What Ontarians need to know about ‘student achievement’ reforms that will run school boards like businesses

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sachin Maharaj, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, Policy and Program Evaluation, Faculty of Education, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

The Ontario government has introduced legislation that will make its school boards run more like businesses. The recently announced Putting Student Achievement First Act reduces the power of elected trustees and creates a powerful new chief executive officer (CEO) position to head school boards.

Unlike previous directors of education who were required to have education backgrounds and shared power with elected boards, CEOs will be required to have business qualifications and will have ultimate authority over decision-making.

CEOs will lead the preparation of school board budgets with elected trustees relegated to an advisory role. Instead of elected trustees representing the public at the bargaining table, CEOs will negotiate and ratify collective agreements at both the local and provincial level.

The goal of all of these reforms is to bring a more business-like focus to schools. The CEO is expected to focus on “effective resource allocation” and “corporate services oversight.”

Over the past five years, we have been studying the challenges to implementing equity reforms in Ontario school districts.

Decades of educational research, including our own, confirms that attempts to force efficiency into schools serve to sacrifice student equity and the material needs of the most vulnerable for short-term cost savings.

‘Chief education officer’ under CEO

School boards will be required to have a chief education officer position, with required teaching qualifications. This role will focus on academic programming.

However, this “CEdO” will be hired by and be subservient to the CEO. What this means is that the traditional educational mission of schools is now going to take a backseat to financial considerations.

For a preview of how this will impact students, we only need to look at the changes that have been made at the eight school boards that have been placed under provincial supervision.

Lowest per-pupil funding in 10 years

These boards were repeatedly accused by the minister of education of financial mismanagement.

While there were instances of questionable expenses, subsequent reporting found that two-thirds of Ontario school boards were either running budget deficits or close to it. This suggests the problem was really chronic underfunding.

According to the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario: “In 2024-25, real per-student provincial operating funding to school boards was $14,504, the lowest level over the last 10 years.” But instead of addressing this underfunding, the province installed supervisors that have been making cuts to staff.

Reductions, layoffs

In the Thames Valley District School Board, there have been staff reductions in its equity and human rights office.

The Peel District School Board is looking at possibly laying off hundreds of teachers.

In the Toronto District School Board, class sizes have increased and summer school programming has been cut by more than half.

The board will no longer provide additional staff for its highest-needs schools, and it will cut almost 300 teachers and 40 vice-principals next year.

LBGTQ+, racialized, Indigenous students

The province is also ending the requirements for boards to conduct school climate surveys, which examine the degree to which students from different backgrounds feel welcome and accepted or experience bullying and discrimination in schools.

As a result, many Ontario schools will no longer even know how their racialized and/or LGBTQ+ students are being treated.

Also concerning is its approach to increasing school attendance by making it part of students’ final grades.

The reality is that the causes of school absenteeism are complex. Taking a punitive approach may end up further marginalizing Indigenous and racialized students.

Risk of exacerbating disparities

Taken together, it’s clear that, while all students and families will be impacted, those who are already disadvantaged will bear the brunt of the cuts and provincial reforms.

This will only exacerbate disparities in schools on the basis of race, social class, gender and sexuality, and disability that exist in our education system. This is especially true of Black students, whose continued marginalization was documented last year by the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

As put in a recent letter to Premier Doug Ford by the Black Trustees’ Caucus: “Ontario cannot address systemic anti-Black racism while weakening the governance and equity structures designed to confront it.”

Advocating for vulnerable students

In part of our study, already presented at academic conferences and now under peer review for publication, we interviewed around 100 people working in several different school boards across Ontario. Participants included trustees, directors of education, associate directors, superintendents, people working in equity departments, school principals and teachers.

What we heard is that in districts across the province, school board staff and trustees have consistently reported struggling to advocate for vulnerable students in the face of a provincial government that appears determined to undermine such efforts.

This includes public comments like Ford repeatedly accusing school boards of indoctrinating students.

Interviewees noted that over recent years, as the province has asserted greater control over school boards, senior school board staff have received ministry guidance to focus more on literacy and numeracy and less on equity and social justice initiatives.

As a result, educators engaged in equity work reported feeling like they were constantly under surveillance and that any real efforts made to help vulnerable students — including racialized and LGBTQ+ students — would put their careers at risk.

Improving outcomes: A better approach

Educators understand that best practices for improving outcomes for all students depend on strong connections between schools, families and communities; a focus on overall well-being (physical, social-emotional and mental); decision-making that reflects the larger contexts in which schools are situated and individual circumstances; and giving educators the respect, autonomy and resources they need to strengthen their teaching.

The Putting Student Achievement First Act promotes the opposite approach — another reason why those with classroom expertise, not CEOs, should be making the key decisions about schools.

An education system that is run like a business ultimately views students with the highest needs as a liability to cut rather than a collective moral responsibility.

It erodes the accountability of leadership under a democratic system, leadership that is responsible to communities it serves. It also erodes the autonomy of teachers who require professional respect and the ability to access resources to serve the specific needs of their students.

Some ‘too expensive’ to serve?

When public school is treated like a commodity to be optimized rather than a fundamental right, it’s a betrayal of the values of a system that should instead centre students and their learning.

Although there were significant challenges with school governance under the previous model, the solution is not to diminish local democratic control, but to strengthen it.

Once we view education through the lens of a balance sheet, we have already decided that some students are too expensive to serve.

Sachin Maharaj receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Beyhan Farhadi receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Vidya Shah consults in school boards. She receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. What Ontarians need to know about ‘student achievement’ reforms that will run school boards like businesses – https://theconversation.com/what-ontarians-need-to-know-about-student-achievement-reforms-that-will-run-school-boards-like-businesses-280618