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  • Education Policy Context

    Ont. teachers take legal action on sex ed

    posted September 4, 2018 / No Comments

    One of Ontario’s largest teacher’s union has launched a legal challenge against the government’s decision to repeal a modernized version of the province’s sexual-education curriculum… ETFO President Sam Hammond said the government’s changes to the curriculum are reckless and put students at risk. He said the union’s legal action is vital to ensure that educators and school boards can continue to protect the safety and health of students. “It also seeks to stop the operation of this unnecessary and counterproductive complaint or snitch line”

  • Education Policy Context

    The critics are right: Campus life is not what it used to be

    posted September 2, 2018 / No Comments

    It is the university administrators who are advocating on behalf of students, motivated by a mix of genuine concern for students’ well-being and enlightened self-interest… The incentives to retain students are compounded, especially in Ontario, by provincial government funding formulas… University administrators are also keenly concerned with their institution’s reputation, because reputation drives student numbers, faculty recruitment and retention, donations, the ability to attract research funds and more.

  • Education Policy Context

    Ontario tells colleges, universities to develop free speech policies or face funding cuts

    posted September 1, 2018 / No Comments

    The government said all university and college policies must include a definition of freedom of speech and adhere to principles based on the University of Chicago Statement on Principles of Free Expression. That document says colleges and university are places for open and free discussion, institutions should not shield students from ideas they disagree with or find offensive, and university or college community members cannot obstruct the freedom of others to share their views.

  • Education Policy Context Equality Debates

    Ontario families to launch human-rights challenge against sex-ed curriculum rollback

    posted August 10, 2018 / 1 Comment

    Six families plan to file a case with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario in the next week, noting that the old version of the curriculum makes no mention of issues such as gender diversity or the rights of LGBTQ students… The government’s decision to repeal the modernized curriculum violates the province’s human rights code and should be declared unlawful, their lawyers said… a parent from Guelph, Ont., credits the 2015 curriculum for making his daughter’s gender transition almost “seamless.”

  • Hot! Education Policy Context

    It’s past time to end academic streaming

    posted January 29, 2018 / 1 Comment

    streaming — which puts kids into either academic or applied courses in high school — was supposed to be phased out in Ontario in 1999. Yet almost 20 years later, it’s still with us despite overwhelming evidence that it hurts rather than helps kids… studies also suggest teachers and guidance councillors actually push racialized and low-income students into taking applied courses. That perpetuates income-based disparities in educational outcomes.

  • Education Policy Context

    Campus culture wars: Universities need to rediscover the radical middle ground

    posted November 22, 2017 / No Comments

    In the classroom, university teachers must lecture competently; they do not have a license to use their podiums in order to propagandize, speak in habitually ill-informed ways, or lie. Free speech allows citizens to do this on street corners or blogs, but universities have loftier goals. Academic freedom and freedom of speech are not the same thing; they are different forms of expression, both vital, in a democratic society.

  • Education Policy Context

    Sex-ed programs shouldn’t be informed by left or right ideology

    posted October 30, 2017 / No Comments

    … gender identity and gender expression are… interrelated. Level of exposure to prenatal testosterone – a scientific phenomenon repeatedly denied by gender scholars – has been shown, time and again, to influence all three… Sex education should not be rooted in ideology, whether it’s being propagated by religion or identity politics. When it comes to shaping young minds in particular, we should praise science and call out distortions of truth on both sides.

  • Education Policy Context

    School vouchers don’t improve educational outcomes. Elitist parents may be the culprits

    posted October 26, 2017 / No Comments

    … the quality of the pedagogy isn’t the only thing that shapes student outcomes in schools. The peer group matters a great deal; families with higher socioeconomic status are better able to navigate the educational system, and they value education very highly, traits they pass on to their children. Those parents also work hard to improve the quality of the schools their children attend.

  • Hot! Education Policy Context

    One-third of Ontario college and university students receive free tuition grants

    posted September 12, 2017 / 1 Comment

    The free tuition grants are part of a number of changes to the student assistance program, which makes mature students eligible for the first time, and also requires repayment only after grads are earning $35,000 a year, up from the current $25,000. The government is now providing students with aid money up front, before tuition bills arrive, for families earning less than $50,000. Some 70 per cent of those students were expected to receive more in grants than average university tuition rates.

  • Education Policy Context

    Ontario school boards to collect detailed data on hiring, suspensions

    posted September 8, 2017 / No Comments

    Ontario plans to revamp Grade 9 — with an eye to ending streaming in the first, “critical” year of high school — as part of its new equity plan that will also compel school boards to collect detailed data on everything from staff hires to student suspensions… The province’s three-year equity plan will, for the first time, have school boards collect data on race, ethnicity and other factors to determine if certain groups are disproportionately represented in areas such as suspensions or expulsions and work to address them.

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