Coalition for Alternatives to Streaming in Education (CASE)

Mission and Vision

CASE’s vision is that all students have full access to programs of study aligned with their interests and career aspirations.

CASE’s mission is:

• To conduct educational research on streaming, its impacts and successful alternatives.
• To raise awareness and engage in community education to help students and parents make informed decisions about educational pathways.
• To develop and advance advice for the Ministry of Education and Ontario school boards to successfully end streaming.

History

Beginning in 2013, concerned parents and community members from the Black community convened conversations about why students who were streamed into applied and locally developed courses were not graduating from high school. It became clear that there was a need for collective action and community mobilization around issues related to academic streaming in Ontario’s public education system.

From these conversations, the Supportive Education Employment Movement (SEEM) was established. They focused on the creation of a community-centred action plan to address inequitable educational outcomes and career options due to streaming. This plan was mobilized by the Black community as a network for support and implementation.

SEEM hosted their first community convening as an organized group to discuss racism, discrimination and gaps in parents’ knowledge related to academic streaming. They began planning advocacy and awareness campaigns, as well as opportunities to conduct original research to better understand the perception of streaming from parents, educators and students.

SEEM received a grant from the Ontario Trillium Fund in 2015 through Social Planning Toronto to conduct a youth-led, community-based research project to explore the experiences of parents and students with course selection in high school. To complete the project, SEEM hired and trained six peer researchers who conducted 52 interviews in the Weston-Mount Dennis region in Toronto.

SEEM presented the preliminary findings from their original research in 2017, indicating the vastly different outcomes for students streamed into academic, applied or locally developed courses in high school. In a strategy session, a core group of organizers transitioned SEEM into the Coalition for Alternatives to Streaming in Education (CASE).

CASE then launched the full findings from their research in their inaugural report, Still Streamed. The report concluded that the process of streaming was complex, inaccessible and lacked adequate support for parents and students. It outlined clear barriers and inequities within the streaming process that led to an over-representation of children of colour and low-income students in the applied and locally developed streams.

The stewardship of CASE transitioned from Social Planning Toronto to the Leadership Lab beginning in 2019. CASE mobilized youth, parents and service providers to advocate for ending streaming, including a policy roadmap in May 2021 and shareable videos to share the lived experiences of students and parents whose lives were impacted by academic streaming.

Ontario’s Minister of Education then announced in July 2020 that the government would begin the process of ending Grade 9 streaming, starting with math in September 2021, to better support all students in having every opportunity to pursue the pathway of their choice after their K-12 education.