Eventually, the Alberta teachers strike will be settled and some concessions will be made. One concession that must not be on the table is the reduction or elimination of school choice. In fact, the UCP government should already be working on expanding education options to reduce the Alberta Teachers’ Union’s ability to hold students as hostages as they are today.Alberta’s teachers turned down an offer that would have made them among the highest-compensated teachers in Canada, along with a commitment to hire 3,000 more teachers and 1,500 educational assistants. Since then, the true target of the Teachers’ Union has emerged: school choice. While union representatives have been uttering the stock lines about class sizes and complexity, their prime target has been complaining about private and charter schools. It’s there where the true nature of this strike emerges. It’s a power grab by a union that wants a monopoly on education provision..OLDCORN: Eby can’t veto a nation-building pipeline.The union couldn’t care less about the needs of the children and it shows. They pretend to care about class sizes yet forget to acknowledge that alternative education options currently take almost 75,000 students out of public-school classrooms when homeschooling is taken into consideration. If the options were taken away as the union would prefer, how would we accommodate the sudden influx of students? Not only that, how would we pay for it? .Despite the claims of the Teachers’ Union, kids in private schools and who are homeschooled save taxpayers money. Children in private schools only receive 70% of the funding a public-school student gets and home-schooled children get less than 10% of the funding. Students in charter schools cost no more than those in public schools. If those options are taken away from parents and students, the public system will have to make up the shortfall, which would lead to a lower per-student ratio of funding overall..HILTON-O’BRIEN: Big money in little politics.The union constantly brings up the challenges of what they call classroom complexity. There is truth to this claim, but the proposed solution is wrong. Due to over a decade of mass immigration policies, the number of students speaking English as a second language has increased.Educational trends have increasingly put more children with special needs into regular classrooms as well, which makes for a more challenging learning environment for everybody. Charter and separate schools provide specialized environments where students can receive instruction tailored to their needs. The union proposal is to keep the children crammed into standardized classrooms rather than allow them to attend schools with instructional environments adjusted for them. .Teachers recognize the unique needs of children in learning environments and how not all of them respond well to conventional learning methods. Teachers’ unions claim this is why they oppose standardized testing of students so vociferously. When efforts are made to provide specialized charter or private schools offering instructional environments tailored to the diverse needs, however, the unions fight the efforts tooth and nail. The hypocrisy is galling.Increased school choice offers more educational spaces that can accommodate diverse educational needs, and it saves the entire system money. Those spaces don’t create more union positions, however, thus the unions will oppose choice in education whenever possible. They don’t care about how it harms the outcomes for children..BERNARDO: Canada's firearms fiasco: Political and bureaucratic blinders vs truth.Not only should the Smith government stand firm against the teachers strike, but it should make it clear it is using this time to develop even more choice in education. Underutilized inner-city schools should be identified and converted into charter schools. The creation of more private schools should be encouraged, and parents should be reminded that their children won’t lose educational time due to strikes in those institutions.The government must not just hold its ground against organized labour trying to take full control of the education system. It must start fighting back. With choice for both teachers and students being on the table, everybody wins. Except for self-serving unions.
