Democratizing School Board Accountability
The Mission
This project is a transparency initiative dedicated to a critical governance question: Are Ontario’s School Boards upholding their end of the regulatory bargain in relation to student safety?
Welcome to the public-facing platform of a doctoral research project investigating the crisis of “delegated accountability” in Ontario’s education system. While the Ministry of Education sets the standards for student safety, the actual implementation is delegated to local School Boards. This research seeks to expose the Policy-Practice Fidelity Gap—the distance between the safety mandates the government orders and the policies School Boards actually adopt.
The Framework: Social Accountability
Traditionally, accountability in education is “upward”—schools report to Boards, and Boards report to the Ministry. This project flips that model by utilizing Social Accountability.
Social Accountability relies on civic engagement and public oversight to hold institutions answerable for their performance. By making obscure policy data accessible and understandable, we empower parents, taxpayers, and stakeholders to monitor the governance of their local education systems. This is not just about finding faults; it is about reclaiming the public’s role in public education.
The Tool: Citizen Report Cards
To operationalize this accountability, this project utilizes Citizen Report Cards (CRCs).
CRCs are participatory survey and audit tools used globally to assess the quality and performance of public services. By standardizing the assessment of School Board policies against provincial “must-do” requirements, we can generate objective “report cards” for each Board. These cards translate complex bureaucratic text into clear, actionable data, allowing communities to:
- Benchmark their Board’s safety policies against PPMs.
- Compare their Board’s performance with others across the province.
- Demand specific improvements based on evidence rather than anecdote.
The Methodology: Computational Policy Auditing
It is a common assumption that when the Ministry issues a safety directive, it is automatically implemented. My research challenges this by auditing the “rulebook” itself.
Using Computational Policy Auditing, we systematically review the publicly available by-laws, policies, and procedures of Ontario’s School Boards. We cross-reference these local documents against the strict mandatory requirements issued by the Province.
The Focus: Governance, Not Operations. This project does not audit what happens in individual classrooms; it audits the governance of the School Boards. It is the specific statutory role of the Board to translate provincial laws and provincial policy into local policy. When a Board fails to do so—or maintains policies that contradict the Education Act and associated PPMs—it creates a systemic barrier to safety that no individual principal, teacher, or parent can easily overcome.
Philosophy: Building in the Open
Trust is the currency of research. Too often, academic scrutiny happens behind closed doors, with results published years later behind paywalls.
This project adheres to the principle of Building in the Open promoted by the Government of Canada.
- Transparency: Methodologies, datasets, and audit criteria are shared publicly as the research progresses.
- Reproducibility: By publishing the “source code” of our analysis, we invite peer review and community verification.
- Accessibility: Findings are presented in plain language to ensure they are useful to the communities they are meant to serve.
The Core Principles
This work is grounded in two non-negotiable standards that govern public education:
1. Fiduciary Duty
School Boards hold a position of trust. When they accept public funding and the custody of children, they accept a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of those students. Failing to adopt mandatory safety guidelines into local policy is a breach of that duty that leaves staff without clear direction and students without guaranteed protection.
2. The Equity Imperative
Safety is a prerequisite for learning. When safety policies are missing or vague, the risk falls disproportionately on vulnerable student populations. Ensuring that every student is covered by the full letter of the law—accessible, transparent, and accurate—is an equity imperative.
Conclusion: Closing the Gap
Ultimately, a safety policy that exists only in a Ministry directive—and not in a Board’s own rulebook—is a broken promise. This project aims to mend that break.
By rendering the governance of our schools transparent, measurable, and comparable, we provide the evidence needed to bridge the “Policy-Practice Fidelity Gap.” This work is an invitation to move towards a system where the safety of every student is guaranteed not just by the Education Act, but by the daily governance of their local Board.
School Board Research 