Special Education Reform in the Peel District School Board
Special Education Reform in the Peel District School Board
“Equity” focus means cutting programs for struggling students
By Igor Stravinsky (anonymous Canadian high school teacher)
The analysis below is based on the following Peel District School Board (PDSB) internal memo, leaked to Woke Watch Canada, regarding changes to Special Education:
Ever obsessed with race, the PDSB is determined to stamp out any evidence of inferior achievement by black students (as a group) even if that means poorer overall educational opportunities for everyone.
In today’s post I will outline the board’s overall educational philosophy, briefly describe the role of special education programs, and explain why the board sees these programs as racist.
Rationale for the Cuts
“...the Peel District School Board fully acknowledges that our system, in its current form, produced inequitable outcomes for students based on their intersectional identities and is resolute in its commitment to restructuring and redesigning our policies, practices and programs to provide equitable opportunity for all learners regardless of their background or personal circumstance…. [the board has made] a commitment to ’confront inequities and barriers that uphold racism and other forms of oppression, so learners of all identities are empowered through education that embraces their identities and their lived experiences.’’
The above quotation, which sets the context for the PDSB special education policy changes which have been kicking in since 2021, is from a memo to all school and board administrators from none other than notorious PDSB Associate Director Poleen “marks fixer” Grewal. You may recall that she was found guilty of using her influence to get her son three high school credits with marks of 100% a few years ago. She was never disciplined by the board or the Ontario College of Teachers, and has never missed a paycheck (she earns $266,269 annually) and although technically on leave, she continues to cast a large and sinister shadow over PDSB operations. Her connections to the activists pulling the strings at the PDSB saved her. She is their puppet!
This context statement neatly encapsulates the PDSB’s overall philosophy of education: Academic outcomes (graduation rates, credit accumulation, and marks) between “identity groups” are not equal, and this is “produced” by racism and discrimination in the form of barriers that maintain the status quo (racist and oppressive systems). The solution, as always, is to “embrace student identities and lived experiences”. Hiding race-based group achievement outcomes has become the board’s single minded focus, at massive cost, and to the exclusion of just about everything else.
But if, as the board claims, Canada is a Eurocentric country and the failure of the school system to achieve “equitable” results between identity groups can be attributed to schools which do not “embrace student identities and lived experiences”, why are Asian kids doing better than white (European descended) students? For that matter, why are black students from Africa doing better than black students from Jamaica? These are questions only a balanced, nuanced, thoughtful, and comprehensive analysis could answer. Sadly, such an analysis has never taken place. When the PDSB was reviewed nearly three years ago, it was through an “anti-racist lens”, meaning racism was presumed to be the cause, and the review simply collected any anecdotal evidence to support that foregone conclusion.
So this simplistic and inaccurate analysis which has spawned the de-streaming of grades 9 and 10, throwing kids of vastly different academic aptitudes and prerequisite knowledge levels into the same large classes, is also being applied to special education, making a bad situation far worse.
What is special education?
The traditional classroom of days gone by did not address the learning needs of all the students. The curriculum and lessons were geared towards the average. Bright, able students could get bored, while other students struggled for various reasons. Educators deduced that many students who were experiencing difficulties could be more successful with learning supports. The analogy often used is eyeglasses: A student who has poor vision would struggle in school, but the obstacle is not lower scholastic aptitude. An eye exam and pair of glasses later, the student can participate fully in class.
Alas, the solution for struggling students is not usually so simple. There can be any combination of factors that may contribute to poor success at school. Diagnosing and addressing them all, along with their interactions, is no mean feat. There are limits as to what the system can do. And then there are the hard realities: Some kids are just not so bright, and not every family places the same value on formal education. Nevertheless, any student who is struggling, for whatever reason, will generally be given an Individual Education Plan (IEP) and offered special education supports.
In spite of teachers’ best efforts, by the age of 14, when kids reach high school, the discrepancies in what they have learned in the school system over the previous 10 years, and what they can do, are very apparent. While some kids are barely able to read, others can read and comprehend material intended for educated adults. While some cannot grasp basic arithmetic, others find solving quadratic equations childs play.
Does it make sense, this being the reality, to put all the kids together in the same classes in the same schools? I think most would agree that it does not. The PDSB used to agree that it doesn’t. But in the brave new world of “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion”, apparently it does.
Special Education is Racist?
“...our current Special Education policies, processes and procedures are disproportionately identifying students with specific racial identities…. An example of this would be our Vocational 2 program data which shows that 28% of students enrolled in Vocational 2 programming identify as Black, African or Caribbean while as a Board this same group would represent 10.3% of secondary students.”
The logical conclusion from this statistic is that black kids, on average, are arriving at high school without the prerequisites for academic study more frequently than others. The sensible course of action would be to do a balanced, nuanced, thoughtful, and comprehensive analysis to figure out why that is the case. What are the common denominators between the successful black kids and what are the common denominators between the less successful ones? This is not rocket science. But it would take time, cost money, and above all, necessitate abandoning the assumption that the lower achievement is entirely based on racist curriculum and pedagogy.
But the board is convinced it is all racism. They accuse teachers of “reducing the learning expectations of students who are marginalized by intersecting identities”, as if teachers think, hmmm… this kid is black. Let’s not include him in today’s math lesson. In fact it is the absolute opposite and teachers make every effort to keep all students caught up but students simply do not all learn at the same rate and the level of learning support at home varies drastically.
Nevertheless, the board is cutting the Vocational level 2 program. The students who would have chosen this program (it was never forced on anyone!) now must join the new “de-streamed” (academic level) classes. We are talking about kids whose literacy and numeracy is at the grade 4-6 level. Can you imagine the frustration of being placed into a class that is so far above your ability level?
These students, the vast majority of whom by the way are not black, will suffer on a daily basis as they struggle to complete enough work to get pushed through the course with an undeserved credit (teachers won’t fail them, but a mark of 50 is the new zero!). And of course the teachers have no choice but to dumb the course down to the detriment of the advanced learners. Everyone is a loser.
In my next post, I will be looking at what else the PDSB has been doing with Special Education over the last couple of years. Will these changes better serve the students of Peel and result in an improvement in terms of overall academic achievement?
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Thanks for reading. For more from this author read, Race-based privileges, lower academic achievement, and disorderly schools
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Totally off the wall. Their insanity just does not stop.
Igor definitely works in a school. He sees the obscene salaries top managers pay themselves for degrading public education. He sees the dishonesty in attributing black academic failings to others. He is insightful from stat to finish.