As the Toronto District School Board’s top leader since 2016, Dr. John Malloy has worked with the Board of Trustees to lead the 246,000-student district through a wide-ranging process to expose inequitable practices and policies that are holding some students back from reaching their full potential. Malloy recently shared the Toronto District School Board’s (TDSB) story and his advice for tackling educational equity with leaders in Holdsworth’s District Leadership Program.
Fourteen.
That number has challenged educators in the Toronto District School Board to our core.
It has driven challenging conversations, realigned our focus and resources and nurtured cautious hope for change.
In the education community, we do not speak of these students as at risk of failing. For anything to change, we must talk about them as students that we are underserving.
Fourteen is the percentage of students who leave school before graduation. In a district with 246,000 students, 14 percent is not a small number. It represents more than 34,000 young lives.
When we look more closely, a stark truth emerges: these students are disproportionately black and Indigenous, both groups who have long struggled with racism, oppression and colonialism in Canadian society.
In the education community, we do not speak of these students as at risk of failing. For anything to change, we must talk about them as students that we are underserving.
This is one of our tenets of equity. It is building inclusive learning environments that inspire all students to reach their full potential. Equity does not mean lowering the bar for the students, but rather building staff capacity to challenge the status quo and create authentic learning opportunities that reflect student and community identities. This means that educators need to examine their own beliefs, values and biases and engage in change at the classroom, school and system levels.
I share our ongoing equity journey in TDSB – challenges as well as successes – because I know that school systems across Canada and in the United States are grappling with the same questions. Why can’t we close persistent achievement and opportunity gaps that exist in our system?
For us, finding answers meant first confronting some hard truths about the experiences parents and students were having in our schools.
Starting the conversation
To probe these questions, TDSB formed the Enhancing Equity Task Force and embarked upon a yearlong journey to find out what equity strategies were working and what challenges remained.
It was an opportunity to bring thousands of diverse perspectives into a conversation that historically would be viewed by underserved communities as one where their voices had no place. We tried to confront this historical reality.
The steering committee for the task force was composed of families, caregivers, community organizations, academics, as well as board staff and others. This group did not just study data in a removed fashion; rather they ventured out into the city to hear real stories from a wide array of stakeholders via working groups, forums, summits, targeted outreach to specific communities and public commentary on the report’s recommendations.
In 2017, the task force issued an 80 page report summarizing all that they heard and learned, and laid out recommendations for making our schools more equitable environments for all students.
First, the hard truths
Data collected for many years in TDSB has painted a troubling picture for black and Indigenous students. In Toronto schools, both groups are far more likely to be:
- Reading below grade level by the end of first grade.
- Identified as having special education learning needs.
- Streamed into non-academic programs in high school.
- Overrepresented among suspended and expelled students.
Both groups were less likely to have positive relationships with adults and peers in school, one of the strongest predictors of academic success.
The data was compelling and hard to ignore, but listening to these personal accounts from students, families and communities was truly a necessary wake-up call. Students shared personal details of their encounters with racism in schools, as well as the feeling that little was expected of them because of their racial identity, their learning needs and/or their socio-economic status.
Perhaps the most difficult thing to hear was that despite earnest efforts to make Toronto schools supportive environments for all students, these students and families did not believe that anything would change.
Changing policies and practices
We knew we needed to take strong actions that would show students that we cared, that we were committed to change and that we would work with them to create a more hopeful and optimistic trajectory for them.
The findings from the Enhancing Equity Task Force helped inform the Board’s Multi-Year Strategic Plan which focuses on transforming student learning, creating cultures of well-being, providing access, using resources effectively, and building strong relationships and partnerships. In each pillar of the plan, we continuously focus on those most underserved in our system.
As a result, TDSB has made significant policy changes that we hope will begin to reimagine – and in some cases dismantle – systems and policies that we heard were creating barriers for the most underserved groups. A few of these changes include:
- Changing how we serve students with special education needs to better integrate these students into community classrooms.
- Allocating resources more equitably to ensure that all students have access to the supports they need to be successful.
- Examining the audition/application processes for our specialized schools and programs in order to ensure a diverse student body that is more reflective of the City of Toronto.
- Interrupting the suspension and expulsion process by expecting principals to discuss potential suspensions with their supervisor.
- After extensive consultation with students and communities, ending the School Resource Officer Program which saw police officers present at specific schools on a consistent and ongoing basis.
Changing mindsets and strengthening family relationships
At the school level, two important recommendations emerged: providing robust professional learning for school staff and forging stronger relationships between school staff and families.
As the task force wrote, this would require “challenging conversations about racism, oppression, classism, and all other barriers to equity.”
We are also reviewing and improving our hiring practices to enhance the diversity of our staff so that our students can see themselves in those adults working with them.
In each of our schools, leaders and staff ask these questions:
- Who is not achieving in our school because of our lack of service?
- What biases do we as a staff hold that could be contributing factors?
- What barriers need to be removed for all students to succeed?
- What systemic conditions need to exist that strengthen a culture that supports all students to succeed?
This means investigating how and what we teach so that students from different backgrounds feel their history, identity and culture is valued and respected. This means creating brave spaces where all voices matter and influence decisions and direction.
To feel safe and valued, students and families need to know that educators will not make or tolerate racist or discriminatory comments or behavior. Acting quickly and decisively when these situations arise is critical.
To do this, we must ensure that all voices are at the table and that there is room for everyone to share their experiences, ideas and needs. As part of this, we must also ensure that those who hold more power and privilege do not overshadow other members of our community.
Staying on the path
In Toronto, our ongoing quest for equity has not been easy or comfortable. Some days I wake up and think this is the most challenging place I have been in 33 years in education. But then it is followed by the gut knowledge that I am exactly in the right place and that we are doing the right thing for our students.
This work is not about the comfort of those who are most privileged like me; rather it is about creating the conditions for all students to succeed, which means paying very close attention to those students who have historically been underserved.
And we are making progress. Though not as quickly as we would like, there are bright spots to report:
- Early reading data shows more students are reading by the end of first grade.
- More students with special needs are being supported in their neighborhood classrooms.
- Suspension rates are declining while schools remain safe.
- More students are studying at the academic level in high school. This number has improved by 10 percentage points over the last five years.
- All school leaders and system leaders are engaged in learning about equity, oppression, racism, anti-black racism and discrimination and hate of all kinds.
- We are not only committed to learning, but we are also committed to being accountable and have stated our Accountability Framework publicly.
For me, the greatest evidence that we are on the right path is whenever I visit one of our 582 schools and I see staff asking the questions needed to remove the barriers that will support all students.
This work is not about the comfort of those who are most privileged like me; rather it is about creating the conditions for all students to succeed.
We are also admitting that this work is very hard, especially because we may not even be aware of the biases we hold that may harm students.
Everywhere I go in the district, we are understanding the difference between intention and impact. In other words, it is not good enough to say, “I didn’t mean for this to happen” when our actions actually cause harm. Focusing on the harm we have caused allows us to reflect on our actions and change behaviors. We have made this commitment publicly in order to strengthen our accountability.
The most important thing for us now is to stay the course. We are a big ship that requires time to turn. But we cannot forget about the number 14, and the thousands of lives at stake. For them, we will keep moving in the right direction.
