Newz from the Toronto School Board

Urban Diversity Strategy aims to cut Toronto's black dropout rate from 40 t0 15 percent

From the Toronto Star (Cut black dropout rate to 15%, schools told by Louise Brown, June 18, 2008):

Canada's largest school board is poised to set tough targets to chop the alarming 40 per cent dropout rate among black students to 15 per cent within five years.

Through mentors, teacher training and close tracking of the most needy students, the Toronto District School Board's sweeping new Urban Diversity Strategy – to be voted on tomorrow by a board committee and by all trustees next week – would aim to make all intermediate and high schools across the city more sensitive to the demographic roadblocks often facing students of differing backgrounds.

The action plan would also target the 25 most racially diverse, low-performing schools for extra youth workers, outreach staff to work with parents, summer programs for Grade 8 students who fail any of the 3 Rs, and a network of teachers who feel passionate about working in such challenging schools.

"We know this is not going to be an easy task, but with the data we now know about our students, and with what we see is working already at some schools – plus a little bit of pressure – we know it can be done," said Gerry Connelly, the board's director of education, in an interview yesterday.

The report is one of the ways the board is responding to new data showing children from poor or turbulent backgrounds or marginalized communities often lag behind.

While trustees voted to open an Africentric alternative school in September 2009 as a sort of test lab for a more global curriculum and more black teachers as role models, the board also charged staff to come up with ways to help children at risk in all schools.

[. . .]

Read all of Louise Brown's article.

Comment:

This strategy seems to be based on the premise that all students have the same potential to do well academically. But what if that's not true? What if, for example, average IQ levels differ from group to group? I suspect five years from now the Star will be publishing articles asking why the Urban Diversity Strategy failed. There's nothing wrong in trying to help black students, but don't assume that all groups will do equally well in school.

See also:

Toronto school study shows great disparities among cultural groups in academic performance

Ontario Safe Schools Act - Liberals plan to abolish zero-tolerance policy. Too many black students being expelled

High number of immigrant children places huge strain on Toronto school system

Toronto high school students who speak Portuguese, Spanish or Somali drop out at higher rates

Tony Lo Bianco...

Lo Bianco. Tony Lo Bianco.

I like my women hot, my beer cold, and summers off. Enter teaching. Just kidding. Well, kinda.

Basically, as long as they pay me on time, I’m good. I’m in by nine (okay, usually a couple minutes late), I’m done by 3:35 (okay, usually a couple minutes early), and I’ll see you at the pool hall on Friday nights. My job reminds me of that famous line from “Dazed and Confused”: ‘I love high school girls. I keep getting older, they stay the same age.’

I never cross the line, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say my little jail bait hotties are a perk of the job. And if I can teach a couple pussies how to lay a couple of those birds, I’m Teacher of the Fuckin’ Year. I’d love a piece of Martina (I call her Little M), but I think I better teach that Muslim Ben how to get his pecker straight. Better him than me. Just wait 2 years for me, Little M... That Kim’s a nice piece of ass too.

In the dudage department, the only kid I kinda like is Adam. He laughs at all my jokes, and he can play basically any sport he wants. Great forearms on that kid. If he wasn’t black, I’d think of him as my kid. I don’t hate black kids, they just make me a little uncomfortable. Still, you can’t beat summers off.

In my high school life, I got it all figured out. I know who to grease, who to ignore, and which girls will probably end up being hot by grade 11. This new guy Mr. Wright is breaking my balls though. I’ve got my routine down. Everything works out, I kiss the principal’s ass just enough to be left alone, and I’ll even coach a basketball team or run the debating club once a year to be “all school spirit”. But this guy is watching me. I can feel his fucken eyes on me like a snake. I don’t know why he can’t just chill the fuck out, but he’s all “Dangerous Minds” or whatever. Once he realizes this job isn’t like the movies, he’ll figure it out. Fuck it. I might even invite him to the pool hall. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

Now I gotta review rationalizing the denominator again. I used to be good at math, but I keep forgetting that shit. I’d rather just teach gym, but they tell me I have to add an “academic”. Personally, I think gym is pretty fucken academic, but what are you gonna do? I can review that math text book tonight, and still have time to Facebook some of my students. Really, I should hang out with more chicks my own age, but I can’t deal with cougars. They get too flabby. My girls got all the right parts in all the right places – and nobody’s asking to marry me. Where do I sign?

I gotta hit Wasaga this weekend. These kids are breaking my fucken balls about their mid-terms. Who’d a thunk so many fuck-ups would end up being keeners? If you’re a ghetto kid, act like it. I’ll let you do whatever the fuck you want, just extend me the same courtesy. I won’t call the cops on you, don’t tell the principal on me. It’s pretty simple. Maybe I can go to Italy for the summer? Maybe Spain? Lots of young girls vacationing in Europe for the summer. Sounds like a plan to me... Just kidding. Well, not really.

Lo Bianco!

Immigrants face growing economic mobility gap

MARINA JIMÉNEZ
From Monday's Globe and Mail
October 6, 2008 at 1:06 AM EDT

Children of Chinese and South Asian immigrants to Canada do dramatically better over time than the offspring of blacks, Filipinos and Latin Americans, new census data reveal.
The findings, released quietly last week by Statistics Canada, suggest a new paradigm for understanding immigrants' integration and success.

The old vertical mosaic – with whites from Britain and Europe at the top and visible minorities underneath – is no longer valid. Instead, second- and third-generation Chinese and Japanese surpass all other groups of newcomers, including whites, while for blacks and other groups, there is little or no economic mobility across generations.

“You can no longer make broad generalizations about how badly visible minorities are doing. Some groups are doing really well, and others are not,” said Jack Jedwab, a historian and head of the Association for Canadian Studies, who wrote a report on the findings.

“We need to rethink the vertical mosaic and look at why mobility is weak among certain ethnic groups.”

The new research, based on the 2006 census, comes as a disappointment – but not a surprise – to Patricia Hines, a teacher and communications expert who emigrated from Jamaica in 2001.
She believes that, while discrimination is a factor, the community could also do more to help itself.

“A lot of us look for schools and communities with black students and teachers so our children won't feel isolated. But that is self-limiting,” says Ms. Hines, 40, who relocated to Toronto with her husband, an accountant.

“If you really don't have an interest in what other people do, or focus overly on your community, then you are limiting your potential,” said Ms. Hines, who owns her own business and works at the Black Business and Professional Association, but noted that her opinions are her own.
The 2006 census data show that first-generation white immigrants with university degrees, aged 25-44, earned $68,036 a year on average – just above the Canadian-born baseline of $65,000. Those from Japan earned $58,294 and those from China $55,270, while black immigrants earned $51,317 a year.

The below-average incomes relate to immigrants' language barriers, lack of Canadian job experience, and difficulties getting their credentials recognized.
The balance shifts, however, with the second and third generation.

The Chinese catapulted ahead, with the grandchildren of immigrants earning an average of $79,022 a year. Incomes for South Asians also increased substantially by the third generation.
In contrast, blacks languished, with third-generation immigrants earning less than newcomers. The incomes of Latin Americans also fell across the generations.
The census findings also suggest that blacks experience more discrimination and difficulties in the labour market than others.

Jeffrey Reitz, a sociologist at the University of Toronto, has researched this area extensively and found that while recently arrived immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa are fairly well educated, their employment outcomes are far worse than other newcomer groups.
“Blacks do fairly well in terms of education, but black men especially stand out with strikingly lower incomes. They report experiences of discrimination on a much higher level than other racial groups,” he said.

Canada's black community has struggled with racial stereotyping and higher-than-average rates of poverty. The high school drop-out rate for blacks in the Toronto public school system has been estimated at about 40 per cent, almost double the rate for non-blacks, prompting the school board to create an alternative Afrocentric school.

An articulate professional, Ms. Hines observed that she never encountered discrimination until she began studying for her master's degree at the University of Toronto. She was shocked to discover there were no other black students or lecturers.

When the class was asked to write the names of five black people, many could only come up with Lincoln Alexander, Ontario's former lieutenant-governor, and Michael (Pinball) Clemons of the Toronto Argonauts football team.

“It made me realize that even though Canada is so diverse, the different ethnic groups don't really mix or understand one another's culture,” Ms. Hines said. “It is hard to talk about this. What are South Asian and Chinese immigrants doing that somehow gets them ahead?”
The census data found that 60 per cent of second-generation Chinese immigrants had university degrees, compared with 52 per cent of South Asians, 36 per cent of Filipinos, 32 per cent of blacks and 23 per cent of Latin Americans.

The higher education levels among Chinese and South Asians appears to reflect the values of their parents – middle-class, educated newcomers who may be underemployed when they arrive, but who expect their children to advance.