Special Education in Ontario, Canada: A case study of market-based reforms

Abstract

In 1995 the Government of Ontario commenced educational reforms that have broad implications for students with special educational needs. The reforms reflect governmental shifts in defining education in terms of economic accountability and market-driven demand and away from concerns for social justice. Five principles of educational reform under market-driven policies are drawn from the literature; diversification and decentralisation (distributing responsibility for implementation, decision making and funding and outsourcing tasks), contestability (competition for resources), prescription/surveillance (through standards-based reform) and accountability to parents. The special education reform initiatives in Ontario are analysed to see how and to what extent they reflect these principles. The results are then compared with the ways in which the principles have played out in other jurisdictions which have longer histories of implementing economics-based models, notably England and Wales, the USA and New Zealand. The purpose of the comparison is to see what difficulties have arisen from the experiences of others which might be anticipated in the case of the Ontario reforms.