The Dumbing Down of Rocket Science

The Globe and Mail buries the lede in this one, I think. Supposedly, it's a good news story about the Toronto District School Board deciding to retain a "prestigious" science program. But the really interesting part of the report comes many paragraphs into the thing when you learn that the TDSB is favouring a certain community--again--thereby compromising the excellence of a merit-based program via what amounts to "affirmative action":

The TDSB has had success in the past in helping high-needs communities by introducing prestigious programs such as the International Baccalaureate into their schools. The Flemingdon Park and Thorncliffe Park communities around Marc Garneau are dense with recent immigrants and low-income families packed into single-family apartments.

“The TOPS program is very much at the heart of what the school is and it has been a very successful program at that school for 24 years,” said Gerri Gershon, the trustee who represents the area.

She said a summer enrichment program was introduced this year at the neighbouring feeder school, Valley Park Middle School, in order to help more local kids get into the TOPS program. She hopes to have an addition put on the high school so that the extra students can be more comfortably accommodated.

The school board has been accused of giving special treatment to this community before. Valley Park Middle School recently won notoriety because an imam has been leading Friday prayers in the cafeteria during class time.

TOPS teachers involved in the admissions process say that community favouritism led to a difficult decision in 2009. Michael Hussey, an English teacher who helped start the program 24 years ago, refers to it as “the day of the switch.”

He and his colleagues say they were directed by board staff to tinker with the admissions process and admit two students from the local community into TOPS at Marc Garneau. Two students from elsewhere in the GTA lost their spots and were invited to attend the Bloor Collegiate TOPS program instead.

Ms. Gershon and Ms. Schwartz-Matlz said they had no knowledge of a switch.

Mr. Hussey is very proud of the TOPS program, but he says he loses sleep over whether he’s helping students by recruiting them to the program and the school’s crowded conditions.

“The trap is that while I know that what we do is a wonderful thing, the implication for hundreds of people at Garneau … are not things that I can countenance,” he said.

Though her oldest children thrived after TOPS – 20-year-old Evan was just accepted to medical school after only three years as an undergraduate and 17-year-old Darren won scholarships to attend Queen’s commerce this fall – Ms. Cole decided not to let her 14-year-old son, Griffin, apply.

“The program just won’t survive if it goes on like this,” she said...

Indeed. Sounds like the TDSB wants TOPS to be a self-esteem-boosting project a la Obama and NASA.