In order to determine the affect of social status on educational opportunity in Ontario, it is instructive to examine educational outcomes. According to D. W. Livingstone (2007) at OISE/UT, the most recent data available suggests that 60% of white students from a professional/managerial upper middle class family attend post-secondary education, whereas, only 10% of black students from low socio-economic working class families do so. This disparity suggests that there does exist a link between social status and educational opportunity in the Canadian/Ontario context.
Educational opportunity can be defined in terms of access to education and student engagement in the educational experience. In contrast to the U.S., public school funding in Ontario tends to be more universal and equitable, at least in absolute terms. The issue of access to schools in Ontario is not so much related to the physical resources of the education system, but rather access to the curriculum by students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. That is, students generally are not impeded from attending school and receiving text books, etc., but attendance is not access. The impediment students from lower socio-economic backgrounds (which tend to include visible minority and recent immigrant populations) face relates to the under-representation of these groups in the common curriculum. This issue of access to the common curriculum influences student engagement.
At the most fundamental level, lower socio-economic students can face challenges meeting their deficiency needs (i.e., physiological, safety, belongingness, esteem) which in turn has a negative affect on their ability and readiness for knowledge acquisition (Malsow, 1968). Although some attempt has been made to offset these challenges (i.e., lunch/snack programs) they nevertheless persist.
Beyond the issues of poverty and safety, more insidious factors are at play which conflate to create a discriminatory system which reduces student engagement and in the result, educational opportunity. Key among these issues is the tendency for lower socio-economic groups to be under-represented in the curriculum, the resultant responses from public schools, and teacher efficacy.
First, the common curriculum in Ontario has largely ignored minority groups with respect to both design and delivery. In the result, there is an absence of cultural relevance for students from lower socio-economic groups. That is, their history is absent, as are their cultural touchstones. More than this absence is the over-representation of the white, European, experience. These two factors act to frustrate these students’ ability to connect with the curriculum. By way of analogy, this issue of cultural relevance is the same issue that has been identified with IQ testing. IQ testing was found to be culturally biased which caused skewed results – a disproportionate low scoring of lower socio-economic group members. If a student is attempting to solve a math problem involving yachts, tacking, and wind speed and does not know what a yacht is or why one would tack, it presents a barrier for that student to even get at the problem being discussed.
The suggestion to create “black-focused” schools in order to find ways to include under-represented groups in the curriculum met with widespread public condemnation. This response smacked of segregation, said the pundits. However, both the pundits and the general public agreed that a problem existed (Livingstone, 2007). This same issue arose in the recent provincial election with respect to funding faith-based schools. That is, there is general agreement that a disconnect exists between the common curriculum and the multi-cultural society it purports to educate. The issue seems to be related to what to do about it. Perplexingly, what has been done about it seems to have exacerbated the problem.
As a result of the failure of students from lower socio-economic groups to engage in their education, public schools have seen a high percentage of students with literacy and numeracy difficulty; a high drop-out rate; and a disproportionate rate of poor academic performance relative to their peer group. In response, public schools have adopted social promotion, reduced expectations in secondary grades, grouped students by ability (streaming) and then ungrouped them, which only blurred the issue. In almost every case, students in secondary school experiencing academic difficulty began to experience difficulty in elementary school – more specifically, in the primary grades. The root cause of the problems faced by lower socio-economic groups manifests very early – the response by public schools should manifest likewise.
Finally, the “mainstreaming” of special needs students has resulted in the allocation of special needs funds to the regular classroom. This has resulted in a concomitant pursuit of these resources by both parents and teachers. Further, the advent of the “learning disabled” diagnosis has opened a door for both teachers and parents to pursue the same goal but for arguably different motivations. In any event, there exists a disproportionate representation of lower socio-economic groups with the learning disabled label and its attendant special funding. Parents pursue this funding in order to access assistance for their child in order to improve academic performance. Teachers are incented to identify students who are challenging to teach as learning disabled in order to relinquish responsibility for their own efficacy and place it on the special needs resources.
As Kozol (2005) comments, there are expensive children and cheap children. Those in lower socio-economic groups tend to be expensive children – expensive insofar as they tend to attract special funding but more so because they require the system to adapt to their needs, and it takes great effort to do that.
It turns out that, like common sense, the common curriculum is not all that common. Although the tone of the issue may be different than in the U.S. the result is the same – educational opportunity is not equal for those from lower socio-economic groups. As Livingstone (2007) comments, when only 10% of students from black families of lower socio-economic status attend post-secondary education it seems like a huge waste of time. I’m sure they’d agree. In fact, that’s the problem.
