Michael Zwaagstra: This Policy Will Cause More Problems in Ontario Schools

Commentary 

Does everyone need the same education? It depends.

If we’re talking about elementary school, the answer is a clear “yes.” All students must learn how to read, write, and do basic mathematics. Everyone should also have a basic understanding of core scientific concepts and know about Canadian history.

However, things are different when we get to high school. Courses are more specialized, and not every student needs to take every course. Students heading to post-secondary education, particularly those going to a university academic program, will take advanced math classes such as precalculus. On the other hand, students heading straight into the workforce will benefit more from math courses that focus on practical matters such as mortgages and interest rates.

This is why “streaming” is common at the high school level. To ensure students take the courses most relevant to their needs, schools offer different streams, typically an academic stream and an applied stream. At least, that’s how it’s been up to this point.

But in 2022, the Ontario government decreed that all school boards must end the practice of streaming in Grade 9, meaning that all high school students take the same courses in Grade 9. The announcement did not go smoothly. According to a survey by advocacy group People for Public Education, only 20 percent of Ontario principals felt that they had enough resources to adequately implement the province’s de-streaming mandate.

Now at least one school board plans to go even further by ending streaming in all its Grade 10 courses as well. The Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) says that this change will broaden options for students and also promote equity and inclusion. Only in Grade 11 will WRDSB students be separated into academic and applied streams.

This is a classic example of an idea that sounds good in theory but falls apart in practice. First, even if de-streaming makes sense at the Grade 9 level, this doesn’t mean it should be extended into higher grades. The older students get, the more essential it becomes that students receive instruction that prepares them for their future studies and/or careers.

Forcing students to wait until Grade 11 to take specialized academic courses delays their ability to get the focused instruction they undoubtedly need. Anyone who has been in high school lately knows that there’s a stark difference between an academic math course and an applied math course. Frankly, they are two different subjects, and they prepare students to do vastly different things.

Making academically-minded students take courses with students who have no aptitude or interest in advanced mathematics will undoubtedly lead to less learning for them. Teachers will have no choice but to water down instruction to help those students who struggle with academic material. Not only does this create extra work for teachers, it also leads to a suboptimal learning environment for all students.

De-streaming is not the only way to ensure that students remain with their peers. Students already take physical education, band, and art classes together. And there are plenty of opportunities for students to be together in a variety of extracurricular activities. Simply put, streaming does not necessarily lead to students of different academic abilities always being separated.

High school courses are streamed because of the need for specialization. Just as not every student needs to spend time learning how to build houses or fix car engines, not every student needs to learn how to solve quadratic equations. Streaming is a way of ensuring that different students get the education they need.

As for the argument that streaming promotes equity, this simply means that every student will receive the same watered-down education. If the goal is to keep everyone at the bottom, then we might de-stream all the way to Grade 12 and beyond. But if we recognize that specialization is a good thing, especially in high school, then we will keep at least some streaming in place.

By pushing ahead with de-streaming, school boards, including in Waterloo, are putting political ideology ahead of student learning. It’s time to put the needs of students first.

Michael Zwaagstra is a public high school teacher and a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.