Posted on 06/21/2008 10:42:21 PM PDT by forkinsocket
Canada's largest school board is poised to set tough targets to chop the alarming 40 per cent dropout rate among black students to 15 per cent within five years.
Through mentors, teacher training and close tracking of the most needy students, the Toronto District School Board's sweeping new Urban Diversity Strategy – to be voted on tomorrow by a board committee and by all trustees next week – would aim to make all intermediate and high schools across the city more sensitive to the demographic roadblocks often facing students of differing backgrounds.
The action plan would also target the 25 most racially diverse, low-performing schools for extra youth workers, outreach staff to work with parents, summer programs for Grade 8 students who fail any of the 3 Rs, and a network of teachers who feel passionate about working in such challenging schools.
"We know this is not going to be an easy task, but with the data we now know about our students, and with what we see is working already at some schools – plus a little bit of pressure – we know it can be done," said Gerry Connelly, the board's director of education, in an interview yesterday.
The report is one of the ways the board is responding to new data showing children from poor or turbulent backgrounds or marginalized communities often lag behind.
While trustees voted to open an Africentric alternative school in September 2009 as a sort of test lab for a more global curriculum and more black teachers as role models, the board also charged staff to come up with ways to help children at risk in all schools.
But instead of recommending special programs tailored for children of various high-risk groups – Portuguese children, for example, or those from Somalia or Afghanistan – the staff suggests helping all teachers be more sensitive to the challenges diversity can bring.
"This approach won't ignore the role of race, or gender, or poverty, or disability; these are all part of students' reality," said Lloyd McKell, the board's executive officer of student and community equity, who consulted with many community groups while helping draft the plan.
"But our training will help teachers recognize the effect racial diversity has on students' lives." Among other recommendations:
Chop the overall dropout rate by 5 per cent in each of the next five years.
Every child not meeting the standard between Grades 7 and 10 would be assigned a staff mentor or "learning coach" – someone the report calls "a caring adult in the school" – to act as an advocate, someone who follows up when they stumble and offers help. "This is always at the top of the wish list of every student we talk to," said McKell;Principals would ensure experienced teachers are assigned to work with students with the greatest need, rather than automatically assigning veteran educators to the university-bound "academic" stream;
Expand free Grade 7 and 8 summer literacy and numeracy camps to all of the 25 high-need schools for students below standard in reading, writing or arithmetic, and have parents come to at least one session to learn about standards;
Boost after-school homework clubs, free tutoring, and expand access to library and computer labs. George Harvey Collegiate Institute, near Keele St. and Eglinton Ave. W., extended library hours and added popular "graphic novels" to the shelves, for example. Library borrowing jumped 245 per cent – and scores in the Grade 10 literacy test have jumped 6 per cent in one year.
While Connelly would not put a price tag on the extra support, she said much can be covered by using existing funding in a more strategic way, and noted the board will also seek some funding from Queen's Park. Sandra Carnegie-Douglas, past-president of the Jamaican-Canadian Association, called the plan "a good start" but warned it is crucial to choose staff mentors that truly care about children, not just track their attendance.
"Not all staff is that attentive to the barriers many students face, so how will you choose `an adult who cares?' The community should have some input," she said. Education Professor Patrick Solomon, who founded the Urban Diversity program at York University, hailed the plan to train teachers to be more sensitive to the community, a process he said is best done by having teachers design community projects in the neighbourhoods where they work.
Marcie Ponte of the Working Women's Community Centre, which runs a successful tutoring program for Portuguese children, said the board's plan is a sign it is "taking at-risk students seriously – and mentoring is a key piece.
"But Toronto is so diverse, schools need to let teachers think outside the box and be creative. No one solution will work for all kids."
Educrat idiots continue to confuse problems of socio-economic origin with race.
But but but...I though Canada was a racism-free utopia...certainly that must mean that minority dropout rates wouldn’t be high...
"Public schools are useless."
Simple enough solution here...just hand diplomas to the top 85.0%. Edict officially complied with... That way those socialist rat educrats will not need to: a) take any responsibility, b) do any extra work, or c) care.
...and since they will be showing such a stunning increase in graduation rates, a raise would certainly be in order...
/s
Good luck with that. The schools are part of the problem, but the larger problem is that getting an education is considered to be “selling out to whitey.” Black honor students are beaten and even killed for being “too white.” That is the reality of the true racism in the West.
And it goes full circle. What do I mean? The same victimhood ideology that dominates the public schools in North America just feeds the victimhood mindset. Good if your are a libscum seeking power who needs an ignorant and beholden population, but bad for the underlying civilization. Of course, the libscum want to wreck that civilization because it is another barrier to acquiring power, so it comes full circle twice.
Racist Canadian pigs.
Must be the cruel legacy of Canadian slavery.
That's gonna leave a mark.
Until children have two parents who value education and a society where the ignorant are not constantly rewarded with social back-ups, there will be no reason for the drop-out rate to improve.
Well, well. Another 5-year plan.
They'll simply put the offending students in a warehouse I guess.
The schools are working on that, with new programs to convert single moms to lesbians who will then marry one another and provide two or more parents.
“Must be the cruel legacy of Canadian slavery.”
Nah.
The legacy of American slavery wafts across international boundaries, continents and undoubtedly out beyond our Milky Way galaxy.
It also crosses time so that in the year 3547, “persons of color” will still be able to claim they are being held back by the taint of the Cruel Institution.
I would be banned for saying what I think about his issue....
You are spot on. I would perhaps add also the “victim mentality” and note that their heroes are rappers who were former pimps, drug dealers and the like. I have no problem with mentors, but I would also like to see some discipline added with that. Also, instead of infusing the schools with low expectations; I would raise the bar and every student would be “expected” to excel.
Getting a good education means getting well-educated.
As we all know, that takes years of consistent hard work.
For over 100 years, valid IQ tests have been given all over the world. Blacks always score lowest of all. I interpret that as saying, on average, given equal hard work by all, blacks would still come out at the bottom. That’s just a fact, but anyone who voices it gets PC’d into silence.
I have read about the defeatism over education on the parts of black schoolchildren, which has metastasized into the “acting white” taunts directed at successful black students by the dropout-type black kids. The belief that they can’t compete succesfully in school keeps many from even trying, and their disdain for school is a face-saving affectation which too many black schoolchildren adopt.
Socio-economic problems are the most important, but I can’t see any other way to get black kids educated than to afford mentors, etc, such as proposed in the article.
how the heck to they plan to do that? 4 periods of basketball? put SMOOTH and heavy hitters magazines in the study halls
“Simple enough solution here...just hand diplomas to the top 85.0%.”
I bet that will be in effect what they do.
“Africentric alternative school”
“special programs tailored for children”
“personal learning coach”
“train teachers to be more sensitive to the community”
All these “solutions” assume that the problem is with the schools, and not with the students.
None of these “solutions” will work, and the brain-weak liberals will meet again to try more stupid liberal “solutions” that won’t work either.
Every time schools are told BS like this, they end up caught in some scandal to cheat and inflate grades.
The principal of my (now mostly black) HS, was recently caught making teachers change grades on exams for black kids. The school was getting attacked for a ~50% black graduation rate and had no way out. Most of these kids never go to class and their parents don’t care. Of course the Board of Ed thinks it’s all racism.
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