Lynn Bosetti - Understanding School Choice in Canada

WRITTEN WITH DAVID SCOTT

School choice policies are prominently placed on most educational agendas in Western liberal democracies. The idea of choice is attractive. Its promise of equality, freedom, and democracy resonates with many political and social movements, and reflects the modern desire for autonomy, control, and self-expression (, p. 17). In its most basic form, school choice involves giving parents the right to choose approaches to education beyond those offered through the school assigned to their children based on their neighbourhood. It requires school boards to respond to diverse needs and perspectives on how children should be educated, rather than agreeing on a particular form of curricula or provision for schooling.

Debates around school choice policies are often taken up in opposition to, or alongside, traditional conceptions of public schooling historically based on the common school model, despite the fact that Canada has a long history of publically funded separate Catholic and Protestant school systems and federally funded schools for Aboriginal students. This compulsory model of education brought a diverse population together in state-funded schools in an attempt to forge a common schooling experience that would help students acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to participate in the labour market and become productive ).

Increasing levels of urbanization and immigration and a shift to a knowledge-based economy requiring more highly skilled workers have intensified pressure on schools to reform the common schooling model. Pressure to reform this system of education has also come from marginalized and minority groups, who have contested the dominant ideologies implicit in and perpetuated by the common school movement. Based on the principles of equity and social justice, these groups have sought accommodations for their culture, identity, values, and beliefs. In a similar vein, parents seeking more voice in the socialization and education of their children have looked for schools more in line with their family values, child-rearing practices, and aspirations for their children. These social, political, and economic factors have created the impetus for ministries of education and school boards throughout Canada to consider alternative schooling arrangements ().

Proponents of school choice reforms argue that traditional public schooling, such as neighbourhood-based school assignments, governance by district, and a one-size-fits-all model of education, neglects the needs of diverse communities and individual learners and provides little incentive for schools to innovate and improve. Advocates herald school choice as a mechanism to encourage public schools to adopt leading educational practices to foster innovation in curriculum, instruction, and governance, as well as to introduce educational provisions to address the learning needs and interests of a diverse range of communities. By breaking the link between residence and school assignment, market forces are invoked that create competition among schools because parents now vote with their feet (, p. 2), thereby creating incentives for schools to be more responsive to diverse parental interests and needs while also increasing student achievement outcomes. Advocates also argue school choice serves as a mechanism to promote greater equity and educational opportunity for all people and in particular for those students whose parents are unable to live in neighbourhoods with quality schools. Because neighbourhood schools can vary significantly in terms of quality and resources, advocates contend that school choice policies provide lower-income families with educational options they would not normally be able to access.

While proponents of school choice extol its virtues, opponents see the idea of educational markets as the commodification of education, which has traditionally been viewed as an essential public good and the great equalizer in terms of life chances for the most disadvantaged students. Critics raise concerns that school choice creates a multi-tiered public education system that perpetuates the segregation of students into increasingly unequal schools ( free market ideology should inform provisions for public education. Rather than creating an educational environment that pits school against school, where students inevitably compete with one another for admission to the best schools, opponents of school choice reform argue that policymakers should focus on ensuring that every neighbourhood has a quality school.

We see several limitations in how these school choice debates are often framed, both within the academic literature and within the greater public sphere. The first of these concerns the way normative assumptions regarding the aims and purposes of schooling are not always acknowledged by either detractors or advocates of school choice policies. , p. 17). While conceptual debates regarding the merits of school choice will likely remain contentious, the need exists for a deeper understanding of the underlying theoretical and philosophical principles, aims, and context for which particular school choice policies are designed.