What’s needed is a revitalized English program with a strong academic emphasis, which can compete with French immersion.

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The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board’s proposal to make big changes in the way it delivers elementary education garnered a fair amount of feedback over the summer. What was conspicuously missing was a wave of support for the tentative plan’s main ideas; changing French immersion delivery, making neighbourhood schools the norm, and integrating more children with special needs into regular classrooms.

It’s really no surprise that the board’s proposed homogenization of elementary education isn’t a big hit with the heterogeneous population it serves. The plan appears to take things away without offering anything very exciting in return. Fans of French immersion are worried that the program might become more limited. Some parents of children with special needs want to maintain the separate classes that are serving them well. More broadly, a neighbourhood school model, while it has benefits, would pretty much eliminate parents’ ability to choose a school that they perceive to be better.

The underlying problem with the board’s initial proposal for change........

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