Understanding de-streaming

Even with the best intentions, streaming is hurting a lot of kids by negatively altering the trajectories of their lives. Research has now made it clear: Grade 8 is far too soon to be making lifelong career choices. Student minds at that age are just not ready for that kind of long-term decision making (Source).

This negative effect is having a much greater impact on Indigenous and Black students, students receiving special education supports, and students from low-income families. They are disproportionately funneled into the Applied stream and it contributes to cycles of poverty and lack of opportunity.

Students in the Applied stream simply do not have the career and life opportunities that students in the Academic stream do. All options remain open to students in the Academic stream, while they do not for those in the Applied stream. When students feel that school no longer offers the value for them that it does for others, they are more likely to drop out. Consequently, the Applied stream has a much higher drop out rate.

Applied courses are taught under the assumption that underachieving students need a learning program better aligned to their perceived lower skills and with lower expectations so that they can find success.  This was considered acceptable for such a long time because it was assumed that their low performance is inevitable, that their intelligence is fixed. (Or, in a darker sense, that they aren’t as valuable citizens as the Academic students). Longitudinal data shows that even when students are successful in the Applied stream, this does not lead to the same positive outcomes as similar success in Academic courses.

Students’ interests or learning skills and even intelligences are not fixed. Some have ‘growth spurts’ later than others, yet streaming cuts them off or makes it far more difficult to get the education they need for the career they want. 

Streaming creates a class system within schools which triggers a self-fulling prophecy. 

This fear has not been realised in every other Canadian province that has long removed all streaming in grade 9. Ontario is not stepping into unknown, risky territory with this policy change. 

In a de-streamed grade nine class, the students coming to grade 9 from grade 8 are not experiencing any effect of being ‘de-streamed’ since they never were streamed to begin with (with the exception of specialized elementary programs that some school boards offer). It is a continuation of their experience of learning together with peers that are not sorted by perceived ability. 

We know the positive benefits that classroom culture can have on students. Putting students in a situation where they feel they are second-class has had a terrible effect on their academics and future trajectories. 

There is no reason to believe that continuing with the same non-streamed experience they had in elementary school will be detrimental to their continued learning in grade 9. All evidence points to the opposite.

Ontario is the last province to de-stream grade 9 and this did not turn out to be a major concern in other provinces.

All students benefit from learning with a diverse classroom community of learners. 

They also benefit from starting high school without an introduction to a two-tiered learning system that looks a lot like socio-economic classes. Just like in elementary school, all students should learn in a community of us, not a community of ‘us and them.’ 

Some students will find school more challenging than they would have in an Applied course, but the low expectations they would have received in Applied would have had adverse effects on their lives. The high expectations and the additional supported-challenges can have life-long positive benefits for students and can greatly improve their personal self-worth.

More funding for special education and EAs is and continues to be a need, but having students all learn together as they did in elementary school does not necessarily create a new additional demand for EAs. 

Those who adamantly believe that many students will suffer and experience failure in de-streamed classes without EA support reveal an underlying belief that those students are simply not capable. It should be a reminder to us that it’s not just courses that need to be de-streamed but also our minds that sometimes make assumptions about certain students. Those feelings can run deep, but should be firmly questioned since those core beliefs have a heavy impact on students. In what is known as the “golem” or “reverse pygmalion” effect, students will live down to our low expectations. 

In the late 1990s, Ontario began a process of de-streaming. At first it was with pilot boards and later one full year of grade nine was de-streamed which resulted in moderately positive results. While this policy shift was still in its infancy, it was cut short by the incoming government based on a political promise, not research. 

Though the implementation of de-streaming was a bit messier in the 90's, and in the end was cancelled, this does not mean it was not a failure. Regardless of any government cancelling it, it remains an ethical imperative. 

There is now a heightened societal awareness of systemic racism and discrimination that gives all teachers a better understanding of why de-streaming is imperative, which was not the case at all in the 90's and led to intense push-back by teachers and unions.

Teachers of intermediate grades teach in an unstreamed environment every day. Some days are hard, some days are amazing. It’s teaching.

De-streaming requires teachers to de-stream their minds and assumptions as well. In a de-streamed class there are no Applied students or Academic students - they are all just students. They are a group of kids in a classroom with a teacher that cares about them and wants them to learn and thrive. Yes, this is demanding work, but anyone with a desire to remove from that class the students that perhaps need that support more than others and put them in a segregated classroom should deeply question the assumptions and motives behind those thoughts. Some of what made teaching Academic courses 'easier' are benefits that should have never existed.

The research on the benefits of de-streaming has piled up over decades. All other Canadian provinces have already moved on this long ago. The OECD has called on all governments to delay any form of streaming until the upper years of secondary school. Even if this somehow saves money, it is still an ethical imperative regardless of any politician’s motivations. (Source)

As addressed in another question here, in general, secondary schools could use more support, more EAs and more funding, but this is not a de-streaming issue. There is no evidence that this is a money-saving scheme. 

Ample research indicates that changing class sizes alone, without shifting how the teaching is done, has no effect on learning. But, when a teacher takes the opportunity of a smaller class to implement more effective practices and teaching methods, much better outcomes can result. So yes, classes should be smaller in general, and if teachers make significant changes to their instructional practice as a result, it would make teaching more effective. But this is not a de-streaming issue. (Source)

Educators can concurrently advocate for smaller class sizes and de-streaming. The presence of one is not contingent on the other. 

Unfortunately some parents may misunderstand or fear de-streaming and opt for private schools (which typically do not stream themselves). However, since there is enough international scholarship about the harm of streaming and the need to end the practice, de-streaming efforts actually improve the quality of the education provided. Essentially, de-streaming serves as a reinforcement of the value of public education, not a diminishment of it. 

Following the example of top-performing education systems from around the world, getting Ontario in line with the rest of the provinces, and essentially doing what is right, is unlikely to be an attempt to sabotage the education system. 

The brains of racialized and low income kids are the same as any kid, yet their outcomes in our schools are markedly different from other groups. Black students are twice as likely to be streamed into Applied courses. It is considered racist because it harms some racial groups while benefiting others.

Research on bias in Ontario has shown that educator perceptions of students map onto demographic identities. Black students, for instance, are more often given lower ratings on Learning Skills, even when given the same grades. This was shown to have significant impact on their educational trajectories and teacher stream recommendation for high school. (Source)

While racialized students bear the largest portion of negative outcomes from a streamed education, streaming (a kind of segregation) affects us all. The presence of a racialized body in a school should not be the only trigger to end this practice. 

Streaming has the same effect on any student. If there are students streamed into Applied courses in your school then there is unintended damage being done. 

It is on all of us to confront and address systemic racism. It is not only those in proximity to racialized people. 

What de-streamed classes require is simply good teaching using Universal Design for Learning, Differentiated Instruction, and Culturally Relevant and Responsive Pedagogy. This applies to every class in every grade, not just newly de-streamed classes.

Some training is required, but it centers around re-culturing and overcoming bias and understanding the effects of streaming, and it is ideal if boards can provide this for educators.

The vast majority of students that would have been streamed to Applied are not identified students with particular needs that require specialist training. The assumption that de-streaming requires a great deal of additional training reveals underlying bias and assumptions about these students.