SEVEN MONTHS LATER THE CBC AGREES!

Although I don't agree with everything the Alberta Parents Union writes, does or stands for, I post the emails I receive from them because I think they deserve to be heard.

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If the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) just read our emails, they could have had a 7 month head-start.

Back in August, we told you that the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) was using some fuzzy math when it comes to education funding.

The ATA were claiming, as they often do, that Alberta spends the lowest amount of money per student on education out of all the provinces.

We pointed out that they were wrong for a number of reasons, including the fact that the figures they were using were incredibly misleading.

Well, now, 7 months later, the CBC have written a fact-check of the ATA’s claims on the exact same grounds as we already did!

(We’ll forgive them for being 7 months late in reporting this - they do only have a billion dollars of taxpayer funding for their reporting, after all.)

This development is all the more surprising because, as you probably well know, the CBC usually just repeats the ATA’s claims without question.

How bad must the ATA’s claims have to have been to warrant a CBC fact-check?

Let's take a look!

“Trickier than you might expect”

The central disagreement is around the data being used to calculate the per-student funding.

In the CBC’s fact-check, reporter Robson Fletcher explains how the ATA claims they are simply using Statistics Canada (StatCan) data.

However, StatCan themselves actively went to the public broadcaster to say that the ATA was twisting StatCan’s numbers to make their argument:

“But Statistics Canada, itself, urges caution when interpreting its data in this way.

That's because precisely calculating per-student funding for public schools across every province in a consistent and comparable manner is a [sic] trickier than you might expect.”

We thought that seemed familiar, so we went back to our email titled “The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark” and here’s what we wrote in August:

“But what StatCan don't do is simply divide one set of numbers by the other, to give the 'average amount of money spent per student' in each province.

And it's important to understand that StatCan don't do this, because they know that there are many differences and variables across all the provinces.”

Indeed, as the CBC summarizes the statistical nerds’ own warnings:

“But officials with StatsCan told CBC News it's actually impossible with the available public-facing data to precisely calculate per-student funding for public schools and make truly accurate comparisons between provinces.”

We were a little more blunt, but said essentially the same thing:

“There are probably dozens more reasons why merging these two datasets makes no sense, and any 'average' resulting from doing so is complete nonsense.”

Apples to Apples

The basic reason the ATA - or anyone else - cannot simply divide one StatCan table by another, is that the result will not be comparing apples to apples.

The CBC explained the ATA’s error like this:

”StatsCan says it uses a 'consolidated spending' approach to look at a 'holistic version' of education expenditures, including those at the school board level as well as 'direct expenditures by provinces and territories.' (The ATA, by contrast, used a dataset that includes just school board expenditures.)”

We explained the same thing with more words, but less jargon, like this:

“For example, in some provinces, the government pays for more things directly, and pays for fewer things via school boards, whereas in other provinces, the school boards are left to make more of the purchases.

In other provinces, including Alberta, there are simply fewer students going to schools managed by school boards and more students going to charter schools and other alternative types of schools.

Alberta is the only province with charter schools.

Charter schools are not governed by school boards, so their funding is transferred directly to the school rather than to a school board, meaning that funding doesn't show up in one of the datasets.”

ATA “Mistakes” Are Ideological

A hint as to why the ATA can't be trusted to handle these numbers carefully lies in a quote from the CBC story:

“The [StatCan] methodology, which includes private-school spending, also aligns with international standards, and StatsCan reports its results to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.”

This is because much of the rest of the world has choice in education, so private-school spending has to be included to make them match.

The ATA is setting out to prove that public schools are underfunded, and deliberately designing calculations that will result in that answer, even if they make no sense.

Thankfully, the media are now finally paying attention, and the ATA’s claims are being at least somewhat tested on this one point.

But, imagine if we could challenge the ATA on every single one of their claims?

Imagine if we could push back on each and every misleading statement they make about Alberta’s education system.

Well - there’s no need to imagine.

That’s exactly what the Alberta Parents’ Union is trying to do.

We’re trying to build a movement of thousands of parents that can get the truth about our education system out there far and wide.

So, tell your friends to sign up for the Alberta Parents’ Union and get tomorrow’s news today!

The more members and supporters we have, the wider we can spread our message.