Choice is the best way to improve public schools

4 02 2008

Heard a great article this morning on the state-funded CBC about the power of private schools to improve the public system. According to the Fraser Institute spokesperson, the power of choice is the best way to improve the public system. By offering parents and students choices, including the choice to move from the public system to private schools, the public system is given competition which forces it to improve and to actually address those issues that are making parents pull their children out of schools.

Restricting our choice in education only serves to make the public school system worse, not better.

To help people move their children out of the public system, the Fraser Institute has these Children First grants to help pay the sometimes exhorbitant tuitions of the private system. Once again, online education has this beat. There are accredited online schools who’s tuition is only a fraction of the standard private schools, but now the governments are trying to restrict our access to these schools also, trying to prevent competition against their precious public schools.

Here’s the Press Release from the Fraser Institute

TORONTO, ON—Children First: School Choice Trust is once again offering grants to low income families in Ontario who feel their children would benefit by attending a private school… (more)


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One response to “Choice is the best way to improve public schools”

4 02 2008
Ron Matthews (15:03:24) :

My first thought is always the knee-jerk “You can fix the system by quitting!”. Then knowing it is coming from the Fraser Institute also makes me worry about the political views involved. But the reality is that the public system really does have a monopoly on education, and monopolies really impede improvement because there is no need to provide a better product when the average person can’t get ANY other product.

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