Tucked into the Ontario Ministry of Education’s newly introduced Putting Student Achievement First Act is a mandate requiring teachers to use ministry-approved learning resources in classrooms.
Providing learning resources sounds neutral and even helpful. But it raises deeper questions about teacher professional autonomy, and where the Ontario government is directing education dollars.
The most important resource in any classroom is the educator, supported by conditions needed to do the work they were professionally prepared to do.
When problems become products
In a digitized education market, learning resources increasingly arrive as “bundled systems:” assessments, textbooks, subscriptions, scripted lessons, professional development and data-tracking tools.
Researchers have long warned that “edu-business” expands when public systems are described as being in crisis, creating demand for market-based solutions.
Read more:
Tax ‘pandemic profiteering’ by tech companies to help fund public education
30 years of literacy reform
Ontario schools have not lacked literacy initiatives. Over three decades, Ontario educators have worked through waves of reform: Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) accountability, early reading expert panels, guides to effective instruction, the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat, as well as reforms targeting putting research into practice, multimedia literacy and serving students with special needs.
In my 44 years in education, I have seen Ontario schools cycle through one purchased literacy program after another, such as Jolly Phonics, Four Blocks and Fountas & Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention.
Ontario’s Right to Read Inquiry called for evidence-based approaches, particularly for students with disabilities. Within this wider aim, the inquiry also challenged classrooms’ reliance on programs, calling for boards and teachers to “determine on their own what programs, approaches and materials are best and how they can implement them.”
Teaching reading is complex and repeated reforms have not produced the measurable improvements policy frameworks seek to capture.
Right to Read inquiry
The Right to Read inquiry report issued 157 recommendations to improve students’ literacy learning with emphasis on curriculum, teacher professional development and early screening of foundational reading skills.
Beginning in 2023, Ontario required twice yearly screening for all children in kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2.
To support this, Ontario approved commercial suppliers and in 2024–25, allocated $12.5 million for screening tools and another $12.5 million for intervention program licences.
Some resources covered by these agreements are associated with large multinational vendors such as Pearson. Policy researcher Curtis B. Riep examines how this education company is an example of the growing role of corporate “partners, contractors and enablers” in education systems increasingly shaped by market logic.
Parents may recognize marketed resources in classrooms today like scripted lessons, slide decks or worksheets or readers sold by companies like UFLI (University of Florida Literacy Institute) Foundations.
Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner has called for open contracting so the public can see what is purchased, how suppliers are chosen, what contracts cost and who is accountable.
Yet reporting about awarded suppliers on the the Ontario Education Collaborative Marketplace (OECM) — a not-for-profit sourcing organization that partners with Ontario’s education sector and the broader public sector — still gives scarce detail about where public funds are going.
Appeal of ‘the quick fix’
The appeal of the quick fix is not new. As American journalist H.L. Mencken warned more than a century ago: “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible and wrong.”
My own research has shown how commercial products can displace teachers’ professional judgment with externally designed systems.
Even when screening tools are efficient and well-designed, teachers often lack the time, class-size conditions and specialist support needed to respond meaningfully to the results.
Canadian political scientist Janice Gross Stein has warned that public institutions can become so focused on measurable accountability that they lose sight of the broader context. While the Right to Read inquiry identified failures in Ontario’s reading approaches, Canada still scored well above the OECD average in reading in 2022, with Ontario among the stronger-performing provinces.
Strengthening reading instruction is essential. That doesn’t mean buying commercial programs is the answer — especially when deteriorating classroom conditions are driving qualified teachers away, leaving schools increasingly reliant on unqualified supply workers.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
Literacy and the opportunity gap
Canadian literacy professor Jim Cummins cautions against moving too quickly, from labelling children “at risk” to buying new programs. The “right to read,” he argues, must also include the “opportunity to read” — early immersion in language and books gives children advantages no commercial package can reproduce.
Often overlooked in the rush to purchase products is the fact that the Right to Read report also called for improving the conditions that make effective instruction possible: sustained professional learning, specialist support and adequate funding. Yet the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario shows that real per-student operating funding has fallen to its lowest level in 10 years.
Those cuts land in classrooms where nearly one in five Ontario children lives in poverty and where educators are responding to rising violence, mental-health concerns, food insecurity and housing instability.
These are the conditions under which purchased programs are being asked to do the work of a properly supported education system.
Invest in people, not just products
Durable outcomes take time and are measured in years, not tests. The broader goal is to cultivate readers whose literacy enables full civic participation.
Comparative research on high-performing education systems points to sustained investment in well-prepared teachers, professional autonomy and coherent public systems.
Ontario stands at a familiar crossroads: keep reaching for solutions that are quick to purchase and easy to measure, or do the harder work of building lasting public capacity.
Equitable conditions for learning
The Right to Read report called for a stronger system grounded in professional knowledge, sustained support and equitable learning conditions: smaller primary classes, restored specialist support, rich early language environments and teacher education grounded in deep literacy expertise.
If we invest in teachers, and in the conditions children need to learn, literacy improvement becomes what it should be: a public education system serious about building our children’s future.
