Understanding Education Policy in Ontario
Who are the academics feeding policy makers' "evidence-based research" decisions?
Through my property taxes, I pay a lot of money each year to support Toronto District School Board (TDSB) operations. Approximately $1,600, to be a bit more precise. I also live and work around TDSB graduates. You might say I’ve got skin in the game.
So I think I’m justified in wondering how that money is spent and how those students are educated. To that end, I recently spent some time scouring the website of the Ontario Ministry of Education looking for information. I found many variations of the claim that the ministry ensures:
…that each curriculum reflects current research and pedagogical practices, responds to current and future market, economic and workforce needs and conditions, and is aligned with provincial priorities.
Excellent. But just what are those “research and pedagogical practices”? Could I access them myself so I can assess their academic rigor and the underlying data that drives them?
Apparently not. I couldn’t find any references to the specific research on which those curriculum policies were based. Ever the optimist, I emailed the Ministry through their website asking for help. When that evoked no response, I contacted my MPP for help. Her staff had me sign a consent form authorizing them to act on my behalf and then launched their own inquiries.
The subsequent silence was calming and restful, but hardly enlightening.
It’s possible that the person responsible for reading and processing incoming emails retired and forgot to designate a replacement. I guess it would also be that no one was able to find the official in charge of curriculum development, but the news never found its way back to me. Or, perhaps, everyone in the office that day knew exactly where to find the research but preferred that ignorant outsiders like me shouldn’t get their grubby, uninitiated hands on it.
Normally, I’d lean to the more charitable alternatives. But since there’s been no reply at all, I’m free to assume the worst.
As it turns out though, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) isn’t nearly as bashful about the origins of their policies. References to “evidence-based polices”, “educational research”, and “best practices” abound. But they bring the receipts: links to underlying research documents are there, too.
There was one academic’s name in particular that came up over and over again in both individual schools’ communications and board-wide Academic Pathways documents: Stanford University researcher, Dr. Jo Boaler. Now that’s interesting.
When clicking through, you’ll discover that some of the links to Boaler’s papers are no longer active. This might (or might not) be connected to the significant controversy the work has attracted over the years. We’ll get to that later.
But why let something as trivial as invisible content get in our way? The internet, after all, never forgets. In this case, multiple versions of Boaler’s (and David Foster’s) 2003 paper, Raising Expectations and Achievement, are available through the Internet Archive’s WayBack machine.
The main argument of “Raising Expectations” is that we should eliminate enhanced and basic tracks in math education and, instead, deliver the same curriculum to all students. As a parent and a recovering teacher, I can tell you that level tracking does indeed come with its own problems, but proving that those problems outweigh the many benefits of tracking will be an uphill battle.
The study on which “Raising Expectations” was based involved applying a de-tracked curriculum, the use of "rich math problems", and the adoption of formative assessment practices (using Mathematics Assessment Resource Service tasks) in five unidentified school districts in California. Three other school districts continued using traditional methods as a control.
Boaler and Foster report that students in the five de-tracked districts “significantly outperformed” their tracked peers. That finding was the key claim on which the paper as a whole relies. Boaler’s ideas were subsequently the inspiration for California’s Oct., 2023 adoption of their California Math Curriculum Framework (CMF). And it’s clear that the TDSB has also worked to implement Boaler-inspired policies right here at home.
Here’s the thing, though. Boaler’s work appears to be flawed. And it’s been widely known for more than a decade.
All the way back in 2012, two California mathematicians and a statistician published “A Close Examination of Jo Boaler’s Railside Report” where they managed to identify the actual schools involved in Boaler's study. This made it possible for them to determine that, in fact, students in the de-tracked schools did not actually outperform the control districts. This became yet more clear when accounting for standardized test scores, demographic confounding variables, and curriculum coverage.
The “Close Examination” paper also argued that the program’s tests don’t accurately measure high school mathematics achievement. Which means that the test results don’t tell us anything useful about student success or failure.
Much more recently, an anonymous document addressed to Stanford University officials appeared, claiming that Boaler’s work was filled with misrepresentations, misleading citations, and poor scholarship.
To be fair, neither Stanford nor Boaler have publicly retracted the original 2008 paper. In fact, Boaler has pushed back against many of the claims, both here and here. So I’m not in a position to authoritatively dismiss the research. But I do have an opinion.
At the end of the day, the research is at best controversial. Boaler’s published content includes recommendations to curtail the use of timed tests and eliminate middle school algebra - both of which haven’t fared well against objective evidence.
What, then, am I to think about TDSB’s warm embrace of the underlying principles? Did the board fully engage with the evidence before imposing this radical reform on their students? And, as a stakeholder, where can I find (and assess) the methodological process they employed to make their decision?
It's not enough to eliminate gifted classes. Kurt Vonnegut showed us, in 'Harrison Bergeron', that various methods of physical and mental handicapping are required to reach the ultimate level of academic success--which is that no one is ever more skilled or knowledgeable than anyone else.
Seriously, we need to give every individual the chance to maximize his/her own potential. This means that some will leave others behind in some areas. If you start out assuming that any child 'underachieving' or being 'left behind' in relation to other students (as opposed to his/her own potential) is something that shouldn't happen, everyone is fucked.
Go get ‘em, David! I hope that you’ll be able to penetrate the Wall Of Silence that will undoubtedly continue to face you.