Opponents of ‘streaming’ claim that the catered teaching method perpetuates white supremacy. So they’re getting rid of it.
Editor’s Note: This is the third installment of an ongoing investigation into Ontario’s public-school system. The first installment, on the district’s adoption of “progressive discipline,” is available here. The second installment, on the district’s compromised mathematics curriculum, is available here.
Trish would not have thrived in Ontario public schools and gone on to a successful teaching career in the district if not for the tailored approach to learning she enjoyed as a student.
“I took applied classes in high school. The only reason I passed was because I had teachers who were catering their lesson plans to a student like me who needed more guidance, who needed different forms of being able to complete assignments,” the elementary-school teacher told National Review.
Trish, who entered teaching a few years ago, went through most of her early life with an undiagnosed learning disability, but was able to succeed despite her insecurities thanks to the special attention she was afforded from teachers. The catered learning approach, known as streaming, was “a benefit to me. My self-esteem grew significantly from elementary to high school because I was getting the help I needed.”
“It also meant that I didn’t have to have anxiety going into my classroom about looking stupid in front of all my peers. That was a big thing for me,” she added.
However, Trish’s views are considered a threat to equity among Ontario’s education establishment. The Ford government de-streamed ninth grade in 2022, citing the alleged threat that a tailored educational approach poses to racial minorities. Education Minister Stephen Lecce specifically denounced the practice as “systemic, racist, [and] discriminatory.”
Critics of streaming claim that the system disadvantages racial minorities by placing a disproportionate number of non-white students in less rigorous tracks. They point out that Ontario has historically begun streaming earlier than any other provinces, pigeonholing indigenous and black Canadians at a young age. However, white Toronto students and racial minorities were virtually equally represented across the three prevailing streams for grades nine and ten.
The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) did not even bother to consult with community members before overturning a foundational pillar of the education system. Instead, the district simply introduced pilot programs that did away with the process for ninth graders and issued glowing reports that set in motion Ontario’s broader adoption of the flattened system under Premier Doug Ford.
Rather than engaging with the parents, teachers, and students who expressed opposition to the new model, its proponents simply denounced them as white supremacists, foreclosing the possibility of debate.
“They are continuing on with their commitment to dismantling a system that is oppressive to marginalized groups of people,” Jason To, TDSB’s secondary-mathematics coordinator, told the Globe and Mail after the Ford government announced it would de-stream ninth grade in 2022.
Asked for her views on the Ford government’s decision, Courtney, a public-school Francophone teacher with over a decade of experience, told National Review that the “de-streaming initiative is all rooted in anti-black racism equity,” and thus cannot be openly challenged without accusations of bigotry and intolerance.
Margaret, a teacher with over a decade of experience in Ontario’s public schools, agreed. “Everything that’s done right now is under the guise of compassion but, in the end, it hurts students, and nothing gets done.”
“I was in community and applied classes and I think it’s a terrible idea to de-stream students. It’s going to make for very, very, frustrated students because academic classes move very quickly and they really need to be on the ball,” Margaret said. “If students do not have those skills, how are you setting them up for success?”
Jeffrey, another public-school teacher, is undecided about the net benefits of de-streaming as a concept. “I really can’t say whether I’m on one side or the other,” the veteran math teacher confessed. What bothered him were the motivations behind the initiative. “My concern is more with the reason why we’re doing this. I think it’s more politically motivated,” he said.
However, in its current manifestation, it is clear to Jeffrey that the policy is backfiring. “As it has been implemented, I know a lot of teachers are feeling very frustrated in the sense that they have to cater to students that can’t add. Whereas strong students capable of solving math contest questions are held back.”
Asked whether he or his colleagues would be comfortable challenging such initiatives or the broader zeitgeist of anti-racism, Jeffrey was unequivocal: “No way! Are you kidding me?”
De-streaming also assigns more responsibilities to teachers who are already spread thin, Zack, a young teacher in the Greater Toronto Area, acknowledged. Having students of various academic levels in a class is “harder for teachers which means it’s harder for kids.”
“If it’s harder for the teacher, that means they are not gonna be able to do as much planning because you only have so many hours in the night,” Zack said. “They may be able to get to the weak students but not the really strong ones” depriving many of the academic refinement they deserve.
John, a former teacher, said much the same. Faced with massive disparities in student ability, educators are compelled “to teach to the middle.”
“Students at the high end are not getting the enrichment they require and students at the low end aren’t getting the support they need,” he said.
But the views expressed by these teachers are not represented among the administrators and policy-makers who ultimately make the decisions those teachers will have to live with.
The York Region District School Board, in a wealthy suburb north of Toronto, does not even offer community members an alternative perspective on the topic, unreservedly deriding streaming as anachronistic and backward.
“Streaming means creating long-term student groups based on perceptions of ability or separating students,” the school district’s website reads. “YRDSB’s de-streaming goal is the elimination of identity-based disproportionalities in achievement, well-being, graduation, and post-secondary outcomes.”
Similar uniform thinking is displayed at Halton, Halton Catholic, Peel, Waterloo, Hamilton, and Ottawa, where de-streaming is usually bundled with subtle jabs dismissing streaming’s reliance on “perceptions of ability.”
Rather than trying to reform or enhance the existing system, TDSB, and subsequently all of Ontario, chucked streaming to the curb for ninth grade in the name of protecting racial minorities. Unfortunately, the promised benefits have yet to materialize.
Ninth-grade math was de-streamed in Toronto in September 2021, one year before the rest of the remaining subjects went the same way. The results, which were also undoubtedly impacted by the pandemic, were nonetheless predictable: Whereas three-quarters of ninth-grade students met provincial math standards prior to the pandemic, by the 2021–22 academic year, that number had plummeted to barely over 50 percent.
The damage done by advocates of de-streaming is unlikely to be contained to Ontario.
Home to nearly a quarter-of-a-million students spread across close to 600 schools, the Toronto school district is the largest in Canada and sets the tone for the rest of Ontario province and the country as a whole.
Several of Toronto’s most influential former school-district leaders now hold top positions at some of the largest districts in the province, including Halton, Hamilton, Peel, Toronto Catholic, and Waterloo. Moreover, influential politicians including Kathleen Wynne — the education minister under Premier Dalton McGuinty, who later assumed the role herself — and Marit Stiles, the official leader of the provincial opposition today and the New Democratic Party’s (NDP) “education critic,” both began their journeys with the storied school district.
The Progressive Capture of Ontario’s Educational Apparatus
The one-sided approach to streaming on display in Ontario schools is the product of political indoctrination that begins in the accredited teacher’s colleges that prospective hires are required to attend, current and former teachers told National Review. From there, new teachers are forced to join labor unions that reinforce that orthodoxy, and they quickly become wary of crossing the progressive line as they begin their careers.
Dissenting from progressive orthodoxy during this crucial early stage can jeopardize one’s career, as Chanel Pfahl learned firsthand.
A new teacher with only a few years of experience, Pfahl was placed under investigation for openly questioning whether educators should disseminate Black Lives Matter (BLM) resources in classrooms. “Kids aren’t in school to be indoctrinated with critical race theory,” Pfahl wrote in a Facebook group of Ontario teachers. “Schools should be nonpartisan. Focus on modelling kindness to everyone and speak out against any form of discrimination you see.”
The response ignited a social-media firestorm with teachers blasting Pfahl for “uphold[ing] white supremacy in schools” and disregarding her argument because it is “very easy for white people to dismiss teaching about race explicitly.”
“The next day I went into school and had a letter saying I was under investigation” from a member of the Ontario College of Teachers whom she had “never met,” Pfahl said. The accreditation body did not respond to a request for comment.
Pfahl passed on the support offered by the French-language public-school union, AEFO, because she had no faith in it. “Yes, they offered, but would not give me any indication that they felt the investigation was wrong and that what I said was okay. I didn’t feel confident they would represent me properly,” Pfahl told National Review.
Pfahl’s story is a sign of the times.
Much of the groupthink that’s taken hold of the Ontario educational establishment wells up from organized labor. As Robert, an English teacher and former union representative with decades of experience, confessed, “the unions are completely captured.”
The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO), the union representing public-elementary-school teachers, links scholarship funding to mandatory commitments to “social justice and equity” in “keeping with ETFO priorities.” Sent a list of questions, the ETFO failed to respond.
Kindergarten lesson plans created by ETFO, publicized by Pfahl in December 2022, show that early-childhood educators are encouraged to inject progressive politics into the classroom. The ETFO asked teachers to “interrogate normative images of bodies” and “challenge gender normativity.” Repeatedly throughout the lesson plan, the ETFO references the use of BLM scenario cards chock-full of buzzwords such as “lived experiences,” “self-identity,” and “skin-colour.”
These lessons are crafted for four- and five-year-olds.
… students share times they didn’t feel welcome, and the teacher informs them that “some places are not always welcoming,” suggesting examples of such scenarios (skin colour, etc.).
Students are then given a “BLM scenario card” to prompt discussions on “inclusion”. pic.twitter.com/CH2yg2mt4Y
— Chanel Pfahl 🇨🇦 (@ChanLPfa) December 4, 2022
The Ontario Teachers’ Federation, an umbrella organization representing 160,000 educators across the four major provincial unions, endorsed the view that standardized tests are a subtle form of white supremacy.
In December 2021, the federation cheered when a provincial court ruled that the “Math Proficiency Test” was a discriminatory benchmark targeting minority teachers. Consisting of 50 content questions and 21 pedagogical questions, test takers needed to score at least 70 percent to pass and be certified to teach the subject in provincial public schools. Prospective math teachers no longer need to take the test, although the Ford government is currently challenging the move in court.
“There is no research to suggest that a standardized test would improve student outcomes or enhance teacher pedagogy,” Ontario Teachers’ Federation president Chris Cowley asserted. However, research does, in fact, show that teachers’ subject-matter expertise affect the math scores of their students.
The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, the professional body overseeing high-school educators, elevates identity politics to a new stratum. The union proudly declares its members to be “in a unique position of influence” for which they can provide “progressive” materials touching on “social issues such as (but not limited to) globalization, world peace, anti-discrimination, environmental issues, universal childcare, sexual harassment, aboriginal issues, [and] poverty.”
The most insidious display of the union’s politicization occurred in 2021 when the Halton chapter, home to “Woke Math” evangelist Jamie Mitchell, released a video touting the benefits of weighted racial voting. Although the group quickly removed the video following its publication, Canadian journalist and Quillette editor Jonathan Kay preserved the video showcasing OSSTF’s internal policies defending the practice of racial discrimination.
“Equal opportunity to participate in the Federation does not mean treating all members the same,” OSSTF’s equity statement reads, echoing Ibram X. Kendi’s anti-racist claim that “the only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
According to the instructional video, if there are 15 white members voting alongside five non-whites, the voting share of the latter is tripled to “bring the net racial vote balance to even,” Kay wrote. Backlash amongst union members, denouncing the proposal as “reverse racism,” led the chapter president Cindy Gage to accuse critics of harming racial minorities within the union.
If everyday teachers manage to survive the gauntlet of teachers’ college and union activism, explicit political indoctrination is exerted on prospective senior administrators who populate the highest rungs of school districts. Beyond the usual teaching regimen, these individuals usually enroll in graduate-level programs such as the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto.
OISE is Canada’s most influential educational-studies program and was ranked fourth in the world by QS World Rankings in 2022 (placing it just behind Oxford and Harvard). The school shapes much of what Ontario students will be taught as well as the resources and theories that will guide future educators.
OISE’s worldview holds that teachers represent the vanguard needed to transform children into political activists. A math lesson plan created by the institution for fifth-grade students requires them to write letters to local political representatives demanding they redirect spending from foreign wars to domestic poverty.
If that does not satisfy hopeful educators of the future, OISE offers a master’s program and a Ph.D. in “Social Justice Education” whose mission, the web page notes, is “ideal for those interested in social justice, committed to social change, or aspiring to assume research-informed responsibilities in a school or community organization.”
In other words, minting political activists.
“I was hungry for language to describe settler-colonialism and how it relates to my queer, two-spirit and trans Indigenous community,” a typical student testimonial on the degree page notes. “I was also eager to see how leading scholars were applying anti-racist education in a variety of contexts to create positive change.”
OISE alumni can be found at the highest rungs of provincial education. One such alumnus, jeewan chanicka, serves as Waterloo’s director of education. (He renders his name in lowercase letters “because he identifies with his Polynesian Indigenous spirituality.”) Previously, chanicka served as TDSB’s superintendent of “equity, anti-racism and anti-oppression.” He declined to comment.
The normalization of hyper-politicization is such that teachers and unions now unflinchingly express their desire to manufacture activists. A Halton educator opposed to a local charitable initiative proudly advocated for transforming kids into agents of social change on ETFO’s union blog.
“My hope is that we use this turn of events to deepen our consciousness around what it means to be an activist in school and work hard to de-centre the ego from the work our students do to help others. Instead of portraying the student as the saviour, how might we portray the student as a co-conspirator? How might we foster a sense of humility in classroom activism?”