Education is not a consumer commodity. When we start talking about how we fund our education system as if it were, Alberta is in trouble.
Kent Hehr, Liberal MLA for Calgary Buffalo, seems to go out of his way to avoid talking about education as a commodity in his private members bill to stop all public funding for private schools. But some of the arguments surrounding the issue do look at education as something we can buy or trade, while also looking at students as factory products.
We need to avoid that, and instead look at funding models relating to how they touch the right of every child to an equal opportunity for the best general education possible, plus the rights of parents to decide what's best for their children – within the limits of the law.
The state need not dictate all the means, but the state must protect of the rights of children against parents, teachers, and administrators who do not reach society's standards in providing kids with the best chance they can get to succeed in life. For the vast majority, that is achieved through public funding of a public system.
First off, we need to acknowledge that despite the wide range of student abilities and the varying qualities of individual teachers and schools, Alberta is widely viewed as a top-quality place to send kids to school. We teach our students better than most other places in the world – if you believe the results of global standardized testing.
Alberta also has the highest tax-paid support for private schooling in Canada. The 25,000 students (about four per cent of the total school population) who attend Alberta's accredited private schools get 70 per cent of the per-pupil grant that public and Catholic school students get.
Only four other provinces give any public funding whatever to private schools (the Western provinces, plus Quebec), and they only provide 50 per cent of what a public system student would get. Ontario experimented with a tuition tax credit for private schooling, but dropped it in 2003.
Along with our charter schools and a widely-accepted home schooling option, Albertans have plenty of choice for providing an education for their children. We also have broad government support for private schools designed for children with disabilities. Plus, the outcomes of those choices are measured against broadly-accepted global standards.
Compared with the world, our system seems to be working for the vast majority of our children.
So why ask for as radical a change as the end to public funding for private schools?
Economic arguments should be ruled out; they are mostly too thin in the balance in any event.
Parents of children in private schools pay full school taxes, but only get 70 per cent of the benefit. Tough. People with no children at all pay full education taxes. It's the price of civilization.
Parents of children in private schools "subsidize" the public system through both their tuition fees and the fact that public education would cost more if there were no private schools and every kid got full funding in a more universal public system. Both ways, that's also the price of choice.
Not all kids in private schools are rich and spoiled. A friend of mine taught for a time in an academy in Calgary, where Christmas gifts for teachers included expensive wines and NHL game tickets. In Grade 1. But the majority of private schools are religion- or language-based, not income-based. Again, it's the price of choice.
We should be more concerned with children from families who cannot afford any choices at all. And for children in families where parents don't seem to care much at all. How many private schools need breakfast programs, clothing exchanges, or in-school laundries? We have all of these in Red Deer public schools.
Our best investment is to raise the bottom, not to pad the top. Therefore, my vote is to allow support for parents' choices – and Alberta already does that in spades – and use whatever financial efficiencies we have to give more help to those who need help the most.
No comments:
Post a Comment