSB jumped to get it going ASAP. Of course at that point, the world was gripped in a pandemic.

Does it make sense to start up an initiative as drastic as de-streaming during a pandemic? Teachers were struggling to educate given online learning, hybrid learning (teaching an online class and an in-person one at the same time), double length (150 minute!) classes, running every other week (how much do you think a student retains after 9 days away from a subject?). To bring de-streaming online under these circumstances is surely a recipe for failure. But that is what they did. And in the PDSB, they did it an accelerated pace. The Ministry of Education mandated the de-streaming of math and provided a new curriculum, but the board went ahead and de-streamed all grade 9 courses by simply putting all the students into the academical level classes and closing the applied option.

Let’s be clear about what de-streaming looks like: You are taking kids who would have been in vocational (class size maximum 17) and applied (class size maximum 22) and putting them into classes of up to 30 the majority of whom are academic level students. Imagine what you’re facing as a grade 9 math teacher: You have a group of 30 kids, some of whom struggle with basic arithmetic and some of whom are gifted at math and find the curriculum unchallenging and boring and everything in between. What are you going to do? You have several unpalatable options:

1. Teach to the top: Challenge the brightest, most engaged kids. This is ideal for them, but the other kids will struggle badly. Many will fail.

2. Teach to the middle: Accept that the brightest will be bored and focus on ensuring that there are not too many failures and that most of the kids at least learn something. The brighter kids get cheated out of a good education and quite a few of the lowest functioning kids still fail.

3. Focus on the weakest learners. Expect everyone else to work more or less autonomously and engage in peer assessments etc. In this scenario, the weakest kids will hopefully learn a little and pass (barely), but everyone else has a miserable experience and does not learn nearly as much as they should have. Attitudes towards school generally suffer.

4. Start out the term by determining the academic level of every student in all three of your classes (we’re talking about up to 90 kids) then place them within each class according to ability into three groups…. Do you see where I am going with this? Do you see the irony and absurdity of it? And doing this could mean preparing up to 9 lessons daily, or if you’re talking about hybrid learning 18 lessons!! The teacher would be working evenings and weekends- forget about getting involved with any extra-curricular activities. Teacher burnout would be rampant. And it would not really work. The teacher’s attention would constantly be divided and he or she would in fact have to adopt one of the three strategies above at any moment in time.

The fact is that no matter what the teacher does, he or she will be working extremely hard and will not be able to provide the kind of learning he or she wants to. Putting teachers in this position is demoralizing, to say the least. Over-worked and demoralized teachers will not form the basis of a highquality education system.

If there really are black (or any other) kids who are being “mis-streamed” then that is a problem that needs to be addressed. But any student in applied classes who is doing well has always been encouraged to move up to the academic level. This rarely happens though, because, as mentioned before, teachers will recommend academic level for borderline kids. Students far more often drop down a level. Those recommended for applied were those achieving well below grade level.

But if you insist on going the de-streaming route, in order for the best chance of success, you would have to at least

1. keep class sizes small (maximum 20 students and ideally less),

2. start with a pilot program in a few schools with a lot of support for the teachers to collaborate and come up with strategies that can be tested and proved to be effective in the de-streamed classroom for each subject area,

3. put together comprehensive lesson and unit plans once the pilot is complete and provide training for the other teachers who will be leading these de-streamed classes on how to execute these plans,

4. allow for constant feedback from teachers and time for collaboration between them to refine the pedagogical practice to make the strategy work the best it can, and

5. establish clear success criteria for the initiative and be willing to change or abandon it if it does not measure up to these criteria.

But the PDSB did not do any of those things.

1. They did not keep the class sizes small, because that would have required more teachers, which costs money. The Ford government wants to cut costs on education, not invest in it.

2. There was a pilot program but no pedagogical resources were developed from it and shared with the teachers who are now teaching the de-streamed classes.

3. There was training, which started after many of the teachers were already leading the destreamed classes, but the training was put on hold when teachers complained that the content of the sessions was entirely based on equity principles and there was no practical discussion at all on how to approach teaching large and academically disparate classes.

4. No formal opportunities for teacher collaboration are happening as that would require leave time which costs money for the supply teachers covering the classes.

5. There are no success criteria, because, according to CSJ principles, streaming is racist, so going back to it is not on the table. And any fixes would likely involve investment of more resources which is also off the table.

Some likely impacts of de-streaming 2.0

• Weak students will struggle badly: The students who would otherwise have been in a vocational program will now be in a much larger class and the curriculum will be beyond their reach so they can only hope that the teacher can carve out some time to do remedial work with them. At best, this will be for part of the period and they cannot expect much, if any, individualized instruction. These students will end up in “essentials” classes in the senior grades as they would have before, but will be more demoralized and less well prepared.

• Below average students will also struggle: The students who would otherwise have been in an applied class will be in the same boat as the weak students, although the remedial work they need is at a higher level (perhaps grade 7 and 8 as opposed to lower grade level work). These students will move on to essentials or perhaps college level classes in the senior grades, as before. They too will be more demoralized and less well prepared.

• Average students will learn less: These students are at grade level and can do the curriculum by they also lose because the teacher’s attention will so often be directed at the multiple levels of remedial work the weaker students are doing. They will not learn as much as they would in a more homogeneous class of grade level learners. They will move on to college or university level courses in which they may struggle, not having learned as much as they would have in the academic level classes.

• Above average students will be bored and not challenged: These students will gravitate towards the regional programs like IB or AP, but since there are not enough spots in these programs, most will end up losing too, for the same reason as the average students, but to a greater extent because they needed additional challenges beyond the curriculum expectations which they will not get. And since they will be able to stand out with very little effort, they will not be developing the work habits they need when, somewhere along the line, they are in a large group of their peers and the academic expectations will be very high (senior grades or post-secondary education).

• Teachers: Teachers will be working much harder and since none of the students will be learning as much as they could be it will be demoralizing and frustrating for them. Burnout and mental health issues will be a major problem.

• School administrators: The stresses mentioned above for students and teachers will work their way up the food chain to local administrators who will have to deal with the fallout in the form of poorer learning outcomes and increased truancy and discipline problems, not to mention the staffing issues that will arise as teachers inevitably squabble over who gets stuck teaching these demoralizing classes. School administrators will be under tremendous stress to “make the system work”- so they will have to find a way to do that, on paper at least. To avoid increases in course failure and drop-out metrics, expectations for student learning will be reduced.

• Equity: De-streaming is, strictly speaking, equitable. All students are treated the same and offered the same opportunities. No one is getting the opportunity to excel in their studies, though. Is that a win? And ironically, this kind of equity does not meet the standard of “equity” as defined under CSJ, which demands that “oppressed” groups (in this case black boys) be targeted for different treatment in order to result in equitable outcomes. In fact, under destreaming 2.0 these boys will be worse off than before (like everyone else).

De-streaming 2.0 meets the political needs of the Ford government and school board trustees and senior managers, but it will be disastrous for students, teachers, and parents. A strong pushback is needed right now to stop it from spreading into grade 10 in September 2022.

Read more from Igor Stravinsky - Woke Teachers Union