WATERLOO REGION — An Ottawa school board has put its popular French immersion program under a microscope for the same concerns under review in this region — that it segregates children by need and ability, damaging public education.

"I'm really concerned about social sorting," education trustee Rob Campbell said in persuading the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board to examine the impact of its immersion program.

In his view, the language program separates children by attributes such as their needs, abilities, English skills, family incomes and parent support.

"To my way of thinking, our default situation with respect to public education should be that effectively we have kids of all sorts in the standard classroom," Campbell said in an interview.

"Public education to me is about the creation of equity ... That's the whole crux of the system.

"If we're going to intentionally or unintentionally end up separating kids ... we have to have a good reason to do that, and we have to look at what we're doing."

The Waterloo Region District School Board is surveying families, conducting focus groups and examining research to understand immersion impacts that have alarmed some families.

French immersion is a voluntary program open to all that teaches local students in French for half their school day.

In this region, more than one in four students in Grade 1 will enrol in September at 42 public elementary schools. There's also a small program at the Waterloo Catholic District School Board.

Advocates say immersion is not meant as an enrichment program. Yet it clusters students in higher-achieving classrooms, relegating needier schoolmates to classrooms with poorer results on tests, according to Grade 3 test scores and individual student education plans.

Suddaby Public School in Kitchener illustrates school divisions to an extreme.

Its immersion classrooms have children who meet provincial standards 87 per cent of the time. Its regular classrooms have children who meet provincial standards 28 per cent of the time.

In Ottawa-Carleton, immersion students also outperform non-immersion schoolmates across reading, writing and math.

Campbell suspected there are differences in achievement but did not know that standardized test scores measure it. The Record filed a Freedom-of-Information request to secure immersion test results that the province typically does not publicly release.

"I will be providing this information to our staff," Campbell said. "Maybe this will aid their analysis."

The Ottawa-Carleton board expects to report back to trustees in the fall on how the different teaching streams affect students and equity.

Waterloo Region trustees expect to see a report on French immersion in the fall after spending up to $150,000 on a consultant-led review.

Parent volunteer Laurie Tremble is not surprised that French immersion is raising equity concerns in Ottawa.

"I think it's probably an issue for most boards who are offering French immersion," said Tremble, who is part of the local immersion review.

Her children are not enrolled in immersion. She hears parents describe it as a way to separate children, and this concerns her.

"They want their kid in that program because they see it as enrichment, or at least a way to get away from a lot of behaviour issues in other classes," she said.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

jouthit@therecord.com

Twitter: @OuthitRecord