Alternative School Choices - Making Things Better

For a select few anyway...

This article by Diane Peters about alternative schools in the weekend National Post has twigged some interesting discussion over at Crux-Of-The Matter.

To suggest that having alternative schools doesn't improve things, as suggested by some quoted in the NP article, flies in the face of just about every study on school choice. 

Thank you Sandy, for raising the topic and the hypocrisy elephant in the room that School For Thought reported on in this earlier post.

Dr. Howard Fuller, whose visit SQE sponsored to Toronto last year, said the issue is not choice itself, it is who has it.  His comments echo those of former UK education minister Walden.  This from Fuller's speech to the Economic Club of Toronto which can be viewed here:

"...Those of us with money have the capacity to choose, and the great hypocrisy that operates are those individuals who would never put their own children in certain schools denying poor parents the capacity to do it. We have teachers who teach in schools they would never put their own children in, demanding that other people's children stay there. I find that to be hypocritical. We've got politicians running around talking about how important the public school structure is and then you ask them, ‘Well, where do your children go to school?'

I actually happen to be a strong supporter of public schools, but I'm also a strong supporter of giving people a choice so that they can determine whether a public school or private school will be best for their children...It is ludicrous for us not to provide a way for kids to go to schools that work because at the end of the day a democracy can't sustain itself unless it has an educated populace.

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