Across Canada, school districts have been confronting a backlash to their equity and social justice initiatives. Critics of public education have been arguing that the solution to these controversies is to increase school choice. Using several examples from the United States, this paper argues that the endgame of these strategies is to undermine…

This paper examines the persistent, growing popularity of Canadian French immersion (FI) programmes. Critics charge that FI programmes are elitist, diverting already limited resources from other areas of the education system. We begin with a brief overview of the benefits of FI in Canada and enrolment trends. Next, sources of FI-related inequality…

Across OECD countries, education choice is proliferating as parents seek and governments permit choice both inside and outside public education systems. The movement of students out of the common public school, however, varies significantly across jurisdictions and sociodemographic characteristics such as race and class. This variation in…

Public education is a public good. It provides students with skills to take part in society and the economy. It gives students access to culture and traditions, as well as exposure beyond a narrow personal experience. But public education has broader social purposes and contributions as well. It is the basis for social benefits that are of value…

Little is known about the school choice practices of Aboriginal families in settler-colonial societies, where they have been removed from their ancestral lands and/or have been subjected to discriminatory educational policies. Through the lens of settler-colonial theory, this study elucidates the "spatially positioned" school choice…

In this paper we examine the public charter school movement in the Province of Alberta, Canada over the past 20 years to determine how charter school policy and regulations have limited and controlled the impact of charter schools on public education. Specifically we focus on the extent to which charter schools in Alberta fulfilled the aims and…

This paper provides a descriptive account of the growing landscape of school choice in Canada through a comparative analysis of funding and student enrolment in the public, independent and home-based education sectors in each province. Given that the provinces have responsibility for K-12 education, the mixture of public, independent and home…

The neoliberal turn in public education positions the parent as a consumer within an expanding educational marketplace. This shift is premised on the notion that the free market is best suited to promote equity. Critics of this claim highlight how a larger choice arena creates additional opportunities for privileged parents to mobilize their…

Teaching in a democracy is challenging and filled with dilemmas that have no easy answers. For example, how do educators meet their responsibilities of teaching civic norms and dispositions while remaining nonpartisan? "Democratic Discord in Schools" features eight normative cases of complex dilemmas drawn from real events designed to…

This critical policy study provides an understanding of the different actors--individuals, interest groups, and other organizations--involved in influencing and defining, through their narratives what public education in BC ought to be, thus capturing the core intellectual dispositions that informed and determined the kind of policy problems that…

This article asserts that in preparing the youth for tomorrow, one of the educators' preoccupations should be helping them learn to make effective, responsible, intelligent choices. Though educators see the importance of choice in relation to student behavior and classroom management, there is little evidence they have considered choice in…

Governments restrict choice about what students learn within the public school system in the name of improved performance and accountability, but have simultaneously introduced choice among schools by enabling "exit" from the public system. Defenders of public education need to consider how public schools can provide citizens with…

The government of Ontario announced in 1984 that it would begin to fund Catholic high schools in 1985. Prior to this announcement, Ontario had operated since the 1800s under a system that provided for the public funding of a dual system of Protestant and Catholic public elementary schools and a single system of nondenominational secondary schools.…

The role of parent choice in publicly funded education in six selected nations is examined. Focusing upon education in developed Western democracies, this study is intended to be instructive to U.S. education as it examines the interplay between state-mandated universal education and parents' right of choice. Twenty-five national education systems…

Examines the coincident nature of recent educational reforms (multiculturalism, skills training, curricular redesign, school choice) in Canada and four other Anglophone democracies as related to two forms of globalization: economic globalization and global rationalization and standardization. Concludes that globalization is transforming education…