The document provides an overview of issues in the education system in Peel Region pertaining to student achievement and equity. It discusses research conducted by CODE (Coalition On Diversity Education) highlighting gaps between policies promoting equity and their implementation. Barriers like a lack of data collection on student demographics and teacher training are identified. Recommendations include developing board-wide equity plans, centering student diversity in curriculum, and increasing community partnerships to improve support for marginalized students.

1. Revisioning Education in
Peel Region: 2006 and
Beyond
A Strategic Report Presented by the
Coalition On Diversity Education

2. Purpose of Presentation
This presentation will provide a
breakdown of identifiable issues in the
education system within Peel as they
pertain to student achievement, and
provide strategies towards this goal.

3. Research and Experience
CODE is a diverse group of educational
professionals, social workers, child and
youth workers, teacher trainers etc.
Conferences, Town hall, field work,
academic research, Equity Summit,
Harmony Movement etc.

4. Board Statistics and
Regional Demographics
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Admin
& DH
Staff Stds.
White
Non-
White

5. The Changing Face of Education in Peel: A
Report from the First Town hall on
Education
Feedback
Letters
Statements
Sensitivity to race and educational materials
Anti-oppression training for teachers
Accountability for equity in education
Community participation and education
The prevalence of anti-black racism
Responding to the need of students with varying abilities
Increasing the diversity of educational staff

6. A Matter of Human Rights
As service providers and employers, boards
of education have historically experienced
their share of human rights complaints form
parents/guardians, applicants and
employees. However, the recent reports from
the Ontario Human Rights Commission takes
direct aim at the educational system and the
systemic barriers that prevent all students
from participating fully in the educational
process.

7. Headlines
December 2003 “Paying the Price: The Human Cost Of Racial
Profiling, OHRC Releases Report. Racial profiling has no place in our
society. We must stop debating the issue and start acting upon it"
Racial profiling usually a term applied to policing and security issues has now
found its way into education.
April 2004 “The Commission makes a submission to the Toronto
District School Board's Safe and Compassionate Schools Task
Force,raising issues around the negative impact of disciplinary practices.”
The Commission recommended that the Ministry of Education and school
boards across the province collect data on suspensions and expulsions in order
to monitor and safeguard against discriminatory application of safe school
legislation.

8. Headlines
May 2004 “Commission restates concerns about potential
discrimination
As a result of submissions made in response to the Commission's racial profiling
inquiry and disability and education consultation, the Commission asked the
Toronto District School Board and the Ministry of Education to recognize the
negative impact these policies and practices may be having on racialized
students and students with disabilities.
July 2004 “Commission releases a comprehensive research
report, The Ontario Safe Schools Act: School Discipline And
Discrimination.”
This report added to the debate with empirical evidence from other jurisdictions
and the anecdotal experiences of students, educators and front-line community
workers in our schools.

9. Headlines
September 2005 “Commission mediates settlement with school board
in sexual orientation complaint.”
The Lakehead District School Board had responded to a student's discrimination
complaint – discrimination and harassment on the basis of sexual orientation by
disciplining the individual student but failed to introduce any remedies to change
the systemic homophobic nature of the school environment
October 2005 “Commission settles complaints with Dufferin-Peel
Catholic District School Board.”
November 2005 “Commission settles employment case with Toronto
District School Board.”
A complaint of systemic discrimination in hiring and promotional practices was
resolved after 10 years. The Board has agreed to 'promote barrier-free hiring and
promotion' by adopting an equity plan, establishing an equity office, delivering
workshops on employment equity to all senior staff and setting up a joint task force
of staff and community members.

10. What it all means:
These very public cases and reports represent the tip
of the iceberg in terms of what boards deal with on a
daily basis through their equity or human rights
officers and policies; and schools through students,
staff and parent/guardians. They clearly point out the
need for school boards to take a more proactive role
in responding to the needs of students. The
challenge is for boards and staff to move beyond the
rhetoric and intellectualizing of 'all students can
learn', to providing the means for that to actually
occur.

11. Regulated Policies
From a human rights prospective, there are many codes,
policies and procedures that govern how boards of education
must respond to equity issues within the educational system.
• The Ontario Human Rights Code (and its various
guidelines on faith and faith accommodation, disability
and accessibility, race and racial harassment, sexual
orientation, age, sex and sexual harassment
• PPM112 – Policy Program Memorandum – Education
and Religion
• PPM119 – Anti Racism/Ethnocultural Policy
• PPM 108 – Opening and Closing Exercises
Locally developed policies and procedures

12. Current Board Policies and Procedures:
The Future We Want (TFWW)
Manifesting Encouraging and Respectful
Environments (MERE)
MERE talks about the isms – ableism, ageism,
classism, faith as an ism, heterosexism, racism and
sexism. It also talks about power and privilege and
how the isms manifest within society and schools.
TFWW describes how we change the curriculum to
achieve our vision of what equity would look like if the
isms, power and privilege did not exist.
PEEL Board

13. 11 public interest remedies to be
implemented by the end of the 2007
school year.
a new Committee entitled “Safe, Caring
and Inclusive schools in Dufferin-Peel”
was created to put these remedies into
effect.
D-P.C.D.S.B.

14. IDENTIFYING THE GAP BETWEEN
POLICY & IMPLEMENTATION
PPM 119
One of the glaring gaps between policy
and implementation has been the
abdication of responsibility of the
Ministry and the boards of education
around the PPM119 – Anti-Racism and
Ethnocultural Equity in School Boards.

15. Many equity practitioners and educators do not see the use of
this policy as confined or restricted to issues of racism and racial
harassment. Rather in their work they use the term 'anti-racism'
as an approach and framework to tackle and dismantle various
forms of oppression and inequalities that exist within the
educational (and other) institutions.
Finally, PPM119 recognized the importance of monitoring the
implementation of the policy.
Collecting data based on race and ethnicity of students: In
monitoring the impact of anti-racism and ethnocultural equity
policies and programs, it will be necessary for boards to collect
data relating to the race and ethnicity of students.
Only 2 boards have ventured into the collection of statistics

16. Literacy, Numeracy and Diversity
In a report compiled by the Equity Team of the Literacy and
Numeracy Secretariat, the Secretariat stated that not all students
were progressing as quickly as their peers. They cited a recent
report commissioned by the Ministry and compiled a group of
students who are more disengaged from and/or less likely to
complete high school than others. This list included:
• Students living in low-income households
• Newcomers and students learning English as a second
or additional language
• Lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered youth
• Aboriginal youth
• Visible minorities (e.g. black youth)
• Youth in remote and rural areas
• Francophone youth
• Boys
• Students with physical, mental and/or cognitive
disabilities

17. There is an abundance of both qualitative and
quantitative evidence (Radwanski 1987, Tate 1997;
Lewis 19xx; Oakes & Lipton 1999;Sleeter 2001;
Bernard 2003) that students from these marginalized
groups are not performing at the same level as non-
marginalized groups. Responding to marginalization
with belief statements rooted in our commitment to
the notion of 'democratic meritocracy' i.e. we can all
succeed if we just try hard enough, will not close the
achievement gap of these marginalized students or
improve the learning environment.

18. Of all student groups currently encountered over the
intense course of a School Social Worker’s
professional practice, no one group is remotely
paralleled in terms of paradoxical extremes of
personal need on the one hand, and systemic
resistance on the other, than Sexual Minority Youth
(SMY).
School Social Work Advocacy
for Sexual Minority Youth

19. Urgency of Action
The desperate urgency of need on this specific client-group is
well documented through the professional literature revealing
that SMY in schools are the highest in:
• Personal isolation
• Dehumanization and harassment, both covert and overt
• Stigmatization
• Invisibility / Threat to systemic integrity
• Disengagement from school
• Run-aways
• Personal doubt often verging on shame/hatred
• Suicide

20. Policy Deficit
Simultaneously SMY, we are warned, are the lowest
in:
• Policies of Inclusivity
• Systemic advocacy: be it from family, peer-
group, society or school,
• In-school Service delivery
• Positive curriculum representation

21. Gaps in policy and reality
Solutions and implementation
Opportunities for leadership and system
reformation
Community and cultural transformation
Language is where it all starts
SOLUTIONS : overview and explanation

22. “School should be a place where students
and teachers feel secure and cared for, and
where all forms of diversity are accepted and
respected. Students need safe space,
language and opportunities to talk about their
lives, struggles and visions. Teachers must
ensure that their classroom programs and
practices respect their students' many
differences; they must find a valued place for
those differences in the daily curriculum”
The Future We Want PDSB
Creating Successful Classrooms

23. Curricular Relevance: Making the
student the curriculum
Students bring cultural capital with them to their
classes, but because of our school structures they do
not get an opportunity to demonstrate their
knowledge because their cultural capital may differ
from the established curriculum goal and
expectations.
Centre students and their home literacies in the
curriculum to create relevance and use existing
capital in the classroom to promote multiple school
literacies.

24. Critical literacy promotes an understanding of
difference. It views readers as active
participants in the reading process and invites
them to move beyond passively accepting the
text’s message by questioning, examining, or
disputing the power relations that exist
between readers and authors. It focuses on
issues of power and promotes reflection,
transformation, and action.
Freire, 1970
Critical Literacy and Classroom
Teaching Strategies

25. Communication and Working through
Difference
New instructional models are needed around
dialogue in order to create more equitable
educational environments for staff and
students.
Co-action model: Creating authentic dialogue
Understanding identity issues and difference
Deconstructing and sharing power

26. Monitoring, Assessment and
Goals
“Improvement is not achieved by focusing on
results, but by focusing on the systems that
create results” National Leadership Network
Monitoring of individual student performance can be
achieved when the systems used are investigated,
challenged and held accountable.
We must face the challenge of race, class
Practices must be research-informed
Goals and targets are for all students
School leaders must be relentless in the pursuit of success
for all students

27. Empowering Youth
The source of empowerment begins from within the
school community and involves all the many layers of
individuals within school complexes.
The key to empowerment is student validation and
exposing the students to people of diverse
backgrounds that serve as positive representations
for marginalized youth. Minority students continue to
rely, on an ethnocentric based curriculum that create
intrinsic feelings of inferiority, and develop beliefs of
superiority among the dominant groups
See: Deena,2001; deCaires Narain,2002; El Saadawi,1997 & Pernal, 2002

28. Achievement and Self Esteem in
Elementary Schools
The foundation of a student’s educational
experience is built in elementary schools
where attitudes towards diversity and equity
must be explicit throughout all aspects of the
experiences of the young learner.
The greatest work in areas of equity must be
done at an early age, be based on firm
research and evaluated and reviewed
regularly by equity departments to meet the
ever changing challenges of early education.

29. Harmony Work and Peace
Building
Empower students to foster an understanding of how
their own identity and background can effect their
perception on people of diverse backgrounds
Diversity initiatives allow students and all participants
to be self-reflexive in order to understand how their
own biases and prejudice lead to actions, attitudes
and behaviours.
Develop student leaders while building capacity
within the school. Students are given a sense of
social responsibility that not only builds character
within themselves but also within their school
community. From The Harmony Movement of Canada

30. Mentorship and Leadership
Cultivating Values: Active roles and
opportunities for change are available at all
levels of the system.
Equity and human rights implementation
meet roadblocks at the doors of Principals,
the traditional initiators of change within
schools
Celebrating Student Voices: encourage
students to be leaders and peacebuilders

31. Community Partnerships
Working with the community
Making connections - roles of police,
social services, education and City
Effective communication between
parents and school boards
Community Education: Increasing
Access and Lobbying powers

32. Developing cultural and critical literacy skills
with existing teachers on a constant basis
Centring equity and diversity in schools
Professional Learning Communities
The lack of diversity and equity training at
training facilities
Board developed certificate programs
Utilizing external agencies
Teaching Teachers

33. Cultivating & Retaining a Diverse
Staff
Centring values within school culture
Staff education and training
Teachers as leaders of equity
Hiring and promotion practices

34. Leadership and Organization
The administration of safe and inclusive
school cultures
Hiring and promotion practices
Fostering Belief and Understanding in the
Staff
Intervention and Special Assistance
Creating Professional Learning Communities

35. Roadblocks and Hurdles
“One of the greatest mysteries in
organizational management is the
disconnect between knowledge and
action. Why does knowledge of what
needs to be done so frequently fail to
result in action or behaviour consistent
with that knowledge?” Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton

36. Roadblocks and Hurdles contd.
Perceived lack of empirical evidence of systemic
racism/classism etc.
Limited knowledge of relevant research and practices
pertaining to identified groups.
Reluctance to consider privilege
Equality vs. Equity
Collective commitment to the notion of democratic
meritocracy:
We can all succeed if we try hard enough
We’re good people
We’re already doing it

37. Implementation of Board Wide
Equity Plans
The development of equity departments is not
just a trend, but a necessity to meet the
growing needs and challenges of school
boards across Southern Ontario
Implementation must be directed, monitored
and initiated by school leaders
The use of external agencies to review,
revise, train and develop equity capital within
boards
Ethic of Care

38. Conclusion and
Recommendation
The implementation of a system wide
achievement plan based on equity is
imperative to the ongoing process of
research and development,
accountability, communication and
oversight to ensure all students can
reach their full potential.

39. CODE partnership
Groups like the Coalition On Diversity Education frequently work
within the larger educational community bringing together
different stakeholders and participants and an awareness of
contemporary trends, research and practices.
When you need to do needs assessment work, equity audits,
curriculum reviews please consider utilizing existing resources
within your board and neighbouring board to develop new
strategies and assist in launching equity plans and systems
reformation and cultural transformation of education
environments.
Email CODE at info@diveristyeducation.ca
www.diversityeducation.ca