The Attacks On School Choice Continue

While many of us were cheering on our NHL choice in the Western Conference Final, one politician just couldn't give it a rest, and instead was busy threatening school choice.

Former Edmonton Public School Board trustee and current candidate for the leadership of the Alberta New Democratic Party, Sarah Hoffman, took the following position in the latest NDP leadership debate:

“I believe that public funding should go to public, Catholic, and Francophone schools. If charter and private schools wanna become public schools, there’s absolutely space for them within that.”

Now, MLA Hoffman doesn’t say it explicitly, of course, but she’s relying on a common trope that claims that charter and private schools are “elite”, serving only the very rich, while public schools serve only the public interest.

And it is a trope, because it's simply not true.

In Alberta, both public and private schools serve all levels of income.

Take, for example, Elbow Park School in Calgary - a public school where the average parental income is $567,400 per year.

That’s significantly more than the average parental income at any “elite private school” in the province.

In fact, across the whole of Alberta, the average incomes of the parents of kids who attend private schools are slightly lower than the average incomes of the parents of kids who attend public schools.

But how on earth can a public school have an average parental income of $567,400 per year, we hear you ask?

(And, in fact, it's almost certainly even higher now, as these figures from the Fraser Institute are from 2014.)

Well, despite being a public school, the Calgary Board of Education won't let kids attend Elbow Park School unless their parents can afford to live in one of the obscenely expensive houses nearby.

This residential requirement turns away any students who can’t afford to live in a particular neighbourhood, and a similar thing happens in many other neighbourhoods across Alberta.

Somehow, though, you will never see Hoffman, or any other opponent of “elite private schools” complaining about "elite public schools".

So, why the dissonance?

It's because their concern isn't actually whether schools are controlled by the "elite" or not.

Their concern is whether schools are controlled by the government or by parents.

According to their ideology, "elite" public schools are fine because they are controlled by the government.

But charter or private schools - whether elite or not - must be shut down, defunded, or taken over, because they're controlled by parents.

By contrast, we think defunding a successful school - whether public or private - would be crazy.

Because defunding any successful school would do nothing but hurt the kids attending the school.

Any successful school will match a family’s values, keep kids safe, and teach the basics of language arts, math, science, and civics.

That’s true no matter whether the school is run by school board trustees elected by the general public or by a board elected only by the parents of children in the school.

Anyone who pretends there’s a difference is simply trafficking in myths.

We already confronted this myth two months ago: that education funding following the child to the actual place they are educated would favour the rich.

But what if that principle were carried even farther than Alberta has taken it, and the money followed the child without an educrat in Edmonton intervening to decide how much follows the child to which school?

Well, we don't need to wonder.

We now have warmer jurisdictions that compete with Alberta for young families and that have carried this principle farther than we have in Alberta.

In one of them, Arizona, a study has recently shown that taxpayers there “spend dramatically more to educate ‘wealthy’ students at public schools than at private schools”.

In Arizona, as in Alberta, the income profile of families who choose schools outside the jurisdiction of a school board is actually a little less wealthy than those who choose schools within them.

That makes sense, because when your house payment is your “tuition payment” - under the residential assignment practiced by school boards - obviously, the rich will be advantaged.

Furthermore, wealth often brings with it political influence, so if you make decisions about schooling through politics rather than pure family choice, then the wealthy will again be advantaged.

Yet in Arizona, as in Alberta, opponents of school choice would never suggest the public has no interest in funding the education of the wealthy - as long as a school board receives that funding.

What rational basis could there be for such a glaring inconsistency?

Choice in education - including the money following the child to choices outside of publicly elected school board governance - serves the Alberta public in two ways: 

1. Charter schools, independent (or private) schools, and home education in Alberta have been shown to outperform students under publicly elected school board governance in language arts, math, science, and civic outcomes.
   
2. These innovative educational options provide competition to school divisions, giving them a strong incentive to improve as well.

In this way, school choice is a rising tide that lifts all boats.

School choice gives the public what they are paying for: educated children.

Educational freedom provides this benefit to the public whether or not it does so through the intermediate product: public school buildings and bureaucracies of educrats hired by school boards.

We want to see good school board trustee candidates who will listen to parents and the public, but competition provides a better and more consistent incentive for school boards to serve parents and be worthy of the public trust than elections ever could.

Many school board trustees are simply acclaimed, with no election because no candidate runs against them.

Even when there is an election, public turnout is quite low, in part because the public doesn’t know anything about the trustee candidates.

Even if the public voice is heard every four years at election time, this does not seem a powerful incentive to listen to the public between elections.

Witness the Calgary Board of Education sending teen moms and their babies into a school where a stabbing occurred just two weeks before the vote, against the voices of almost 5,000 members of the public who signed our petition and over 400 members of the public who contacted them directly through our efforts alone.

And that brings us to two of the more powerful reasons for choice in education beyond the test scores that are so easy to measure: student safety and respect for the family’s values.

No family should be forced to send their child to a school that is hostile to their values.

No parent should feel trapped sending their child to a school that isn’t safe.

And unlike any possible educrat in Edmonton assigning funds to schools on any other basis than the choices of families, parents look beyond the measurables to these foundational aspects of the responsibilities of schools.

Parents are the best judges of whether a school is successful and have the most at stake in assuring it will be.

Parent-run schools tend to outperform schools governed by the general public through elections every four years whether we’re scoring based on families’ values being respected, kids being kept safe, or learning in language arts, math, science, and civics.

That’s why, by providing competition with schools parents run more directly, school choice motivates school boards to copy the successes they see and involve parents more robustly as well.

Without that incentive to improve, public schools quickly lose the public trust and become nothing but a drain of public funds without the matching benefits to the public.

We think it’s important for more people to understand this.

People with kids in public school divisions, with kids outside those systems, and the public whose interest is served by kids getting an education (not just particular adults getting a paycheque) all deserve the best information to hold every adult accountable for our kids’ educations.

Can you partner with us today to get that critical information to more people?

If you join the Alberta Parents' Union today, it will help us stay on top of every development during the summer, when decision-makers can typically count on parents not to be paying attention.

We know you have more important things to be paying attention to during the summer, namely, your kids.

That’s why we’re here: not to be just one more tax on your attention, but to direct it to precisely where it matters most for your kids.

Serving the Public through the Parents,

Jeff and the Alberta Parents’ Union Team