“Research proves the most effective way to improve student learning is to ensure parents are actively involved in their children’s education.” — Former Alberta Teachers’ Association president, 

Bauni Mackay 

Given the critical importance of parental involvement, you would think that parents would hold considerable influence over the public education system in Alberta. Unfortunately, just the opposite is true. 

The recent meeting between Premier Ralph Klein and Alberta Teachers’ Association President Larry Booi illustrates that in Alberta, the nexus of power in public education lies between the provincial government and the teachers’ union, to the detriment of local school boards, principals and, especially, parents. 

Education is not immune to the golden rule — he who controls the gold, rules. In this case, the provincial government ultimately is responsible for funding education and the teachers, though their salaries, receive a lion’s share of that funding. In addition to being the recipient of much of the gold, the ATA’s power is bolstered by the fact that it also controls the certification of teachers — you must be a member of the ATA in order to teach in a public or separate school. This gives the ATA overwhelming power over the direction of education — from teacher training, to deciding what qualifications must be held in order to teach in Alberta. 

Local school boards, in contrast, have little control over education because they have lost control over the gold. Even though they formally are responsible for bargaining with the teachers and overseeing local schools, the fact that they do not raise their own revenues to pay for education — as they did when they set local education property tax rates — means that their influence is superceded too easily by a provincial government that has all the golden eggs in its basket. 

And because principals are required to be members of the ATA, they cannot be an effective counterweight for parents when that conflicts with the goals of the union. 

Lost entirely in the power nexus between the government and the ATA are the parents. Sure, there may be local parent advisory boards and parent councils, but, in practice, because parents do not control the gold, they have little influence over the rules. 

The golden rule in private and home schooling works in complete reverse. While the provincial government does provide partial funding for both, a significant share of funding for these forms of education comes from parents. 

In contrast with public education, the golden rule in private and home schools means that parents rule. In private schools, it is most often the principal, in concert with parent-driven school boards (or the parents themselves, in the case of home schooling) that determine the composition of the teaching staff, the curriculum and the overall tenor of the school. In other words, the power ranking is parent, principal, school board, teachers and, finally, the province. 

And, as you would expect, given the opening quote, private and home schools perform much better than public or separate schools, even when you adjust for socio-economic factors such as education of parents and income. 

There are ways to increase parents’ (and principals’ and local school boards’) influence over public education, but many of them are problematic. 

We could return taxing authority, for example, to local school boards. This would align much better the gold between parents (who would pay local taxes) and the school. The trouble is, there is a great variation in the ability of different regions to raise property taxes, resulting in great inequities in per-pupil funding across the province. 

We also might consider giving the ultimate power to hire and fire school teachers to the principals, and perhaps even require a parent-board to hire the principal — moves that would require principals to be outside of the ATA. But the ATA has been very effective at preventing principals from exiting the union, despite repeated attempts over the past decade. 

A third possibility would be to remove the responsibility of the ATA to certify all teachers, giving schools a choice over whether they hire ATA-certified teachers or not. But, again, the golden rule gives teachers enough power in the current system to effectively prevent this change — their withholding of services would weaken the resolve of any government bold enough to try. 

But, Alberta, because it already funds choices in education such as charter, private and home schools, is well suited to give power to parents by changing who holds the gold. 

Putting gold in the hands of parents, yet retaining a universal education system, could be done by moving to a system of education vouchers. The system would work as follows. Each parent with a school-age child would receive a voucher from the province. That voucher could be used by the parent in any school of their choice, and an equal per-pupil grant would go to that school. A voucher-based system would, therefore, radically increase the importance of parents within our education system, by moving the golden eggs from the province to parents. 

Power and control over public education in Alberta is exactly backwards, relegating parents to a minor, if not irrelevant role, and giving most of the power to the government and the teachers union. A voucher system would return to parents the power they deserve over the education of their children. And, that, as the opening quote from the ATA suggests, would be good for everybody. 

Ken Boessenkool is the president of Sidicus Consulting Ltd., a Calgary-based economic and public policy consulting firm and an Adjunct Research Fellow at the CD Howe Institute.