Ontario school boards hired American consultants for DEI training

Ontario school boards are turning to American DEI consultants to train Canadian teachers in U.S.-style race and identity politics.

Source: Rawpixel

Ontario school boards are turning to American DEI consultants to train Canadian teachers in U.S.-style race and identity politics, even though records show there is no shortage of Canadian “equity” consultants readily available.

Documents obtained by True North show the Simcoe County District School Board paid the equivalent of $18,261 for professional development led by Texas consultant Shani Dellimore of Aurora Change Agency.

Invoices billed in U.S. dollars cover four sessions in 2024 on “cultural humility” and “culturally responsive schools.”

Dellimore’s materials centre around race and identity. One slide instructs educators to “expand textbooks and other readings beyond white authors” and “normalize identity-based discussions.”

Teachers were asked to “commit” to diversity, equity and inclusion and then to rethink “student success” by explaining how they will apply a DEI lens when they measure outcomes “for students, for teachers, and for you.”

At the same time, her public biography lists a background in journalism, human resources, and DEI administration in the United States. Outside of her contract with Simcoe County, there is no record of Dellimore having K-12 teaching experience and no formal training in Ontario’s educational or legal framework.

A similar pattern appears at Halton Catholic District School Board. Access to information documents shows the board invited a long list of Canadian DEI consultants, yet the only providers it appears to have paid for sessions were two American firms.

American DEI consultant Gholdy Muhammad of Hill Pedagogies billed the Halton Catholic board roughly $12,380 for two sessions in 2021. The sessions instructed staff on how to “unpack culture and race,” do “self identity work,” and apply “culturally and historically responsive education.”

Another invoice shows Halton Catholic paid about $11,269 CAD for three 2-hour equity workshops delivered in 2021 by the Equity Literacy Institute, a U.S. consultancy led by American scholar and DEI trainer Paul Gorski.

The American-educated staff specialize in training educators to teach literacy through a race and identity lens to address “systemic racism.”

For Ontario, the politicised transformation of schooling has cost millions and has yet to show clear gains in student performance, even as a growing body of research finds that schools themselves are not, in fact, dens of systemic racism.

A recent study for the Aristotle Foundation, reported by True North in September, challenged the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s claim that the province’s schools are “systemically racist.” Achievement data from Peel and Waterloo boards found that many racial and ethnic groups outperform white students on provincial tests, arguing that individual acts of racism should not be conflated with systemic discrimination.

Ontario’s Ministry of Education spent $2.5 million over four years on Grade 9 de-streaming projects based on “culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy,” a model drawn from Brazilian Marxist educator Paulo Freire and American critical race theory. The approach was rolled out to improve Grade 9 math achievement, but provincial results have not improved.

A review of funding allocations found that nearly half a billion dollars in provincial funding has been spent since 2017 on DEI programs, including “anti-oppressive” teacher training, “culturally responsive” programs, race-specific graduation coach programs and other initiatives.

The University of Toronto’s OISE has been producing politicized education training for teachers for decades. Given the depth of homegrown expertise, it is unclear why school boards would turn to American consultants, often at a higher cost than local providers. It is even less clear why U.S.-centric education, history, and cultural concepts are being imported and applied in Canadian classrooms.

True North reached out to both school boards, but neither provided a comment.