Joanna DeJong VanHof
Joanna is a Researcher with Cardus and is based out of the Hamilton office. She holds a Masters of Education in Educational Leadership and Policy from the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, and completed her undergraduate degree in Biology at McMaster University. She has previous experience in educational leadership and governance in the private education sector, and is passionate about understanding education, growth, and learning as a fundamentally relational endeavour and creative process. Together with her husband and four daughters, she lives in Millgrove, ON, and when she can find a few moments of spare time, she can usually be found reading or repotting her houseplants.
Bio last updated November 9th, 2022.
Articles by Joanna DeJong VanHof
Denying the Reality of Independent Schools
By Joanna DeJong VanHof
September 23, 2021
Policy confusion inflicted on alternative schooling during COVID shows why Ontario needs urgent discussion of an education system that reflects the province’s diversity, Joanna DeJong VanHof argues.
The vast majority of independent schools in Ontario are small, community-oriented schools that serve specific, sometimes marginalized populations, often of students whose diverse needs are not met within a behemoth public system weighed down by bureaucracy and sheer size When can we have the conversation that a province as diverse as Ontario will never have a single public school system that is able to adequately meet the broad needs of all of its families? The prevailing narrative that independent schools are for the rich and elite and serve only to further stratify and divide Ontario’s population, is weak, short-sighted, and ignorant of the truth