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Private Public Schools
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute reports that there are 2,817 “private public” schools in the US - publicly-funded schools that serve hardly any low-income children. These private public schools are located in “wealthy urban enclaves or well-heeled suburbs”. And although their doors are effectively closed to poor children (because poor families can’t afford to buy a house in the schools’ catchment areas), these schools are fully funded by taxpayers.
While there are far fewer of such schools in Canada than in the US, there is no doubt that they exist here as well. So the next time you hear someone grumble about “exclusive” and “élite” private schools like Upper Canada College, you might point out that Canada’s private public schools are actually more selective than its private private schools, since most, if not all, of the truly private schools offer scholarship to dozens of low-income students. Why would anyone support public funding for private public schools - but not for private private schools?
This is just so much nonsense. Toronto Board had lots of these schools in Forest Hill, North Toronto, and other “leafy suburbs”. When I was a trustee we simply said “anybody can go to any public school” these schools were given the worst pupil-teacher ratios, programs like gifted and French Immersion were kept away from them in order to be more democratic etc. They are public schools by definition because they are free and state financed.
The problem in the USA is quite different and I don’t know how they will ever solve it. These schools are much better finaced in fact they oftern have a $10-1 ratio over inner city schools which is why inner cities are falling apart. In Ontario we pool the wealth and actually redistribute income away from rich schools to poor ones. The Americans do the opposite and are unwilling to move funding from toney suburbs to hard scrabble inner city ghetto schools. Hence-they have a giant problem but due to our much more socialist nature, our problems are much less.