6 Potential Brain Benefits Of Bilingual Education : NPR

2016/11/30 1 Comment

What the latest science and studies show:

So what does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? NPR Ed called up seven researchers in three countries — Sorace, Bialystok, Luk, Kroll, Jennifer Steele, and the team of Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier — to find out.

Attention

It turns out that, in many ways, the real trick to speaking two languages consists in managing not to speak one of those languages at a given moment — which is fundamentally a feat of paying attention.

Saying “Goodbye” to mom and then “Guten tag” to your teacher, or managing to ask for a crayola roja instead of a red crayon, requires skills called “inhibition” and “task switching.” These skills are subsets of an ability called executive function.

People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of executive function. “[Bilinguals] can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another,” says Sorace.

Do these same advantages accrue to a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don’t yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn’t begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood.

Empathy

Young children being raised bilingual have to follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting. As a result, says Sorace, bilingual children as young as age 3 have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind — both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills.

Reading (English)

About 10 percent of students in the Portland, Ore., public schools are assigned by lottery to dual-language classrooms that offer instruction in Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, alongside English.

Jennifer Steele at American University conducted a four-year, randomized trialand found that these dual-language students outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school year’s worth of learning by the end of middle school.

Such a large effect in a study this size is unusual, and Steele is currently conducting a flurry of follow-up studies to tease out the causality: Is this about a special program that attracted families who were more engaged? Or about the dual-language instruction itself?

“If it’s just about moving the kids around,” Steele says, “that’s not as exciting as if it’s a way of teaching that makes you smarter.”

Steele suspects the latter. Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, she suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general, aka “metalinguistic awareness.”

The research of Gigi Luk at Harvard offers a slightly different explanation. She has recently done a small study looking at a group of 100 fourth-graders in Massachusetts who had similar reading scores on a standard test, but very different language experiences.

Some were foreign-language dominant and others were English natives. Here’s what’s interesting. The students who were dominant in a foreign language weren’t yet comfortably bilingual; they were just starting to learn English. Therefore, by definition, they had much weaker English vocabularies than the native speakers.

Yet they were just as good at decoding a text.

“This is very surprising,” Luk says. “You would expect the reading comprehension performance to mirror vocabulary — it’s a cornerstone of comprehension.”

How did the foreign-language dominant speakers manage this feat? Well, Luk found, they also scored higher on tests of executive functioning. So, even though they didn’t have huge mental dictionaries to draw on, they may have been great puzzle-solvers, taking into account higher-level concepts such as whether a single sentence made sense within an overall story line.

They got to the same results as the monolinguals, by a different path.

Source: 6 Potential Brain Benefits Of Bilingual Education : NPR Ed : NPR

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Douglas Todd: Are schools pushing aboriginal, ‘Buddhist’ spirituality? | Vancouver Sun

2016/11/22 Leave a comment

Good analysis, commentary and recommendation, slightly different take to the  column posted earlier (Ashley Csanady: Indigenous prayers in the classroom and all-Muslim suburbs are equally dangerous attacks on our secular society).

That being said, I am a great fan of mindfulness, as have found that useful in both my professional life (being more aware of my internal biases) and during my cancer treatments:

The aboriginal blessings and mindfulness exercises, while fine in themselves, inject a confusing shot of religion into academia, given many scholars would revolt if a university event began with prayer rooted in Christianity, Judaism or Islam.

What’s a way forward?

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Mackenzie ruled in 1999 that public education should be “strictly secular,” which he interpreted to mean it should not show favoritism to one religion over another. Beyond that, he said, schools should be ”pluralist,” or ”inclusive in the widest sense.”

Canadian religion professor John Stackhouse believes the B.C. parents objecting to having aboriginal spirituality and mindfulness imposed on their children have a case — and that the public-school system has “crossed a line.”

Just as there is no place for the Christian practice of baptism in public schools, Stackhouse says there is no room for aboriginal smudging or Buddhist-based mindfulness. And rather than creating the awkwardness of students opting in or out, he believes educators should just not invite participation in such practices.

There is a third approach.

Like many, including myself and the B.C. Humanist Association, Stackhouse believes schools should teach far more world-religion courses, so students can learn, in age-appropriate ways, about a variety of spiritual observances and worldviews, from Catholicism to Confucianism.

That should also fit with the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which recommended doing more to educate students about aboriginal traditions.

The actual practice of such rituals, however, is probably best reserved to individuals, families and spiritual communities.

Source: Douglas Todd: Are schools pushing aboriginal, ‘Buddhist’ spirituality? | Vancouver Sun

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Ashley Csanady: Indigenous prayers in the classroom and all-Muslim suburbs are equally dangerous attacks on our secular society

2016/11/19 2 Comments

Good column by Csanady although I do think there is a place, in a secular system, for comparative religion courses to help students understand the diversity of cultures and beliefs (as in Quebec):

Teaching kids about smudging ceremonies, and giving them the chance to participate in one, is a fine idea. As a fence-sitting agnostic, I have and it was great and calming and I really appreciated the openness of the First Nations community that offered it. But I also have friends who grew up in much more dogmatic households than mine, who would have broken into tears at being asked — nay forced — to do something against their religion. I considered the ceremony more spiritual than religious, but not everyone feels this way, and to suggest it’s not religious is actually an insult to its indigenous culture.

 The most infuriating thing about this debate in B.C. isn’t the details of the challenge itself, however, but the maddening knee-jerk left-wing reaction. The argument is less about religious freedom and secularism, but about a mother supposedly trying to “ban indigenous ceremonies in schools,” as a Guardian headline screamed.

Just as kids shouldn’t be required to all sing religious Christmas carols, nor should they be forced to recite another religions prayer or be anointed under its practices.

The mother isn’t trying to ban the ceremonies. Again, the issue is choice. Creating a prayer room for Muslim students, or ensuring Jewish students can miss class on Yom Kippur, or letting Hindu kids bring in treats on Diwali, are reasonable measures. But just as kids shouldn’t be required to sing religious Christmas carols, nor should they be forced to recite another religion’s prayer or be anointed under its practices. A multicultural society means freedom of religion and balancing competing rights.

Which brings us to the other troubling story in the news this week: a proposal to build a Muslim-based community in Quebec.

The organizer, Nabil Warda, has said his intent was to give Muslim families a chance at homeownership without paying interest, something that’s forbidden under certain interpretations of the Quran. And he has admitted maybe he should have called it “humanistic” instead of “Muslim,” to avoid the backlash.

Given there are many Orthodox Jewish communities in the U.S. and other predominantly Muslim suburbs in Ontario and Alberta, this should end the debate. Cultural communities have always taken space for their religion and people. Ethnic, religious and cultural communities that evolve over time are part of a diverse country.

What makes the Muslim community proposal offensive is the strictures that would be in place. As my colleague Graeme Hamilton notes, Warda has been explicit that Muslim cultural norms would be imposed, even in the public spaces in the community: “You don’t drive drunk on the street. If you want to drink alcohol, you drink it in your house,” Warda said.

“Women could choose whether to wear the headscarf but they could not walk around in a halter-top and shorts,” Hamilton reports.

There are already public intoxication and anti-drunk driving laws in Canada. And last time I checked, indecency under the criminal code only requires the teensiest bikini to pass muster. Since when does “humanism” not include women?

Imagine if this were an orthodox Christian community, like the ones in B.C. and Utah where women are forced to cover up and daughters are traded like chattel. For some reason, I think there’d be more outrage from the left. But the second it’s a Muslim community, it’s immune to criticism from the far-left, lest a rational secular argument be deemed Islamophobic.

Women in Canada should be able to wear whatever they want in public. I support a woman wearing a burqa on a public beach just as much as I do a bikini. If a temple or a church requires them to cover up or undress upon entry, that’s their right. But it’s also women’s right not to have religious requirements imposed on them in public spaces — including the municipal roads and sidewalks in a proposed suburb.

So too do children have a right to be free from religion during their public education. A religion is a religion is a religion. It doesn’t matter if it’s indigenous or Abrahamic in origin— it has no place in the public sphere or in the public classroom.

Source: Ashley Csanady: Indigenous prayers in the classroom and all-Muslim suburbs are equally dangerous attacks on our secular society | National Post

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Jordan Tones Down Textbooks’ Islamic Content, and Tempers Rise – The New York Times

2016/10/17 Leave a comment

Interesting article on one of the challenges facing Jordan:

When Jordan’s school year began last month, educators began noticing tweaks in the curriculum.

Along with the images of women wearing head scarves were a few who went without them. Cleanshaven men appeared alongside drawings of devout, bearded ones. And references to Islam, once sprinkled liberally throughout textbooks and other class materials, were scaled back.

The 70 or so tweaks to Jordan’s textbooks for first through 12th grades are small. The books are still laden with Islamic references: The 10th-grade science text, for example, encourages students to marvel over God’s creation as it discusses evolution.

But they are one of the Middle East’s first noticeable efforts to moderate the school curriculum in hopes of preventing youths from drifting to extreme ideologies.

“It could be a test case for the region,” said Musa Shteiwi, a sociologist who sat on an Education Ministry committee for six months last year to change the textbooks. “All of us in the Arab world have the same problems. We are all entering this battle.”

So far, this modest effort has not gone well. Islamists see it as a threat to their traditional domination of the education system. And among Jordan’s mostly conservative Muslim population, many view the changes as a declaration of war on Islamic values.

“Obama and Clinton’s schools are not for us!” shouted Mahmoud Abu Rakhiya, an Islamist in Maan, a desert town in southern Jordan, at a rally on a recent Friday in late September. In the capital, Amman, around the same time, teachers set a pile of textbooks on fire. A woman in a white face veil shouted: “We don’t need these textbooks anyway! We will teach them what we want!”

Even those who support changes to the curriculum say the government bungled the effort. Jumana Ghunaimat, the editor in chief of Al Ghad, a liberal newspaper that campaigned for a new curriculum, said the changes, introduced without public debate, had antagonized conservative Jordanians.

“I fear that this will not bring positive change,” Ms. Ghunaimat said.

She added, “And today we are in a hard place,” referring to growing fears of extremist violence in Jordan.

The curriculum changes are part of the balancing act that Jordan’s monarchy has long attempted to appease its conservative citizens; the United States, a loyal ally that provides crucial aid; its noisy secular elite; and its influential Christian minority. (Even as the government issued the new textbooks, it arrested a Jordanian writer, Nahed Hattar, for sharing a cartoon on Facebook that many saw as mocking God. Mr. Hattar, 56, a prominent writer from a Christian family, was fatally shot when he showed up at a courthouse on Sept. 25 to face criminal charges of insulting Islam.)

The problem with the previous Jordanian curriculum, advocates for change said, was that Islam dominated every subject, without teaching children about the shared humanity of non-Muslims, including other Jordanian citizens. For instance, Jordanians are taught, “You are a Muslim, and therefore you are moral,” said Oraib al-Rantawi, director general of Al Quds Center for Political Studies, which argued for revisions. “So the question is, what of others? Non-Muslims? Are they moral?”

Source: Jordan Tones Down Textbooks’ Islamic Content, and Tempers Rise – The New York Times

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Study Finds Students Of All Races Prefer Teachers Of Color

2016/10/11 Leave a comment

Interesting and unexpected:

During the time that Cherng, who is of Chinese descent, taught in an 85 percent African-American middle school in San Francisco, he enjoyed a good rapport with his students, and he wondered what role his own identity played in that.

Now Cherng is a sociologist at New York University and he’s just published a paperwith colleague Peter Halpin that addresses this question. It seems that students of all races — white, black, Latino, and Asian — have more positive perceptions of their black and Latino teachers than they do of their white teachers.

Cherng and Halpin analyzed data from the Measure of Effective Teaching study sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which also supports coverage of education at NPR.

They looked at a group of 1,700 sixth- through ninth-grade teachers from more than 300 schools in cities around the country. The students had completed 30-question surveys, asking about a variety of different dimensions of teaching.

For example:

  • How much does this teacher challenge his students?
  • How supportive is she?
  • How well does he manage the classroom?
  • How captivating does she make the subject?

Although NPR Ed has reported before on the pitfalls of student evaluations used in many undergraduate classrooms, this particular student self-report measure may be more valid because of its thoroughness; it’s been independently linked to student learning gains on standardized tests.

Cherng and Halpin found that all the students, including white students, had significantly more favorable perceptions of Latino versus white teachers across the board, and had significantly more favorable perceptions of black versus white teachers on at least two or three of seven categories in the survey.

The strongest positive relationship was the flipside of what Cherng experienced in his own classroom: Asian-American students had very rosy views of their black teachers.

The relationship persisted after controlling for students’ age, gender, their free and reduced-price lunch status and their academic performance. The researchers also controlled for other factors like the teacher’s level of experience and education, their gender, and even outside expert ratings of the teachers’ effectiveness, based on classroom observations.

No matter what, students had warmer perceptions of their teachers of color.

Cherng calls the findings “surprising.”

“I thought student awareness of the racial hierarchy would influence the results,” in favor of whites, he says.

Other studies have found evidence for “race matching,” or the idea that students and teachers of the same race or ethnicity perceive each other more favorably. And NPR Ed recently covered research on “implicit bias,” the idea that teachers of all races look less favorably on students of color.

“We’re not done,” investigating this finding, Cherng says.

His working theory is that teachers of color score more highly because of their ability to draw on their own experiences to address issues of race and gender, which, he says, can be highly germane even to teaching subjects like math, especially in America’s majority-minority public schools. He’s currently working on a series of studies that look at preservice teachers and teacher training, to provide more evidence about the relationship between teachers’ multicultural beliefs and awareness and their effectiveness in the classroom.

As a math teacher, and now a sociology professor, Cherng was never prepared to really understand or address race or gender dynamics in the classroom. But, he says, there may be good evidence that these are essential tools to being a good teacher, period.

Source: Study Finds Students Of All Races Prefer Teachers Of Color

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When public prejudice can serve the greater good: Saunders

2016/09/12 Leave a comment

Usual interesting and sensible commentary by Doug Saunders on how the request from an exemption from music classes led to a good result and defence of a neutral and inclusive space where all can live together:

Many religious concessions are uncontroversial. Few Canadians object to cafeterias offering non-pork options for observant Jews and Muslims. After a period of debate, most people have come to accept public officials wearing Christian crosses, Jewish yarmulkes, Islamic head coverings or Sikh turbans while on duty. These things may offend logic and aesthetics, but they do no harm and don’t interfere with anyone else’s life.

But some concessions to the religious aren’t benign or harmless. When spirituality infringes on the working of the legal, educational or medical systems, we have a problem – even if we don’t notice at first.

Most shockingly, Canadian provinces allow religious exemptions to the requirement that children be vaccinated in order to attend school.

These exemptions, generally granted to people who claim to be members of ascetic Christian or Jewish denominations, are far, far more dangerous than a pass from music class.

Mr. Dasu is harming only the minds of his children (and mortifying most Canadians of Muslim faith). But if even 10 per cent of a community’s children escape vaccination, they endanger the lives of every child in their city, including those who are vaccinated. This is not a reasonable accommodation.

Groups of Christians and Muslims in Ontario have spent the past year trying to withdraw or exempt their kids from public schools because they’ve come to believe that the province’s rather anodyne reproductive-health curriculum is contradictory to their faith. As harmful as this is to their kids, the province can do little to complain because in the 1980s it granted Canada’s most extensive religious concession by allowing Roman Catholics to withdraw their children from public school entirely and self-segregate with a fully taxpayer-funded religious school system.

It’s unfortunate that people only began to notice these incursions when Salafi Muslims began requesting them. But it’s one instance where public prejudice can serve the greater good.

We saw a great example of this in Ontario’s 2005 decision on quasi-judicial tribunals. These tribunals, known as “faith-based arbitration,” had been created in the early 1990s to reduce the cost and workload of courts by letting churches and synagogues rule on family-law and property disputes. Their rulings, and rules, were often contradictory to Canadian values and laws. But people only began to notice in 2003, when mosques wanted in on the action: Suddenly, those tribunals, applying nearly identical religious laws became known as “sharia courts.”

Ontario responded wisely, by stripping all faith-based tribunals of legal authority. It was a rare moment when the ugly voices of Islamophobia helped secure a neutral, secular public sphere in which people of all faiths and backgrounds can live together. If we’re lucky, Mr. Dasu’s musical tastes will give us another.

Source: When public prejudice can serve the greater good – The Globe and Mail

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Mandatory music classes hit a bad note with some Muslim parents

2016/09/09 Leave a comment

Reasonable accommodation is based on compromise. Not being open to compromise – the TDSB proposed a number of compromises that respected and acknowledged the concerns but was met by parents who rejected any form of compromise, another form of radicalization and extremism, without any flexibility.

And while I won’t enter into any religious debates regarding Islam and music, the Islamic societies I have lived in or visited in the Mid-East all have a rich musical tradition. And as Zarqa Nawaz notes in her Globe op-ed, that interest and richness is part of Canadian Muslims too (To the music-banning Muslim father: Rejecting compromise is extremism: Zarqa Nawaz):

When music class begins this week at Toronto’s Donwood Park elementary school, Mohammad Nouman Dasu will send a family member to collect his three young children. They will go home for an hour rather than sing and play instruments – a mandatory part of the Ontario curriculum he believes violates his Muslim faith.

The Scarborough school and the Toronto District School Board originally had offered an accommodation – suggesting students could just clap their hands in place of playing instruments or listen to acapella versions of O Canada – but not a full exemption from the class.

After a bitter three-year fight, however, Mr. Dasu felt he had no other option but to bring his kids home.

 According to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail, some parents insist they cannot allow their children to be in the same room where musical instruments are being played. Mr. Dasu, a Koran teacher who sometimes leads prayers at Scarborough’s Jame Abu Bakr Siddique mosque, says he has led the fight on behalf of parents. He has consulted with national Islamic bodies, and requested a letter from the leader of his mosque.

“We here believe that music is haram [forbidden]. We can neither listen to it, nor can we play a role in it,” said the mosque’s imam, Kasim Ingar.

Conceding that Muslims have to adjust when they send their kids to public school, he suggested that some matters, such as teaching music, are beyond debate.

“We do not compromise with anyone on the clear-cut orders and principles conveyed by the Prophet,” said Mr. Ingar, who also leads the Scarborough Muslim Association.

Within Islam, the question of whether Muslims are banned from music is divisive and nuanced. Similar to questions about whether women should wear veils, there is no consensus on the issue.

But Ontario’s primary-school curriculum is unambiguous on music class: It must be taught, without exception, to all primary-school-aged children. Officials at the TDSB say they can only bend the rules to accommodate religious students, but not exempt them.

The Globe used freedom of information laws to access TDSB e-mails on how the issue evolved at Donwood Park, where it first surfaced in 2013.

The released records redact the names of students for privacy reasons, and very few families appear to have been adamant over pulling children from music classes. Early internal e-mails show administrators wanted to find “some common ground.”

But Mr. Dasu, who says he represents many of the parents at the school concerned about the issue, pushed for exclusion for his own children by invoking the prospect of litigation and the religious freedoms clause of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In response, school administrators pitched an array of potential compromises. Records show one idea was to have the children “research the role of nashid” – or the Islamic tradition of oral music. Another was to have the children clap out quarter notes, half notes and full notes.

“Your children will not be required to play a musical instrument or sing in their music class,” read a formal note to at least one family.

The records show that as the standoff at Donwood Park lingered, TDSB officials prepared a media plan and sought legal advice from eminent lawyers, including Eric Roher of Borden Ladner Gervais.

They do not make clear how the situation was dealt with. But during the 2014 school year, two requests for music exemptions were made. When school officials struggled again to suggest accommodations, they were presented with a “Petition for Accommodation of Religious Beliefs of Muslim Students” signed by more than 130 parents, initiated by Mr. Dasu.

Mr. Dasu says he proposed alternative arrangements for his own children, which were rejected by the vice-principal, the superintendent, and a trustee of the school board, after which he decided to take them out of school for the duration of music and drama class.

By the spring of 2015, an interest group known as the National Council of Canadian Muslims was prodded by some parents to intercede further. After meeting with Donwood Park administrators, an NCCM spokeswoman referred them to a guide it has created for Canadian teachers. “Opinion regarding the place of music varies among different Muslim countries,” it says. But, it adds, “it is important for the school to discuss reasonable accommodations with the parents or guardians and the students themselves.”

TDSB officials wouldn’t discuss particular cases, but insist that religious students cannot cut themselves out of music class. “As per the Education Act, we can’t exempt students from the curriculum. But what we do is accommodate,” said John Chasty, a TDSB superintendent of education.

The TDSB says it does not keep track of the number of students who seek accommodations or exemptions. But Mr. Chasty believes the issue will come up there again in the coming school year.

Mr. Dasu has since moved to a different neighbourhood nearby, and is planning to transfer his children to a new public school. He says he will take up the fight again.

“My kids cannot participate in music or drama, that’s for sure. Let them sit in a library to read, or in an office, or let them volunteer around the school during that time, that’s all okay. We’re flexible.”

Source: Mandatory music classes hit a bad note with some Muslim parents – The Globe and Mail

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Helping College-Bound Native Americans Beat The Odds : NPR

2016/08/16 Leave a comment

Not as familiar with similar initiatives in Canada as I should be, but university graduation rates for Indigenous peoples in Canada are 13 percent, half of the average rate for all Canadians:

Native American students make up only 1.1 percent of the nation’s high school population. And in college, the number is even smaller. More than any other ethnic or racial group, they’re the least likely to have access to college prep or advanced placement courses. Many get any little or no college counseling at all. In 1998, College Horizons, a small nonprofit based in New Mexico, set out to change that through five-day summer workshops on admissions, financial aid and the unique challenges they’ll face on campus. Its director, Carmen Lopez, sat down with NPR to talk about the obstacles that bright, talented Native students face.
You say there’s an implicit bias among college admissions officials who seldom, if ever, deal with Native American students. Is that why you’ve partnered with 50 top-tier institutions, to “educate them” by inviting them to the student retreats?

Something happens when you’re sitting face to face with a teenage native student and you’re hearing their story.

We give counselors an appreciation for what Native students experience, the inequities they face. Admissions counselors realize, “My gosh, you have only two AP classes you’ve been offered! Your school has never offered any test preparation or you’re not getting any advising!”
After spending time at one of your retreats, I noticed that you repeatedly told students: “You are desirable. Colleges want you. You’re not a number.” But don’t admissions officers rely heavily on GPA, class ranking and standardized test scores?

I want you to want my students because they’re going to contribute to your institution.

A test score, the GPA, the ranking, are things that an admissions officer doesn’t remember. l’m not just looking for a diamond in the rough or the hard-knock life. They’re not always in crisis. They’re doing beautiful, amazing things. And I want colleges to recognize that.

Source: Helping College-Bound Native Americans Beat The Odds : NPR Ed : NPR

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TDSB’s plan to tackle racial disparity

2016/07/30 Leave a comment

John Malloy, director of education for the TDSB, on what they are doing to improve outcomes for all groups. Always like to see data and evidence-driven approaches.

Look forward to any comments from readers in Toronto:

The Toronto District School Board has heard the critiques and acknowledges there are racial disparities in our school system, which we must continue to work on.

It is correct to point out white students in the TDSB are more likely to be found in high-income neighbourhoods, while black students are more likely to be found in low-income neighbourhoods. And while we do face issues of poverty, our job is to provide schools in every neighbourhood that create conditions for all children to succeed.

In particular, Sachin Maharaj’s recent opinion piece in the Star on black students in Toronto schools makes some valid points and defines the challenges many school boards face. It’s important, however, to recognize that the TDSB has taken, and will continue to take, steps to ensure that all students are able to succeed.

The TDSB’s Model Schools for Inner Cities Program, launched in Toronto’s most needy neighbourhoods 10 years ago, has shown that schools can be essential equalizers. With extra resources, such as additional staff, iPads for students, after-school programs, unique field trips and Parenting and Family Literacy Centres, the program has given a great number of students the tools and encouragement they need to succeed.

TDSB research on the impact of Model Schools over time shows evidence of improved academic achievement and student well-being. We have also seen higher credit accumulation by the end of Grade 10 than before the program was in place (from 50 per cent to 64 per cent of students in priority neighbourhoods attaining the expected number of credits). Many of these factors help explain the TDSB’s rising graduation rate from 78 per cent in 2005 to 85 per cent in 2015 — our highest ever.

Having said that, we do recognize achievement levels among some black students are lower than their peers. Our data shows this and we have been open about it. In fact, we collect more data than most school boards across the country and for good reason. We want to know where the gaps are and where extra supports are needed.

Over the past number of years, we have been using this data to boost improvement. This work has been overseen by board-wide and community-driven Equity and Inner-City advisory committees, which bring a collaborative, school-community focus to addressing opportunity, participation and achievement gaps. This work needs to continue and we must also take a more deliberate approach to responding to this data.

In the past, our research has shown opportunity, participation and achievement gaps for historically marginalized student populations and we have acted in direct response with, for example, pre-kindergarten readiness, after school programs and in-school health clinics for students. More of these intervention strategies must be done and they need to have a more direct impact on classroom teaching and learning.

More recently, trustees voted to establish a Black Student Achievement Advisory Committee to examine and make recommendations on strategies to create more equitable outcomes for black students.

We have also put in place a new Learning Centre model across the city that will improve the speed with which we identify and respond to learning gaps. The Learning Centres strategy will place resources closer to schools, decentralize decision-making and reduce bureaucracy so we can get the support students need in the hands of principals and teachers and impact the classroom sooner.

This fall, the TDSB will prepare an Integrated Equity Plan that will spark tough and challenging conversations system-wide and in each and every school. It will engage principals and ultimately classroom teachers to respond more directly to key questions, such as:

  • What barriers exist in the school that might be keeping students from achieving?
  • What bias might persons in the school possess about what certain groups of students are able to achieve?
  • What needs to change in terms of the instruction, the environment in the school and the relationships in the school?

Under the plan, senior management and central departments will oversee the implementation. Their mandate will be to ensure principals and vice principals are engaging staff, students, and parents/guardians to work together to build action plans for schools that promote a sense of belonging, support and well-being and help eliminate barriers to success. As with many TDSB initiatives, we will closely monitor and evaluate this new model’s effectiveness to ensure it’s having the impact we intended.

We recognize that patterns of systemic racism and discrimination exist within our society and this has to stop. For our part, the TDSB is committed to working within our schools, and with our parents, communities, the city and province to reduce and eliminate racism and discrimination in all forms.

Source: TDSB’s plan to tackle racial disparity | Toronto Star

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USA: “Islands” That Separate Education Haves From Have-Nots : NPR

2016/07/21 Leave a comment

Fortunately, Canadian school system funding (at least in Ontario) is funded at the provincial level, ensuring relatively equal funding levels between schools (although parental fundraising etc means some differences):

The school district of Freehold Borough, N.J., has a 32 percent poverty rate. It is fully surrounded by another school district, Freehold Township, which has a 5 percent poverty rate.

Freehold Borough is what a new report calls an “island district” — and it’s not alone. The report, from a nonprofit called EdBuild, maps 180 of these islands around the country: Districts that, by historical accident or for political reasons, lie completely inside other systems with a disparate poverty rate and often different funding levels.

And that can correlate with very different outcomes for students — something educators in Freehold Borough have long struggled with.

“Surrounding communities are able to provide a better education than we are,” says Rocco Tomazic, superintendent of the K-8 district. “It’s not supposed to be that way per the state constitution.”

Source: Education Week, U.S. Census Bureau

As we noted in our School Money project, around half of school funding in the U.S., on average, comes from local property taxes. That means districts with high poverty often struggle with limited resources, a one-two punch.

“We have a mismatch between the way we’re funding schools and what we’re expecting schools to deliver,” says Rebecca Sibilia, the founder and CEO of EdBuild, which focuses on school finance.

Though they are rare, Sibilia argues that these island districts serve as vivid examples of a larger pattern that holds true in many places throughout the country: The resources available to your local public school may depend on your zip code, or sometimes even your specific address at birth.

Source: “Islands” That Separate Education Haves From Have-Nots : NPR Ed : NPR

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