An Open Letter on Open Government

Dear Premier Wynne,

We were cautiously optimistic to read your open letter to the people of Ontario announcing your Open Government initiative promising "engagement, accessibility and welcoming new ideas."  When your party formed the government ten years ago, the Society for Quality Education contacted the newly appointed Minister of Education to introduce our organization and offer insight and information on quality education practices in order to improve student achievement.   As an education stakeholder, we had always met with every Minister of Education from the David Peterson Liberal government, on through the Bob Rae NDP government, to the Mike Harris PC government--until the current Liberal government, your government,  took power.   At least when you were Minister of Education we actually got a very nice "thanks, but no thanks, the Minister is too busy" letter from your assistant,  the only response we ever received, and that a year after our first letter to you.

Can you blame us if we are not exactly confident that, via the Open Engagement Team and whatever inevitable website portal through one is supposed to give "feedback" (and to capture an email contact list, no doubt), our "engagement" will actually get to you? Our message may be one you won't want to hear, but heck, here goes. The following is from our November 2012 Open Letter to Ontario leaders:

It's not fair to taxpayers.
For the sake of future generations we need to deal with Ontario’s massive deficit.

And, of course, to cut the deficit, we will need to cut government waste, and that includes cutting the wasteful practices so prevalent in our education system.

The Drummond Report, for instance, recommended cancelling all-day kindergarten and removing caps on class sizes.

These are good ideas and should be implemented, but there are other areas where we can cut costs and at the same time improve student learning.

That’s why I am writing. My group, the Society for Quality Education, has identified several  ways in which our educational system can be made more cost efficient and better for students.

For instance, the following agencies should be eliminated or curtailed:

Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat (LNS)
This expense is worse than useless; the secretariat’s activities are ideologically biased and they only depress student achievement in Ontario.

Ontario College of Teachers (OCT)
A pawn of the teachers’ unions, this agency is almost totally worthless.

Ontario Curriculum Centre (OCC)
This agency oversees the Trillium List, a list of textbooks approved for use in Ontario classrooms. The Trillium List includes only textbooks that meet the ideological bias of its administrators: for example, there are no phonetic readers or sequential mathematics texts on the list. Ontario children would be far better off if the Trillium List (and the Ontario Curriculum Centre) did not exist.

Another option is to reduce the expense of Ontario’s 13 faculties of education, especially given that most if not all of them are indoctrinating their students in the same flawed ideology that already dominates the Ontario educational landscape.
If the government were to authorize alternative teacher training, including private institutions, it would not only save money but open up the possibility that better teacher training would become available to prospective teachers.

Lastly, there’s one way to save the government money and to improve parent satisfaction and to improve student achievement.

I am talking about tuition tax credits/school vouchers for independent schools.

At present, the Ontario government spends more than $12,000 per student on primary and elementary education. If the government chose to offer a tuition tax credit/school voucher of $6,000 to independent school students, it would save about $6,000 per student.
Plus, the potential exodus of students from publicly-funded schools would galvanize those schools into improving their service.

The bottom line is the Society for Quality Education believes huge savings can  be realized in the education portfolio – while at the same time improving student achievement.

In addition, make more detailed education data more accessible.  All education data from school board spending, graduation rates, staffing, class sizes, to EQAO results and more, by board and school, should be all in one place.  Our www.SunshineOnSchools.ca site is a good example of what such a resource could look like and should be accessable to parents and taxpayers in a timely, coherent fashion.  Sadly, our website hasn't been updated, because YOUR MINISTRY's INFORMATION IS NOT UPDATED ON YOUR OWN WEBSITE.  

And finally, if after ten years in government, you don't already know how to be open and accountable, then why are you asking now? 

We would be pleased to provide fuller information on request. Too bad it's ten years too late. 

Sincerely,

Society for Quality Education

P.S.  As you can see by the poor spelling by your own staff, you REALLY need to pay attention to SQE...

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