Post COVID Educational Recovery

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

 [permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

The re-opening of schools and the provision of online learning amidst COVID-19 has been – let’s say – uneven. Well, yes, it has not even been that good and, yes, almost everyone knows that. British Columbia’s Premier has acknowledged that in the mandate letter to his newly appointed Minister of Education.

In his mandate letter, the Premier establishes his expectation that over the course of the Government’s mandate he expects the Minister to make progress in supporting COVID-19 recovery “by fast-tracking improvements to online and remote learning, including investing in more computers and tablets, more training for teachers and support staff, and new ways to improve social e-learning to promote group interactions between students and teachers.”

I expect that premiers across the country are saying pretty much the same thing to their ministers of education: “Fix online learning.” There is little doubt in my mind that there will be improvements made to online learning, including improvements to e-learning that promote social interaction between students and teachers and among students.

Such improvements will be time-consuming and costly, especially if they are pursued by each province and territory on its own. Yet, I expect each province will attempt to “go it alone.” I also expect that the Government of Canada will remain aloof from such efforts, though it should not and need not. The Government of Canada should be using its leadership role and its spending power to assist provinces that are willing to cooperate in developing a pan-Canadian approach to online learning.

By this point some readers are saying, “can’t be done. There’s no way that the Government of Canada can engage with the provinces and territories to improve online learning or do anything else in education. That’s the domain of the individual provinces.”

It is true that the provinces have the jurisdiction to make laws in relation to education, but there is nothing in the Constitution Act that prevents the Canadian government from using its leadership role and spending powers to work with the provinces on something such as the improvement of online learning.

In fact, when the Government of Canada has wanted to influence public schooling, it ­has not been shy from doing so. In fact, the Government of Canada has supported or undertaken many initiatives in the realm of public schooling.  For example, the Government of Canada provides funding for PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and, based on agreements with the provinces and territories, it also provides financial support for minority language education and second-language instruction.

The COVID-19 recovery in education and the improvement of online learning will take longer and be more costly if the provinces “go it alone” without the benefit of the leadership and financial resources that the government of Canada can mobilize. The federal government could help to coordinate the work of the provinces and the various federal departments and agencies that engage with public schools and provide leadership and funding to public elementary and secondary schooling in this domain.

I am mindful of the sensitivity about the role of education in nation-building – a topic that is extremely sensitive for the province of Quebec. But if the provinces retain their jurisdiction in education and can establish the limits to their cooperation, I do not think the relationship I am describing would intrude on provincial autonomy.

The establishment of a pan-Canadian online learning infrastructure and the development of courseware for mathematics and science should pose no threat to provincial autonomy. Cooperative work in languages, literature, social studies could take place among a coalition of willing provinces. Quebec could provide substantial leadership in French-language education across Canada which would strengthen French language and culture throughout the country.

Cooperation would be voluntary and would extend only so far as any jurisdiction is prepared to go. What I am describing is cooperative federalism, the provinces, territories and federal government working together to achieve common goals.

Resources are scarce. Planning for a post-COVID educational recovery that includes improved online learning is an opportunity that should not be overlooked . . . but I fear it will be.

 

Best wishes for the holiday season and the New Year - Charles

Institutional Racism and Inequality in Canadian Schools: Part 3 of 3

 

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

 [permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

I wrote a blog last year about discrimination in education that reported the results of a study that a colleague and I undertook to see if British Columbia student teachers discriminated against Aboriginal learners. We found that pre-service teachers led to believe that students were Aboriginal were more likely to place them in a remedial program, even though their performance was identical to students whom they were led to believe were not Aboriginal.

 Another colleague studied the factors associated with school completion for children and youth with behaviour disorders and mental illness in BC. She found that “students of Aboriginal ancestry were grossly overrepresented among students with behaviour disorders and mental illnesses and at a significant disadvantage with respect to high school completion in comparison to all other peers.” When I say our assumptions are baked into the system, I mean they are habitual and often codified in the policies and procedures we follow. This is what the colleague wrote about the implications of her findings:

The designation of special education categories for distinguishing students with moderate to severe behaviour disorders and mental illnesses has not resulted in supporting this population of students with intervention strategies leading to successful high school completion. Current definitions for students with behaviour disorders and mental illness in the Special Education Services: Manual of Policies, Procedures and Guidelines (Ministry of Education, 2016) are subjective, putting heavy emphasis on the attitudes and opinions of schools and school districts to determine the status of the students. The vague definitions and subsequent inconsistent identification is problematic and does little to determine if the services are focused on the appropriate students (p. 234-235).

Schools separate students into courses or programs according to their perceived ability or interest levels. Students are often encouraged to “choose” a pathway the school thinks will produce successful outcomes for the student. This separation (called tracking or streaming in different places) often finds students over- or under-represented in a stream or track in relation to their overall proportion in the student population. Black students in Toronto streamed into courses below their levels of performance prompted the Ontario Minister of Education to refer to streaming as a "systemic, racist, discriminatory" practice and announce that grade 9 streaming will be eliminated by the 2021-2022 school year in Ontario.

Streaming and tracking occur whenever there are alternatives that appear to be the same but are actually not. Two or three different mathematics courses at the same grade level may not be called streaming, but the separation often provides opportunities to some that are denied to others. The nomenclature used to refer to Ontario’s grade nine mathematics tells the story. One pathway is academic mathematics, a requirement for entrance to most universities; the other is applied mathematics, an alternative to the more rigorous academic pathway. 

A factor associate with lower graduation rates is student mobility. Students who change schools are at greater risk of not graduating. Schools do not adapt well to students who enter school once the academic year has begun. It is not that schools are unwelcoming to the individual. They usually are. The problem is integrating the newcomer into an existing instructional program. Albeit unintentional, this impediment to learning most often affects students from low income families among which racialized and Indigenous Canadians are over represented.  

Could institutional racism be one of the reasons that the teaching force does not reflect the demographic variety in the population? It might be difficult for individuals who have seen the subtle and not so subtle racism in the system to work within that system, even if they believed that being part of the system would help to change it.  Harold Johnson, author of Peace and Good Order: The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, was recently asked why, after serving as an Indigenous defense lawyer and prosecutor in Saskatchewan, he believes that having more Indigenous lawyers will not lead to better justice or outcomes for Indigenous offenders and victims. To which he responded:

To get through that education, you have to allow yourself to be colonized. You have to become one of them. And once you become one of them, then you’re outside of your own community. If you believe in that system, then you’re put outside. You’re going to struggle to connect again.

There are numerous structural and operational practices that fail to consider the demographic diversity of the students enrolled in Canadian schools. Many of those structures and practices arose during a period of colonial settlement. Slavery was an approved practice and the extermination and mistreatment of Indigenous people were accepted when colonial institutions, like public schools, were developing.

It took until the late 1960s for Canada to begin to talk about racism. It revised its overtly racist immigration policies and strengthened human rights and anti-discrimination legislation. But the justification for its revision of immigration policy was often discussed in terms of the advantages that diversity would bring to Canada’s economy. Few were willing to speak about racism and consider how it was embedded in all institutions.

Social segregation sometimes occurs without intention. In the return to school this fall, an Ontario school board decided to distribute students to online classes alphabetically. By doing that students were inadvertently grouped by their ethno-linguistic backgrounds. It was some time before the school board learned that it had formed groupings that did not reflect the racially diverse nature of its district. A spokesperson for the board acknowledged the concerns parents had expressed about the groupings but said that reorganizing the classes “would have delayed the start of the school year.” The decision of the board to keep the alphabetical groupings leaves the impression that bureaucratic expediency takes precedence over ensuring diversity.

Canadian society is increasingly willing, even if reluctantly, to talk about racism and consider its impact on its institutions and its population. That is a good thing. But willingness to talk about racism and consider its impact on Canadian education is only a first step in addressing the institutional racism and inequities that are perpetuated.