The Watchdog That Didn't Bark

When the Province announced assessments for young students, so parents and decision-makers would have more information on how our kids are doing in reading and math, the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) opposed it.

Among other things, they said in their official media release that the announcement should have been a funding announcement instead.

We argued that the new assessments should be supported on their own merits, and that the ATA was looking for a blank cheque.

Ten days ago, the Province made a $215 million funding announcement.

It is meant to relieve cost pressures from enrollment increases, as young families continue to move to Alberta.

Part of that $215 million will go to 100 new modular classrooms in growing school divisions, and the Province is also paying for 50 existing modular classrooms to be relocated to higher-need schools.

The rest will go to growing school boards for them to spend in the way they choose - hiring teachers, educational assistants, and so on.

So, what did the ATA say in their official media release now?

Nothing.

They didn’t even send out an official statement about the funding announcement at all.

This is seemingly part of a pattern in the ATA’s communications.

They demonize even tiny funding cuts (whether by a school board or by the Province), but stay completely silent about much more substantial funding increases.

This gives parents, teachers, and the general public the impression that the overall direction of spending on education in Alberta has been trending downward.

This false narrative also leads many to believe that there are easy solutions in education policy that start with simply spending more.

It's a lot easier to think the solution is more spending when you've been (incorrectly) told over and over again that spending is being cut!

Worse, this false narrative deeply misleads the public about where the real opportunities for improving the education system lie.

School superintendents, for instance, are popularly perceived as victims of underfunding and constant cuts.

In reality, most of them are rather highly compensated (mis)managers of an enormous bureaucracy.

Assuming the problem is a lack of funding also makes parents and taxpayers much less likely to hold our elected school boards and powerful school officials accountable for the performance of the schools under them.

But, again, unaccountable public spending benefits the ATA, because it often results in more people being forced to join their union and pay their dues.

What the ATA really want is a blank cheque.

They argue spending needs to be way higher than it currently is.

And this argument is commonly made by sharing a chart that purports to be from StatCan showing Alberta with the lowest per-student funding in Canada.

But, next time you see this chart, take a closer look.

You'll find that the chart isn't actually from StatCan itself, it's a chart the ATA have made themselves, by merging two different sets of StatCan data.

The first of these StatCan datasets shows the number of students in public schools in each province.

The other StatCan dataset shows the amount of money transferred to school boards by each province.

But what StatCan don't do is simply divide one set of numbers by the other, to give the "average amount of money spent per student" in each province.

And it's important to understand that StatCan don't do this, because they know that there are many differences and variables across all the provinces.

For example, in some provinces, the government pays for more things directly, and pays for fewer things via school boards, whereas in other provinces, the school boards are left to make more of the purchases.

In other provinces, including Alberta, there are simply fewer students going to schools managed by school boards and more students going to charter schools and other alternative types of schools.

Alberta is the only province with charter schools.

Charter schools are not governed by school boards, so their funding is transferred directly to the school rather than to a school board, meaning that funding doesn't show up in one of the datasets.

There are probably dozens more reasons why merging these two datasets makes no sense, and any "average" resulting from doing so is complete nonsense.

But the ATA don't care about that.

They don't care that they're using fuzzy math.

They don't care that their figures count charter school students as public school students but don't count their funding as public school funding.

They just know that if they take these two numbers and divide them, they'll get a nice graphic that "proves" that the Alberta government is spending the least on education of any province in Canada.

And they know that they'll be able to get some nice media headlines out of it too.

They don't care that it's not true.

Of course, all of this also fails to account for the fact that Alberta gets better results from our education system than the provinces who "outspend" us, by virtually any available measure.

None of this is to say there are no problems with the Province's approach to funding.

But let's leave that story for another day.

We know you’re all busy during the summer, actually enjoying time with kids and grandkids, and you don’t have time to keep yourself informed on education policy.

The ATA does pay attention, but they are more interested in advancing their vendetta against the Province than giving you honest information.

If you value being an informed parent, grandparent, educator, or taxpayer on this issue (and if you've read this far, you must do!), please help us keep it coming.

If you join us as a member today, you can help us keep the work going, even when you have less time for it yourself!

Every dollar goes straight to our independent, high-quality work, trying to shed light where others try to obscure.

Keeping the Light on for You,

-Jeff and the Alberta Parents’ Union Team