School for Thought reaches the Second Year Mark

As we celebrate our second anniversary of ruminating on the state of education in Canada, I'd like to share this piece (c/o our friend and director Gerry Nicholls) from the Morning Bell:  School Choice is the New Normal.

Well, at least in the U.S. it is. 

      "School choice, which saves taxpayers money and simultaneously offers children a higher quality education, is sweeping the nation. And it's an idea whose time has come. Instead of funding school buildings, the philosophy behind school choice says we should fund students instead and allow education dollars to follow a child to the school of his or her choice.
      In places like Washington, D.C. [SFT note - spearheaded by Virginia Walden-Ford who spoke at our Measuring Up Conference], where the now-revived D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program is providing low-income children with vouchers to attend a private school of their choice, dramatic results have been achieved. These children, who once attended the poorest-performing public schools in the country, are thriving in schools chosen by their parents - not assigned based on their zip code. Academic achievement has risen, and impressively, students who received a voucher and used it to attend private schools of their choice had a 91 percent graduation rate."...
   ..."And yet, education special interest groups - teachers' unions - are dead set against such options for children and the state as a whole. They consistently lobby to stop the school choice movement in its tracks, because they know it poses a threat to their power. But the union stranglehold over education is beginning to crumble - thanks to efforts in Wisconsin and elsewhere - and policies that are in the best interests of children - not adults - are being pursued."

The task ahead of SQE is to achieve the same for Canadian children.  

You can help us do this by supporting the Society for Quality Education with a DONATION, joining Friends of SQE on Facebook, or following us on Twitter. 

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