Changes in the perception of school climate and self-identified race in two Toronto cohorts

Abstract

Drawing on Toronto District School Board (TDSB) Student Census data (2006 and 2011), we examine if there have been changes in the perceptions of school climate between two cohorts of high school students. First, we contextualize our study and review relevant policy changes to student inclusion and equity to set the stages for examining, by way of a sort of “natural experiment”, to see if there was a change in the perception of school climate by students after these policy changes occurred. We then review the scholarship on school climate, its relationship to race, and its relationships to educational experiences and outcomes. We then examine how self-identified race is associated with students’ perceptions of school climate in both cohorts, interpreting our results within a Critical Policy Analysis framework. We find evidence of improved school climate from 2003 to 2008, although the changes have not been uniform by self-identified race, and in some cases have worsened, particularly for self-identified Black and Latin American students.

The intersections of race, immigrant status, and university confirmations in Toronto

“…As described elsewhere (Robson et al., 2021a), understanding if access programs are effective requires keeping detailed microdata on students that contain information about their demographic characteristics, particularly on those that make them “traditionally underrepresented.” Until recently, there has been a veritable absence of data collection efforts in this vein, making it effectively impossible to understand the demographic make‐up of the student body in Canada, particularly around the topic of race. This is important because, in the handful of Canadian studies that do examine how race and postsecondary enrolments are related, there is consistent evidence of racial inequality (George et al., 2021; Villegas & Aberman, 2019).…”

“…Until recently, there has been a veritable absence of data collection efforts in this vein, making it effectively impossible to understand the demographic make-up of the student body in Canada, particularly around the topic of race. This is important because, in the handful of Canadian studies that do examine how race and postsecondary enrolments are related, there is consistent evidence of racial inequality (George et al, 2021;Villegas & Aberman, 2019).…”