A major overhaul being proposed to how students are admitted to the city’s most coveted high schools and specialized programs has left some feeling blindsided.
The new policy by Toronto’s public school board, which has yet to be voted on, would mean that rather than writing entry exams or demonstrating any ability, students will need to show interest in the area.
Trustee James Li says parents are outraged, and feel blindsided, by the removal of skill-testing from the admission criteria.
“They are frustrated that they didn’t get to provide their feedback on this change,” Li said. “I think we lost some confidence and trust with the parent community.”
He says parents are worried the Toronto District School Board’s move will lead to the erosion of these programs.
“There will be students who are incredibly talented now, who may not necessarily have access to these programs because their names may not be randomly selected,” said Li, who plans to vote against the new policy.
The board says the new policy was developed after extensive consultation with the school community, and a review of best practices, enrollment trends and system data. Changes are intended to address TDSB data showing not all students have benefited equitably from specialized programs. Since 2010, research has shown that students in specialty programs and schools disproportionately come from families with two-parent structures and higher incomes.
the proposed policy will be voted on at a board meeting May 25. The changes will affect those applying for September 2023.
Prospective students would no longer need to submit report cards, write entrance exams, demonstrate skill, provide audition materials or pay application fees.
Random selection would determine admission, with priority given to those from underserved communities so that these programs better represent the wider student population.
In an op-ed published in the Star, TDSB director of education Colleen Russell-Rawlins says, “The application process has long advantaged students who have access to previous formal training in specific disciplines.”
“Moving to an interest-based model will ensure that this prerequisite is no longer a barrier to students who may not have had those same opportunities, but still bring an interest, passion and commitment to those fields.”
She noted there are already specialized programs and schools that don’t require auditions, entrance exams or previous marks, “and staff and students produce outstanding results.”
Student demographics from October 2020 reveal a notable disproportionality between those in secondary specialty programs, compared with the board’s overall high school student population. At arts schools, 58 per cent identify as White, compared with 29 per cent across the TDSB, and five per cent identify as Black, compared with about 11 per cent.
When looking at other specialized programs, including Elite Athlete, Cyber Arts, STEM, there are discrepancies overall, but some are more extreme. For instance, 63 per cent of students in the Elite Athlete program identify as white, compared with 29 per cent across the board. And those who identify as South Asian represent about 66 per cent of students in the Leadership program, compared with 23 per cent.
Jia Li, whose son is in Grade 4 at Claude Watson School for the Arts, a specialized program for those in grades 4 to 8 with talents in music, drama, dance and the visual arts, calls the new policy “unacceptable.” Li – no relation to Trustee Li – is considering moving her son to a private school for Grade 9.
Li participated in the consultation process and was “shocked” to see admission criteria scrapped. She’s “fully supportive of the notion of equity and inclusion,” but without admissions criteria “we are setting ourselves up for failure.”
The proposed policy would affect the board’s roughly 40 specialty programs and schools, which focus on areas such as the arts, athletics, sciences and math. It also aims to bolster local programming in neighborhood high schools over the next decade.
The TDSB’s Secondary Program Review will beef up local programming in schools with more than 1,000 students, so youth don’t feel the need to leave their neighborhood. The challenge is that while some schools have lots of programming and more kids than they can support, others are below capacity, making it tough to offer anything beyond core courses.
As the TDSB reviews its programming over the next two years, some specialized programs may shift locally, and some local programs may become centralized.
Deryk Jackson, a teacher and program leader at MaST, a specialized STEM program in Danforth Collegiate and Technical Institute, said no longer being able to review report cards before admission will mean some future students may not be able to handle the advanced curriculum he teaches.
To offset this, Jackson said he’s been told specialized programs will have to lessen the difficulty, or “enrichment” of courses and place more emphasis on guiding individual students through lessons. This would change the way specialized programs operate, he said, from places where verifiably advanced students tackle challenging material to places where students with various skill levels get a higher degree of individual support from their teachers.
“They’re directing us to eliminate the focus on curricular enrichment in the program and replace that with an enriched focus on lived experience,” said Jackson. “My understanding is that they want us to meet a kid on their own ground, not just assuming everything you say in class is going to make sense to them… But that’s something we have to do with all our students. That doesn’t differentiate a specialized program. That’s just being a good human being.
“They want that to be the focus of specialized programs, which doesn’t make sense from a logical perspective. Curricular enrichment is why these specialized programs are around.”
But Jackson does agree with removing entrance exams.
“We did entrance examinations for a number of years,” he said. “But when we actually dissected the data to look at how students did on entrance exams and how they flourished in the program, there was absolutely no correlation.”
The policy revision would also prevent art students from selecting a major in Grade 9. Instead, they would participate in a more rounded arts education in early years, including learning about fields they may not be interested in.
Julie Butson’s daughter, in Grade 11 at the Etobicoke School of the Arts, commutes an hour each way to school from their home in Leslieville. She never would have applied if she couldn’t focus on painting from the get-go.
“The thought of her doing a dance class, or a musical theater class or band is laughable,” said Butson. “It’s insulting to these kids, who are really talented and driven. It assumes they’re too young to know what they want.”
Butson said her daughter would have lost out on valuable training if forced to split her focus in Grade 9.
“If she didn’t have those years of intensive painting experience, the quality of her work wouldn’t be strong enough to get a scholarship.”
Butson believes this change will be punitive for students from lower-income families, as wealthier parents will place their children in private training to make up for learning loss in earlier years, thus ending up with better skills and portfolios by graduation.
Specialized programs took root before amalgamation, developed by local schools as a way to combat declining enrollment and attract students. Over the past two decades, many have become elite programs.
At the April 27 committee meeting where the policy was presented, Trustee Christopher Mammoliti called it “an incredible step,” saying he’s in “full support.”
He spoke of the “stigma” some local schools face, which leads to lower enrollment, funding, and fewer resources.
“When our students are losing opportunity, they’re losing elements of their future. Long term that has massive, massive consequences,” said Mammoliti. “We need to make these types of corrections, we need to take urgency because for decades communities have been left behind … We have to have equal opportunity for our students, or we’re not doing our job in public education and actually building a future for those communities.”
Trustee Anu Sriskandarajah said at the meeting that some students don’t want to attend their neighborhood school, calling it a “local brain drain,” that “stifles the enrichment of our local schools oftentimes.”
“We have to also be cognizant of the role that the TDSB plays in increasing socio-economic stratification in our city,” said Sriskandarajah. “We see how certain neighborhoods, based on the schools and the programs there, and how that will drive up (house) prices because people want to avoid certain areas.”
She noted the proposed change doesn’t mean specialty programs are disappearing, “We’re just allowing students who traditionally don’t get to access to these programs access,” adding she’s excited at the prospect of STEM programs having more girls.
Many parents argue it’s natural and societally beneficial to sort people based on potential and performance. There are Ivy League schools and community colleges. Major and minor sports leagues. They say widening access to specialized high schools doesn’t reflect how securing opportunities works in the real world.
Sachin Maharaj, an assistant professor of educational leadership, policy and program evaluation at the University of Ottawa, said studies that compare school systems internationally have shown the longer that the sorting process is delayed, the better overall performance is from students. Cutting off access to better teachers and opportunities too early can hobble development.
“There’s this idea that schools should serve as a sorting function, so that students can be slotted into their positions in the social hierarchy,” said Maharaj. “There are places in the world where this starts in preschool.”
At some point, students are going to experience sorting, Maharaj said. And not all students can be equally capable in all areas. But the time it takes to develop an aptitude for something varies.
“Students need time and opportunity to express their abilities,” he said. “How much of that are we going to give them before we slot them into particular trajectories from which they cannot easily return?”
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