[Wolven]

Originally Posted by #-3

I'd also say to the comment of UPC members kids getting paid school board jobs. Their blatant and repeated corruption is not because of or exclusive to charter schools, and stopping that doesn't stop the problem.

I do think there is a decent labor organizing arguments that public schools and charter schools essentially have the same employer and that the charter schools are piggybacking the ATAs negotiations without paying dues. It's a fair but somewhat less sympathetic argument.

But they aren't private schools. The CBE runs a bunch of programs that are essentially charter programs, that also have a substantial bias towards more engaged and affluent families, and reject hundreds of qualified applicants every year. who I'm sure do a much much better job of fund raising. The CBE also has large capital requests and many ongoing projects, if you cherry pick a sample of this year, some programs might be seeing more than others and the upc might have some perverse interest in undermining public education as a whole, because it just seems to liberal for them. that is not directly related to the charter schools that have been around for a few decades either. I would also argue that the entire concept of ccsb is the same, it's an inherently exclusionary program that often has the first "public" school in a given neighborhood, there are a lot of programs that a consistent person who has an issue with charter schools as an institution should be going after.

I think this is the issue. Charter schools are private schools that are pretending to be public schools. However, unlike public schools, charters have separate boards of directors and different rules for admission or capacity and can accept private funding that public schools cannot. I guess you could view them as a "gateway drug" for conservative governments to destroy public education. But when you look at other jurisdictions you realize one thing stands out: Alberta is the only province giving public money to Charter schools.

Here is an editorial from the ATA last fall that sums it up better than I.

Also, I'll quote myself and the articles/reports that I looked at with their conclusions around the Charter system in Alberta.

Originally Posted by Wolven

Did you know that Charter schools in Alberta were an innovation experiment? The goal was for the charter schools to be flexible enough to try new education methods and then bring the successful methods back to the public school system.

Since Alberta charter schools started in the 1994, that was meant to be their function. In 2009 there was a report that still tried to pump the tires of "enhanced choice" but admitted the following:

• One of the original purposes of charter schools was that they would be centres of innovation and would share innovations with the rest of the system. This purpose has largely not been realized.

In my mind, if an experiment fails to fulfill its purpose you should either make adjustments to have it become successful or stop the experiment.

Here is another report from 2020 reviewing charter schools. To extract from the conclusions:

"Compared to many states in America joining the charter school movement, Alberta’s regulatory structures (including a limited/cap system, non-profit obligations, non-denominational affiliations, and adequate funding equalling the same per-pupil funding as other public schools) has made Alberta’s public education system better-off. Under the current government, however, there are signs that regulatory reforms will open up the province to a more Americanized model of charter school competition that may undermine the public system. Lifting the charter school cap follows the same trajectory of liberalization that has occurred in the US, which has largely resulted in a differentiated public system and inefficiencies caused by running two parallel systems of public schools under separate governance arrangements. By removing the participation of local school boards in an effort to streamline the system of charter approval, inefficiencies, redundancies, and unsystematic planning should also be reasonably expected. Regulatory oversight of charter school development that is transparent, equitable, and measured so that only providers offering the best possible opportunities for learners that are in the interests of the public and truly accountable to the public are permitted to operate is paramount.

It is also far from a guarantee that charter school competition will spur innovation and efficiency, as proponents claim. The established system of charter schools in the US has demonstrated this much. Charter schools in Alberta as they currently stand, working in collaboration with local school boards, play an important role in promoting the growth of specialized and alternative school programs within the public system. Yet, standalone charter schools have proven not be effective or equitably accessible for all learners. This is because barriers to access remain that represent impediments to real choice, such as supplemental fees associated with attending charter schools and independently-determined selection processes, which will not dissipate by liberalizing the charter school market. So, what then is there to gain systemically from such reforms that are expected to overhaul the system? Education reforms that settled for charter school liberalization and parental “choice” exercised in quasi-market environments, instead of a full-blown voucher system as was proposed during the UCP’s annual general meeting in November 2019, indicate the governments’ ambition to explore opening-up Alberta’s public education system to the private market. It is a playbook of policy reforms intent on privatizing public choice."

I would say that after 30+ years that is enough time to run an experiment. Charter schools should be given a choice to either convert to private schools or come back into the public system and bring all of their great learnings with them. If they have received a public built school then the building comes back to the public system no matter what.

Then, to your point Fuzz, let's try to give everyone the amazing experience that a few people are getting out of their charter school.

This is obviously a part of a much bigger issue than what is going on with the teacher strike but I think there are definitely links between the strategy the UCP has been demonstrating by giving larger and larger amounts of money to charter and private schools while also driving the whole province into this teacher's strike by refusing to put forth a reasonable offer to the teachers.

Also, I know many people who love Charter schools for being great to their kids. The point is not to take that away, the point is to give that to everyone.