The School Funding Thread- Merged

[ex-Sup]

This issue is far from over.  It may well come up in the next federal election, as many educators are pushing for a federal department of education.  Canada is one of the only modern western countries that does not have a federal department of education (minus the enept INAC department of ed with no educators working there). 

Great...if provincial paper pushers weren't enough.
Curious to see the reaction from some provinces such as Quebec. This was one of the main reasons why education became a provincial responsibility in the BNA.

 

[a_majoor]

They can PUSH for the matter all they want but it will take an act of parliament plus the majority of provinces and territories to agree to it before a federal department of education can be created.

Brilliant; just ******* brilliant.  A solution in search of a problem. 

The Federal government already poaches on Provincial jurisdictions with its spending power. This is most apparent in health care and "higher" education (although one of the institutions of "higher" education in London eventually had to install a fence to prevent undergraduates from jaywalking on a four lane arterial road; higher education does not = common sense), where the Federal government can impose standards through the threat of withholding funds.

 

[medaid]

Yeah, I know what you mean, but in the "word" of law, it states that... we all know that not all laws are created equal  ;D

 

[1feral1]

Parents are not being charged to use public (secular) schools - and so they are free to choose any of them they can get their child to.

In Saskatchewan, property owners pay education tax as part of their council rates for their homes. Cost captured by the city. When I lived in Regina, and owned a home, I was paying (in 1994) over $600 each year to either the Regina Public schools, or the Regina Catholic schools. I had a choice. Renters of property paid nothing, and still do not. I was not even a parent myself.

All in Saskatchewan(and those passing thru) pay E&H (education and health) tax on almost everything they buy, thats how things are funded. PST, plus GST, double stabbed. Indians excluded of course.

So its not free education for your kids if you own a home in Saskatchewan, don't know how it works in other provinces.

Regards,


Wes

 

[warrickdll]

...
There is, however, no especially good argument for government run education....
...

Children who have richer parents will receive many advantages over their cohorts; why should we add education to this? There will be many points in a person’s life where merit and competition will be significant factors; but no child starts life having earned a better education over others.


On some level doling out an equal amount of money to parents, for each of their children, seems fair and balanced.

But I believe this will lead to many young Canadians attending nothing but Box-Store educational facilities; unable to simply add more money to the government cheque and buy themselves out of the situation.


By making government directly responsible for delivering education, and not hiding behind school boards, vouchers, or private schools, I believe that enough focus can be brought upon this so that we can have a public education system worthy of all our children.



And, though it might not be an especially good argument, I think that many Canadians do see an advantage in having young Canadians being educated with a diverse mix of their peers, as opposed to being overly stratified by economics, religion, or point of origin.

 

[DBA]

But I believe this will lead to many young Canadians attending nothing but Box-Store educational facilities; unable to simply add more money to the government cheque and buy themselves out of the situation.

This is the current system. There is per head funding for each student but it's only useable in two places in Ontario: the public school system or the separate school system. In addition everybody has to pay into the common fund those cheques are drawn from so those who want to buy themselves out of the situation are in effect being double billed. The double billing means less people have the means for educational choice.

The current system can still provide an education but it will allways drift towards being bureaucratic and inefficient. The very stakeholders who are against change also control the bureaucracy making it incredibly frustrating to get anything fixed. Just try to rationalize school infrastructure to current and projected student populations in the different geographic areas of a major city to see the type of fight I mean. School boards were given BILLIONS of dollars to do it and instead blew the money on current expenses and promptly cried for more.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

All of those who deride the present school system as "bloated and inefficient" need to spend more time involved in it.

I think I will now go into the various "Afghanistan" threads and tell all those who have been there what they need to do better next time..............no, wait,  I will rebuild NDHQ, ........hold it, better idea, I just watched Al Gore on TV so I'll...............

 

[a_majoor]

The alternative: (unable to find link)

May 20, 2004, 8:51 a.m.
Lessons in Liberty
Our children deserve freedom — most especially in their schools.

By Peter M. Flanigan
The following remarks were delivered by former investment banker and Manhattan Institute board member Peter M. Flanigan, honoree at the Manhattan Institute's recent Alexander Hamilton Award Dinner, held on April 29 at the Pierre Hotel in New York City.
* * *
Thank you, John, for that fulsome introduction, and thank you ladies and gentlemen — friends of the Manhattan Institute all — for being with us.
I could not help wondering, as I am sure you were wondering, how I came to be included in such illustrious company on this platform.

Bob Bartley was a very dear friend, but more than that, an intellectual mentor. For 25 years his Wall Street Journal editorial page instructed us on how to think about national issues, on how freedom is best defended both at home and abroad, and why free markets and private property are the moral expression of man's God-given economic creativity. Edith, Bob's wisdom and memory will always be cherished at the Manhattan Institute.

Bill Buckley is another very dear friend and mentor. How many of us "classical liberals" were stimulated, educated, and nourished as young conservatives at his National Review's knee? With me that stimulation continues at regular luncheons and sailing adventures from Nova Scotia to the Bahamas. Bill, may these adventures, intellectual and otherwise, long continue.

But the question remains — how did I get up here? Perhaps the reason is that I learned well from Bob Bartley and Bill Buckley about the need to fight for and to defend freedom. The battleground that I chose for myself in this fight for freedom is education.

Most of America's children are free, but tragically, many of its most needy and vulnerable children remain in educational bondage. Dick Gilder, the Hamilton Award recipient in 2002, does not exaggerate when he says that 150 years ago, we freed our African-American citizens physically; 40 years ago, with the Voting Rights Act, we freed them politically; and now, to give them the opportunity to fully participate in our society, we must free them educationally.

I would venture that virtually everyone in this room went to a school, either public or private, chosen by his parents. None of you was trapped in a dysfunctional school. Yet for our inner-city, largely minority, poor children, that is precisely the fate to which we as a society condemn them. They must go to schools that, in all too many cases, they know simply do not educate.

How can we change that? For twenty years, we have been trying to do it with money. In New York City, per capita, constant dollar spending has increased dramatically. Now we have a court-mandated program to increase the city's already enormous education budget from $12 billion to $18 billion, or about $18,000 per student — and that is for operations only — not capital expenditures. And yet with all that money, inner-city test scores and inner-city graduation rates have not budged.

What we have not tried is freedom. Freedom for poor parents to choose the schools that they think are best for their children. And freedom for those schools that are not chosen to close. Sy Fliegel, who is here, and who was the first staff member of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Educational Innovation (now the independent Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association), started the move to freedom when, twenty-five years ago, he allowed intra-district public-school choice in New York City's District 4. Sister Josephine and Father Victor and Tom Smith, sitting right here, run an elementary school in East Harlem; all of its pupils' parents have chosen to send their children there. Expenditure per child is less than one-third of what the city spends. But their students outperform the public-school students in the same school district, on the New York State tests, by an enormous margin. The children are the same, and their teachers are paid less. Could not — is not — the difference in outcome a reflection of one system being based on freedom, the freedom to chose, and the other system being based on government direction?

The Student Sponsor Partners, which Chris O'Malley, who is right here, runs, has had the same dramatic success with 4,000 poor, inner-city high-school kids who chose to move from high-spending public schools to inner-city private schools that spend one-half as much per student. And his success, measured against comparable public high-school students, has been validated by a study by the Rand Corporation. Again — freedom.

That same parental freedom to choose is what distinguishes the two excellent Beginning With Children charter schools started by Joe and Carol Reich, sitting over there. Their first school was born, after severe labor pains, as a regular public school. But when the public-school bureaucracy, regulations, and labor contracts made success almost impossible, they converted it to a public charter school. And they started their second school as a charter school from the beginning.

Mary Grace Eapen and Kristin Kearns — two exceptional young women who "cut their educational teeth" running the Student Sponsor Partners several years ago, and who are right there — having learned the magic of freedom have also founded charter schools. Kristin's Bronx Preparatory School, after only four years, is moving into a brand new building this fall. And Mary Grace has just chosen by lottery the first hundred students from 300 applicants for her Bronx School of Excellence. "Eternal vigilance being the price of freedom," they and we need to be eternally vigilant that the political forces do not encroach on the essential freedom of charter public schools. And be assured — those foxes are trying.

Our battle for educational freedom has moved us from New York City to New York State to the nation at large. With Manhattan Institute friends like Roger Hertog, Bruce Kovner, Tom Tisch, and others, we are engaged across the country through the School Choice Alliance, dedicated to the proposition that parents should be free to choose their children's schools.

So perhaps I am before you tonight because I listened well to Bob Bartley and Bill Buckley as they taught the blessings of freedom. And being a dutiful student, I have tried, with the help of so many in this room, to apply their teaching of freedom to education, particularly to the education of our most needy children. I have found that in this endeavor, as in all endeavors, freedom works. So I thank you for this honor, and hope all of you will join with us in this battle for educational freedom.

On the one hand, idiological demands that children be forced into government "public schools", on the other, repeated and constant evidence that allowing parental choice provides better results. Idiological purity is invoked in order to achieve certain "results", although looking at these threads and listening to the last election campaign it is clear that actually educating children is not one of the results demanded (protecting budgets being forst and foremost).

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Again, a waste of our bandwidth article,.................comparing how one can run schools on an island with almost a third of Canada's total population would be like comparing why the Toronto subway doesn't go all around the city like New York's.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

I. Renters of property paid nothing, and still do not.

Umm, yes they do..............unless the person owning the rented building is a very bad [or very generous] business person.

 

[Kirkhill]

Umm, yes they do..............unless the person owning the rented building is a very bad [or very generous] business person.

Touche Bruce ;D

 

[GAP]

In Saskatchewan, property owners pay education tax as part of their council rates for their homes. Cost captured by the city. When I lived in Regina, and owned a home, I was paying (in 1994) over $600 each year to either the Regina Public schools, or the Regina Catholic schools. I had a choice. Renters of property paid nothing, and still do not. I was not even a parent myself.

All in Saskatchewan(and those passing thru) pay E&H (education and health) tax on almost everything they buy, thats how things are funded. PST, plus GST, double stabbed. Indians excluded of course.

So its not free education for your kids if you own a home in Saskatchewan, don't know how it works in other provinces.

Regards,
Wes

Renters DO pay education taxes via the landlord incorporating the property/education tax charges into the rent. They do not pay them directly like homeowners, but also are not eligible for tax rebates that homeowners are, unless the landlord lowers the rent (right!!)

 

[Kirkhill]

Children who have richer parents will receive many advantages over their cohorts; why should we add education to this? There will be many points in a person’s life where merit and competition will be significant factors; but no child starts life having earned a better education over others.


On some level doling out an equal amount of money to parents, for each of their children, seems fair and balanced.

But I believe this will lead to many young Canadians attending nothing but Box-Store educational facilities; unable to simply add more money to the government cheque and buy themselves out of the situation.


By making government directly responsible for delivering education, and not hiding behind school boards, vouchers, or private schools, I believe that enough focus can be brought upon this so that we can have a public education system worthy of all our children.



And, though it might not be an especially good argument, I think that many Canadians do see an advantage in having young Canadians being educated with a diverse mix of their peers, as opposed to being overly stratified by economics, religion, or point of origin.

Iterator,  have you considered fully why the English call their Private Schools "Public Schools" while their Public Schools are "State Schools"?

At bottom it is because money, like that other great bete-noire of the left the Colt .45 (and before it the longbow - digressing again  :-[ ) was the great leveller.  With money everybody could buy themselves an education.  They were not dependent on a hierarchy that hid behind the veil of "merit" to determine who it was safe to entrust with knowledge, and how much knowledge they could be entrusted with, and what knowledge should be released to the public.

Folks talk about access.  Quebec and Ireland, and many other places denied their kids, and their adults, unfettered access to knowledge up until the Taschereau Commission in the early '60s.  The Church limited access and consequently bolstered the power structure.  It was all done by well-meaning individuals with the best of intentions - wishing to maintain societal peace and harmony.  But it didn't work.  It was a prescription for continuous, intermittent, violent eruptions of rebellion as dissatisfaction built to the point that the lid blew off.  The Church controlled the schools, the universities, the kids and the books.

In Scotland "open" lectures at University became the norm in the 18th century.  Instead of going to the movies or the theaters local people, common people, would go to lectures and throw a donation in the collection box on the way out.  The "lecturers" were used to this system because most of them were Presbyterian ministers, many of them without parishes.   The reason they were without parishes was their contracts were not renewed by the local congregations - often because they failed to deliver suitable "Ernest Ainsley" type fire and brimstone sermons on Sunday.  They learned the value of being entertainers.  And it is easier to "please a crowd" if your subject matter is interesting or useful.

Likewise "Public" Libraries sprang from the same source.  A down on his luck poet couldn't get published (Allan Ramsay) so he tried his luck self-publishing his work.  That didn't work either.  But he discovered a niche with a Blockbuster Video type of business: renting books for a week.  The idea caught on just like Blockbusters did and soon dirt poor coal-miners in Lanark and Ayr were organizing their own "subscription" libraries.

Now all information was available to everybody. Because the price was set at what the market would  bear.

Just like Blockbusters.  I don't know many folks that can't afford to spend a few dollars a week on entertainment at that establishment.   And before you go undervaluing the role of entertainment most Americans know what they know of American history from watching John Wayne movies.  Most Canadians know what they know about the environment from watching David Suzuki's "The Nature of Things" and Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth".  Politics are gleaned from Mockumentaries prepared by an ugly, fat f**k.  And Victorians learned what they knew about morality and reform from Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Robert Burns and Thomas Hardy.

The Internet has merely improved the accessibility to information.

Those that wish to control information moved to plan B.  Since they could no longer justify "merit" based access, or at least prevent general access, they moved to testing, accreditation and pricing folks out of the market.  Do you think that James Watt had an Engineering Degree?  No his "accreditation" was that he had "studied" at Glasgow but more importantly that his ideas worked more often than the failed.  The market place "accredited" him.

Now that we have successfully managed to control access by raising the price of information, and the cost of a ticket to the Guild, the call goes out to make access more universal by reverting to "merit".  And how is "merit" to be judged? By "Judges".  Superior mortals that understand these things, things that are beyond the ken of us lesser mortals.

The good news is that the Internet has already cut the feet from that argument.  And as much as China and Russia and Burma are fighting it, I believe the genie is well and truly out of the bottle.

Now, for peace of mind I still want a reliably "accredited" surgeon slicing me open.  But I am not sure that a single source "accreditor", like the CMA or the various Bars (creatures of the original "merit" based Clerical system - they are steeped in the culture of controlled access) is necessarily the best way to go. 

Control panels, and electrical equipment, kill people as surely as a poorly wielded surgeon's scalpel.  But they aren't licensed by one federal bureaucracy.  They are tested by private firms like Underwriter's Laboratories or Canadian Standards Association. Likewise ships are "licensed" by Lloyd's of London or Det Norske Veritas - again private agencies.  These companies are hired to test outcomes, not process.  They don't care if the engineer is accredited or not.  They only care that the panel meets all relevant standards, both their own and any relevant government imposed regulations.  Once they have done that the panel may still explode, but if it does it will be because somebody, accredited or not, has found a new way to screw up within the existing rules.  The purchaser of the ship or panel gets to choose which accreditor he or she prefers.  If the accreditor has a good track-record, ie few catastrophic failures, then the market will tend to favour that accreditor.  Likewise for educational accreditation.  Have you considered the difference between a University where one attends lectures or one "reads" a subject?  One requires that you show up for classes to hear the "Truth" propounded from the pulpit.  The other requires that you embark on a course of reading, draw conclusions and then defend your conclusions. 

The educational equivalent, I guess, would be the LSAT type tests.  Individually purchased from a private administrator and accepted as a reasonable assessment by the merit based law community - who then charge a fortune to become a member of their club.

But the knowledge, the information that education is supposed to supply, that is increasingly available outside of a formal, institutional environment.

I would go further than Edward and state that real "education" ends when individuals are capable of discovering, evaluating and applying information themselves.  And I don't think that takes 12 years to accomplish that - much less 16, 18 or 20.

Someplace between Kindergarten and Grade 12 kids learn to read competently and understand what is written.   Beyond that they need to be taught "logic" - good old fashioned Aristotelian logic.  A schema for organizing your thoughts and available data.

From then on what passes for education can be characterized as:

a) feeding kids "The Truth"
b) teaching them how to become "Good Citizens"
c) keeping them off the labour market as we already have more people than jobs available
d) supplying jobs for teachers, administrators and janitors (see point c).

If information transfer is institutionalized it can be controlled.  Societies that control information transfer have not fared well because, if the Great Leader, is a moron then the whole society goes over the cliff with him when he screws up.

Privately financed access to information may be a messy solution but, like democracy, it is better than all the alternatives.

Besides which is more affordable?  $40,000 for a Law Degree via a Law School?  Or the license fee associated with just writing an accreditation exam - like getting your steam ticket.?

 

[a_majoor]

Again, a waste of our bandwidth article,.................comparing how one can run schools on an island with almost a third of Canada's total population would be like comparing why the Toronto subway doesn't go all around the city like New York's.

This was to demonstrate there are different means of achieving the end (educated children). I don't have anything handy about Alberta's experiments with parental charter schools, but many of the solutions tried in Alberta are similar enough to what was used in NYC to make this a valid comparison. Outcomes are similar too.

You could examine why the TTC does not run a subway around the city. I suspect the answer would also be perverse incentives to fail. After all, the TTC wants you tax dollars just as badly as the Ministry of Education.......

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

...the answer is quite simple, with enough clients things are possible, without enough clients, they are not.

Those who live in the metropolition areas will be served a choice of whatever school type they wish simply by numbers. Those who do not live in those areas will not have those choices. I guess living in, say London, makes one more important than one who might live in a place like Merrickville?

 

[warrickdll]

This is the current system. There is per head funding for each student but it's only useable in two places in Ontario: the public school system or the separate school system. In addition everybody has to pay into the common fund those cheques are drawn from so those who want to buy themselves out of the situation are in effect being double billed. The double billing means less people have the means for educational choice.
...

The idea that there is a specific amount of money due to parents for their children is a myth, propaganda, poor logic, and bad math.

Why should Joe Gazillionaire get to drop off his Precious at Madame Truffle’s School of Short-pants and Beanies, and then get a cheque from the government to go buy matching plasmas for his yacht?

How does it make sense to pay someone to not use a service they were never going to use in the first place?

After all: Susie Spinster doesn’t receive a manila envelope every year containing a wad a cash and a note stating “thanks for not clogging our schools”; neither do parents whose children are too young (or too old) for school.

Perhaps single Corporal “no children that I know of” Bloggins should be voicing his desire for a turn at the money-for-nothing trough.

Governments in Canada that fund private schools cost more – because, even when public services are being reduced, they end up creating a complex system of redistributing the wealth amongst the wealthy.

 

[UberCree]

Charter schools are something we should support in Canada.  Start them and measure their effectiveness.


Here's a delema for you if you believe in 'schools of choice' or vouchers.

I am the director of education for a band that has 1050 K - 12 students.  Our spending per pupil is roughly $6,400 (provincial average is $8,950 and local public is ~$10,000).  We have no tax base, an overcrowded building, and can't pay our teachers enough to stop losing them to the nearest public school which pays between 8 - 12 k more per position.  I dare not say this but the reality is that our educational outcomes suffer as a result of our funding levels. 
If a band member wants to send their child to school off reserve, to support them we have to pay the public school directly between $7,000 - $10,000.  We lose a significant amount of money for every child we send off reserve, yet many parents know their kids will get a better education off reserve.  So we say no, we can't afford it.
Vouchers, schools of choice and parental rights of choice are all excellent ideas, I wholeheartedly agree with them ... IF the schools of choice are supported equally.
Solve this problem for me and I'll buy you the first three rounds. 

 

[a_majoor]

...the answer is quite simple, with enough clients things are possible, without enough clients, they are not.

Those who live in the metropolition areas will be served a choice of whatever school type they wish simply by numbers. Those who do not live in those areas will not have those choices. I guess living in, say London, makes one more important than one who might live in a place like Merrickville?

While we in London do tend to have a higher opinion of ourselves ( ), the solution is a mix of funding methodologies as mentioned:

Broadly, schools should be privately run. They should aim to serve customers (trades, colleges, universities, etc). They should aim to make a profit by ‘graduating’ a many students as possible – and the government should pay them based on a mix of enrolment and performance.

Clearly there will have to be exceptions. Schools in rural and remote areas will not able to reap the undoubted benefits of an open, competitive market. They will have to be funded almost without regard to performance – which (lack of incentive to do well) is one of the many problems with public education today.

For UberCree, the universal voucher system would provide a voucher of (say) $7000 for each child, so the parents can shop around for a school that meets their needs, band together to found a charter school or use the money to home school. If your band is in a rural or isolated region, then some sort of suppliment will be needed. (see above).

 

[Brad Sallows]

>Solve this problem for me and I'll buy you the first three rounds.

1) If there is no tax base, from where is the current funding obtained?

2) There may be more to teacher retention than the wage gap (benefits? attitude of students? parental support? available resources?), but a $12K delta is about $500 per student in a class of 24.

3) What other privileges/benefits are in the band's power to grant to teachers as a condition of employment?

If money is truly a barrier, non-monetary benefits must be explored.  Among the reasons private schools can retain teachers while paying them less is that the students are somewhat better behaved and motivated than the general public school population.  I also suspect that more of the parents are directly involved and supportive.  If there are too many disruptive students and indifferent (to their children's behaviour) parents, your options are severely limited.

If there truly is no tax base, then the community is essentially in the same situation as every company ghost town I've ever seen, but for the grace of federal funding.  Reassign funding priorities.

 

[TCBF]

... I guess living in, say London, makes one more important than one who might live in a place like Merrickville?

Or Dryden.  Or Kapuskasing.