SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

A Call for Choice

Kate Tennier has a great editorial in today’s National Post. Bravo!

While SQE is generally optimistic about the choices being offered, we agree with Tennier’s caution that unless choice mechanisms reach “tipping point” levels, they will not be the incentive that becomes the “tide to make all boats rise.”  Our critics know this all too well.  Tennier notes:

        “The board’s education director, Chris Spence, has stated that one reason for this initiative is to stem the flow of students from the public to the private system. It is not surprising then that I find myself on my more cynical days imagining a statistician beavering away at board headquarters doing the math as to just how much choice they need to offer to retain the students—and their funding—who would otherwise go to private schools.
         “And it is this very calculation, the one that says ‘choice but not too much’ that creates the problem. ‘Calculated choice’ is a well-known tactic of monopolistic systems to satiate the demands—and thereby quell the voices—of the empowered few who would otherwise demand much-needed structural change.”

We were both on Jerry Agar’s CFRB Newstalk 1010 show this morning discussing the choice issue.

So readers, is this the Toronto District School Board merely tossing a bone to a famished dog or is it the start of a tide of change?