Matthew Lau is a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy.At its March 16 annual general meeting, the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) approved a motion to support the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement against Israel. It is a radical movement. “The selective targeting of Israel” for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions, Canada’s federal government said in a signed memorandum in January 2015, “reflects the new face of anti-Semitism.”Whether or not the BCTF and its support for BDS is actually anti-Semitic or simply just radical politics, it clearly has nothing to do with actually educating students. A reasonable person might ask whether BC teachers have better things to focus their energy on, such as, for example, trying to reverse the appalling decline in the province’s test scores.According to the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures the performance of 15-year-old students worldwide, BC math scores plummeted from 538 in 2003 to 496 in 2022 (the latest year of available data), with most of the decline coming after 2015. For context, the OECD equates 20 points with about one year of learning, which means Grade 10 math students have fallen by approximately two grade levels since 2003. Pretty appalling.The BCTF’s decision to target Israel comes only weeks after the Elementary Teachers Federation (ETFO) of Ontario hired an anti-Zionist group called Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) to deliver anti-Semitism training to its executive. However, as a letter from Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) to the Ontario education minister argues, IJV is a “fringe” organization and that it and other anti-Zionist organizations “dispute Israel’s very right to exist, a view rejected by the majority of the Jewish community.” (Surveys of Canadian Jews, and that IJV supported “All Out for Gaza” protests a week after the October 7 terrorist attacks, support CIJA’s view)..In addition to its anti-Israel views, the ETFO is similar to the BCTF in delivering unencouraging math test scores. According to the latest results from the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), a provincial agency, only 51% of Grade Six students reach provincial standards in math, and that’s likely an overestimate since the calculation excludes students who did not “fully participate” in the assessments.Notably, Ontario’s Grade Six math standards, which half of students do not meet, are shockingly low. One EQAO test question asks: if a jar contains 200 marbles and five percent of the marbles are blue, how many marbles are blue? The multiple choices are 5, 10, 20, or 25 marbles. A competent Grade Three student — never mind Grade Six — should know five percent of 200 is ten. But even among Ontario’s Grade Six students whose EQAO math test scores were “Level 3” (equivalent to letter grade B, which is classified as meeting standards), only 71% answered this question correctly.So what do teacher unions taking radical anti-Israel positions have to do with awful math test scores? Probably not much. Delivering ineffective or worsening math instruction does not make someone anti-Semitic, and supporting BDS does not make teachers worse at teaching math — although it certainly doesn’t help, either.The real point is that government-run school systems staffed by radical unions are a disaster for families who prioritize good education free from radical politics, which underscores the value of school choice..Indeed, according to researchers from Simon Fraser University in BC, the “average private school is more effective than the average public school in both reading and numeracy.” A Fraser Institute study in 2018 found that only eight percent of the province’s private schools are “elite” preparatory schools, and even excluding these elite schools, private school students — whose family income was comparable to that of public school students — materially outperformed their public school counterparts on academic tests.In addition to wanting stronger academic outcomes and radical politics removed from education, there are other reasons many parents prefer independent schools. A survey by Cardus in 2019 found the five most cited reasons by Ontario parents for choosing an independent school were: 1) safety, 2) a supportive environment, 3) emphasis on character development, 4) trustworthy curriculum, and 5) outstanding teachers. A literature review of school choice policies in the United States covering around 200 studies since the late 1990s finds that school choice positively impacts parent satisfaction, academic achievement, educational attainment, and school safety.Given the radical politics of teacher unions, solid evidence, and numerous examples of their radical politics making their way into classrooms (both in Ontario and BC), and deteriorating educational quality, the case for school choice has never been stronger.Matthew Lau is a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy.
