Securing a spot for your child in the most desirable public school requires a combination of clever machinations and outdoor survival skills. And good luck to those who fail to plan their strategy before the registration deadline.
(Which, by the way, is this month in most Canadian school districts for those of you who foolishly thought that teaching your five-year-old to dress themselves in time for September was your chief parental duty.)
You may, as Andrew Hope, a father in Nanaimo, B.C., did last March, sleep in your truck for two nights in the school parking lot, to win a kindergarten spot for your daughter in the local high-performing French immersion school. Or bring a lawn chair and radio to survive the hours-long lineup, as Lorraine Baldwin, a mom in Willoughby, B.C., did for each of her two daughters (the second time, it wasn’t only for the innovative neighbourhood school – she had her eye on a certain teacher and wanted morning classes).
Alternatively, with a well-crafted transfer-request, you may want to stress your son’s long-standing interest in learning German, a course taught only at the better high school a catchment area away – that’s what David Langner, an Ottawa father, did, while still lining up at the school, letter in hand, as a precaution.
After all, in a society of ever-expanding choice, why shouldn’t parents get to customize the academic path of their children, the same way they choose life-enriching extracurricular activities?
Parents make a reasonable argument: When families “vote with their feet,” it creates an incentive for a public system to innovate or fix problem schools.
Even cash-strapped boards are offering more specialized school programs, charter schools and generally loosening cross-boundary transfers – keen to retain the best students and appease their vocal, well-organized parents. It’s a trend that’s happening across the Western world. But growing research – including a new report this month from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development – has also uncovered a worrying side effect: growing social inequality and segregation in public schools.
That shouldn’t be a surprise: The parents with the savvy to write letters, the time to line up and the resources to drive across town to get their kids to the better schools are usually not the ones working two jobs and split shifts, just trying to get by.
The impulse is understandable. Research shows that good students help the performance of struggling peers, but if that school is in a rough neighbourhood, if it has low ranking and an out-of-date science lab, a bad (if undeserved) reputation for drugs and gangs, who can fault a parent for seeking a better option?
As Mr. Langner says, having spared his two sons entry into just such a worrisome high school, “I want the best for my kids. I am uncomfortable with them being treated like a social experiment. The school isn’t managing the problems and the best the board could do was take away choice – that’s what I really bristled at.”
And while social integration is a worthy goal in principle, Nanaimo father Andrew Hope says, “If you have a certain school that’s going the extra mile, I would do whatever I can do to get my daughter there.”
On the other hand, Canada already boasts top-ranked international test scores and a smaller gap between poor and richer students than most other countries. Advantaged students benefit most from open competition in public education: Choice helps only those students whose parents are able to exercise it.
Countries such as Australia and Britain, with a high level of choice, are now struggling to improve test scores in classrooms vacated by wealthier and more educated families, who then crow over their self-selected high-performing schools. (Though it’s hard to imagine a school not succeeding with a homogeneous population of enriched students and educated, homework-policing parents.)
And while specialized programs, such as schools focused on arts and science, are appealing, University of Calgary education professor Darren Lund, who studies social-justice issues in schools, points out that they drain the system of funds that might be used to bring innovation and a good music program to all students, especially in early grades when students haven’t self-identified interests. Aside from overcrowding some schools and emptying others, making choice equitable also costs money: How does the system ensure a low-income student has the bus fare to cross town to their desired school?
