From time to time, we point to educational public policy research by Cardus, a public policy think tank, that relates to the heart of the cause that GAJE is pursuing. In this week’s update, we turn readers’ attention to an open letter to Alberta business leaders written last month by Michael Van Pelt, the president and CEO of Cardus.
Entitled The Business Stake in K–12 Education, Van Pelt points out that the business community in Alberta (and in Canada) decries the lack of “workers who have the necessary non-technical skills, in such areas as communication, basic numeracy, interpersonal skills, management and leadership ability, and character attributes such as integrity and work ethic.”
He then points to research that proves that the very qualities businesses seek more earnestly in their workforce, are hallmarks of the students who graduate from independent schools.
“Independent schools, in particular, play a positive role in inculcating the knowledge, skills, and habits that animate lifelong democratic participation… Most of the skills for effective democratic participation apply equally to effective performance in the workplace. Ten years of Cardus Education Surveys have likewise demonstrated that independent schools produce graduates with the interpersonal and character skills that translate to success in the workplace….. Independent schools are also seedbeds of innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit in education.”
Van Pelt provides a reasoned, principled case to show why it is in the best interests of the business community to be more attentive to fashioning a provincial educational system that best responds to the needs of businesses and the private sector – not only in Alberta, but in all of Canada. Such a school system, Van Pelt unequivocally contends, is one that incorporates a critical mass of independent schools.
Van Pelt places a critical mass figure at 20-25 percent enrolment outside the government-run schools. And he explains why. “We would have, in effect, true choice and real accountability. Multiple school options produce more innovation, creativity, and accountability within each system…. The most effective, perhaps the only, way to create the outcomes that we need in K–12 education in Alberta lies in significant growth in educational choice. …. An increasingly robust reality of educational choice in Alberta will directly contribute to producing high school graduates with the knowledge and skills that Alberta needs. This is because choice creates healthy competition among schools and sectors, leading to better outcomes overall—and at a lower cost.”
Van Pelt writes forcefully and persuasively.
Educational choice, he says, improves all schools. Indeed, on a broader basis, Van Pelt unsubtly implies, educational choice improves society. To be sure, it gives the economy a better chance to flourish. But so too, the values of a caring, humane, civic-minded, democratic society.
Cardus has proven in other empirical research studies, the cost of integrating true educational choice within a province-wide educational system is a matter of political priority not of financial affordability. This is especially true in Ontario. (See: Funding All Students: A Comparative Economic Analysis of the Fiscal Cost to Support Students in Ontario Independent Schools, David Hunt, Anointing Momoh, and Deani Van Pelt, September 2021).
Van Pelt’s opinion piece is a well-researched, deeply footnoted, tightly argued, pragmatic plea for bringing independent schools into the public educational realm. There is also an argument to be made outside of pragmatics, based on fairness and on conscience.
The fact that Ontario – in this day and age – continues to fund the education of only one religious community to the exclusion of all others, adds injustice and unfairness to its rigid indifference to producing the best educational system possible. Why?
Van Pelt’s study is available at:
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We still await the decision of Judge Papageorgiou on the motion brought by the governments of Ontario and Canada to strike our application. As soon as we know her decision, we will share it with you.
If you wish to support GAJE’s lawsuit for fairness in educational funding, please click here.
For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com
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Shabbat shalom
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
July 28, 2023
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 