Another move to benefit the wealthy

"There's always going to be finger-pointing. It's important to remember that everyone wants the system to succeed," Michael Thomas, associate director of school performance studies for the Fraser Institute.

Define success. Ad a director of the Fraser Institute, it invariably has everything to do with the bottom line. What's best for BC and best for the vast majority of those living in BC is immaterial.

What a travesty of our supposedly social democratic nation.

Just how many apple carts can Campbell and his cronies upset before someone makes him into applesauce?

Canada preserved for the elite

Only the wealthy in Canada can own a home, raise well fed and healthy children, get good health care...why would a decent education be any different? The talented and bright kids of our nation's low income families are already banned from university due to lack of funds.

dumbing everyone down

Poor mental health or maturity are no longer desired If a person is mature and with good mental health they do not support idiots like gordo or harpo sicko ideas like theirs. Many people realize the present state of afairs are a
WAKE UP CALL to those who have ignored running things

Privatization of schools is only one more step they hope to take that puts us back how many decades???

This reminds me of the book

This reminds me of the book by Pierre Burton, "The Smug Minority". And this Peter Brown fella that is mentioned in the article; isn't he the one and only who use to control the Socred Party back in it's hay-day? And isn't he the same Peter Brown who use to run the Vancouver Stock Exchange which had to be closed down cuz it was so corrupt? Dollars to doughnuts that he controls the Liberal party too?

public funding to private schools

It's time we took a serious look at the public dollars we spend on private, independent schools. These schools discriminate on who gets in and then rely on the Fraser Institute to publish school rankings to further promote them. If dollars are scarce, you'd think you'd prop up the public institutions that society relies upon ... not hand money over to those already in a priviledged situation. I just wish that the VSB recieved the same per pupil funding that Ontario public schools get!

Straight from the horse's mouth...

Do the BC Liberals support privatized schools?

Read this e-mail exchange between BC Liberal MLA Randy Hawes and a constituent and judge for yourself:

http://stopeducationcuts.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/hawes-email1.pdf

The comments are all the more bizarre and out-of-touch when you consider that 90% of Hawes' constituents choose Mission's public schools over private alternatives - clearly that 90% is not the constituency he considers himself elected to represent!

Has funding for private schools gone done?

Betcha not. Taxpayers should not be funding private schools. Period.

I do not think that I should have to put dollars to fund someone's education; especially religious education.

Doing so is not separation of church and state.

@Name

Thanks for posting that email exchange between Hawes and megan faulkner.

It is highly informative that Hawes not only doesn't know what the actual figures ARE - or the fact that they come directly from HIS GOVERNMENT and not the BCTF - and that, when his spin directions fail to get him out of trouble he resorts to calling names.

The 200 million odd dollars Campbell spends on private schools EVERY YEAR should go back to funding and supporting PUBLIC SCHOOLS and Campbell an his acolytes like Randy Hawes should stop 'stealing' tax revenuses and shovelling it out to their friends.

@ Linda and Emily

Thanks for the article - and thanks to Tyee for publishing it.

Billed as a "prestigious

Billed as a "prestigious conservative economic think tank", the FI is nothing more than an advertising agency for corporate dictatorship, one of about a hundred, set up in the mid 70s for the purpose of world takeover, now called "globalization" .

The real meaning of the word "conservative" is "fascist".

The purpose of school privatization and the content being taught is to ensure that only people who "deserve" education will get it.

Ed Deak.

The Facts.

GOD GAVE 2% OF THE POPULATION 98% OF THE EARTHS WEALTH!
NEXT QUESTION...

Death by a thousand cuts...

Of course Campbell and his Liberals support privatized education. (Even having to ask the question displays a certain naivete.) Liberal actions (as opposed to promises to placate the undecided at election time) consistently show that to be true.

Their actions embody the general thesis of the recent book THE WRECKING CREW. Although this book documents the depredations of Republican governments in the US, its thesis can be applied here. Generally it runs thus.

1) Private is better than public.
2) Government is bad.
3) When you get into power, appoint dimwits and chuckleheads into positions of authority, especially endeavoring to get them to promote policies that make their ministries' do their jobs badly.
4) Cut back staffing in the public sector so that those employed therein cannot do their jobs properly.
5) Use government funds badly (rewarding your pals in the private sector is fine) to further demonstrate how irresponsible government is.
6) Make sure that most public sector workers are poorly paid, a tactic that encourages skilled, intelligent, mobile individuals to move to the private sector.
7) When government does its jobs badly, people will seek a private alternative for the services they need.

Campbell's government has lied and cheated, bending the truth (e.g. we keep spending more on education), breaking the law (ignoring private clinics in health care), failing to uphold even its own legislation (class size and composition limits).

I remember just before the Liberals were elected in 2001 sitting in a local all-candidates meeting when the guy next to me said, "I've always been under the impressions that Campbell is, well, evil!"

Says it all.

Both my wife and I have

Both my wife and I have spent years in European parochial schools, so we know what they're like.

I was in the custom furniture business in Vancouver from 1957 to 79 and one of my best customers was the Contract/furniture department of Jordan's Carpets on Granville.

They had a break-in, sometime in the early 70s, and called me to repair the broken lock on the front door, which was in a small alcove. It was a rainy day and as I was working, inside the store, on the open door, a couple of girls in the uniforms of the the Little Flower Academy came into the alcove, out of the rain, waiting for a bus.

They haven't seen me behind the door and one of them started tapping her jacket pocket as said: "Goddamn it, I've lost my fucking radio !"

I kept quiet, not to disturb them, and so their conversation went on for a few minutes and, based on many years of experience in the trades, I would say it would have passed with credits in any construction site lunchroom.

The language wasn't really bothering me, as I have been known to use a few colourful expressions on occasion, but coming from a couple of girls in fancy uniforms, I thought, it was very funny.

Their parents were paying more par year for their private school education than many people were making in a year, even before the now fashionable minimum wage, part time jobs in our "competitive society".

And what have they learned any different than in any other school?

Those girls must now be in their late 50s, probably married to some top line executives and I'm wondering how they speak now, and what schools have their children attended ? We can bet it wasn't some lousy public school.

Ed Deak.

Gordo is for Sale

Anything that might yield campaign donations to the Lib juggernaut, is acceptable to the current regime.

CITIZEN-JOURNALISTS: another scandal brews. The both-party denial of the role of BC's Police Lobby in putting their front-man, Rich Coleman (ex-RCMP) into the role of taker of their Legislative dictation, has resulted in a huge scandal in Ontario. Huge Ontario private security companies - outside of effective RCMP control - were shut out of G20 service, in favour of companies favourable to the BC Cop-Lobby. Watch Canwest cover this up. They have loved Coleman since they defended a Langley Defamation suit with his Campaign VP, Jordan Bateman.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/joe_warmington/2010/07/08/14651761.html

fleecing the lambs...

the history of the vancouver stock exchange, practically a biography of peter brown, he also was behind bcric,i`d bet there isnt one canadian politician that would turn down the title of fellow of the fraser institute or whatever they call them, there`s a hell of a lot of them. that said, there is reason to believe that if the ndp would have provided a candidate other than ms. james,enough voters would have shown up at the polls to have ended this white collar crime wave of campbell and co.

funding

Sutherland said, "What has actually happened is that every single year, funding for the education system has increased, even in school districts where they have seen a dramatic decline in enrolment. The government funds education on a per people basis.
-there it is again- the oft stated lie!
What no one seems to point out is how the Liberals lumped in all the special needs categories, which were previously outside the per student amount in the "per student" funding in order to say they've increased funding. That lie should be exposed in every report.

I don't like funding private schools either but....

if it is decided to send funding their way then any cuts in education funding should be applied to them as well. There is absolutely no way the taxpayer should be forced to endure budget cuts and then sit by and watch private schools continue to operate without the same constraints.

gordo

What we have here is an early post-Katrina New Orleans.

From Wikipedia:

Undoubtedly the most radical experimentation with charter schools has occurred in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The New Orleans Public Schools system is currently engaged in reforms aimed at decentralizing power away from the pre-Katrina school board central bureaucracy to individual school principals and charter school boards, monitoring charter school performance by granting renewable, five-year operating contracts permitting the closure of those not succeeding, and vesting choice in parents of public school students, allowing them to enroll their children in almost any school in the district. New Orleans is the only city in the nation where the majority of public school students attend charter schools.

In other words, in New Orleans: no money, no education.
No wonder most low-income (mostly black) folks with kids are, five years later, still in Baton Rouge, Houston, etc.

The gentrification by economic exclusion of residents is a reality in that city.

Do we want that here? It may be too late.

Go Patty!

By the way, I don't even have children but I know the value of education, especially my own.

A billion or six for the Owelympics, another half-billion for the refubishing of B.C. Place so the boat show won't be wet and 30-per-cent wage hikes for Mary Polak, millions about to be spent on pro-HST propoganda but CUTS to special-education teachers, EMS workers needing to on strike for a living wage, phone-a-librarian service axed, environmental agencies stifled, etc., etc.

If Gordo had a conscience, or two clues to rub together, he would take his private school bent, along with his other facist plans for his "Best Place on Earth" (how much is that propoganda campaign still costing us?) and jump of the Bennett Bridge in Kelowna.

Will Private Schools Fill This Gap?

Factory Jobs Return, but Employers Find Skills Shortage
http://www.memeorandum.com/100702/p8#a100702p8

From reading Ed's snippet above about the "girls in fancy uniforms", I doubt that those who send their kids to private school have visions of factory work dancing in their heads.

The problem that the FI and sycophants such as Gordo don't even realise they have, is that this society is no longer one of "hewers of wood and carriers of water". The hoi polloi must necessarily be educated or else the "factory owners" (as envisaged by those who send their kids to private school) will have no one able to run their factories.

Private schools

For whatever reason I went to a private girls school in NB some 50+ years ago.The school was within walking distance, and I was only a "day girl". Some little rich girls were sent there as borders as young as 8 years old. The school wasn't any good academically, and it often prompted my mom to say that the "English like their dogs better than their kids, so they send them away as soon as possible". We were recent immigrants then.

We had to pay for the tuition, and I don't believe that private schools had any subsidies, nor should them get any. I don't think the Molsons and Pitfields whose girls were borders there needed them.

Pre-Industrial Revolution Conditions?

If the FI & (sycophant) Gordon Campbell want to re-institute medieval Europe, perhaps they could re-institute the Poor Laws:

http://www.alternet.org/story/147422/just_give_money_to_the_poor_a_surprisingly_effective_solution_to_poverty
Back in the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth, English lawmakers said it was the government and taxpayers. They introduced the compulsory “poor tax” of 1572 to provide peasants with cash and a “parish loaf.” The world’s first-ever public relief system did more than feed the poor: It helped fuel economic growth because peasants could risk leaving the land to look for work in town.

As I see it

I don't really think that even the BC Liberal Party wants to privatize education. What I really think they want to get rid of is school trustees and the BCTF. They can control school trustees through monetary policies, but they cannot control their political views. If the trustees were hired by the government of the day, they would no doubt be made to toe the line or be looking for a new job. The problem is that they are duly elected by the municipality that they represent which makes control a difficult proposition. The BCTF has been traditionally left of centre and donated both money and vociferous support of the NDP which doesn't sit well with Campbell & Co.

The Fraser Institute is really just a tool in the BC Liberals quest of gaining complete control of the education system. Their job has been to create the wedge, private school performance versus public school performance. Unfortunately, too many uninformed parents of schoolage children have bought into the scam. Thus we have more parents turning to private schools and others choosing to send their children to schools outside their catchment area based on nothing more than the results of one set of exams.

The partial funding of private schools was the brainchild of the Socred Party and subsequent governments have been reluctant to reverse this decision for the simple fact that they don't want to possibly drive away votes. This was supposedly a trade off for the government being able to have greater control of the curriculum. Nothing more tha a way of selling this decision to the masses.

In my opinion the elites that accepted this subsidization of government funding for their private schools really screwed themselves. This funding formula opened the door for many more commoners to join the fold. The religious based schools were just able to increase their populations and assist their bottom lines.

crankypants

True enough. But is it control for control's sake - or some other reason?

Whereas I believe the BC Libs are a tool of the FI
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/politics/news/2010/06/30/fraser-institute-gets-defensive
and it's overall agenda.

The FI is only pushing what

The FI is only pushing what is now being taught in the universities, all over the world, as the "science of economics"

The neoclassical, Friedmanite crap, the religion of the Money God, forced on the world by big business who now also control the universities.

Capitalism and communism are the idiot twins of the age, demanding total mind control and collectivization, for the benefit of a ruling cadre.

There are no ideological "left" and "right" wings, only, what I call the "nut ladder", where ideologues and politicians are located on a vertical scale, like the C and F on thermometers, divided by a thin line.

Ed Deak.

Milton Friedman lived a lie, theories only promote greed!

I just read George Lakoff's "Don't Think of an Elephant!" which clearly showed how conservatives in the US have managed to frame issues to their advantage. How they have twisted the truth of privatization to make it look like a benefit to society, when in reality it is nothing more than an elitist plan to profit from the ignorance of the common man and woman.

Many conservatives themselves don't even understand that their arguments are false, unproven and even completely discounted in Steven Hill's new book "Europe's Promise". His book shows clearly how Europe's experience with pensions, health care, unions and even housing co-ops has benefited everyone, including the corporate world and how the political right and left essentially agree that their system works with all the social benefits it provides.

It is also interesting that universities in North America present Milton Friedman's theories as credible, when in reality they are nothing but a pipe dream based on a pyramid scheme of entrepreneurial greed.

Please note

Please note, the BCTF does not give any money to any political party. Some individual members may on their own but it is policy that the BCTF does not give donations to any political parties.

Lower Your Expectations

Seems the best most people can aspire to going forward is a McJob...

So how better to prepare you for that fate than a McEducation?

The funny bit is -- the private (expensive) charter schools provide horrible educations so after you gut the public system that does a darn good job if you fund it -- we will be a society of uneducated dolts and we'll have the dumb leading the dumber.

Welcome to the neo-con's corporate dystopia.

This is another attempt to

This is another attempt to draw us closer to an American Education System that can be sold off under a free trade agreement by allowing the private sector to compete. Education is for those who can pay and if you don't believe me look at the current method post secondary education is delivered. Many people are denied further education and are forced to work for the very people who would deny them a chance for higher learning. The Fraser Institute is nothing more
than the flack line for the political right in this
Province.

Independent School Funding

May I point out to all those bashing independent schools that some of the "information" taken as fact - is not. For example, you will find special needs kids in lots of independent schools. Most of them are not filled with elite kid admitted for their high IQs. As for funding them - do you really want to have the province finance the other 50% per pupil costs plus all the physical infrastructure, furniture, computer costs that independent schools are now paying for?? Do the math. Education costs would be higher - not lower - that they are now.
Here's an idea - why don't we have education vouchers and every family could spend them where they wanted? After all, it's a democratic country, eh?

Another example of Agenda Jouralism

The Tyee keeps disappointing those of us in Vancouver who want to see balanced investigative journalism. By turning the private school debate into a political screed against Gordon Campbell the Tyee fails to offer any constructive criticism into the schools funding issue.

Long before Campbell was elected into office, private schools thrived in BC and Vancouver. There are manifold reasons from religious affiliation to the desire of parents to find better education alternatives for their children. And these parents pay taxes, too, so there is fundamentally nothing wrong with the govt supporting private schools.

Instead, the BC left trots out the usual tired arguments that only the rich and elite send their kids to private school. We all know that is so far from the truth.

Private schools are a necessary part of our education system and the govt should fund them. Critics should accept that BC demographics are changing and public schools are subject to reorganization,