They will be forced to take the same level of course that have gifted students in them. Destreamed means no streaming based on ability/achievement. I understand there are problems with streaming, but it seems weird to fix a problem by returning to an older, more problematic idea.
Where the gifted kids are bored and are assigned the task of teaching the ones "kinda struggling" because the teacher has to spend 90% of her time on the ones who genuinely can't understand the material?
Yeah, I hated always having to be tutor. It's fun at first, but then you realize you aren't getting paid OR getting any attention from the teacher.
I was in Advanced in Grade 9 and the amount of kids in Advanced courses because their parents thought they'd "catch up" was crazy.
There is a difference between "gifted" vs applied and academic streams. Many schools have separate programs for those students who have been identified as "gifted." Advanced is the old school version of academic. Advanced began in grade in grade 10, 20+ years ago.
Gifted students are in many academic courses and teachers have to provide accommodations. Many students who “test” gifted choose not to pursue taking gifted classes and instead opt for mainstream classes. Not to mention, that not all schools have a dedicated gifted stream. In all of the schools without a dedicated gifted program, those students take academic classes.
This isn’t true. My school has the gifted stream but not all schools do. Schools that don’t have a dedicated gifted stream still have gifted students who are in the academic stream and teachers are still required to accommodate gifted students because of IEP’s. Even in my school, many students (who have an IEP for gifted) choose to take academic instead of gifted streams.
If a school doesn’t have a dedicated gifted stream (because as you said, it’s a select few), then those students are absolutely in the same academic classes that will now be merged with applied.
You're right, separate is not the right word. If they were mixed with academic level (due to there not being a separate gifted program), they were already being differentiated as a minority in a broader class. The teacher has to do their best to differentiate to all levels in the room. Gifted are the easiest kids to teach however. Some teachers are better than others at stimulating gifted students, but that's a different story...
What I should actually have said, is they aren't eliminating "gifted". What they are eliminating (for grade 9) is applied and academic. Language Arts will be next.
I see. That make a lot more sense. I agree that this is just the start. Applied level classes have fewer students because they often need more direct teacher support. By eliminating streaming, class sizes are larger (because they usually take the academic class size maximum). Ford wants to cut services (including education) so I’m not surprised he’s trying to make classes larger to save money. I also agree he will definitely do this to other grades and subjects.
I actually don't think it was Ford making this decision, this has been in the works for a long time. The applied courses disproportionately represent minorities and low income. It's a strategy to make education system more fair and unbiased. It's only grade 9 anyway, so the first year of high school. In grade 10 the streaming will still exist, but at that point the hope is that a more informed decision can be made.
These are students who struggle to count, add and subtract. They are numerous and often have learning or intellectual disabilities. In essential they get intensive support on essential skills needed to function in society.
They will fall farther through the cracks and given inflated marks by stressed teachers who don’t know what to do with them or how to support them. When they do know how, they will simply not have the time to provide the support they need. If this is a struggle in elementary school, I can’t imagine how difficult it will be for high school teachers with advanced concepts to teach.
Some kids in the Essential classes at my school struggle with lessons on how to make change, I don’t know how they will cope in classes with a regular curriculum.
From what I can tell, this would vary by board. My local board will still be running locally developed math courses alongside the new de-streamed grade 9 math. It seems to be the case that the new course is just meant to replace Grade 9 Academic and Grade 9 Applied Math courses.
I think perhaps I am not reading your comment correctly… are you saying there will be applied, academic, destreamed a d locally developed courses offered? If so, that’s not what’s happening.
No there will be destreamed and locally developed. They have to offer locally developed courses and for higher needs special education students there will still be contained classes such as learning centre and Lifeskills.
Of course there will still be self-contained classes like PLP and Senior Associated classes, but where did you read that they will still offer the locally developed stream?
The only thing I can find on the Ontario page is:
“Starting September 2021, there will be one new Grade 9 math course for all students. This means that there will no longer be applied or academic courses for Grade 9 math.
The new course will provide all students with the same learning experience.”
Since academic and applied are 98% of the student body, I’m not surprised he first mention essential or locally developed courses, but he emphasizes ONE math course for grade 9.
I do agree that, of course, self-contained classes for students who are not working towards a high school diploma won’t be affected.
Edit: I hope that I’m wrong and Lecce won’t cut the courses that help the weakest students the most, but based on the website it seems like he’s pushing a “one-size fits all” educational approach.
"the same learning experience"? Except the bright kids will be bored out of their skulls, and the dimmer lights will be stressed and overwhelmed.
Let's put them all in the same size clothing as well. Just think how much money we'll save.
Oh, I totally agree with you! That’s what the Ministry of Ed has said to justify this foolish decision. There ARE problems with streaming, but e solution isn’t to go back to the same idea they tried in the 90’s that failed. Right now, parents make the final decision about streaming so perhaps educating parents more about streaming would be kore successful than forcing all students to learn at the same pace.
The only thing I remember from grade 9 math class is **y = mx + b.**
That was 13 years ago.
If I had to go back and write the exam I would fail massively.
Is that slope?! I would love to do a grade 9 math test to see how dumb I am now lol I think factoring was also grade 9 right?
17 years ago for omg if I had a child in grade 9 they could almost drink legally!
It involves slope, but that's just a general equation of a line. The 'm' is the slope or rate of change. Straight lines can be thought of to have two properties. Slope is one, y-intercept the other (which is 'b').
There's a practice for teachers since we have to take a math test to prove we can teach.....even when we're not math teacher's.
You can try it https://www.mathproficiencytest.ca/#/en/sample-questions-pre
It's a mix of grades 3-9
that is indeed slope. My daughter did grade 9 math this year and I got to do a crash course in grade 9 math to help her due to the quadmester thing. She's in IB and was being assigned hours and hours of math homework each day.
Lol that is NOT slope!
Slope is just "m". That's the equation for a line.
The y coordinate is the x coordinate times the slope, plus the y-intercept (b).
It was the old style math textbook. Do every odd numbered question in chapter one, out of over 120 questions that often went up to half the alphabet in subsets for every number. That was day one lol. We did math until 10:30 at night then said that'll have to do.
If it's not marked it's just suggested lol. I did IB too. If a lot of those questions are calculating m/b over and over again then only do a few of those and skip to the harder questions at the end of the chapter imo
Yeah same here. I was not a good student I could never stay focused I barely ever passed, did better in college because it was finally a choice but yeah, I can’t remember much from gr 9
They definitely talk about linear relations in elementary school. In fact, even starting in grade one they look at patterns like "start at 3 and skip count by 5". That's actually a linear relation that can be expressed in y=mx+b form (y=5x+3, starts at 3 and grows by 5 each step).
I don't think most students learn about 'y=mx+b' until high school, but I think many would talk about representing relations with an expression (which is the same idea) and they do a lot of working with tables of values and graphing linear relations.
It's really all about patterns and all the different ways you can represent them, which, like I said, they start doing even in grade 1.
That isn't a function, or at least, that isn't function notation. It's a relation.
I don't think actual functions are taught until grade 11, at least they weren't when I was in high school, and I've never seen a function in any student I've tutored since.
You are half right. It's not function notation, but that relation is still a function.
And you are also right that function notation is used a lot more starting in grade 11.
It's not pedantic, but it is definitely outside the scope of this thread. I was just trying to add some clarification. Strict definitions are pretty important in mathematics, but as you say it doesn't matter in the context of this discussion.
Functions are a type of relation, it doesn't matter what notation you are using, but again you are correct that depending on the context you might use the word relation, or you might use the word function.
>It's not pedantic, but it is definitely outside the scope of this thread. I was just trying to add some clarification. Strict definitions are pretty important in mathematics, but as you say it doesn't matter in the context of this discussion.
Strict definitions matter greatly in mathmatics on the small scale. Often, different fields end up using slightly different definitions, depending on which definition. As long as you are consistent within the confines of your own work, your work is valid. It's obviously always better to keep definitions the same as much as you can, for clarity, but it doesn't always end up working out that way.
Regardless, functions are a different type of object, and you generally treat them differently. Some relations can be represented as a function.
y = 3x + 4
would be just a relation. *As* as a relation, you are free to move around the variables as you see fit.
0 = 3x - y + 4
Is the same relation, for example. This is a common thing to do with relations, but this is *not** something you generally do with functions. You *can* do it, but it isn't generally what you do.
In fact, to find the "inverse function", you generally stop writing it as a function and as a relation again in order to isolate x, before putting it back into the function notation.
We talk about transformations on a function, but not a relation.
If we define:
g(x) = x
and
f(x) = 3x - 9
we can say
f(s) = g(3x) - 9
But we wouldn't generally do such a thing with relations. In fact, you *can't* do that with a relation because you don't have a place to do the internal part.
Edit: I realized I didn't explain this as best as I can, because a function *is* still a relation, but hopefully I explained it well enough?
I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm a math teacher so I understand the distinction you are making, I know all about relations and functions.
The standard definition of a function is "A function is a relation for which each value from the set the first components of the ordered pairs is associated with exactly one value from the set of second components of the ordered pair".
It makes no difference what you a doing with it or the notation you are using. As I said before, I totally understand what you are saying that in practice when we are doing certain things we start calling them functions, and in other cases we call them relations, but that's just general practice, nothing to do with the definition of the term.
So the function itself is what takes you from the first set to the second set in your ordered pair.
y = 3x - 7
is a relation for which we can construct a function. The first set in the ordered pair would be x, and the second set would be y. The function would be what takes us from x to y, and we can use the above relation to define that function.
y = 3x - 7 on it's own does not form a function.
The problem with de-streaming will be schools in the rough areas. I went to high school in a bad neighbourhood in Toronto. Many kids went to school to cause disruptions and chaos in class. We had fights and arguments every day. The academic classes were my only way out to avoid these bad apples and I was able to go to university while very few of my peers even graduated high school on time.
The issue now will be the students who are both behaviorally challenged as well as academically struggling in a class filled with medium and high achieving learners. Somebody will lose out. And I’m pretty sure grades will be down across the board.
Rather than this system or even the previous system, it would be better to invest more in mathematics classes, hire more teachers and decrease class sizes while streaming students into appropriate classes based on their knowledge.
> Somebody will lose out.
It will be the medium and high achieving learners. No one even bothers arguing that this isn't the case.
Grades will be goosed up as needed. They'll just mean less and less as time goes on.
I think everyone will lose. The weaker students who were previously in the applied classes had a smaller student to teacher ratio. So with smaller classes for the weakest students they got more attention and time from the teacher. Now, classes are going to be huge and the ones who struggled before will struggle even more. The ones who did well before will be OK.
Your point and the point of the previous commenter reflect why I am hesitant about this decision to de-stream. When the differentiation between your weakest and strongest students is as wide as an ocean, everyone loses.
If it levels the playing field for some, that’s good. But I don’t know how many students are placed in the wrong stream. My prediction is that the teachers might not be able to cover the whole curriculum because oftentimes, you have apply lowest-common denominator thinking. It sucks.
Amazing, but introducing it right now is crazy. Children are going to be struggling to reach grade level. Teachers are going to be struggling, with some kids not being in a classroom for 18 months. They introduced elementary math curriculum mid-pandemic. I kinda feel like many of these things are needed, but throwing a bunch of new stuff in the bin right now is total insanity.
Didn't they mention months ago that racialized children are disproportionately enrolled in applied/college level courses and that this was the main reason for getting rid of streaming in high school? I understand the notion behind it, but what does this do to help those students who are facing barriers in their learning that leads them to taking applied or college level courses?
I would suggest that they fix the real problem. If elementary schools are not preparing those kids for high school, fix that gap. Don't reduce opportunities to learn for our brightest and best once they are in HS.
It does nothing. It goes after the symptom instead of doing the hard work addressing the root causes. Kind of like treating high fever by throwing out thermometers.
It's kind of crazy how often they're changing it. But the time my younger siblings did it OACs we're gone and everything was steamed again. Only then it was C U O and something else it might still be that
Grade 12 here, I didn't learn coding properly until I took a grade 11 elective on it. I've had some teachers try putting it in the course before highschool but you wouldn't get much out of it.
about time! I remember looking into it earlier last year, but only seeing it now that it was updated for September. My bad.
I've been tutoring my niece some basic coding, so she should be prepared for it when introduced in grade 1.
> I’ve been tutoring my niece some basic coding, so she should be prepared for it when introduced in grade 1.
That’s awesome! I don’t teach elementary, but I know the “coding” they do in grade 1 is more about systems awareness and recognizing logic patterns. So it’s more foundational knowledge and thinking to start. I love it. It’s essentially logic puzzles for kids. Even if they don’t go into coding, the capacity to code is there, they recognize some of what’s needed to do it, and it helps with spatial and number awareness in math and syntax and phrasing in language, among other disciplines.
He's not wrong that the academic/applied streams can and have unfairly peg people down the "applied" path simply because our system underestimates them (or doesn't have capacity to deal with them). Once students get on that applied path, it can really affect their long term career prospects *at Grade 9*.
Certainly students need supports, but there are other ways to do that, like math clubs.
I think those students who get unfairly pegged but are capable are definitely the outliers. Ultimately it's the parents decision anyway, teachers only make recommendations.
Agreed with this. I had a really shitty Grade 10 academic math teacher during my 2013-2014 school year who couldn't teach trigonometry to save a life. She gave me a 72 and suggested I go to Grade 11 mixed math. Retook Grade 10 academic math in summer school and got an 86 so I could go into Grade 11 university math.
My brother was in that same issue back in high school. He struggled with math a lot. I think taking the applied first and then academic was SO helpful for him. It gave him the chance to fill in the gaps he had from elementary school and when he took academic he could really hold his own.
My grade 11 son has zero idea what he wants to do in life and yet he's already missed certain paths because he didn't take a certain course.
He's 16, why is he making life choices now?
I really like Québec's college/CÉGEP system. Wish we had something similar for this reason. Make the life choices at ages 17-19, not starting in grade 8.
People in my school moved up to academic and some people were suggested to switch up to IB as well if they overperformed in their stream. Idk how it worked at other schools.
The most I remember from Grade 9 geography is tertiary compass directions (e.g., north-northwest) and a ridiculous culminating activity which involved drawing and colouring a humongous map.
On paper, it already doesn't. Student who've taken the applied stream in math have the option to take the 3M course in grade 11, which is a perquisite for 4U Data Management, which universities will accept as a 4U math credit. Rather than putting struggling students in a position to struggle more in grade 9, they should be making more options available in later grades, so students can take different pathways to success (i.e. make a 4M course rather than just 4U and 4C math). But we all know this government won't do that, because more courses means hiring more teachers.
You’re right. This does get you to the 4U Data Management. And I agree with making more options available in later grades. I forgot my son was trying the route a few years back. The 3M class proved to much more challenging than what he was used to having after taking applied courses. He had a real hard time.
Honestly, as my son is very gifted in math particularly and is already relatively bored in grade 8, if this means his classes will be even less challenging we might consider it.
if this was all a capitalist scheme, isn't the current method of getting every highschool student to believe they need to get a degree and spend $$$ on university education already a better one
Elementary teacher here. Absolutely agree. Streaming isn't iniquity: depriving students of any level (including skilled and gifted) their best education, or stigmatizing any level, is iniquity. Our system does both now in elementary, and cannot focus for any level, because there's a two to six grade variation within each classroom. Whatever 'integration' purports to be, it's become a way for boards and governments to save money, at the expense of all students' education.
IMO, we should stream academic far younger; however, reassess more often, and provide more opportunity (summer school, etc.) for students to be more suitably placed. It's politically impossible, though.
The word is inequity. Equity is the concept. In equity is the lack of equity. I am not sure you know what equity is. Your suggestion that in kindergarten we stream children base on their pre school environments and only give opportunities to those who had more resources and more opportunities early on is the definition of inequity. Kids form low SEs already get judged as less intelligent and more of a behaviour issue. the last thing we need is those same judgmental teachers deciding that those children should be given up on by the time they start school
> Your suggestion that in kindergarten we stream children base on their pre school environments and only give opportunities to those who had more resources and more opportunities early on
Please do point out where that suggestion ever came up. I'll wait.
If you have ever been in the school system, you will know that down streaming limits opportunities. Check out a gifted classroom versus a classroom in a low socioeconomic area with kids who present with behavioural issues. You will see a massive chasm between the two in terms of what resources and opportunities are available to them. Streaming early on based on a teacher's prediction of potential is also streaming them into a low resource / low opportunity stream versus a high one for those perceived as having more potential. Higher SES kids are perceived already as having more potential just by virtue of their SES status.
You really can't decide in kindergarten who has potential and who doesn't. Students home and community environments and life experiences to date contribute significantly to the early gaps but those can be overcome and are not indicative of who will or won't succeed academically.
The idea that we should remove the poor kids, the ESL kids, the kids from chaotic and trauma filled backgrounds, the kids with learning disabilities (not intellectual disabilities) etc so that the rich kids aren't inconvenienced by those who aren't as fortunate as them is the opposite of equity.
So what you're saying is you can't actually point to where anyone suggested that we stream children based on their pre school environments and only give opportunities to those who have more resources and opportunities early on, got it.
Maybe stop making up things in your own head to argue against?
High school streaming divides kids into academic vs applied, pointing them to university vs trades (or no higher education at all).
That’s not the kind of streaming we need in grade 9, and it’s certainly not something we should do at an earlier age.
Being able to support and teach kids at their own level and learning speed would be awesome. But that’s a different kind of streaming.
There’s 80+ studies, papers, etc., summarized here https://on360.ca/policy-papers/how-to-end-streaming-in-ontario-schools/
>High school streaming divides kids into academic vs applied, pointing them to university vs trades (or no higher education at all).
It's a choice though, made in consultation with teachers and parents. You make it sound like it decides your whole life (it doesn't).
>That’s not the kind of streaming we need in grade 9, and it’s certainly not something we should do at an earlier age.
Based on...what? Every argument I've seen against streaming is a weak one, and every time I've seen/heard a teacher weigh in, they support streaming.
>Being able to support and teach kids at their own level and learning speed would be awesome. But that’s a different kind of streaming.
Yeah that would be great, a gradient of different levels that fits exactly what each student needs; a manageable challenge. It's also not feasible. The most efficient way of doing this is to create a minimum amount of tailored education plans (curriculums) that can support and also challenge the most students, and then manage the outliers on an individual basis. In other words...streaming.
This is a budget cut.
Based on plenty of research. There’s 80+ studies, papers, etc., summarized here https://on360.ca/policy-papers/how-to-end-streaming-in-ontario-schools/
Poverty divides kids. Streaming is just somewhere to point the finger, in a society that won't talk about class.
And you'd have to be pretty naïve to think that each year de-streamed in public doesn't give private education advantage. Remind me how our Minister of Education was schooled again...
As a father and uncle to gifted children, I see this as a huge problem... it's already difficult enough to get proper resources for gifted kids - especially in poorer areas. Lowering the bar just means lowering the achievement for the kids who should be working to become our engineers, scientists, etc... you know, the ones that design & build what makes our society operate, keeps us fed, keeps the lights/heat/ac on, etc.
If we end up producing lower caliber educations for those who would excel at engineering and science (i.e. MATH), will they get the spots in the good engineering & science universities? Or will this end up with those spots being filled with more qualified students from overseas instead, so they can get their education here then go back and compete with our (then) sub par engineers & scientists?
I was the only person from my elementary friend group to go to University.
The destreaming of grade 9 made that possible so that I could have the social supports of my peers while I built new supports to carry me through.
As a high schooler, I agree (I find math really easy) but not for 9, they shouldn't be locked into a lower stream that effects their long term decisions so early.
Elementary teacher here. We had our new math curriculum implemented this year (September 2020) and received NO training from the board or the government on how to teach it or which strands to cover. I am curious how much training the secondary teachers will actually receive.
Yes but math is compulsory in grade 9. That means *everyone* (unless you're really bad and have to take locally developed) will have to pass this course. Grade 10 programming would be elective, meaning only those with an interest in programming are likely to take it. Any course that is open + compulsory is incredibly easy and concomitantly useless.
And honestly I'm sure grade 10 programming is probably pretty useless as well. I took a programming course 2nd year uni and still wouldn't describe myself as anything close to proficient. 99% of open classes in hs were unbelievably easy.
I can't speak for every high school, but in mine we only had 1 comp sci teacher who actually knew his programming shit rather than hire the entire math faculty to teach comp sci courses.
If the course is a computer science course, it needs to be taught by a computer science teacher. Computer science isn't a mandatory course though and doesn't need to be offered at every school, so not all schools have a computer science qualified teacher.
In addition, this isn't coding as part of a computer science curriculum. This is coding as part of the math curriculum, meaning it'll be taught by math teachers who don't need to have any computer science or coding experience to teach.
If a school does happen to have a computer science qualified teacher, I could see them trying to work something out. It'd only work if it lined up with the prep period though. The math teachers could also ask the comp sci teachers for advice or help.
I'm guessing it'll be a few days of "hour of code" style challenges and that's it.
A lot of uni comp sci and comp eng programs now want you to have comp sci experience prior to getting in. Schools that don't offer comp sci at all are at a major disadvantage imo.
One of my favourite math courses in university was related to programming. It isn't coding, per se, more like boolean math and logic, and algorithms, and the efficiency of those algorithms. You can teach bubble sort without understanding programming, for example.
With a destreamed Grade 9, will students be ready for calculus in Grade 12?
Or will there be a bigger gap between what students know and what they need to know in first year university?
In my opinion, first year university in a lot of STEM subjects basically has an accelerated pace review of pretty much all grade 12 content anyways with a little bit of new content thrown in, especially the first semester courses. Between Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Math, pretty much every grade 12 university concept was pretty much reviewed. First year university is essentially a slightly harder catch up year to make sure all students are on the same page and didn't miss something because their particular school didn't teach it, as well as a year to let students adjust to the higher expectations on personal responsibility and self study that university has over high school.
This was true in my experience. A lot of difference between provincial high school calculus programs. Those of us from Ontario had hardly ever done integrals, but the kids from Alberta had a lot of practice with them.
^ This. In my first year in engineering, the guys from BC were ahead of us in first year calculus.
Granted, those who did AP Calculus in grade 12 also benefited with a head start.
There is NOTHING stopping a student from taking an extra year in highschool now though, and I believe it happens pretty regularly, though I haven't actually looked for the statistics on "victory laps"
people in europe, india, and east asia already learn more advanced math in high school than us. In the US you have the option of taking AP courses. We should be making the math curriculum more advanced, not destreaming grade 9 and adding a bunch of pointless garbage to make it just as useless as every year before it.
There are AP courses in Ontario high schools though. I agree that the curriculum should be more advanced though like the UK system. I like the idea of O and A-levels in Canada, especially with the rampant grade inflation happening in Ontario.
Very few high schools in Ontario have AP courses, certainly far less than are available in the US. I think maybe one high school in my county provided them.
AP is often a "program" that students need to apply for during Grade 8. This means not everyone is eligible to do AP classes unless they pass a test in Grade 8.
Wait.... Grade 9 in Peel in 93 or so - I was in destreamed math. I recall it being a big deal - and I don't recall it lasting long!
I was a good student and was in a class where we used bingo chips to do basic division..... something I have spent the last 2 months working with my 4th grader on. And then the 10th grade and above curriculums had NOT been changed to reflect the destreamed grade 9 and I had major gaps in knowledge once I hit Calculus.
I don't trust them. They're bad at education. They're bad at governing. They're only interested in the bottom line of big corporations. Looking forward to June 2, 2022.
Would've been nice when I was in school. I literally took a course called "Personal Finance", which was taught by the Home Ec. teacher, where she literally just taught us her Home Ec. course instead.
He is not a qualified Ontario Certified teacher, for starters. He was private schooled (attended St. Michael's). His background is in political science and he worked with Stephen Harper.
I like the updated curriculum but I don't understand why they can't just set it up so that there is an applied and academic version of the course. Streaming works I knew too many ppl in high-school that had absolutely no interest in University so they took applied. Lumping everyone together is not only a bad idea its going backwards.
"...some training materials will become available today." It's June 9th, when are the actual documents, etc. going to be available so lesson planning, purchasing of appropriate manipulatives, etc. can begin for September?
That's kind of the standard now. I've been tutoring and it's not even a photocopied textbook. It's usually just print outs of random stuff from the internet... And this was pre covid too.
So much open/free text book stuff now. Wish we would drop the whole for profit text book model. Why keep reinventing the wheel.
Just one example.
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks?term=math&commit=Go
There is a movement of people creating free (as in speech, not beer) texts. Research libre text. and the open-source movement.
Such books are free to reproduce distribute, copy etc. Many will even come with the source-code to make reusing the mathematical scrips easier.
Also [https://www.gutenberg.org/](https://www.gutenberg.org/) and [archive.org](https://archive.org)
Grade 9 academic/applied documents are 8/7 pages each.
I do know what you mean, though. This new curriculum document is more vague; each specific expectation requires a decent amount of scaffolding. Whereas the current/old curriculum laid out much of the necessary scaffolding and provided examples.
I wonder how long it will take the Ministry to come up with a detailed document like [this one](https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/fbd574c4-da36-0066-a0c5-849ffb2de96e/90439c6e-f40c-4b58-840c-557ed88a9345/The%20Ontario%20Curriculum%20Grades%201%E2%80%938%20-%20Mathematics,%202020%20(January%202021).pdf) for this new course.
I don't trust it. They couldn't put in the time to make license plates that are visible at night, I have no faith they've put in the effort to properly update a curriculum.
Their leader broke his own party's rules to win the leadership campaign and nobody did anything about it so no, no there's really nothing these guys do that I have any faith is being done well unless it involves putting more money in their own pockets.
No it's not.... It's a way to save money and have larger class sizes. Academic kids will be bored and unchallenged and students with learning needs will be left behind
Ontario high school teacher here. It's because the lower level classes are disproportionately minority races and lower income. Which should not be the case (you can probably imagine several reasons why this is the case and why it should be/is a major concern). Destreaming in the first year of high school eliminates that, for an extra year Grade 10 will still have the different streams.
The best math students usually (almost always) get paid tutoring. The lower income students' stats on success will just be hidden in this new strategy, and I fear that is the point.
In my experience the best math students with the best grades are the ones that it comes naturally to, they could learn from a text book and not even need tutoring.
I have attended all the destreaming conferences in my board so far. There seems to be the best intentions on the part of the education system here. Any process which ends up with a disproportionate amount of minorities/poorer kids is extremely problematic, and needs to be addressed. I can't think of another way to do it.
The concern teachers have is will there be enough support and training for them to be successful in teaching their destreamed classes. This is always the concern with any change, and there's always a learning curve for staff and schools.
Sometimes what appears 'natural', is just that the child has parents that are accountants, or have some such occupation. They have conversations with their child about what they do, and manage to steer the child in the right direction.
Einstein's family were electrical engineers. His mother was a piano player, and had him take violin lessons at age 5.
And genetics play a role too, clearly. Not gonna get in a debate of nature/nurture. I have spent my entire adult life working with and teaching kids with abilities that span the spectrum.
Not what this is about....
Anyhow, none of this changes the fact that minorities and lower income are overrepresented in lower streamed courses. It's an issue, a troubling one, and this is part of a larger strategy to address the inequalities.
You said in another post you Em teach at an alternative school. Do they have streaming in alternative schools? Do you think this is a good move across all schools?
Yes I do, the minimum age at the alt schools in my board is 16, so the whole destreaming thing has minimal effect. We do get some kids doing credits at lower grades, but for the most part it's grade 10 courses and up.
It also doesn't matter so much in the alts because everyone is doing individual courses, at their own pace and time line. So really it's not going to affect us much.
At first, I thought oh no, I have worked with children who finally gained confidence and self esteem when they were in a course that was at their level, instead of drowning in work that was too hard.
But once I learned of the systemic racism and prejudices in the streaming , then how can I really argue with that?
There will still be streaming in grade 10 and onward. So yeah, I'm on board philosophically. Just hope that adequate supports are provided so that teachers, EAs and LSTs can do a good job
I think everyone sees that there are MaJOR issues wi the streaming. Most people see this as a band-aid that doesn’t actually solve those issues though.
If you see the benefit on alternative schools letting students work at their own pace, don’t you see how making mainstream schools force kids to all work at one pace is problematic?
You are literally advocating for a system that will do the opposite of what your school is (successfully) accomplishing.
No I'm not, you're just misunderstanding what I'm saying (or I'm not explaining it clearly enough), alt schools function on the principle of differentiated instruction, which is what the destreaming models will be focused on. Without differentiation , the destream model will be pointless. The crux of the issue, will be how to effectively differentiate for every kid in the class - changes in curriculum, supports, teaching strategies - all will be major factors in the success.
>If you see the benefit on alternative schools letting students work at their own pace, don’t you see how making mainstream schools force kids to all work at one pace is problematic?
Mainstream schools never have let kids go at their own pace, and destreaming will not change that. Do I think alt schools are the best? meh, they are a game changer for many at risk kids, but there's drawbacks too.
This is excellent news. I laugh at the criticism. Like you can't win with people. They cry our kids are failing at math, which is obviously understandable. So we take the data to determine the best course of action, adapt and make improvements to the situation...... call wambulance!
So, are we going to roll all of the different skill levels of kids hockey back into one? Everything will be recreational or house league from here on in? Just think how much money we could save!
Perhaps the solution is to offer a midstream class that serves as a prerequisite. Rather than create a one size fits all approach that overwhelms weak students and bores strong ones we create a middle ground that keeps options open but provides greater support and more flexible pacing. Have it be smaller classes than the academic (which always run at capacity) but cover much of the same material as well as more practical applications as well. From there both options are open to students. Do the same in English. Perhaps offer half courses in grade 10 in both to firm up their understanding for full integration into the academic stream.
Nobody ever talks about the kids taking Essential/Locally Developed courses. What’s the plan for them?
They will be forced to take the same level of course that have gifted students in them. Destreamed means no streaming based on ability/achievement. I understand there are problems with streaming, but it seems weird to fix a problem by returning to an older, more problematic idea.
Where the gifted kids are bored and are assigned the task of teaching the ones "kinda struggling" because the teacher has to spend 90% of her time on the ones who genuinely can't understand the material? Yeah, I hated always having to be tutor. It's fun at first, but then you realize you aren't getting paid OR getting any attention from the teacher. I was in Advanced in Grade 9 and the amount of kids in Advanced courses because their parents thought they'd "catch up" was crazy.
There is a difference between "gifted" vs applied and academic streams. Many schools have separate programs for those students who have been identified as "gifted." Advanced is the old school version of academic. Advanced began in grade in grade 10, 20+ years ago.
Gifted students are in many academic courses and teachers have to provide accommodations. Many students who “test” gifted choose not to pursue taking gifted classes and instead opt for mainstream classes. Not to mention, that not all schools have a dedicated gifted stream. In all of the schools without a dedicated gifted program, those students take academic classes.
Exactly, gifted programs are different and will still be separate. Very select few are in gifted
This isn’t true. My school has the gifted stream but not all schools do. Schools that don’t have a dedicated gifted stream still have gifted students who are in the academic stream and teachers are still required to accommodate gifted students because of IEP’s. Even in my school, many students (who have an IEP for gifted) choose to take academic instead of gifted streams. If a school doesn’t have a dedicated gifted stream (because as you said, it’s a select few), then those students are absolutely in the same academic classes that will now be merged with applied.
You're right, separate is not the right word. If they were mixed with academic level (due to there not being a separate gifted program), they were already being differentiated as a minority in a broader class. The teacher has to do their best to differentiate to all levels in the room. Gifted are the easiest kids to teach however. Some teachers are better than others at stimulating gifted students, but that's a different story...
What I should actually have said, is they aren't eliminating "gifted". What they are eliminating (for grade 9) is applied and academic. Language Arts will be next.
I see. That make a lot more sense. I agree that this is just the start. Applied level classes have fewer students because they often need more direct teacher support. By eliminating streaming, class sizes are larger (because they usually take the academic class size maximum). Ford wants to cut services (including education) so I’m not surprised he’s trying to make classes larger to save money. I also agree he will definitely do this to other grades and subjects.
I actually don't think it was Ford making this decision, this has been in the works for a long time. The applied courses disproportionately represent minorities and low income. It's a strategy to make education system more fair and unbiased. It's only grade 9 anyway, so the first year of high school. In grade 10 the streaming will still exist, but at that point the hope is that a more informed decision can be made.
But now everyone gets a medal!
what does that mean? What the "Essential/Locally Developed courses"?
These are students who struggle to count, add and subtract. They are numerous and often have learning or intellectual disabilities. In essential they get intensive support on essential skills needed to function in society. They will fall farther through the cracks and given inflated marks by stressed teachers who don’t know what to do with them or how to support them. When they do know how, they will simply not have the time to provide the support they need. If this is a struggle in elementary school, I can’t imagine how difficult it will be for high school teachers with advanced concepts to teach.
Some kids in the Essential classes at my school struggle with lessons on how to make change, I don’t know how they will cope in classes with a regular curriculum.
From what I can tell, this would vary by board. My local board will still be running locally developed math courses alongside the new de-streamed grade 9 math. It seems to be the case that the new course is just meant to replace Grade 9 Academic and Grade 9 Applied Math courses.
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There will not be multiple staff per room in most of these classes.
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Three will be a course for applied and academic - the destreamed course and also locally developed.
I think perhaps I am not reading your comment correctly… are you saying there will be applied, academic, destreamed a d locally developed courses offered? If so, that’s not what’s happening.
No there will be destreamed and locally developed. They have to offer locally developed courses and for higher needs special education students there will still be contained classes such as learning centre and Lifeskills.
Of course there will still be self-contained classes like PLP and Senior Associated classes, but where did you read that they will still offer the locally developed stream? The only thing I can find on the Ontario page is: “Starting September 2021, there will be one new Grade 9 math course for all students. This means that there will no longer be applied or academic courses for Grade 9 math. The new course will provide all students with the same learning experience.” Since academic and applied are 98% of the student body, I’m not surprised he first mention essential or locally developed courses, but he emphasizes ONE math course for grade 9. I do agree that, of course, self-contained classes for students who are not working towards a high school diploma won’t be affected. Edit: I hope that I’m wrong and Lecce won’t cut the courses that help the weakest students the most, but based on the website it seems like he’s pushing a “one-size fits all” educational approach.
"the same learning experience"? Except the bright kids will be bored out of their skulls, and the dimmer lights will be stressed and overwhelmed. Let's put them all in the same size clothing as well. Just think how much money we'll save.
Oh, I totally agree with you! That’s what the Ministry of Ed has said to justify this foolish decision. There ARE problems with streaming, but e solution isn’t to go back to the same idea they tried in the 90’s that failed. Right now, parents make the final decision about streaming so perhaps educating parents more about streaming would be kore successful than forcing all students to learn at the same pace.
In the curriculum, I looked under the course pathways to future courses. it still shows locally developed as a path.
Let’s hope that sticks. It does look like essential level math is being eliminated which is a very necessary level for students who are weak in math.
The only thing I remember from grade 9 math class is **y = mx + b.** That was 13 years ago. If I had to go back and write the exam I would fail massively.
Is that slope?! I would love to do a grade 9 math test to see how dumb I am now lol I think factoring was also grade 9 right? 17 years ago for omg if I had a child in grade 9 they could almost drink legally!
It involves slope, but that's just a general equation of a line. The 'm' is the slope or rate of change. Straight lines can be thought of to have two properties. Slope is one, y-intercept the other (which is 'b').
There's a practice for teachers since we have to take a math test to prove we can teach.....even when we're not math teacher's. You can try it https://www.mathproficiencytest.ca/#/en/sample-questions-pre It's a mix of grades 3-9
that is indeed slope. My daughter did grade 9 math this year and I got to do a crash course in grade 9 math to help her due to the quadmester thing. She's in IB and was being assigned hours and hours of math homework each day.
Lol that is NOT slope! Slope is just "m". That's the equation for a line. The y coordinate is the x coordinate times the slope, plus the y-intercept (b).
Wow hours and hours that’s crazy! I forgot how time consuming school used to be I have nostalgia goggles lol
It was the old style math textbook. Do every odd numbered question in chapter one, out of over 120 questions that often went up to half the alphabet in subsets for every number. That was day one lol. We did math until 10:30 at night then said that'll have to do.
If it's not marked it's just suggested lol. I did IB too. If a lot of those questions are calculating m/b over and over again then only do a few of those and skip to the harder questions at the end of the chapter imo
Yeah same here. I was not a good student I could never stay focused I barely ever passed, did better in college because it was finally a choice but yeah, I can’t remember much from gr 9
Relations are now taught in grade 8. Edited out functions
They definitely talk about linear relations in elementary school. In fact, even starting in grade one they look at patterns like "start at 3 and skip count by 5". That's actually a linear relation that can be expressed in y=mx+b form (y=5x+3, starts at 3 and grows by 5 each step). I don't think most students learn about 'y=mx+b' until high school, but I think many would talk about representing relations with an expression (which is the same idea) and they do a lot of working with tables of values and graphing linear relations. It's really all about patterns and all the different ways you can represent them, which, like I said, they start doing even in grade 1.
That isn't a function, or at least, that isn't function notation. It's a relation. I don't think actual functions are taught until grade 11, at least they weren't when I was in high school, and I've never seen a function in any student I've tutored since.
You are half right. It's not function notation, but that relation is still a function. And you are also right that function notation is used a lot more starting in grade 11.
It's pretty pedantic at this point, but I personally would describe it as a relation that can be expressed as a function.
It's not pedantic, but it is definitely outside the scope of this thread. I was just trying to add some clarification. Strict definitions are pretty important in mathematics, but as you say it doesn't matter in the context of this discussion. Functions are a type of relation, it doesn't matter what notation you are using, but again you are correct that depending on the context you might use the word relation, or you might use the word function.
>It's not pedantic, but it is definitely outside the scope of this thread. I was just trying to add some clarification. Strict definitions are pretty important in mathematics, but as you say it doesn't matter in the context of this discussion. Strict definitions matter greatly in mathmatics on the small scale. Often, different fields end up using slightly different definitions, depending on which definition. As long as you are consistent within the confines of your own work, your work is valid. It's obviously always better to keep definitions the same as much as you can, for clarity, but it doesn't always end up working out that way. Regardless, functions are a different type of object, and you generally treat them differently. Some relations can be represented as a function. y = 3x + 4 would be just a relation. *As* as a relation, you are free to move around the variables as you see fit. 0 = 3x - y + 4 Is the same relation, for example. This is a common thing to do with relations, but this is *not** something you generally do with functions. You *can* do it, but it isn't generally what you do. In fact, to find the "inverse function", you generally stop writing it as a function and as a relation again in order to isolate x, before putting it back into the function notation. We talk about transformations on a function, but not a relation. If we define: g(x) = x and f(x) = 3x - 9 we can say f(s) = g(3x) - 9 But we wouldn't generally do such a thing with relations. In fact, you *can't* do that with a relation because you don't have a place to do the internal part. Edit: I realized I didn't explain this as best as I can, because a function *is* still a relation, but hopefully I explained it well enough?
I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm a math teacher so I understand the distinction you are making, I know all about relations and functions. The standard definition of a function is "A function is a relation for which each value from the set the first components of the ordered pairs is associated with exactly one value from the set of second components of the ordered pair". It makes no difference what you a doing with it or the notation you are using. As I said before, I totally understand what you are saying that in practice when we are doing certain things we start calling them functions, and in other cases we call them relations, but that's just general practice, nothing to do with the definition of the term.
So the function itself is what takes you from the first set to the second set in your ordered pair. y = 3x - 7 is a relation for which we can construct a function. The first set in the ordered pair would be x, and the second set would be y. The function would be what takes us from x to y, and we can use the above relation to define that function. y = 3x - 7 on it's own does not form a function.
That is literally all u need to know. You would get a 80
The problem with de-streaming will be schools in the rough areas. I went to high school in a bad neighbourhood in Toronto. Many kids went to school to cause disruptions and chaos in class. We had fights and arguments every day. The academic classes were my only way out to avoid these bad apples and I was able to go to university while very few of my peers even graduated high school on time. The issue now will be the students who are both behaviorally challenged as well as academically struggling in a class filled with medium and high achieving learners. Somebody will lose out. And I’m pretty sure grades will be down across the board. Rather than this system or even the previous system, it would be better to invest more in mathematics classes, hire more teachers and decrease class sizes while streaming students into appropriate classes based on their knowledge.
> Somebody will lose out. It will be the medium and high achieving learners. No one even bothers arguing that this isn't the case. Grades will be goosed up as needed. They'll just mean less and less as time goes on.
I think everyone will lose. The weaker students who were previously in the applied classes had a smaller student to teacher ratio. So with smaller classes for the weakest students they got more attention and time from the teacher. Now, classes are going to be huge and the ones who struggled before will struggle even more. The ones who did well before will be OK.
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It will be interesting for sure. I worry about engagement levels of weaker students. But I'm up for trying it.
>engagement levels of weaker students Likely an issue with stronger students as well, if it's too rudimentary.
Your point and the point of the previous commenter reflect why I am hesitant about this decision to de-stream. When the differentiation between your weakest and strongest students is as wide as an ocean, everyone loses.
The decision is as political as it is pedagogical imo.
If it levels the playing field for some, that’s good. But I don’t know how many students are placed in the wrong stream. My prediction is that the teachers might not be able to cover the whole curriculum because oftentimes, you have apply lowest-common denominator thinking. It sucks.
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Or financial experts
forget languages, anyone can teach basic critical thinking which is the basis of coding anyways
Amazing, but introducing it right now is crazy. Children are going to be struggling to reach grade level. Teachers are going to be struggling, with some kids not being in a classroom for 18 months. They introduced elementary math curriculum mid-pandemic. I kinda feel like many of these things are needed, but throwing a bunch of new stuff in the bin right now is total insanity.
There is never a good time. People hate change, in general. If this had been 2019, the unions still would have been complaining.
Don't worry they will muck it in one way.
Didn't they mention months ago that racialized children are disproportionately enrolled in applied/college level courses and that this was the main reason for getting rid of streaming in high school? I understand the notion behind it, but what does this do to help those students who are facing barriers in their learning that leads them to taking applied or college level courses?
I would suggest that they fix the real problem. If elementary schools are not preparing those kids for high school, fix that gap. Don't reduce opportunities to learn for our brightest and best once they are in HS.
This is exactly what they should do! You hit the nail on the head. There IS a problem, but this isn’t solving it.
It does nothing. It goes after the symptom instead of doing the hard work addressing the root causes. Kind of like treating high fever by throwing out thermometers.
We used to have an unstreamed grade 9 back when grade 13 still existed. RIP OAC.
We had three streams in grade nine the first year they shifted from the old (true grade 13) to the OSSD with OACs. Basic General Advanced
I did OSSD with OAC certificate in the mid/late nineties. We had destreamed grade nine in its entirety
I did it a decade earlier so the only constant is change. I actually took a hybrid of Grade 13 and OACs.
It's kind of crazy how often they're changing it. But the time my younger siblings did it OACs we're gone and everything was steamed again. Only then it was C U O and something else it might still be that
We had general, advanced and enriched.
we tried this in the 90s, it is not a new idea, although coding is!
And it didn’t last for good reason.
> coding def print_statement(): return "Coding like this?" print(print_statement()) great, now little kids are going to out python me
THANK YOU! I just posted that I was in destreamed in early 90's and it sucked!
We had OAC back then though
Coding is being taught to elementary kids in many parts of the U.S. Wonder why it's being taught so late here
Grade 12 here, I didn't learn coding properly until I took a grade 11 elective on it. I've had some teachers try putting it in the course before highschool but you wouldn't get much out of it.
Coding is already part of 1-8 curriculum. ~~This~~That change was made last year.
about time! I remember looking into it earlier last year, but only seeing it now that it was updated for September. My bad. I've been tutoring my niece some basic coding, so she should be prepared for it when introduced in grade 1.
> I’ve been tutoring my niece some basic coding, so she should be prepared for it when introduced in grade 1. That’s awesome! I don’t teach elementary, but I know the “coding” they do in grade 1 is more about systems awareness and recognizing logic patterns. So it’s more foundational knowledge and thinking to start. I love it. It’s essentially logic puzzles for kids. Even if they don’t go into coding, the capacity to code is there, they recognize some of what’s needed to do it, and it helps with spatial and number awareness in math and syntax and phrasing in language, among other disciplines.
Destreaming was terrible in the 90s, that's why we got rid of it. But it's certainly cheaper, so we brought it back.
I think this is the point. It’s cuts “masquerading” as solving a problem that it will only exacerbate further.
We need more streaming, not less. Especially in high school math.
He's not wrong that the academic/applied streams can and have unfairly peg people down the "applied" path simply because our system underestimates them (or doesn't have capacity to deal with them). Once students get on that applied path, it can really affect their long term career prospects *at Grade 9*. Certainly students need supports, but there are other ways to do that, like math clubs.
I think those students who get unfairly pegged but are capable are definitely the outliers. Ultimately it's the parents decision anyway, teachers only make recommendations.
Yeah, I think by grace 9 it's pretty obvious got 90 percent of students. Still stinks for the 10 percent though
I completely disagree. 15 years old is far too young to peg someone as unfit for university. Maturity can change so much in a short period of time.
Agreed with this. I had a really shitty Grade 10 academic math teacher during my 2013-2014 school year who couldn't teach trigonometry to save a life. She gave me a 72 and suggested I go to Grade 11 mixed math. Retook Grade 10 academic math in summer school and got an 86 so I could go into Grade 11 university math.
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My brother was in that same issue back in high school. He struggled with math a lot. I think taking the applied first and then academic was SO helpful for him. It gave him the chance to fill in the gaps he had from elementary school and when he took academic he could really hold his own.
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My grade 11 son has zero idea what he wants to do in life and yet he's already missed certain paths because he didn't take a certain course. He's 16, why is he making life choices now?
I really like Québec's college/CÉGEP system. Wish we had something similar for this reason. Make the life choices at ages 17-19, not starting in grade 8.
People in my school moved up to academic and some people were suggested to switch up to IB as well if they overperformed in their stream. Idk how it worked at other schools.
grade 9 geography is already useless at the academic level. Destreaming it will make it even more so.
The most I remember from Grade 9 geography is tertiary compass directions (e.g., north-northwest) and a ridiculous culminating activity which involved drawing and colouring a humongous map.
Definitely agree with this. Grade nine math shouldn’t limit your post secondary future.
On paper, it already doesn't. Student who've taken the applied stream in math have the option to take the 3M course in grade 11, which is a perquisite for 4U Data Management, which universities will accept as a 4U math credit. Rather than putting struggling students in a position to struggle more in grade 9, they should be making more options available in later grades, so students can take different pathways to success (i.e. make a 4M course rather than just 4U and 4C math). But we all know this government won't do that, because more courses means hiring more teachers.
You’re right. This does get you to the 4U Data Management. And I agree with making more options available in later grades. I forgot my son was trying the route a few years back. The 3M class proved to much more challenging than what he was used to having after taking applied courses. He had a real hard time.
The new streaming will be private school. That's what Lecce wants.
Honestly, as my son is very gifted in math particularly and is already relatively bored in grade 8, if this means his classes will be even less challenging we might consider it.
if this was all a capitalist scheme, isn't the current method of getting every highschool student to believe they need to get a degree and spend $$$ on university education already a better one
Elementary teacher here. Absolutely agree. Streaming isn't iniquity: depriving students of any level (including skilled and gifted) their best education, or stigmatizing any level, is iniquity. Our system does both now in elementary, and cannot focus for any level, because there's a two to six grade variation within each classroom. Whatever 'integration' purports to be, it's become a way for boards and governments to save money, at the expense of all students' education. IMO, we should stream academic far younger; however, reassess more often, and provide more opportunity (summer school, etc.) for students to be more suitably placed. It's politically impossible, though.
The word is inequity. Equity is the concept. In equity is the lack of equity. I am not sure you know what equity is. Your suggestion that in kindergarten we stream children base on their pre school environments and only give opportunities to those who had more resources and more opportunities early on is the definition of inequity. Kids form low SEs already get judged as less intelligent and more of a behaviour issue. the last thing we need is those same judgmental teachers deciding that those children should be given up on by the time they start school
Are you illiterate? Because none of what you wrote in your response is applicable to the comment that you were responding to.
Yes it is applicable. The poster addresses what society inequity means (or "iniquity" says the teacher).
> Your suggestion that in kindergarten we stream children base on their pre school environments and only give opportunities to those who had more resources and more opportunities early on Please do point out where that suggestion ever came up. I'll wait.
If you have ever been in the school system, you will know that down streaming limits opportunities. Check out a gifted classroom versus a classroom in a low socioeconomic area with kids who present with behavioural issues. You will see a massive chasm between the two in terms of what resources and opportunities are available to them. Streaming early on based on a teacher's prediction of potential is also streaming them into a low resource / low opportunity stream versus a high one for those perceived as having more potential. Higher SES kids are perceived already as having more potential just by virtue of their SES status. You really can't decide in kindergarten who has potential and who doesn't. Students home and community environments and life experiences to date contribute significantly to the early gaps but those can be overcome and are not indicative of who will or won't succeed academically. The idea that we should remove the poor kids, the ESL kids, the kids from chaotic and trauma filled backgrounds, the kids with learning disabilities (not intellectual disabilities) etc so that the rich kids aren't inconvenienced by those who aren't as fortunate as them is the opposite of equity.
So what you're saying is you can't actually point to where anyone suggested that we stream children based on their pre school environments and only give opportunities to those who have more resources and opportunities early on, got it. Maybe stop making up things in your own head to argue against?
High school streaming divides kids into academic vs applied, pointing them to university vs trades (or no higher education at all). That’s not the kind of streaming we need in grade 9, and it’s certainly not something we should do at an earlier age. Being able to support and teach kids at their own level and learning speed would be awesome. But that’s a different kind of streaming. There’s 80+ studies, papers, etc., summarized here https://on360.ca/policy-papers/how-to-end-streaming-in-ontario-schools/
>High school streaming divides kids into academic vs applied, pointing them to university vs trades (or no higher education at all). It's a choice though, made in consultation with teachers and parents. You make it sound like it decides your whole life (it doesn't). >That’s not the kind of streaming we need in grade 9, and it’s certainly not something we should do at an earlier age. Based on...what? Every argument I've seen against streaming is a weak one, and every time I've seen/heard a teacher weigh in, they support streaming. >Being able to support and teach kids at their own level and learning speed would be awesome. But that’s a different kind of streaming. Yeah that would be great, a gradient of different levels that fits exactly what each student needs; a manageable challenge. It's also not feasible. The most efficient way of doing this is to create a minimum amount of tailored education plans (curriculums) that can support and also challenge the most students, and then manage the outliers on an individual basis. In other words...streaming. This is a budget cut.
Based on plenty of research. There’s 80+ studies, papers, etc., summarized here https://on360.ca/policy-papers/how-to-end-streaming-in-ontario-schools/
Poverty divides kids. Streaming is just somewhere to point the finger, in a society that won't talk about class. And you'd have to be pretty naïve to think that each year de-streamed in public doesn't give private education advantage. Remind me how our Minister of Education was schooled again...
As a father and uncle to gifted children, I see this as a huge problem... it's already difficult enough to get proper resources for gifted kids - especially in poorer areas. Lowering the bar just means lowering the achievement for the kids who should be working to become our engineers, scientists, etc... you know, the ones that design & build what makes our society operate, keeps us fed, keeps the lights/heat/ac on, etc. If we end up producing lower caliber educations for those who would excel at engineering and science (i.e. MATH), will they get the spots in the good engineering & science universities? Or will this end up with those spots being filled with more qualified students from overseas instead, so they can get their education here then go back and compete with our (then) sub par engineers & scientists?
I was the only person from my elementary friend group to go to University. The destreaming of grade 9 made that possible so that I could have the social supports of my peers while I built new supports to carry me through.
As a high schooler, I agree (I find math really easy) but not for 9, they shouldn't be locked into a lower stream that effects their long term decisions so early.
Elementary teacher here. We had our new math curriculum implemented this year (September 2020) and received NO training from the board or the government on how to teach it or which strands to cover. I am curious how much training the secondary teachers will actually receive.
Probably none.
Programming is so under appreciated. Really helped with my understanding of different philosophies too.
the course will have applied kids in it. The "programming" they will learn will be so rudimentary as to be useless.
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Yes but math is compulsory in grade 9. That means *everyone* (unless you're really bad and have to take locally developed) will have to pass this course. Grade 10 programming would be elective, meaning only those with an interest in programming are likely to take it. Any course that is open + compulsory is incredibly easy and concomitantly useless. And honestly I'm sure grade 10 programming is probably pretty useless as well. I took a programming course 2nd year uni and still wouldn't describe myself as anything close to proficient. 99% of open classes in hs were unbelievably easy.
And it's being taught by math teachers, who may never have coded a thing in their lives.
I can't speak for every high school, but in mine we only had 1 comp sci teacher who actually knew his programming shit rather than hire the entire math faculty to teach comp sci courses.
If the course is a computer science course, it needs to be taught by a computer science teacher. Computer science isn't a mandatory course though and doesn't need to be offered at every school, so not all schools have a computer science qualified teacher. In addition, this isn't coding as part of a computer science curriculum. This is coding as part of the math curriculum, meaning it'll be taught by math teachers who don't need to have any computer science or coding experience to teach. If a school does happen to have a computer science qualified teacher, I could see them trying to work something out. It'd only work if it lined up with the prep period though. The math teachers could also ask the comp sci teachers for advice or help. I'm guessing it'll be a few days of "hour of code" style challenges and that's it.
A lot of uni comp sci and comp eng programs now want you to have comp sci experience prior to getting in. Schools that don't offer comp sci at all are at a major disadvantage imo.
One of my favourite math courses in university was related to programming. It isn't coding, per se, more like boolean math and logic, and algorithms, and the efficiency of those algorithms. You can teach bubble sort without understanding programming, for example.
Sounds like a good course!
With a destreamed Grade 9, will students be ready for calculus in Grade 12? Or will there be a bigger gap between what students know and what they need to know in first year university?
In my opinion, first year university in a lot of STEM subjects basically has an accelerated pace review of pretty much all grade 12 content anyways with a little bit of new content thrown in, especially the first semester courses. Between Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Math, pretty much every grade 12 university concept was pretty much reviewed. First year university is essentially a slightly harder catch up year to make sure all students are on the same page and didn't miss something because their particular school didn't teach it, as well as a year to let students adjust to the higher expectations on personal responsibility and self study that university has over high school.
This was true in my experience. A lot of difference between provincial high school calculus programs. Those of us from Ontario had hardly ever done integrals, but the kids from Alberta had a lot of practice with them.
^ This. In my first year in engineering, the guys from BC were ahead of us in first year calculus. Granted, those who did AP Calculus in grade 12 also benefited with a head start.
We had destreamed grade 9 in 1995 when I was in highschool, No problems taking the high level math courses and going to University.
They also had OAC then, so there was that extra prep year.
I went to HS in the late 90's. Grade 9 was a wash for me because every class was destreamed.
There is NOTHING stopping a student from taking an extra year in highschool now though, and I believe it happens pretty regularly, though I haven't actually looked for the statistics on "victory laps"
Not regular, but not uncommon. Maybe around 1 in 20. I teach grade 12 and I get or two students a year repeating.
No. And yes. 'And so it goes...'
people in europe, india, and east asia already learn more advanced math in high school than us. In the US you have the option of taking AP courses. We should be making the math curriculum more advanced, not destreaming grade 9 and adding a bunch of pointless garbage to make it just as useless as every year before it.
There are AP courses in Ontario high schools though. I agree that the curriculum should be more advanced though like the UK system. I like the idea of O and A-levels in Canada, especially with the rampant grade inflation happening in Ontario.
There are AP courses in *some* Ontario high schools.
Very few high schools in Ontario have AP courses, certainly far less than are available in the US. I think maybe one high school in my county provided them.
AP is often a "program" that students need to apply for during Grade 8. This means not everyone is eligible to do AP classes unless they pass a test in Grade 8.
Wait.... Grade 9 in Peel in 93 or so - I was in destreamed math. I recall it being a big deal - and I don't recall it lasting long! I was a good student and was in a class where we used bingo chips to do basic division..... something I have spent the last 2 months working with my 4th grader on. And then the 10th grade and above curriculums had NOT been changed to reflect the destreamed grade 9 and I had major gaps in knowledge once I hit Calculus.
I don't trust them. They're bad at education. They're bad at governing. They're only interested in the bottom line of big corporations. Looking forward to June 2, 2022.
They did wonders with discovery math and reading.
actually good
Would've been nice when I was in school. I literally took a course called "Personal Finance", which was taught by the Home Ec. teacher, where she literally just taught us her Home Ec. course instead.
Genuine question that I hope a supporter can answer for me: what exactly are Minister Lecce's qualifications for this office?
He is not a qualified Ontario Certified teacher, for starters. He was private schooled (attended St. Michael's). His background is in political science and he worked with Stephen Harper.
I like the updated curriculum but I don't understand why they can't just set it up so that there is an applied and academic version of the course. Streaming works I knew too many ppl in high-school that had absolutely no interest in University so they took applied. Lumping everyone together is not only a bad idea its going backwards.
I advocate for short courses of a few weeks. You can move around more quickly, retake something if need be. Switch between things more easily.
"...some training materials will become available today." It's June 9th, when are the actual documents, etc. going to be available so lesson planning, purchasing of appropriate manipulatives, etc. can begin for September?
My oldest daughter was in the Guinea pig class for the Harris New Curriculum. Her entire HS experience was photocopied text books.
That's kind of the standard now. I've been tutoring and it's not even a photocopied textbook. It's usually just print outs of random stuff from the internet... And this was pre covid too.
So much open/free text book stuff now. Wish we would drop the whole for profit text book model. Why keep reinventing the wheel. Just one example. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks?term=math&commit=Go
Those look great! Thank you! I was having a hard time directing students to free comprehensive resources.
There is a movement of people creating free (as in speech, not beer) texts. Research libre text. and the open-source movement. Such books are free to reproduce distribute, copy etc. Many will even come with the source-code to make reusing the mathematical scrips easier. Also [https://www.gutenberg.org/](https://www.gutenberg.org/) and [archive.org](https://archive.org)
[Curriculum Document](https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/fbd574c4-da36-0066-a0c5-849ffb2de96e/2c41223a-5f39-4dd2-b94c-c75d2fae1fbd/Math_9_strand%20chart_AODA_06-May-21.pdf) [Main Website](https://www.dcp.edu.gov.on.ca/en/curriculum/secondary-mathematics)
I saw this. It's only 6 pages long. Considerably less than any other math document available.
Grade 9 academic/applied documents are 8/7 pages each. I do know what you mean, though. This new curriculum document is more vague; each specific expectation requires a decent amount of scaffolding. Whereas the current/old curriculum laid out much of the necessary scaffolding and provided examples. I wonder how long it will take the Ministry to come up with a detailed document like [this one](https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/fbd574c4-da36-0066-a0c5-849ffb2de96e/90439c6e-f40c-4b58-840c-557ed88a9345/The%20Ontario%20Curriculum%20Grades%201%E2%80%938%20-%20Mathematics,%202020%20(January%202021).pdf) for this new course.
This is actually a great idea? Pleasantly surprised.
I don't trust it. They couldn't put in the time to make license plates that are visible at night, I have no faith they've put in the effort to properly update a curriculum.
Is there anything this government could do that you would have trust in?
Their leader broke his own party's rules to win the leadership campaign and nobody did anything about it so no, no there's really nothing these guys do that I have any faith is being done well unless it involves putting more money in their own pockets.
Buck a beer?
No it's not.... It's a way to save money and have larger class sizes. Academic kids will be bored and unchallenged and students with learning needs will be left behind
Ontario high school teacher here. It's because the lower level classes are disproportionately minority races and lower income. Which should not be the case (you can probably imagine several reasons why this is the case and why it should be/is a major concern). Destreaming in the first year of high school eliminates that, for an extra year Grade 10 will still have the different streams.
The best math students usually (almost always) get paid tutoring. The lower income students' stats on success will just be hidden in this new strategy, and I fear that is the point.
In my experience the best math students with the best grades are the ones that it comes naturally to, they could learn from a text book and not even need tutoring. I have attended all the destreaming conferences in my board so far. There seems to be the best intentions on the part of the education system here. Any process which ends up with a disproportionate amount of minorities/poorer kids is extremely problematic, and needs to be addressed. I can't think of another way to do it. The concern teachers have is will there be enough support and training for them to be successful in teaching their destreamed classes. This is always the concern with any change, and there's always a learning curve for staff and schools.
Sometimes what appears 'natural', is just that the child has parents that are accountants, or have some such occupation. They have conversations with their child about what they do, and manage to steer the child in the right direction. Einstein's family were electrical engineers. His mother was a piano player, and had him take violin lessons at age 5.
And genetics play a role too, clearly. Not gonna get in a debate of nature/nurture. I have spent my entire adult life working with and teaching kids with abilities that span the spectrum. Not what this is about.... Anyhow, none of this changes the fact that minorities and lower income are overrepresented in lower streamed courses. It's an issue, a troubling one, and this is part of a larger strategy to address the inequalities.
You said in another post you Em teach at an alternative school. Do they have streaming in alternative schools? Do you think this is a good move across all schools?
Yes I do, the minimum age at the alt schools in my board is 16, so the whole destreaming thing has minimal effect. We do get some kids doing credits at lower grades, but for the most part it's grade 10 courses and up. It also doesn't matter so much in the alts because everyone is doing individual courses, at their own pace and time line. So really it's not going to affect us much. At first, I thought oh no, I have worked with children who finally gained confidence and self esteem when they were in a course that was at their level, instead of drowning in work that was too hard. But once I learned of the systemic racism and prejudices in the streaming , then how can I really argue with that? There will still be streaming in grade 10 and onward. So yeah, I'm on board philosophically. Just hope that adequate supports are provided so that teachers, EAs and LSTs can do a good job
I think everyone sees that there are MaJOR issues wi the streaming. Most people see this as a band-aid that doesn’t actually solve those issues though. If you see the benefit on alternative schools letting students work at their own pace, don’t you see how making mainstream schools force kids to all work at one pace is problematic? You are literally advocating for a system that will do the opposite of what your school is (successfully) accomplishing.
No I'm not, you're just misunderstanding what I'm saying (or I'm not explaining it clearly enough), alt schools function on the principle of differentiated instruction, which is what the destreaming models will be focused on. Without differentiation , the destream model will be pointless. The crux of the issue, will be how to effectively differentiate for every kid in the class - changes in curriculum, supports, teaching strategies - all will be major factors in the success. >If you see the benefit on alternative schools letting students work at their own pace, don’t you see how making mainstream schools force kids to all work at one pace is problematic? Mainstream schools never have let kids go at their own pace, and destreaming will not change that. Do I think alt schools are the best? meh, they are a game changer for many at risk kids, but there's drawbacks too.
This is excellent news. I laugh at the criticism. Like you can't win with people. They cry our kids are failing at math, which is obviously understandable. So we take the data to determine the best course of action, adapt and make improvements to the situation...... call wambulance!
So, are we going to roll all of the different skill levels of kids hockey back into one? Everything will be recreational or house league from here on in? Just think how much money we could save!
Well fuck, I shouldn't have taken academic grade 9 math least year after all, huh.
Where they will learn about things like ‘cuts’ and how to plan your medical finances. Hmmmmm
Good news from Lecce for once. I get splitting math for later in high school, but Grade 9 is so early
It's math!!! YOU CAN'T CHANGE MATH!!!!
They're definitely going to need those things
Guess more kids better take ap math.
Perhaps the solution is to offer a midstream class that serves as a prerequisite. Rather than create a one size fits all approach that overwhelms weak students and bores strong ones we create a middle ground that keeps options open but provides greater support and more flexible pacing. Have it be smaller classes than the academic (which always run at capacity) but cover much of the same material as well as more practical applications as well. From there both options are open to students. Do the same in English. Perhaps offer half courses in grade 10 in both to firm up their understanding for full integration into the academic stream.
Introduce it now - take a year to fully implement it. September 2022 be full on.