In recently responded to Cambridge Green Party of Ontario (GPO) candidate Colin Carmichael’s claim that I am “wrong” not to want forced school board amalgamations (to which I stressed that having different opinions doesn’t necessarily mean either of us is “wrong”). This is what I said… (I’d appreciate not receiving hostile emails because you disagree with my opinion, as I did the last time I posted on this subject)

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The GPO is advocating the top-down forced amalgamation of school boards (whether the one-third of parents, teachers, students, and trustees that operate within separate schools want it or not). This is the same as Mike Harris’s top-down forced amalgamation of municipalities, which has turned out poorly (no cost savings as promised, less responsive administrations, unfunded mandates, etc). The GPO wants mega-boards, just like Harris wanted mega-cities.

Why does the GPO want this? Two arguments: 1) “Fairness” i.e. separate schools are discriminatory so we should get rid of them, and 2) “Efficiency” i.e. having four parallel public systems (French/English, public/separate) is a waste of tax dollars. But upon close inspection, the rationales for each of these arguments actually contradict each other. (Note that one of the arguments *not* used is that the proposed changes will actually improve the quality of education in Ontario, as Colin readily acknowledges, which was the point of posting the separate vs public school comparison).

Let me illustrate with a recent exchange I had with Leonard Baak, President of “Equality Education in Ontario” (the group calling for “One School System”). He argued at DemocraticSPACE that the separate school system is a “religious-in-name-only duplicate school system”. Thus, he concludes: “A merger would streamline administration by eliminating a lot of duplication and enable the sharing of both physical and staff resources.” This is the “efficiency” argument that Harris used to justify forced amalgamation. So, to reiterate Baak’s argument: because the separate school system is “religious-in-name-only” i.e. not religious/same as the public system, it makes logical sense to amalgamate them. I agree with Baak that separate schools today are religious-in-name-only. But I don’t believe having mega-boards (justified on the grounds that they are more “efficient”) improves the quality of education in Ontario. As with municipalities, scale matters. Are mega-cities more or less responsive to citizen concerns? I would argue they are less responsive. Do parents really want to suddenly have their kids’ school boards double in size? Do you really want to repeat the disaster of municipal up-scaling with school boards?

But then, Baak turns to the “fairness” argument. Despite having argued that the separate school system is “religious-in-name-only” in the *same letter*, Baak later says that separate schools’ “particular religious bent makes them a non-option for many” i.e. they are discriminatory. But wait — didn’t he just say that they were not religious? Which is it? Are they religious-in-name-only and thus easily merged with the public school boards or are they religious/discriminatory? Is Ontario’s education system a “human rights violation”, on par with the genocide in Darfur, or religious persecutions in China, as the now-defunct (and disgraced) UN Commission on Human Rights ruled? If so, why now? Why didn’t we take that seriously a decade ago when that ruling was made? (probably because most reasonable people in Ontario know that it is not a human rights violation)

As it turns out, we’ve already seen separate and public school boards merge — *voluntarily*. If they were so different (if they were so discriminatory), how could they possibility reconcile those differences with such easy merger? Why? Because they aren’t very different at all today — both separate and public boards teach the Ontario curriculum, are subjected to the same teacher qualifications and standards, etc. Let me be clear — I’m all for mergers if the parents, teachers, trustees and students in the local separate school board voluntarily merge because they felt there would be a mutual advantage (i.e. in cases where enrollment is declining and both separately lack resources). It certainly doesn’t make sense in fast-growing regions where we are barely keeping pace with population growth. Why do we need to a re-play of Harris’s undemocratic forced amalgamations against the will of the people? If it is the people’s will to merge in some places, then why do we need one-size-fits-all forced amalgamation for all regions? The only rationale you are left with is the “efficiency” argument, which has already been proven a failure with forced municipal amalgamation.

So, to recap, either you believe separate schools are discriminatory or you don’t. If they are discriminatory, and you simply fold the teachers, administrators, trustees, and students of a discriminatory system into the “public” system, do they suddenly cease to be discriminatory? And if they are not discriminatory, then the argument for forced amalgamation cannot be made on fairness grounds, it must be made on efficiency grounds. But we’ve been down this road before with forced amalgamation of municipalities. It was a bad idea for municipalities, and it’s an even worse idea for school boards.

At the risk of enduring the barrage of hostile emails I received when I posted the Toronto public vs separate school comparison (mostly from those want to rescind public funding from Catholic schools), I did promise to do a full comparison across the province. So without further ado…

(note: I’ve compiled them into the 8 regions I use for our seat projections)

DOWNLOAD SCHOOL-BY-SCHOOL SCORES

As you can see, separate schools have a higher average school and more consistency (a smaller standard deviation) than public schools across all regions. There is little difference in some cases, and more noticeable differences in others. Overall, separate schools score about 10% higher and have about 30% less variation. Also of note, almost 1/3 of Ontario students attend separate schools, so withdrawing funding from these schools is not small matter. Inter-regional differences are also apparent. Toronto, Central Ontario, Northern Ontario, and Hamilton-Niagara score below average, while both Eastern and Western 905 regions, Southwestern Ontario, and Eastern Ontario score above average.

Obviously, there are many factors that explain this difference (feel free to debate them below). My point was merely to demonstrate that the motivation for rescinding funding from separate schools cannot be motivated by a desire to improve the quality of education, since the separate schools, on average, score higher (again, for many reasons, but even accounting for different factors, it should be clear that separate schools do not perform *worse* than public schools…).

Note: scores are those given to each school in the 2007 Report Card on Ontario High Schools by Peter Cowley and Stephen Easton.

Notes
¹ Out of 10.
² Standard deviation is a measure of the range of scores. The smaller the number, the less range there is between the schools (i.e. the more consistent they are).

The debate over funding for religious schools heating up in Ontario (some calling to expand public funding to religious private schools, while others calling to end public funding for Catholic schools, and still others saying to leave it alone). In another post, I made the claim that the Catholic/separate schools, on average, out-perform the public schools (thus, it seems bizarre to want to get rid of the better-performing schools). I was asked for proof. Well here’s a start. I have compiled a comparison of public vs. separate schools in the Toronto-area based on the 2007 Report Card on Ontario’s Secondary Schools by Peter Cowley and Stephen Easton.

DOWNLOAD SEPARATE VS PUBLIC SCHOOL COMPARISON (Toronto area)

The results from the Toronto area indeed show that separate schools, on average, out-perform public schools.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Average Score = 5.90
Standard Deviation = 2.23
No. of Schools = 167
No. of Students = 61,956
Avg. No. of Students/School = 371

SEPARATE SCHOOLS
Average Score = 6.40
Standard Deviation = 1.83
No. of Schools = 84
No. of Students = 28,455
Avg. No. of Students/School = 341

Specifically, separate schools have an average score of a half-point (out of 10) higher than public schools. Moreover, separate schools have a lower standard deviation, which is a measure of the range of scores, meaning that there is less disparity between separate schools than there is between public schools (indeed, public schools have a range that is 20% more than separate schools).

It is also important to note that separate schools account for approximately one-third of all students in the Toronto area. So it is no small task to simply abolish separate school boards. And more importantly, to do so would be to abolish the better performing part of the school system.

(when I have more time, I hope to do a full comparison across all regions)

If we were starting from scratch today, I don’t think there would be a lot of support for creating two separate public school systems. But let’s be clear: even if we had one single secular public “system”, it would still operate in the same way as the 4-pronged “system” (public/separate/English/French) we have today — as a series of relatively autonomous boards that respond to the particulars of their communities within a basic policy framework set out by the Ministry of Education.

The two proposed alternatives — either a) rescinding public funding for Catholic school boards (as proposed by the Green Party) or b) extending public funding to private religious schools (as proposed by the PC Party) — have nothing to do with improving the quality of education in Ontario. They are essentially symbolic administrative moves that weaken education, not strengthen it.

Let’s take the first alternative. Subsidizing private schools is bad public policy, whether they are religious or not. Funding religious schools provides an incentive for parents to take their kids out of the public schools, because the private schools have the double benefit of getting public funding *and* still collecting private tuition (at $400 million in public funds as proposed by Tory for 53,000 kids works out to $7,500 per child, on par with public funding, in some cases exceeding it — add private tuition funds on top and it’s clear that these private schools have a huge financial advantage over public schools). It’s a classic result — private schools can then use their financial advantage to attract the best teachers, buy better equipment etc — the result is that public schools suffer. Welcome to the U.S. education system. Moreover, why would we want to segregate kids of different faiths into different schools? I would think it’s better for kids to learn about and respect the difference traditions of all faiths and cultures. Frankly, I find it surprising that some Liberals support taking money out of the public schools to subsidize private schools and encourage the segregation of Ontario society along religious lines. So to me, John Tory’s “solution” is flat out bad public policy.

The other alternative — withdrawing public funding from Catholic school boards — is more credible, but it has serious negatives that make it undesirable. We can argue this approach on two grounds: 1) if you think Catholic schools are teaching religious education, you could argue that it’s unfair that they receive funding while other religious schools do not, or 2) if you think they are Catholic in name only, then you could argue that it is wasteful to have a duplicate public system.

I think that separate school boards, as they exist today, are not substantially dissimilar from public school boards — that 95% of them are Catholic in name only. Others might disagree. They are subjected to the same teacher credentials, standardized testing and curriculum requirements that public school boards face. And importantly, they aren’t private (they don’t collect private tuition). And if there are cases where some students are prejudiced on religious grounds, because they are publicly funded, we have the ability to rescind funding on a case-by-case basis if some schools are not living up to their obligations. If Catholic schools don’t follow the rules, they will lose their funding. It’s that simple. So, to me, the argument against Catholic boards — as they operate today — is largely a symbolic one. Given that Catholic school boards, in general, out-perform public school boards, it seems particularly odd to argue we must get rid of them. Clearly, it is symbolism and politics, not the welfare of kids that drives this urge. And I just cannot accept an outcome that yields worse results (i.e. closing down the best-performing schools).

But if the Catholic and public schools are parallel public systems, wouldn’t it be more efficient to simply merge them? Well, the same argument was made by Mike Harris to amalgamate municipalities i.e. less administrative costs = more efficient. But, unfortunately, those cost savings haven’t materialized because quite simply, scale matters. You can’t simply double the size of an administrative unit and not increase the number of administrative staff. In many cases, these new amalgamated municipalities are simply too large to govern effectively. School boards are no different.

So, how would we merge the public and Catholic systems? There are really only two ways to do it. The first is to keep the public school board districts as they are (geographically) and simply add the Catholic board kids — this effectively doubles the number of kids in the board. I, for one, don’t think that bigger is better in education. Quite the contrary, in fact (especially since we’re working hard to reduce class sizes and gives kids more individual attention). So there’s no free lunch — you double the board, you have to double the administration, double the teachers, etc. So instead of two smaller boards, you have one giant one, which will inevitably be less accountable to parents than smaller ones (because suddenly there are twice as many people to whom that board is responsible). It’s the equivalent of doubling the population of your local riding and expecting your MPP to be as responsive. I don’t think most people would see this as a positive.

The second, and perhaps more feasible option, is to re-district the entire province into new school boards so that the average size (in population) of the school boards remains the same as it is today. But to do that means having smaller geographic areas. So you end up with boards that have the same number of kids as today, but are smaller geographically. Nothing wrong with that, in theory.

The problem with this is that the way the system works, teachers, staff, materials, etc are all hired, bought and administered at the school board level. Pensions and seniority are all tied to the school boards. To re-district the entire province would mean moving teachers and staff from one board to another, splitting up books and other resources, figuring out who falls where in seniority, and somehow moving pensions to different boards that often have different standards, etc. It would be a mess. And again, we have to ask ourselves, does all of this administrative juggling improve education in Ontario? No, it doesn’t. It has nothing to do with improving the quality of education; it’s a symbolic and political game.

So what to do? I think we let school board trustees and parents decide what they want to do. We are already seeing a merger of public and Catholic school boards in some cases, where they independently lack resources. This process is happening voluntarily by school boards and parents, etc where merging the two boards provides a clear advantage for students. This makes sense. These mergers also illustrate that there is no ideological divide between Catholic and public schools — that is, it affirms the claim that Catholic schools are pretty much just like pubic schools these days. If it makes sense to merge, then let’s let them decide for themselves. Otherwise, let’s see things for what they really are — just a series of school boards (some that we call “public” and others that we call “Separate” or “Catholic” because that’s what they started out as) that all do the same thing. Massive administrative juggling isn’t going to change that. And it certainly isn’t about improving the quality of education in Ontario, which is, after all, what it’s all about.

With the Ontario election campaign beginning to show signs of life, the long-debated issue of faith-based education has once again re-surfaced. And once again, the issue is polarized along partisan lines. On the one hand, many on the left — including many NDPers — argue that religion has no place in schools whatsoever; ergo, there should be no public funding for any religious schools (i.e. Ontario should do away with funding for Catholic school boards). On the other side, including PC leader John Tory, who would do precisely the opposite — expand public funding for all religious schools (i.e. no only Catholic schools, but Muslim, Jewish, and a wide range of other religious schools). The Liberals, by contrast, appear to support the status quo.

This is one instance where I think the status quo is the best option. Whether those on the left like it or not, separate Catholic separate school boards are a historical fact in Ontario. They were created to accommodate the Catholic minority (including the sizable francophone population) because for a long time, the Protestants (read: the Orange Order and its ilk) tried to starve them out of existence.

Today, the public school boards are secular (i.e. not Protestant), so if we didn’t already have separate Catholic school boards, I doubt there would be an uprising to demand their creation. But, as they are well-established and function well, there is no need to fix what isn’t broken. Indeed, merging the Catholic boards with the public system would surely only hurt the students of both, creating nothing but an administrative nightmare.

But, since the Catholic boards are publicly funded, there is increasing demand to publicly fund all religious schools. Unfortunately, this too would hurt the students. Public funding would necessarily come attached with strings that the private religious schools would have to abide by, which may or may not be desirable. Let’s be clear: private religious schools already exist; the question isn’t whether to allow private religious schools or not. The question is whether they should get public funding. I’m not convinced it’s really in anyone’s interest. If the well-to-do want to send their kids to private religious schools, be my guest. And many religious schools give low-income families a break on tuition if they can’t afford it. So why mess with something that seems to be working just fine?

Moreover, unless there is a commensurate increase in the education budget (which is probably not economically feasible), then it simply means that the same public dollars are being spread over more students, which surely is not a good thing. Also, I suspect that funding segregated all religious schools will surely encourage more cultural and religious segregation — a stark contrast to today, where kids from all backgrounds and faiths attend schools and are exposed to their respective traditions and cultures. I don’t think it is a good thing to promote educational segregation along religious lines. My impression is that the Catholic schools today operate very much like public schools, so the argument that the Catholic boards shouldn’t get an unfair advantage doesn’t really resonate with me. There is little upside to either expanding public funding to all religious schools, or to withdraw public funding from Catholic school boards. Will this administrative juggling result in better results? I doubt it. Therefore, it is worth the angst.

So, let sleeping dogs lie, I say. Decisions whether to abolish or expand public funding for religious schools get people excited — like most philosophical questions — but at the heart of the matter, they are symbolic administrative acts that don’t tackle the core objective, which is to continue to build upon Ontario’s strong education system. Let’s keep our eye on the ball, instead of playing politics with one of our most cherished public systems.