Back-to-school shopping isn’t what it used to be. Before the new shoes and the latest jeans, today’s savvy student needs to find the right school. These days, high schools can be as specialized as digital cable channels, and a determined breed of career-driven student makes a daily trek across the city to join others with the same passion—be it musical theatre, molecular biology, CanLit or hoops. In our September issue, Denise Balkissoon goes inside 10 institutions that are taking education to the next level. Here, she talks about her research process, what makes these schools unique, and offers further insight for anyone in the market for a secondary school.

What advice would you give to people looking to research Toronto schools?
Start early. These are the top 10 schools, but I visited at least 30, and there is a lot of inaccurate information out there. I think most neighbourhood high schools have really great things about them. Even if your child can’t go to the best school for math, for example, it’s more important to be a really good parent and encourage them, and to let the teachers and principals know that you plan to be involved in your child’s education.

How did you choose the schools you researched?
I went through The Unauthorized Guide to Toronto Secondary Schools and made a short list of schools that sounded good. There are a lot of choices that are fairly obvious, like Mark Garneau Collegiate. Etobicoke School of the Arts came from a column about Broken Social Scene that mentioned members of the band went there. I talked to people, made a long list and then I started visiting the schools.

Many of the schools in the article have specialized programs. Do they advertise these programs?
Most of the schools advertise themselves as having areas of specialization, except Malvern and Eastern Commerce. Some of the schools are identified as “magnet” schools—it’s part of their mandate—and they actually get 20 per cent more funding. So they definitely advertise their special programs.

Why do they get more funding?
To go toward their specialized programming. In addition to providing the programs we highlight in the article, the school has to also provide a regular academic curriculum for students who aren’t in the specialized programs. They have to provide everything a normal school would.

Is there a push toward creating these specialized programs in schools?
I think so. There is another arts school that didn’t get chosen—Rosedale Heights School of the Arts—which was a school in danger of being closed. Basically, the principal decided to make it specialized in order to keep it open. He integrated an entire arts curriculum over five years. He planned the whole thing, brought in the right teachers and started vetting students. He actually did this before he had a mandate from the school board. Now I think it’s really recognized as an arts magnet school. It’s the same with Scarlett Heights. It had a bad reputation, so they decided to go with a specialized business focus, and now it’s a thriving school.

What criteria did you use to determine which schools were the best in their fields?
There were actually some that were really neck and neck. At the point when there were two schools that were equally great, it came down to which school hadn’t been in Toronto Life before, so that regular readers would get a fuller picture of their city.

How easily were you able to gain access to information at the schools?
Some of the schools didn’t call back. The media people at the board made some schools sound interesting, but when I contacted the schools they never returned my calls. So soome of the schools were included because they were more transparent about their programs—an openness that’s especially important for parents. I wanted the article to be well-rounded in terms of giving a picture of where high school is at in Toronto. But there was a little trouble getting more controversial information.

What kind of controversial information?
Like who’s dropping out of school. One of the schools in the article is a “second chance” school, and it’s a really great school. But I’m sure everyone would like to see fewer kids dropping out in the first place.

What surprised you while you were doing the research?
Public school is really competitive, and if a parent really wants their kid to go to one of these schools, and the kids do too, they probably need to be thinking about it by Grade six. That doesn’t exactly sadden me, but it makes me wonder what happened to the time when you could just be a kid. They have a lot of fun at these schools, but I know that when I was in Grade six, I wasn’t planning my high school and university career.

How does high school differ today from when you were a student?
In a way, it doesn’t really. The first school I went to was in Scarborough, and there were kids hanging out at their lockers and you could see everyone was choosing their identity: this kid is goth and this kid is into hip hop. So that’s pretty much the same. But a lot of schools have cameras and walkie-talkies and no one seems scared by that. For someone like me—who hasn’t been in high school for 10 years—it was surprising, but for the teachers and principals, this is just how they deal with their security concerns. There are also a lot more dress regulations.

How did students in uniform schools feel about having to wear them?
Most of the ones who were in uniform schools loved it. It makes everyone the same. Some people have more money, but with uniforms you can’t really tell that from their clothes.