Parents for Choice in Education is an advocacy organization built on one proposition: authority over a child's education belongs to the parent. The state can assist - but it can never replace.
That proposition has consequences. School boards answer to parents - not the other way around. A Catholic school may teach Catholic doctrine and a charter school may run a classical curriculum without apology. And no authority should be able to tell families that their options are restricted because of the neighbourhood they can afford to live in.
Our job is to help parents understand their rights and the issues before them. We equip them to defend those rights, and make sure that those making decisions on their behalf hear them.
Alberta has more school choice than any province in Canada. It did not happen by accident, and it will not survive by accident.
Sign up and you get two things. Email alerts when something in your constituency needs a parent's voice: a trustee vote, a consultation, a bill. And our newsletter, which explains what the alert did not have room for.
We ask for your address because the alerts are local. A school board in Grande Prairie does not need to hear from Medicine Hat.
Four fights, one principle: the people who run Alberta's schools answer to the parents whose children sit in them.
Oversight
Alberta built a court for teacher discipline. It has no police. A $16-million abuse settlement at one Calgary school and a superintendent facing fraud charges, found by accident, show what happens when nobody is looking.
The proposalChild protection
Canada catches about half of the sexual abuse of students by school staff. Chicago catches twice as much and clears the innocent faster. The difference is structure, not luck.
The evidenceThe profession
Membership is compulsory. Discipline has been taken away. What remains is a union with the powers of a regulator and the accountability of neither. A series of articles begins this season.
Follow the seriesTeacher supply
An electrician is trained on real buildings by a master who signs off on her work. A teacher spends four years and $68,000 before meeting a classroom. Alberta trained teachers the first way until 1945.
The proposalPCE runs on the donations of parents and other citizens who think the work is worth doing. There is no government funding and no union dues behind us.
Because we advocate directly on legislation, PCE is not a registered charity and cannot issue tax receipts. What your gift buys instead is research, lobbying, and the email alerts that put parents in front of trustees and MLAs when it counts.
Prefer a cheque? Make it payable to Parents for Choice in Education and send it to Suite 622, 440-10816 Macleod Trail SE, Calgary, AB T2J 5N8. E-transfers go to [email protected].
