I wish you could see the giant smile on my face right now:
…a distinctly Canadian squeamishness about gathering data based on ethnic and national origin means there’s a paucity of information to help understand the problem – just scattered hints that something isn’t right.
For example, only one in five Creole-speaking students in Montreal graduates from high school on time. Only 42 per cent of Latin American students in Toronto meet standards on Grade 6 math tests, compared with 86 per cent of East Asians. (…)
Some of the most important ideas in education have come from studies of race in schools. In 1966, a groundbreaking look at academic outcomes and race known as the Coleman Report led to the end of de facto segregation in U.S. schools. (…)
One of the possibilities suggested by Prof. Gaztambide-Fernández is that Latino families may lack the cultural capital of other groups, the background, connections, community links and institutional knowledge built over generations, that ease the path for their children.
Prof. Finnie said he looked into ways of measuring the impact of cultural capital, but wasn’t able to explain the trend among students from the Americas.
“At this point we have no answers to that one. It’s obviously a source of concern.”
