Canada Imports "School Choice" Ideology

[Joanne98]

Toronto's current debate over whether to create Afrocentric public schools looks suspiciously like arguments over private school vouchers in the United States, with the same charged rhetoric and misleading data.

Dana Goldstein | March 21, 2008 | web only


Across our northern border, a battle is raging over race and education. The Toronto District School Board has approved a plan to create an Afrocentric high school for black students, set to open in 2009. Many black community activists overcame initial reservations about racial separation to support the idea; in Canada as in the United States, there is an intractably high drop-out rate among black students, although up north, the majority of blacks are descendents of Caribbean immigrants, not slaves. In Toronto, 40 percent of black Caribbean youth never graduate high school. Parents and advocates rightly argue that radical action is needed.
But the Toronto school board's split 11-9 decision in late January to move forward with the plan reflects what has become an increasingly divisive political fight. A February poll found that only 15 percent of Ontarians support the school, and 79 percent are opposed. The province's premier, Dalton McGuinty, has said he dislikes the idea and will not funnel extra funding to the project. Canada's most influential newspaper, The Globe and Mail, has repeatedly editorialized against the school, likening its philosophy to that of Jim Crow era segregation. Last month readers and activists criticized the paper for publishing a cartoon called "Afrocentric Algebra," which depicted a black male teacher leading a math lesson by saying to his students, "S'up dog?" Some of the math equations on the chalkboard behind the teacher were solved incorrectly.

Undoubtedly, Canadians are far from immune to the combustible racial discussions with which Americans are so familiar. But what's strange about the Afrocentric education controversy is the way in which Canadian media have, almost without realizing it, absorbed the twists and turns of the American "school choice" debate, some of them ideologically-motivated and intellectually dishonest.

In January, for example, Canadian newspapers and television networks reported on a pro-Afrocentric-schools lecture by former Milwaukee public schools superintendent Howard Fuller in front of the conservative Economic Club of Toronto. Milwaukee is the location of the largest private school voucher program ever enacted. Currently, over 17,000 students there, the great majority of them low-income African Americans, participate in the program. "The fact of the matter is that you already have separation," said Fuller, who is black. "Poor people in Toronto are not swimming in the mainstream." About the Milwaukee voucher program, he claimed, "Thousands of lives have been saved because this program exists."

What Fuller didn't mention is that independent assessments of Milwaukee's voucher program have consistently shown that students attending private schools on the government's dime perform no better academically than socioeconomically similar children in traditional public schools. Furthermore, as millions of Wisconsin dollars have flowed from the public system into the hands of 120 private schools -- 102 of which are religious-affiliated -- private schools have refused to educate many students with special needs. In Milwaukee, the percentage of disabled students in public schools is twice as high as the percentage in the voucher program, putting considerable strain on a public system that has been drained of crucial resources.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=canada_imports_school_choice_ideology

Canadians better wake up! The RW talk radio and Christian TV are having an effect. They need to get those fuckers off there radio and TV before they destroy their country like they did ours!

[annabanana]

1. Look out, Canada! The neocons have you on their plate and are

getting ready to chow down!