News

Earlier this week, it was revealed that the Calgary Board of Education is planning to close the Louise Dean Centre, a school program for pregnant teens and young mothers, located in northwest Calgary.

For those who aren't familiar with the Centre, it currently has 47 students and has proven particularly successful, offering a unique educational environment that includes on-site child care, life skills programs, and other critical supports needed to help pregnant teenagers and young mothers graduate.

The free market enables consumers to find the best product at the lowest price.

As it turns out, the same principles can be applied to education.

When there is plenty of choice in the marketplace, costs will come down and quality will go up.

Alberta's choice-based education system improves education for students, while actually saving taxpayers money.

Our Executive Director Jeff Park spoke to the Western Standard's Cory Morgan yesterday about the Alberta Parents' Union.

They discussed the launch of the project, the importance of choice in education, upcoming APU events, and how people can get involved.

At a basic level, school choice is the idea that parents and students should determine which schools students attend, rather than students being allocated to specific schools by the government based on where they live.

But, school choice doesn't only apply to the idea of getting to choose which school to attend - it also applies to what type of education is available to be chosen from.

Types of education include public, separate, francophone, alternative, charter, independent, or home education, and specific schools within each type may have their own special focus too.

School vouchers are the system by which choice can be maximized, by ensuring that families have the ability to choose from a wide array of schools offering these different types of education and focuses.

Today, we are very excited to be launching what could be an incredibly important step towards securing Alberta's long-term future.

Living in Alberta, we are blessed to be living in a truly remarkable part of the world for a number of reasons.

But, at least in one respect, you might be taking Alberta's remarkableness for granted.

Despite some big challenges - and we'll address those soon - Alberta has a truly world-class education system.