Public Education as the Trojan Horse: The Alberta Case
David Flower
This article first appeared in the Spring 2004 Our Schools, Our Selves, published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It is reprinted here with permission of the author and the publisher. Minor changes have been made to fit ATA style.
The more I read about the state of public education in the Alberta media the more convinced I become that Ralph Nader's explanation of how to undermine public services in the neo-liberal environment is not only accurate but ongoing.
In a speech in Edmonton in April 1998, Nader talked about the Trojan horse. This analogy of the Greek gift that contained within it the mechanism for the defeat and ultimate sack of Troy is apropos. Nader was talking in 1998 about the attack on the public health care system in Alberta and, indeed, in Canada as a whole. But the same metaphor can as easily be applied to public education. Governments appear to support the system because of strong public support evidenced through opinion polls but at the same time those same governments are surreptitiously and deliberately undermining public education. Perhaps a closer look at Nader's explanation of how to bring down the system, in this case the public education system, might assist in understanding what has and indeed what still is happening.
The examples that I use are primarily from Alberta because I am more familiar with that system, but they can, I am sure, be applied across Canada and also in Britain, New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere. What follows are five ways to bring down the system.
1. Piecemeal it. The primary task is to fracture the system into many parts by creating alternatives both within the public system and outside it. Make it possible to justify, for example, the public funding of private schools and provide no restrictions on the establishment of private religion-based schools or home schooling situations, apart from minimal inspection that a deliberately depleted and understaffed bureaucracy in the government department cannot handle. Then establish alternative schools like hockey schools, ballet schools, military academies, academic high schools, native schools, "cogito" schools, charter schools and cyber schools, all of which, individually, become more concerned with their own continued existence than with the overall goal in a public education system of educating all children well. Fracturing the public education system in the name of "choice" helps to undermine the totality and, thereby, makes it more vulnerable. Choice, after all, is a questionable concept. As Roy Hattersley suggests, "when some families choose, the rest accept what is left. The rest are always the disadvantaged and the dispossessed."1 Tom Flanagan, a political scientist at the University of Calgary and advisor to the then Reform Party, wrote a column in the Globe and Mail (July 16, 1998) in which he stated:
Education, just like the telephone service, electric power and many other essential services, could and should be privatized. But for the time being the ideology of public education is still strong, and that means that government-owned school systems will continue to exist. In those circumstances, the best policy is to introduce as many competitive elements as possible.
Charter schools, a concept introduced into Alberta in 1994, were simply a mechanism whereby those who could afford the extra funds could take their children out of the general public system and put them into special schools funded by government, but with fewer rules and regulations governing their operations. The schools still exist in Alberta but they have not proliferated the way many neo-liberals hoped. After eight years there are only 13 charter schools in the province.
2. Starve its budget. Since the reforms of 1994/95, the Alberta government has been entirely responsible for education funding. Prior to that change local school boards collected part of their revenue through property taxation. Now government funding of school jurisdictions, or even of individual schools, has a significant impact on the running of the schools. This devolution of funding down to the local level and at the same time the provision of inadequate funding are major steps in the continuing erosion of K–12 education in the province. The government claims that education is one of its priorities, yet it is increasingly obvious that the government chooses not to put its money where its mouth is. Education spending in Alberta has been under study for some time by Dean Neu (future fund professor of accounting and co-director of the Centre for Public Interest Accounting at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary). Neu had compared enrolment, funding and the consumer price indices for K–12 education in Alberta from 1981 to 2001. In constant dollars, his study shows that per-student spending in 1981 was $3,856, and in 2001 it was $3,923—a real increase of $67 over a 20-year period. The peak of per-student spending in Alberta was reached in 1987 when in constant dollars it reached $5,229. From that year the funding has declined in real terms by $1,306. It is not surprising then that despite government's constant assertion that it is re-investing in education every year, that "re-investment" has not even compensated for the effects of increasing enrolment and inflation.2
The effects of this underfunding, this deliberate starving of public education's budget despite significant annual government surpluses, often in the billions of dollars, has had serious consequences. The Alberta Teachers' Association (ATA) study Cracks in the Foundation lists many aspects of education that have been affected by underfunding, including efficacy of administration, capital projects (some talk has already occurred about public-private partnerships), class sizes, integration and funding of special needs students, shortages of specialist teachers, under funding, mandated technology requirements and issues such as child poverty and problems facing First Nations and Métis children. All these budget-related problems cause some questioning of the effectiveness of public schools and a debate—amongst those who can afford it—of the value of, and the need for, private schools.
3. Squeeze out its services into the marketplace. It is an ideological belief among neo-liberals that "private enterprise delivers higher levels of efficiency and productivity at cheaper prices."3 The process of downsizing government departments and the deliberate cutting of budgets have meant that school jurisdictions looking for budget savings have turned to privatization as a source of savings. One of the first moves was the contracting out of janitorial services. The important role of the school janitor was not understood. It was soon evident that contracted out work just did not meet the standard of school cleanliness that had existed previously. The janitor was, in reality, an integral part of the school team and, although some privatization of such services may still exist, the idea never really caught on. Another privatization idea that received much publicity was the private management of schools. The concept was not tried in Alberta but in the United States. Companies such as Edison Schools Inc. and Alternative Schools Inc. offered school jurisdictions substantial savings by taking over "failing" public schools and revitalizing them. The results to date have been spotty at best, producing academic results no better than the public schools and often costing jurisdictions significantly more money over time. One supposedly cost-saving model that is being bandied about in Alberta is the creation of P3s, public-private partnerships, for the building of new schools. The province with a surplus of billions of dollars claims it cannot afford to keep constructing new schools and so is looking at options that might save it money. Another public responsibility that can be opened to the market!
Deliberate reductions in school budgets have also caused problems for children with special needs in public schools. Services that used to be supplied through school board personnel, such as speech therapists and psychologists, now have to be purchased by schools as needed. The consequence is that the debate in school is whether to hire a speech therapist to help specific students, or to put the money into more technology, or to purchase more books for the library. Schools are given a specific budget within which to operate and the staff is expected to make budgetary decisions on how that money is to be spent. Deficit budgets are unacceptable and if they do occur, schools are expected to fundraise to compensate for the additional funds. In addition, of course, schools' staffs suffer because the debate then is whether a teacher librarian or a guidance counsellor is more important than software, additional computers or more books. The services of a speech therapist or a school psychologist must now be hired at an hourly rate as needed and, consequently, the need for such services has to be pressing indeed.
4. Create more delays because of budget restrictions. Reports in the Alberta press last September (2003) indicated that this school year there were 1,000 fewer teachers in the public education system than there were in 2002 and the number of students has not changed dramatically. Class sizes continue to increase and boards are cash-starved by a government that despite claiming that, education is a priority, can more quickly find $100 million to assist an embattled beef industry than it can find $40 million to ensure there are sufficient teachers in its schools.
On November 18, 2003, Alberta's minister of learning announced to a meeting of school trustees that the government was acting on one of the recommendations of the Learning Commission. The announcement was for an immediate injection of $37 million to school boards and the promise of a further $23 million in April 2004. Boards had reported in September that they were about 1,000 teachers short as a result of budget shortfalls, yet the government chose to ignore the concern until well into the school year. Whether this late injection of funds reflects the priority Alberta places on the education of its children or not, many cynics suggest that the decision to add funds has more to do with buying off parents and teachers before the next provincial election.
The frustration caused by the delays in funding inevitably leads parents to look for alternative education opportunities for their children. The class size issue alone is evidence of this move. Every single private school that advertises in Alberta's newspapers uses as one of its attractions class sizes of 12 or 15 to one teacher. However, the minister of learning is quick to point out that class size is not really a problem in public schools despite numbers in the 30-plus students-to-teacher range in some larger school jurisdictions. Indeed, the previous education minister chose to remark in the Alberta legislature that "among red herrings the issue of classroom size is the king of tunas."4 Yet despite such comments, not only have studies proved the benefit of smaller classes, but parents and teachers themselves see the need. In the ATA's 1996 Report Card on Education, 67 per cent of the 10,500 teachers who responded believed that their class sizes had increased since 1993 when the government changes to education were imposed. In April 1999, in a study of advertising effectiveness for the ATA, 65 per cent of respondents stated they believed that the size of classes in Alberta's public education system should be smaller.
In the fall of 2001, Alberta Learning collected data about actual class sizes but only in kindergarten and elementary grades. "This limited survey indicates that 41 per cent of Alberta elementary classes have 25 or more students in them and there are over 620 of these classes with 30 or more students."5 This debate on class size has been ongoing in Alberta for many years. The Kratzmann report, the result of the Calgary Public school strike in 1980, recommended class sizes of 20 students. The recommendation was dismissed on two grounds. The first was that the only research supporting limiting class size was American and therefore not relevant in Alberta. The second was that the change in the economic fortunes of the province by 1984 made the cost of such a recommendation too great. The recently released report of Alberta Learning Commission Every child learns. Every child succeeds also recommends the establishment and implementation of provincewide guidelines for average class sizes across school jurisdictions (recommendation 14).6 Continually delaying any action that would improve the learning conditions for Alberta students by simply not acting on recommendations received in 1980 and continually discounting any research that might suggest that changes need to made in schools suggest that this latest report may in large part be shelved for economic reasons. Such delays because of budget restrictions, whether it be in class sizes, in repairs to schools, in building new schools or in refusing to fund technology adequately all imply that the government's so-called priority education is really low on the list.
5. Continue to undermine confidence in the system. The story that abounded in the early 1990s was that the public education system was failing and students were not as well educated in Canada as they were in other countries despite the fact that the provinces spent more money on K–12 education than most other countries. It was supported by reports from the media, from think tanks and business councils. Even the February 1991 Canadian Business got into the act claiming "that business is tired of an education system that produces illiterates." The article then proceeded to castigate the Canadian education system calling it too expensive, criticising it for not targeting needed skills and accusing it of being inefficient. The extreme neo-conservative view appeared in Alberta Report, July 5, 1993. The cover of the magazine read "OUT OF CONTROL: The great socialist experiment in public education has resulted in rampant school violence, runaway costs, poor performance and furious parents. The alternative is privatization." When asked what was needed to improve public education, business in Canada had the answers, and if it didn't, it borrowed answers from the United States.
First, critics claimed teaching efforts needed to concentrate on mathematics and science, because Canada ranked far behind the rest of the world in those two areas. The fact that subsequent international studies proved that, for Alberta, such assertions were false were of little effect. The lie that public education was failing was simply repeated.
Second, critics argued that a special effort was needed to ensure that students were prepared for the world of work. The premier of Alberta stated clearly what his vision of education was: namely "to allow the people of this province, people of all ages, to acquire the skills and the knowledge they need to participate in the civic and economic life of this great province. Nothing more. Nothing less."7 This view of education was supported by the survey conducted by the National Post in 2001, when it was reported that 32 per cent of those polled stated that "training youth for the world of work" is what education is all about and only 17 per cent saw education as creating inquiring minds.8 Business turned for its solutions to the United States-based National Association of Manufacturers, which had five simple prescriptions for improving public education: (1) rigorous and meaningful testing of students that can be compared from state to state; (2) charter schools; (3) school vouchers; (4) a national system of skills standards designed by industry; and (5) tax incentives to support education and training investments by business. There is, of course, no guarantee that any of the above prescriptions would improve the education of the patient, namely the students, but such a detail appears to matter little.
Third, critics insisted that the system needed to be cheaper and more efficient. Attempts to achieve such goals explain provincial budgetary constraints that began in Alberta in 1994, as well as constraints on school board costs resulting in school jurisdiction amalgamations and limitations on administrative spending.
The attack on public education and the attempt to undermine the public's confidence in it became a feeding frenzy. Everyone seemed to be able to find a solution, whether it was technology and personal laptops for all students, or value-added testing to judge whether the students had indeed learned $5,000 more knowledge at the end of the year than they had at the beginning, or simply involving business in anything from the preparation of the curriculum to the running of the schools. All that was needed, supposedly, was the will to make the changes—and if the extreme neo-liberal view was to be followed, the single most important change was to privatize the whole system. That would solve all the problems and make the education system lean and efficient. And it would also eradicate the so-called "socialist experiment" called "public education."
Is that still the aim in Alberta? Is the deliberate undermining of public education—an undermining revealed in many of the recommendations of the report of Alberta's Learning Commission—still an ongoing process? Will it in the end so weaken public education that parents will seek private alternatives out of sheer frustration?
I believe the process outlined by Ralph Nader in his Trojan horse analogy is still under way in Alberta. The ultimate aim of the neo-liberals in their ideal world is the privatization of K–12 education. At present there is still a single huge obstacle to achieving this goal: the parents of school-age children.
David Flower, a retired teacher, is the former coordinator of communications of the Alberta Teachers' Association.
Endnotes
1. Roy Hattersley. "Agitators will inherit the earth," The Guardian. November 17, 2003.
2. The Alberta Teachers' Association. Cracks in the Foundation: Why we heard what we heard. Edmonton: The Alberta Teachers' Association, September 2002.
3. Robertson, S., V. Soucek, R. Pannu and D. Schugurensky. "Chartering new waters: the Klein Revolution and the privatization of education in Alberta," Our Schools/Our Selves, March 1995.
4. Question period, June 4, 1997, Alberta Hansard, page 1004.
5. The Alberta Teachers' Association. Cracks in the Foundation: Why we heard what we heard. Edmonton: The Alberta Teachers' Association, September 2002. Page 6.
6. Alberta Learning. Every child learns. Every child succeeds. Edmonton: Government of Alberta. October 2003. Page 8.
7. Interview with Premier Klein in PCTalk, January 2001.
8. Quarterly report on the state of education, National Post, September 2001.