John Hilton-O’Brien is the Executive Director of Parents for Choice in Education.I guess that it was bound to happen.There are around 48,000 students in independent schools. That means there are close to 2,000 teachers in them — none of whom are forced to join the Alberta Teachers’ Association. To the ATA — which charges $1422 in union dues — that is close to $3 million in foregone revenue. So, no surprise: someone from the ATA Board of Directors has launched a petition for a referendum to defund independent schools. The naked self-interest on display is breathtaking — but there is more to this story. The campaign relies on misinformation — and it is a dog whistle for something far darker..EISEN / Hill: Bad ‘policy solutions’ would make BC’s fiscal disaster even worse.Demands to eliminate funding for Alberta’s independent schools are old. The age of the arguments is no indicator of quality. As economist Bruce Wilkinson noted in a 1994 book, the arguments are debunked thoroughly every time. But immediately after, self-proclaimed “public education advocates,” who always turn out to have a financial stake in the matter, pretend that their arguments are sound. His case in point? His correspondents in the very book he was writing in didn’t even try to respond to the economic analysis that proved them wrong.In 2019, Parents for Choice in Education commissioned a report entitled “How educational choice saved Alberta taxpayers $1.9 Billion and supports student success.” It concluded that independent education actually subsidizes public education. The money saved by underfunding the independent schools goes straight into the public schools. Remove those independent schools, and you strip hundreds of millions of dollars out of the public system..That report also busted some of the myths about independent schools that the union is still repeating.First, independent schools get better results — by any measure. Anti-choice proponents try to claim that this is because the schools “cream” the best students from the public system. While it is true that admission to elite schools is competitive, this is also true of special programs in the public system, such as International Baccalaureate streams. More importantly, the argument does not explain the better results achieved by independent schools in general. Studies done of both elite and non-elite independent schools show that the students in the non-elite schools are also doing vastly better than the public schools. Independent schools simply offer a better educational option than the public system.Secondly, the ATA claims that funding for independent schools is simply giving a subsidy to “the rich.” The truth? Only about 1-in-6 private schools cater to “elites.” The overwhelming majority — 83% of them — cater to families whose average income is below the provincial average. The main effect of independent schools is to improve educational access to lower and middle income families. These aren’t elite schools: they are for the working class. .QUESNEL: From the fury of the useful idiots deliver us, O Lord.Thirdly, independent schools honour student diversity in a way that the public system simply doesn’t. Part of the reason that they get better results is that the learning environments vary between schools. If a child is not thriving in one environment, you can change environments. Public systems — in spite of excellent special programs — are standardized. They simply can’t adapt to student needs as quickly or radically as independent schools do.Beyond that report, we should observe that there is nothing “private” about Alberta’s independent schools. The government dictates the curriculum. They are subject to regular inspections which the “public” system does not undergo. And as Section 35.1 of the Education Act makes clear, the government can even tell a private school what clubs it can have. Government control is absolute..Underneath the false claims and myths of the public-school lobby, however, lurks something far more sinister.According to a recent Cardus study, 105 of Alberta’s 180 independent schools are religious. They are generally minority religions – various Christian denominations, Sikh, Jewish, and Islamic. If we remove funding for independent schools, we are removing funding for them..HANNAFORD: Your body is not state property.Now, foes of choice may claim that these can simply be programs within the aggressively secular public system. But that amounts to claiming the right to decide what can and cannot be taught as part of someone else’s faith. It’s not just patronizing — it’s an attack on minority religions.We’ve seen such attacks before. In 1875, American Senator James Blaine tried to introduce a Constitutional amendment to forbid money from going to sectarian schools. He intended it to eliminate educational rights for minority religions — specifically Catholics. While he failed federally, 38 states adopted their own state-level Blaine Amendments. .In fact, the ATA’s ballot measure is a Blaine Amendment. Same language. Same purpose. Same effect.In the US, however, Blaine Amendments have been dying. Not just in the court of popular opinion, either: one by one, the courts have struck down Blaine Amendments on human rights grounds. And the fact is that we have signed international agreements to the effect that people have a right to their independent schools — and they are entitled to funding for them. While the ATA’s move may be morally and intellectually bankrupt, it is flush with cash. In 2022, they announced that they had diverted $16 million from their “Special Emergency Fund” (the strike fund) into a “Defence and Advocacy Fund,” intended to be used for political advocacy. Nobody opposing them has comparable resources. Independent schools need to treat this as the existential threat it is. .BARCLAY: The open attack of ‘The Conservative’ in America.However, the petition’s very attack on religious freedom is the key to defense. Independent schools can potentially certify a class-action lawsuit, alleging religious discrimination for the fact that they have not received equal funding to begin with. That knocks the petition off the table, and the province can negotiate a settlement that protects the rights of independent schools forever.And if their timing is right, the ATA’s management may have plundered the membership’s strike fund in vain.John Hilton-O’Brien is the Executive Director of Parents for Choice in Education, www.parentchoice.ca.
