The Case For School Choice: Implications for Canada

[Previous] [Contents] [Next]

School-choice policies in the United States, New Zealand, Denmark and Sweden offer valuable lessons for the reform of education policy. They demonstrate the role competitive markets and parental choice play in the improvement both of student achievement and of parental satisfaction with the education system. These countries have also demonstrated that the instruments of systemic education reform--charter schools, public vouchers, private vouchers, and tax incentives--carry their own risks and their own rewards.

Of the four policy initiatives, charter-school legislation would almost certainly be the easiest reform to enact. The success of Canada's first charter schools in Alberta, documented by a recent study (Bosetti 1998), should increase Canadians' interest in, and comfort with, this educational innovation. Charter schools broaden the conception of "public" education little but create an element of competition, accountability, and choice within the government's system. Charter schools have been dubbed America's research and development centers for education. In both the United States and New Zealand, they have won the approval of many teachers who had once resisted this educational reform. Students at c harter schools in both countries are making greater academic progress than their peers21 because charter schools are more innovative, focused, energetic, and responsive to their students' needs. There is every reason to believe that Canadian students would also benefit from this policy innovation.

Experience with charter schools in the United States and New Zealand has proven that, if they are to be successful, charter schools must be autonomous: free to select their staff, students, and educational profile as they see fit. If they are not given this autonomy, few, if any, charter schools are likely to open and those that do will vary little from the schools already under government control. Weak charter legislation is, in fact, the most significant risk associated with charter schools; charter legislation may add another administrative fiefdom to the government education bureaucracy but fail to provide the quantity and quality of choice that would make schools competitive.

Alternatively, private vouchers could pave the way for education reform by demonstrating the need for school choice. They require no change in the common understanding of "public education" and no controversial action by government. A program based upon private vouchers would cast light on what is missing in government education--parents' right to seek the best possible education for their children. The private voucher programs established in the United States have demonstrated both the benefits of school choice for students and the demand for school choice from parents. Students selected randomly to participate in New York's private School Choice Scholarship Program out-performed their peers in both reading and mathematics after only a year in their new school. Other private voucher programs around the country have demonstrated equally impressive results. The new Children's Scholarship Fund, which is distributing 40,000 vouchers totaling US$170 million, was deluged with 1,250,000 applications in its first year of operation. This unforeseen demand made news headlines and underscored the need for public policy to defend parental choice of schools. A private voucher program could be established if only a private foundation, corporation, or grass-roots education-reform group took the initiative. Although the private sector is unlikely to commit enough resources to provide wide-spread school choice to Canadian children, a private voucher movement could prepare the way for broad-scale reform of public education, as it appears to be doing in the United States. Private vouchers might then lead to public vouchers or education tax credits.

Public vouchers, if administered liberally, have the potential to create a dynamic educational marketplace where educators are encouraged to innovate, to imitate successful practices, and to respond to the needs of their students. However, they also have the potential to destroy the independent school sector and contribute to greater centralized control of the education system--exactly the opposite of what they are designed to accomplish. Controversy is inevitable when public dollars fund private choices that are unpopular with the majority. Should parents be allowed to apply tax dollars to education at a selective school or a profit-making educational institution? The majority might disapprove of these choices in theory but, in practice, if such schools were affordable and offered better education than municipal schools did, many would choose them and so encourage the municipal schools to improve.

Evidence suggests that the majority of children benefit either directly or indirectly from educational vouchers. Preliminary evidence from the United States indicates that the children who remain in government schools benefit as well as those whose parents use the vouchers. The Danes, who provide a public voucher for up to 85 percent of the cost of independent education, have encouraged school diversity and parental involvement and, perhaps because parents must contribute to the cost of independent education, they have kept control away from the public authorities. In Sweden, public vouchers have generated educational diversity and innovation but also a new generation of regulation to impede the autonomy of the independent school sector. Public funding has led to a loss of independence for all Swedish independent schools. Elected officials, if given the power, can seldom resist the temptation to make decisions that are better made by those primarily affected by them: parents and educators. Public voucher movements in New Zealand and the United States are also struggling with the same question: how much regulation is enough?

To avoid this question but maintain choice we must keep school funding out of the hands of public administrators. Tax incentives would increase the dollars available for education but keep the decisions in private hands. They could be designed to reduce the financial barrier to independent education for middle-income families (as has been done in Minnesota). They could be targeted specifically at low-income Canadians (as in Arizona). They could be made income-neutral as the NCPA has proposed. Only a significant tax credit for education would be likely to bring about widespread school choice and a significant tax incentive is unlikely without demonstrated public demand. A private voucher program might help to focus attention both on an unvoiced demand for school choice and on its well-documented benefits.

In Canada, school choice has yet to become the civil rights movement it is quickly becoming in the United States. Public frustration with the education system has been building for a generation in Canada (Guppy and Davies 1997), but Canadian public opinion has yet to coalesce on a specific method of reform. The danger is that special-interest groups in the education field will obfuscate the need for systemic decentralization and that the provincial education systems will continue to cost taxpayers more while providing students, their families, their future employers and communities with less than they need and want. If the international evidence is ignored, it seems probable that Canadian education will continue to yield less and cost more, not merely in terms of the educational dollars spent but also, more importantly, in terms of the years students will waste.

Education, like medicine, must be tested scientifically, applied sympathetically and held rigorously to account. The children must come first, not the system, the employees of the system, or a deficient conception of "public education." Only then will the Canadian public have a responsive, dynamic, accountable, and efficient system of schooling.

[Previous] [Contents] [Next]

info@fraserinstitute.ca You can contact us at the above email address for any comments or information requests. Please report any dead links or technical problems.

If you know someone who would be interested in this web page, please enter their email address below, and we will forward this URL to them: Email Address:

Last Modified: Monday, September 20, 1999.