Making a Difference in Urban Schools: Ideas, Politics, and Pedagogy

What can be done to improve the educational experiences of students who live in cities with increasingly high levels of diversity and inequality? Making a Difference in Urban Schools evaluates how school and community leaders have worked to change urban education in Canada for the better over the past fifty years.

This analytic and comparative study traces the evolution of urban education in Toronto and Winnipeg from the 1960s onward. Jane Gaskell and Ben Levin identify important contrasts between the experiences in each city as a result of their different demographics, institutional structures, cultures, and politics. They also highlight the common issues and dilemmas faced by reformers in these two cities, across Canada, and globally - including many that persist and remain controversial to this day.

Introduction

Chapter 1- Setting the stage: Poverty, diversity and urban education

• Demographic challenge and change
  • Poverty
  • Diversity
• The changing meaning of equity
• The literature on urban educational systems
• Conclusions

Chapter Two – Change in the Winnipeg School Board

Chapter Three - Reform at the Toronto Board of Education

• The Toronto Board of Education
• The 1970's: setting an agenda for reform
  • Some of the Toronto reform trustees
• The 1980s: institutionalizing change
• Conclusions

Chapter Four – Ideas Matter: The Impact of Evidence and Belief

• How do ideas matter?
• Social movements and evidence informed policy
• Frameworks for thinking about education and equity
• Educational analysis in the Toronto and Winnipeg boards
  • Ideas as a resource for change in Toronto
  • Ideas as a resource for change in Winnipeg
• Conclusions

Chapter five - Politics, conflict and civic capacity

• Central and local: Relationships between districts and provincial governments
• Trustees and boards
• Community involvement
• Relations with board administrators
• Conclusions

Chapter 6 - Teaching and Learning in Urban Schools

• Creating a welcoming classroom environment
• Changing the curriculum
• Rethinking literacy
• Streaming and secondary school change
• Testing and assessment
• Relationships with teachers and their unions
• Conclusions

Chapter 7 - Lessons from Canadian urban school reform

• Have things improved over the last forty years?
• Policy proposals and their limits Ideas and research
• Politics
• Teaching and learning
• What should be done?
  • School districts need thoughtful strategic plans
  • Stronger links are needed between urban districts and provincial governments
  • More public debate based on good data around the political controversies inherent in urban public education.
  • Urban schools must be good places to work and learn so as to attract and retain good people
  • A central and sustained focus on improved teaching and learning
  • Strong, consistent community engagement
  • Better use of research and evidence
  • The necessary infrastructure to support all of the above

Appendix on methodology

• The study

Index of Names and Organizations

References

Jane Gaskell is a professor in the Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education and former dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

Ben Levin is Canada Research Chair in Education Leadership and Policy and a professor in the Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

‘I would recommend the use of this text in its entirety for graduate level seminars… The authors have provided a valuable study for students interested in exploring the background of urban reform movements in two important Canadian cities.’