The Province of Ontario welcomes the largest population of high school Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SILFE students) in Canada to its secondary schools. Many of these students arrive late in age with significant academic gaps and face many barriers to reaching their post-secondary goals in Canada. Literature has identified…

Improving schooling by reducing achievement gaps based on family background has been on the agenda of school governance worldwide for more than three decades. International benchmarking like the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is used to find models of best practice in effective school governance. Enlarging school…

Bimodal grade distributions indicate a gap in learning, where the highest quartile of students is skilful in the subject matter, but the lowest quartile is not retaining course material that demonstrates a good level of understanding. Students in the lower quartile do not necessarily have the same challenges as remedial students (i.e., those that…

Collaboration among Indigenous Peoples and the Saskatchewan government in Canada has led to Indigenous K-12 education progress concerning First Nations and Métis peoples, the Indigenous populations whose traditional territories exist within Saskatchewan. Acknowledging such advancements, this paper is concerned with how white identified students…

Though school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic affected all students globally, the effect was significantly more for students from marginalized and vulnerable communities. In Nova Scotia, Canada, the concern was the racial achievement gap that the education system is addressing through an inclusive education policy. The worry, especially for…

Can summer programs, as remedial supplements to regular schooling, extend learning opportunities and other benefits to disadvantaged students? To frame this question, we compare logics from "social reproduction" and "partial compensation" perspectives, and then apply them to a large mixed method study of four kinds of summer…

At an Ontario College of Applied Arts and Technology experiencing a rapid internationalization of its student population, three faculty members in the School of Business embarked on an action research project to learn how to better facilitate the success of international students. The research team examined grades from international and domestic…

This paper explores the student achievement-related decision-making processes of eight school principals in Ontario, Canada. First, we describe Ontario's public education system with respect to neo-liberalism and student achievement. Next, we review general approaches to reducing the achievement gap as it pertains to matters of race. We then show…

Validity of a measurement refers to appropriate test score meanings, uses, and interpretations (Messick, 1989; Kane, 1992). There are different approaches to validity: an evidentiary aspect of validity is one requiring gathering statistical evidence to evaluate test score meaning. A common approach to validation is comparisons of test score equity…

Canada prides itself for being multi-cultural, valuing diversity, and having educational outcomes that have been identified as excellent and equitable with above average performance and lower than average impact of socio-economic status and immigrant status in PISA. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, plus policies concerning child care,…

There is an achievement gap between students of different ethnic groups. An important alterable contributor to academic achievement is teacher expectations--the beliefs teachers hold about their students' academic capabilities. Teacher expectations affect students' academic performance--high expectations are associated with higher academic…

This article presents a grounded theory analysis of interviews with eight Black and nine white teachers in Nova Scotia, Canada. Patterned differences emerge between discourses used by Black versus white teachers to understand the roles of Black students' families in academic achievement. In varying degrees and respects, Black teacher interviewees…

Creativity is the driving force of technological innovation and sustainable economic growth in the knowledge society. A central question, therefore, is how education helps to enhance creativity. As East Asian countries occupy the top of performance tests such as the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), it is most important…

"Mino-Pimaatisiwin" is an Ojibwe term for life in the fullest, healthiest sense. Grounded in anticolonial theory, this case study explores the impact of infusing Indigenous perspectives into an elementary school curriculum on students, school staff, parents, and community. With a focus on building self-esteem and cultural connectedness…

Using integrated 2006 and 2016 census data, this study examines the education and labour market integration outcomes of a recent cohort of young Black Canadians. Specifically, this study examines the link between the characteristics of the youth and their families when they were living with their parents (in 2006), and their education and labour…