Dale Alton

Support for the federal NDP may be waning elsewhere, but party leader Jagmeet Singh thinks the NDP can be the winning ballot in a number of Edmonton ridings. Singh bases his hope of painting Edmonton NDP orange on the strong following of the NDP in the provincial election and the strong candidates that will be running in Edmonton ridings.

Alberta Shows School Choice Helps Poor Families

The Alberta Parents’ Union brought your voice to an international audience!

We've told you before that Alberta is a world leader in school choice.

Recently, our Executive Director was able to sit on a panel at the International School Choice and Reform Conference (ISCRC) to explain why that matters.

We had the privilege of providing our local insights into Alberta’s educational landscape to support and talk about Dr. Merrifield’s research into how education policy impacts poorer families in Canada.

Dr. Merrifield is one of the founding fathers of school choice research and is also one of the founders of the ISCRC

He was the professor who inspired Corey DeAngelis (probably the most famous advocate for school choice alive today) to take up the cause.

Dr. Merrifield’s research showed that a “free” public school assigned to your family, based on where you live, simply moves the true cost back a step.

The cost of a “free” public school education is now a house in a neighbourhood assigned to a given public school.

Dr. Merrifield shows that this means richer families will buy up the housing around the best schools, while poorer families will be left in the neighbourhoods assigned to worse schools.

He demonstrates that flight to neighbourhoods with better schools (demonstrated by the flight happening disproportionately as children reach compulsory schooling age) is sufficient to explain families sorting to live in cohorts with similar family incomes.

The worse this sorting gets, particularly in large cities, the more negative outcomes other than schooling - crime, social disorder, additional poverty, and (perversely) higher prices for many goods and services - accumulate in neighbourhoods with concentrated poverty.

Conversely, as richer families (who tend to be families with greater economic and political influence) are geographically shielded from this decay in social welfare, they are less apt to work towards and advocate for improvements.

Thus, residentially assigning schools hurts poorer families the most - whether or not they have kids in school!

Dr. Merrifield shows that stronger school choice - which does not depend on geographically assigning families to schools - results in fewer neighbourhoods characterized by concentrated poverty.

Applying his model to the nine most populated Canadian metro areas, Ontario’s population centres (which have the least choice in education) jump out.

Ottawa tops the list with almost twice as much concentrated poverty as Edmonton (the highest concentration in Alberta).

Surprisingly, Vancouver actually showed the lowest overall income segregation.

British Columbia has the highest level of school choice in Canada other than Alberta, lacking only charter schools to match us.

Calgary had the second-lowest concentration of poverty among Canadian metros.

Anyone familiar with the vast array of schools in Calgary that are not assigned based on residential address would expect, then, to see Alberta’s largest city do well on this measure.

Alberta and British Columbia also benefit, of course, from making home education more accessible by reimbursing some of the costs.

Our Executive Director offered his thoughts as to how Edmonton Public School Board has been comparatively successful in keeping competition from schools of choice out of the capital city, accounting for its comparatively high levels of poverty concentration.

Two of Edmonton’s charter schools, also, are focused on serving low-income families - which, while admirable, is unlikely to attract higher-income families to their neighbourhoods.

This brings us to the last insight we will share for today from this study:

School choice only for poorer families will not alleviate the poverty concentration that hurts all poorer families!

Dr. Merrifield showed this with reference to Milwaukee, Wisconsin - which has a voucher system, but only for poorer families.

Poorer families with access to vouchers can escape the worse schools in the neighbourhoods they can afford, but not the other social ills resulting from the flight of richer families with no access to vouchers.

Without school choice for them, rich families still have to pay the premium for housing near the best schooling, leading to flight.

Thus, paradoxically, to help all poorer families - with or without kids in school - escape the effects of concentrated poverty (crime, social disorder, additional poverty, higher prices for many goods and services) you cannot concentrate your school choice efforts on poorer families alone.

Aside from participating in this cutting-edge research process, we benefited from learning from other organizations doing similar work and talking strategies to notch more policy wins.

We also loved the opportunity to let international leaders know about Alberta’s success story!

In turn, we learned in depth about successful school choice and reform policies around the world, including Ireland, Portugal, and Spain.

And, of course, eleven American states now have universal eligibility (no longer limited to just poorer families or just children assigned to failing schools) school choice.

Just five years ago, no American state had a universal eligibility school choice program.

So, this is a story of, whether they realize it or not, America following Alberta, not the other way around.

What it does mean, though, is that Alberta is losing our edge over many American states in attracting and retaining families with school-aged children.

Flight to more attractive geography for your kids’ education doesn’t just happen within metro areas, of course.

Alberta has seen large numbers of families moving here from Ontario and citing K-12 education as the reason.

We don’t see families leaving Alberta for those reasons yet.

But now Florida, Arizona, Iowa, Utah, and others are attracting families citing K-12 education as the reason for their move.

Alberta must regain our edge, or the social decay from families of means taking flight to better options will afflict us all.

Even those who don’t care about education for its own sake will be made to care, at that point.

So, we know we have a lot of work to do, but we are proud of what we've built already.

Our grassroots activism was the envy of many people trying to build what we have, in all corners of the world.

We are grateful to you, our supporters, for helping build this organization that can provoke international envy.

We understand that things like this don't just happen.

It takes a mom who doesn't want to become a full-time advocate herself, but needs someone in her corner to fight for better for her kids.

It takes a grandparent who can see us losing our edge and who is desperate to stop it.

It takes a taxpayer and teacher who is tired of exclusively funding people advocating against his voice, no matter how much he cries out.

So thank you, if you have joined our merry band of reformers!

A family in the Castle Downs area of the city are looking for a school their 3 boys, aged six to 10, can attend this school year. Last year the boys went to school in Namao but at the end of June they were told the family would have to find a new school because the Namao school was full. Krista Butler and Jerome O’Brien were trying to get their boys back into Baturyn School, their designated school, which the boys attended two years ago near their home in Castle Downs but timing seems to have closed that door as well. Baturyn School is near capacity and can only welcome students that pre-enrolled and registered February 1 to March 22, 2024 or were new to the area. Because it wasn't until the end of June that Butler and O’Brien found out that their boys could not attend Namao School they missed Baturyn School's pre-enrollment and registration which leaves the family still looking for a school the boys can attend this year. Their problem is further exacerbated by the fact that

There are approximately 7,000 more students than last year, so not everyone can get into their school of choice.

He was hoping you wouldn’t notice...

Between the long weekend and getting ready for back-to-school, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to slip two Senate appointments by you.

In theory, federal politics should have nothing to do with education policy, given that's provincial jurisdiction.

So, we normally wouldn’t have anything to say about appointments to the Senate.

Kristopher Wells being appointed to the Red Chamber, though, is not something we can overlook.

For one thing, Wells does not agree that federal politics should have nothing to do with education policy.

He proudly lists that he is an “expert scientific consultant” to the Canadian Teachers’ Federation.

The Alberta Parents’ Union has, to the best of our knowledge, stood alone in raising the alarm for the last two years about how the Canadian Teachers’ Federation exists solely to demand unconstitutional federal overreach into the purely provincial jurisdiction of education.

And, to be clear, Wells has been focused on education policy first and foremost, as a quick scan of his biography would make clear.

So why would he agree to be appointed to the Senate, unless it was to continue that advocacy - on a federal level, where it does not belong?

Moreover, why would Justin Trudeau appoint someone with such a focus to the Senate, unless it was to continue his ambition to bring education under some form of federal jurisdiction?

And since Senate appointments are until age 75, Wells could conceivably continue Trudeau’s influence on this file well beyond the time Canadian voters reject Trudeau’s own ambitions.

The best place for decisions to be made about children’s education is at their own kitchen tables, not in the Legislature in Edmonton, and certainly not in the Red Chamber in Ottawa.

Parents and those who support us have another reason to be particularly concerned about this appointment, though.

On August 24, 2023, Wells said:

"Don’t be fooled. So called “parental rights” are a dog whistle for an explicit anti-2SLGBTQI+ agenda, which is focused on banning books, restricting access to inclusive curriculum, and targeting trans and nonbinary youth in schools. This is an organized hate movement."

There are plenty of other things Wells has said and done - some much more inflammatory, in fact - that we are confident this represents the views for which he was appointed to the Senate.

Obviously, anyone who supports parental rights should be concerned by the appointment of someone who dismisses and defames us as a hate movement.

Statements like these also reveal that Wells’ ignorance of the constitution is not limited to his visions of federal mandates of all his favourite things and federal bans of all his least favourite things in education.

Parental rights are explicitly invoked in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and are a constitutional value that Canadian courts have found relevant to a host of cases.

That’s why “parental rights”, or an equivalent phrase, are mentioned in over 2,500 Canadian court cases.

There are, at last count, 90 duly passed Canadian laws that enshrine parental rights.

You would think someone appointed to a law-making body should know that.

Finally, you know his charges are a misrepresentation of our movement, but just for fun, let’s take the “book banning” charge.

Wells supports students as young as five having access to sexually explicit material and calls attempts to limit that access “book banning”.

To avoid being censored ourselves by your email provider, we’ll have to leave you to search out those examples yourselves … carefully, without kids around.

But we could find no condemnation from him at all of Peel District School Board requiring a “cull” of books - not because they contained sexually explicit material, but because they supposedly lacked cultural relevance when viewed through an “equity lens”.

With just one librarian saying she sent over 2,000 of her school library’s nearly 6,500 to be buried, this is by far the most significant instance of book banning in Canada.

Wells does not limit himself from speaking on Peel District School Board’s decisions, though, as he praised their 2015 decision to not allow families to opt their children out of certain classes on sexual orientation and gender identity.

He crowed, “If you don’t like it, don’t use public education.”

The teacher unions he avidly supports, of course, seek to make sure families who “don’t like it” are trapped in the public education options they still have to pay for in taxes.

We may not be able to do anything about Kristopher Wells now getting to call himself a Senator, but we can call on the Government of Alberta to stop the funding of his unconstitutional ideological project via the Alberta Teachers’ Association sending off our tax dollars to the Canadian Teachers’ Federation.

Forcing Alberta taxpayers to fund an organization premised exclusively on asking Trudeau to tell us how to run our own education system is just wrong.

We think it’s well past time for the Alberta government to put a stop to this.

They should use their power - whether in legislation or their ongoing negotiations with the Alberta Teachers’ Association - to stop forcing Albertans to fund this blatant advocacy against our interests.

"I send my children to school to be educated, not tested."

- @atypicalalbertn on Twitter

As you may have heard, the Alberta government recently announced that it will be phasing in mandatory literacy and numeracy screenings for K-5 school children.

The tweet quoted above was one of the responses I saw, and it's what prompted me to write this email to you.

You see, like most opposition to this idea, it sounds catchy, sure, but it doesn't actually make any sense when you think about it for more than a second.

It's a bit like saying, "I want my aircraft to fly, not pass safety tests."

Which would be an odd thing for "a typical Albertan" parent to say.

But Jonathan Teghtmeyer, the person behind the handle @atypicalalbertn, is not really "a typical Albertan".

In fact, he is a communications coordinator for the Alberta Teachers' Association (ATA).

I guess you could say this makes him more of an "atypical Albertan", than "a typical Albertan"?

Interestingly, Teghtmeyer claimed to be speaking "as a parent", not as a union boss, despite directly quoting a comment his boss had made on the official ATA Twitter account.

Now, obviously, some ATA bosses are actually parents too, and we're sure they want the best possible education for their kids too.

But, they shouldn't pose as "typical" parents in an attempt to make it seem like the teachers' union's preferred policy is also parents' preferred policy.

The ATA is actively calling on the Province to leave parents and our elected representatives in the dark, without access to these key insights into the efficacy of the reading and math instruction our children receive.

And they're claiming that that's what parents want.

In reality, over 3,000 parents have signed our petition calling on Alberta Education to stand up to the ATA and stick by their promise to deliver this crucial data, and more, to parents.

Parents are demanding this information and insight because they know it will help.

Research shows that early and frequent assessment of the youngest children’s skills in reading and math is unquestionably beneficial.

It also shows that parental involvement is one of the most important predictors of a child’s success in school.

Clear assessments, with easily explained results, are one of the key indicators that parents can use to understand how well our children are learning.

That then allows us to hold our kids, ourselves, and the school accountable for those outcomes.

Parents are the real experts in our own kids, and we think we should put the best data in the hands of the real experts.

Because, ultimately, long after they leave a particular teacher’s classroom or even a particular school, our children are our responsibility.

So, let us take responsibility, and give us the information we need to do the job right.

Go to our site to sign our petition.