September 2001
Feudalism in our School Districts
by Peter Cowley
In its throne speech delivered this past April, the Ontario government signaled its intention to outlaw restrictive school district policies whereby students registering in the district are assigned, without consultation, to a particular school. Students are placed in the school whose geographical catchment area (or school enrollment area as it is sometimes referred to) includes the student's primary residential address. Proposed legislation was mentioned that would "allow parents more choice to enroll their children in any available school within their system."
In a July speech, British Columbia's new minister of education, Christy Clark, made it clear that she also believes parents should have the right to choose the public school that they believe will be best for their child.1 When questioned about catchment area policies,2 Minister Clark stated that since they inhibit parents' ability to choose, they are incompatible with the government's position on the issue of choice in the public system.
To both of these position statements: "Bravo!" However, being a cautiously optimistic Canadian, I am waiting for more specific details that will tell us just how each administration proposes to eliminate this deeply entrenched aspect of the educational status quo.
For many people, restrictive catchment area policies in the public school system should be eliminated simply because, as both ministries agree, they interfere with parents' ability to choose the school that they believe will best suit their children's needs. For these folks, no further justification is needed for summarily dumping such policies.
But there are other reasons why hesitant or unwilling school districts should be strongly encouraged to abandon this destructive example of bureaucratic coercion. Indeed, it can be convincingly argued that the objectives apparently served by the policy can be more fully and quickly achieved by its elimination.
What prompted the districts to adopt and maintain restrictive catchment area enrollment policies? For many decades, public school districts across the country have routinely mandated which single, public school each student was entitled to attend. The establishment of policies such as this is most often justified on one or both of the two grounds cited in the policy currently in force in British Columbia's Greater Victoria School District.
POLICY 5117: SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AREAS
To encourage the sense of community inherent in neighbourhood schools and to ensure the efficient use of school personnel resources and facilities, the Board shall establish school attendance areas. The Board may place limitations on a school's enrolment in order to facilitate efficient use of school personnel, resources and facilities.
A description of attendance areas and any proposals for change shall be brought to the Board for approval by the Superintendent of Schools in December of any school year.
Any request for a student to attend a school outside the neighborhood school's attendance area will be considered in accordance with district regulations.
The Board may, if necessary, assign or reassign students to specific schools and/or educational programs.
Greater Victoria School District, Adopted: July 1962 (titled "School Attendance Areas"),
Revised: March 1971, Various
revisions Revised: March 1991,
Revised: February 22, 1999. (School District #61, 2001)
The Greater Victoria School District's determination to encourage a sense of community in neighborhood schools by forcing students to attend their designated school seems to be wrong-headed. If parents are allowed to choose their children's schools, it is likely that they will consider a variety of school characteristics, including historical levels of general academic achievement, teaching methods employed, non-academic programs, provision of programmes for children with special needs, extra-curricular activities offered, assessment techniques, student safety, the school environment, and a host of other characteristics—among which may be included the sense of community. But surely it is for each family to decide what mix of characteristics represents the best alternative for the child. When parents are able to choose their children's schools, they will decide for themselves the relative value of a sense of community, and will discover which school has it and which does not. Indeed, one effective way to foster a sense of community at any school is to enable families to be associated with the school of their own free will rather than to force them to enroll their children in a school not of their own choosing.
The related themes of the reservation of space for neighborhood residents and the efficient use of the school district's buildings and staff are common elements of catchment area policies in districts everywhere. But couldn't the objectives addressed by such policies be met while, at the same time, ensuring that parents have unlimited choice of schools?
Concerns about efficient use of school district resources and the continuing ability of the district to guarantee each child a place at the school within his or her catchment area may well mask what many school administrators and teachers mistakenly believe would be a far more sinister consequence should catchment areas be eliminated. Without compulsion, would not the parents whose students are enrolled in schools that are perceived to be of lower quality grab up their children and flee to schools perceived to be of higher quality? The resulting drain on the former, both in loss of enrollment and in the quality of the school's remaining students and parents would, it is suggested, lead to near-empty, low quality schools serving exactly those students who are most in need of high quality schools. The high quality schools, on the other hand, would be filled to the rafters with able and motivated students benefiting from the attention and support of actively involved parents. The result, so this line of argument goes, is the highly inefficient and ineffective use of the school district's resources and the breakdown of the guaranteed space for those children in whose neighborhoods are located these highly desirable schools.
Arguing the absurdity of this rationale for catchment areas as a mechanism to assure the efficient operation of a public school system, Professor Edwin G. West writes, "[The reasons]... are so curious and so unconvincing that it is astonishing that they have been left unchallenged for so long" (1994, p. 24). It is hard to disagree. In the third edition of his landmark 1965 indictment of government involvement in education, Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy, Professor West successfully argues that the very objectives held out as the justification for catchment areas can, in fact, only be achieved by their complete elimination.
This "zoning" [catchment area] system seems to be the gravest of all denials of parental wishes. For if they were taken seriously enough, the correct response would be to allow the popular school to use all possible improvisation and expedients to carry the increased load in the short-run and all possible assistance to expand in the long-run. By the same token, pressure would be applied to see that the less popular schools either shrank or took steps to bring their services up to the standards of the more popular ones. (West, 1994, p. 24)
By way of illustration, he continues,
Imagine the case of a retail shop which had become so relatively inefficient that customers were beginning to crowd into the premises of a rival establishment. To argue that the crowding was the inefficiency would be to confuse the "symptom" with the "disease." To establish "catchment areas" to prevent the "crowding" would be to remove the very pressure which was working to put things right. Under such pressure the favoured shop would meet the "crowding" with extemporary measures pending plans for extension, whilst the unfavoured shop would be spurred into copying the superior service of its rival. Staff who were frustrated by their treatment by unimaginative managers in the first shop would begin to find tempting vacancies occurring in the more successful and therefore "crowded" second shop. (West, 1994, p. 25)
He concludes,
Zoning [catchment areas] on the other hand, simply freezes the system and insulates the authorities from the necessity to improve educational provision in accordance with popular [parental] wishes. (West, 1994, p. 25)
Thus, West argues, the provision of choice to parents through the elimination of restrictive catchment areas is the most effective and efficient way to use the district's resources and, by definition, it guarantees the right of parents to a place for their child at any school within the district including, of course, the neighborhood school.
Some Canadian school districts have long held this common-sense view. Since 1982, Saskatoon's Catholic Separate School Division's policy on catchment areas has recognized the primacy of parents' right to choose. It reads simply:
The principle of open attendance boundaries shall be followed— parents are free to register their children in the school of their choice.
BOARD APPROVED: June 28, 1982
But even where school districts have recognized that parents should be given the right to choose schools for their children, catchment areas and constraints upon the ability of parents to move their children among them remain in place. In one such district, for example, the policy reads as follows.
Edmonton Public Schools maintain a general open boundary policy which permits a child to attend any school in the District, provided that
the school has adequate space to accommodate that child for the duration of the program in which the child is enrolled, without jeopardizing the opportunity of children residing in the neighbourhood to attend their local school...
Where the available space may be inadequate for the accommodation of students from other attendance areas, the Associate Super- intendent of Schools may direct a principal to register only students living within a school's designated boundaries. Limiting school boundaries usually occurs in outlying areas and is intended to avoid overcrowding the affected school.
(Edmonton Public Schools, 2001)
Fortunately, as we will see below, Edmonton's restrictive clauses seem more honoured in the breech than in the observance.
While many districts tout an open boundary policy, it is their actions in the administration of this policy that are of importance to parents. Toronto District School Board, for instance, allows students to attend schools outside their catchment area provided that the desired school has accommodated all those students residing within the catchment area who wish to attend the school. However, once a school is deemed "full," no provision is made for additional out-of-area students who wish to enroll, although in-catchment area students will always be accommodated. One good test of the effectiveness of an open catchment area policy would be the average length of time during which any school that finds itself enrolled to capacity subsequently remains closed to any students regardless of their residence. As West points out, a truly effective school district will ensure that such schools are quickly augmented to allow the return of unconditional enrollment. Of the 75 secondary schools in the Toronto District that reserve space for neighborhood children, just 24 are open to all applicants. How quickly will the district return the other 51 to "open" status? (Toronto District School Board, 2001)3
What happens when a school board adopts and maintains an open attendance policy where parent/student choice is virtually assured? We need only look at Edmonton public schools to find the answer. That district has made choice a key objective. It has maintained an open attendance policy for more than a decade. It provides a stunning variety of educational programs including single-sex middle schools, Christian schools, dance academies, immersion programs in half a dozen languages, academic focus schools, and scores of other educational alternatives embraced by the district's families.
With such an array of choices, what happens to the neighbourhood schools? The answer is not unexpected. Certainly, a great many parents and students decide to take advantage of programs located outside their catchment area.4 Sixty-one percent of senior high school students registered in Edmonton public schools are attending a school in another catchment area. Fifty-two percent of middle school (grades seven through nine) students have chosen to do likewise. Surprisingly, in elementary schools, where one would expect the greatest premium to be put on the school's proximity to the student's home, 45 percent of Edmonton's public school students are attending district schools located in a catchment area other than their own. However, nearly half of all the families with students registered in the district have, without compulsion, chosen schools within their catchment area. Where it attends the needs of the families that it serves, the neighborhood school will survive and flourish.
Ministries of education across the country must use their considerable influence to eliminate the use by school districts of these restrictive and unproductive catchment area policies. While Quebec's Education Act acknowledges parents' and/or students' rights to choose from among the programs offered by the province's school districts, in the section of the Act immediately following, it subordinates parent/student rights to the right of school boards to manage enrollments. Other legislation is equally equivocal.
Ontario and British Columbia have signaled that they plan to put the right to choose front and centre. We hope they do so in no uncertain terms. We also hope that the other provinces quickly follow suit. Their job will not be easy. Catchment areas are apparently dear to the hearts of the vast majority of school district administrators. Here is the lament of one public school board member after a presentation to the board by parents who demanded greater access to a particular type of schooling.
They [parents] wanted a traditional school and that's it. That's what they see as the answer now. But that's not what's best for the system.
I still hold my position in the end—we would not have enough traditional schools to meet the demand. (School Trustee Sylvia Gwozd. Quoted in Porter, 1999)
Ministers of education in every province must ensure that it is not the system that is being served, but the children who find themselves in that system.
Notes
1 Minister of Education, the Honourable Christy Clark (2001). Luncheon Speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade (July 17). Attended by the author.
2 Question submitted by the author.
3 Calculations by the author.
4 The data in this paragraph were provided to Fraser Institute researcher Robert Van Belle by the Curriculum, Programs, and Planning branch, Edmonton Public Schools, on July 16, 2001.
References
Edmonton Public Schools. Edmonton Public Schools Board Policies and Regulations Code: ICA.AR. Digital document: http://epsb.ca/policy/ica.ar.shtml (August 14, 2001).
Porter, Catherine (1999). "School board seeks parents' involvement: Richmond tries to let Asian parents know what they can expect from their schools." Vancouver Sun, May 10, final edition, p. B1.
School District #61 (Greater Victoria). Policy 5117: School Attendance Areas. Digital document: http://www.sd61.bc.ca/ school/super/polreg/pdf/pol5117.pdf. (August 14, 2001).
Toronto District School Board web site: http://www.tdsb.on.ca/schools/Optional_Attendance.htm. (August 14, 2001.)
West, E.G. (1994). Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy, Third Edition. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Ontario, Legislative Assembly (2001). "Step 10: Flexibility and Choice in Education." Address of The Honourable Hilary M. Weston, Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Ontario, on the opening of The Second Session of the Thirty-Seventh Parliament of the Province of Ontario. April 19. Digital document. http://www.premier.gov.on.ca/english/ library/thronespeech-Apr1901.htm#10. (August 14, 2001).
Peter Cowley (peterc@fraserinstitute.ca) is Director of School Performance Studies at The Fraser Institute. He is co-author of the Institute's series of report cards on Canada's secondary schools.
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