Alberta is getting attention for it's education system, from California to New Zealand to the UK, educators and politicians are looking towards Alberta as a model of success. Take a bow Alberta!
Ontario parents can only wish they had Alberta parents choices for the education of their kids, but McGuilty effectively killed any chances of that happening last election by demonizing choice for parents.
Take the province’s approach to education. School officials in Oakland, Calif., have admired it so much, they’ve tried copying it there. Management texts have been written about it. They’ve praised it in New Zealand, Germany, Sweden, New York City and Chicago. And now, the U.K.’s Education secretary, Michael Gove, is hailing the Alberta education model as the prescription to fix his country’s ailing state school system.
Funny how other nation's can recognize Alberta's superior education system, but provinces won't adopt it. The Alberta Advantage is at work again!
Canada, meantime, ranked sixth overall in the 2009 PISA report, behind Shanghai, Korea, Finland, Hong Kong and Singapore. But Alberta students did most of the heavy lifting to get it there: In the past three PISA reports, Alberta has handily beaten every other English-speaking region in the world.
“Alberta has been the number one province nine or 10 times out of 12” assessments, says Peter Cowley, education policy researcher at the Fraser Institute.
“Why don’t the provinces doing poorly just emulate Alberta, why don’t they buy the Alberta curriculum?”
He suspects it is because with education being an area of provincial responsibility, each one thinks they can do it better than the rest, even if results suggest otherwise.
I suspect the problem is powerful teacher's unions who want to maintain control over our kids, and do not want any competition allowed. BC is too busy adding eco-friendly and gay material to their curriculum to be bothered with math and English. Ontario teachers unions are too busy bashing anything non-Palestinian to care about what the kids are actually doing.
I actually don't care what happens in Ontario, because my kids are able to get the quality education they need to excel in the world. If other provinces are happy with math and English illiterate kids, so much better for my kids! HA! Just kidding.
Parents need to take control back of their school systems and demand the education their kids need. Push, and push hard to make sure that YOU decide where your kids go to school. The funds in Alberta follow the students, who can go to any school in the system, and standard testing ensures that no matter which school kids go to, they all get the same basic education.
Life is good here in Alberta for our most precious resource, our kids!
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Thanks Sandy, I meant to link to it.
