How the UCP is Supporting Charter Schools

As of March 15, 2022, the UCP Government is investing an additional $25 million in public charter school operations. This is in addition to the $47 million in capital investment already set aside for charter school expansion over the next three years.

In 2019, only a few months into their reign as government, the UCP passed Bill 8 which eliminated the cap on charter schools (previously 15), allowing for an unlimited number of schools with unique programming that they argue is not offered in the public system.

Then, in September of 2020, a second piece of legislation came into effect: Bill 15, The Choice in Education Act which effectively allows charter schools to bypass local school boards and apply directly to the Ministry of Education to approve its status.

Following the passing of Bills 8 and 15, three schools have opened: The STEM Innovation Academy, The Calgary Classical Academy and an agricultural-focused school in Calmar called The New Humble Community.

UCP officials say they want to see more charter schools run by parents, providing “experiential and practical learning” in junior and senior high schools, adding that more announcements to create charter school hubs — with several charters in one location — are on the way. Premier Jason Kenney says the province also wants charters to consider forming "hubs" or campuses, where multiple schools could cluster together and share gymnasium space or sports fields.

Premier Kenney himself is a product of elite private schooling. Plus, University of Calgary Political Scientist, Lori Williams argues that with the Premier up for a leadership review in April, it is likely he’s looking to regain support in rural Alberta where charter schools and homeschooling will provide more options for families.

The push for charter schools also aligns well with this government’s political and economic ideology of privatization, commercialization, and deficit reduction. It was these same neoconservative and neoliberal values that allowed for charter school legislation to be introduced in Alberta in 1994, under the Ralph Klein Progressive Conservative Government.

Borrowing ideology, policy options, and language from the United States has long been a part of Alberta’s history. Charter schools in the US emerged largely from the Chicago School of Economics, inspired by the ideas of prominent thinkers like Milton Friedman. Friedman argued state “monopoly” over public education was problematic, and thus education should be instead subject to consumer choices and the dynamics of the free market.

However, while charter schools have gained popularity in the United States because of their small class sizes, high student achievement, and their ability to attract niche populations that are not well served in the traditional public school system, Alberta is the only province in Canada to experiment with them.  

Supporters of the public school education system are not keen on the fact that charter schools are funded by public tax dollars, but do not operate under the same regulations as public schools – such as having a democratically elected school board. They can also set fees that only some families can afford to pay.

The Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) believes that “options” in schooling should not be funded by public tax dollars since a number of charter schools use admission criteria or performance assessments to restrict public access. The ATA calls Premier Kenney out for “privileging charter and private schools that service a small percentage of the student population and ignore the vast majority of students.” Currently, 93% of Alberta students attend public school.

Certainly, the expansion of charter schools takes money away from an already-underfunded public school system. And in March 2020, the government redirected $128 million from Education funding to the province’s COVID-19 response, after laying off more than 20,000 education staff.

If Premier Kenney’s goal is to cut education costs and promote the development of charter school hubs and campuses that share facilities such as sport centers and libraries, then it is questionable whether efforts will be put into opening schools in the rural areas. Without having large populations, rural communities may have greater difficulty securing large proportions of funding needed to develop the kind of multi-plex facilities Kenney is alluding to. Currently, only three out of the sixteen charter schools operating in Alberta are located outside of city centers.

Nevertheless, the effect of Jason Kenney’s charter school policy will be revealed in time as we start to see more schools open. We ought to pay attention to the kinds of alternative programs that arise and where in order to gauge whether UCP expansion of the charter school system will indeed improve our education system by providing more options for students, or if it will act more as a gateway to the privatization of schooling and streamlining of exclusivity.