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Toronto's "Road to Health" report on schools is flawed

Posted: January 11, 2008, 6:31 AM by John Turley-Ewart
Filed under: John Turley-Ewart

How bad are Toronto's public schools? The numbers in yesterday's school safety report presented to the Toronto District School Board paint a picture of our public high schools as havens of terror. Guns, knives, sexual assault, extortion, racism and a code of silence have fashioned a school system that graduates survivors, not students.

The spectre of such a conclusion was evident even before the School Community Safety Advisory Panel presented its findings.

In the course of its inquiry the panel discovered an alleged sexual assault at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute in 2006 against a female student. The incident has all the hallmarks of the worst social pathologies that plague the Jane and Finch community where Jefferys is located -- a gang attack on a lone victim, protected by a code of silence, leaving the perpetrators free to terrorize others.

Since the panel learned of the allegations, six male students have been charged while a principal and two vice-principals have been put on leave by the TDSB. The school officials also face charges under Ontario's Child and Family Service Act for failing to report the incident.

"Equity" is the saving grace for such a broken system, according to this panel. It pays homage to the concept by painting all 102 Toronto public high schools using the same broad brush. For that reason the panel would like to see all students wear identification cards, all schools subjected to sniffer dogs and argues that all female students are at risk of "gender-based violence."

The panel would prefer schools with mostly black students to have black teachers, though it does not call for quotas, and an Afrocentric focus, having bought the ill-conceived notion it will improve the self-esteem of disengaged students and thus outcomes.

And it is out of concern for equity that the panel takes direct aim at the Safe Schools Act introduced by the Ontario Conservatives in the 1990s and declares it a failure because of its disproportionate impact on black students who have been suspended and expelled at greater rates than other students.

Zero tolerance is out. Students who are criminals and bullies, the ones who make schools unsafe and strike fear into the hearts of fellow students and teachers of all races, are now "complex-need youth" who must not be transferred out of their home schools unless they present the gravest of threats.

Yet this picture of Toronto schools these recommendations are based on is anything but equitable. The core of the report is a catalogue of survey responses from 1,293 students and 90 teachers at two schools -- Jefferys and Westview Centennial Secondary School. Together, these schools reflect the experience of just 1.5% of Toronto's 270,000 public high school students and their 5,800 teachers.

It is folly to pretend these schools, located in pockets of poverty and single-parent communities, present the same risks for students in schools located in high-income, stable-family areas such as Riverdale and North Toronto.

On first blush, the panel's report strikes the informed reader as a politicized document. Racism, classism, poverty and sexism are the culprits endangering all our high school students and the blame says the panel lies largely with the former Ontario Conservative government of Mike Harris, a profoundly partisan shot at a government long out of office. This dig calls the motives and solutions proposed in the report into question.

Few will dispute the need for more social workers to help troubled students, as the panel recommends. Or reforming the TDSB's education culture, which leaves teachers silent in the face of violence for fear of losing promotions or being accused of racism.

But there is little point being politically correct at the expense of reality. Most of Toronto's public high schools do not harbour a culture of fear and don't need to be treated as if they face the same problems as Jefferys and Westview.

To pretend otherwise is not only a disservice to healthy schools, but to students who do live in a state of fear and most need society's protection from their violent peers.

jturley-ewart@nationalpost.com