For the most part, Canadians are blessed with a wide range of consumer choice. They can choose their vehicle from dozens of makes and models – sedans, convertibles, SUV’s, sports cars, mini-vans, and dozens of manufacturers – GM, Mazda, Kia, Saab, VW, BMW, Fiat, Volvo, Ford, Toyota, and literally hundreds of colours and options. This same level of choice is taken for granted by Canadians, and is available in most other areas of their lives – food, housing, clothing, entertainment, day-care, travel, and so on.

When it comes to their children’s education, however, most Canadians have little or no choice. The costs associated with private schools and home-schooling put these options out of the reach of most Canadians, leaving only publicly funded schools as the practical alternative. Unfortunately, most publicly-funded schools do not differ greatly from one another. Moreover, it is common for school boards to assign students to specific schools, giving parents no choice whatsoever.

The absence of school choice is primarily justified by people’s desire for one strong public school system where all children attend a common-denominator neighbourhood school. Unfortunately, the more children attend neighbourhood schools, the less satisfied parents tend to be with those schools. Monopolistic schooling has inherent defects, including the dominance of special-interest groups like teachers’ unions; excessively-uniform school policies; weak and inappropriate incentive structures; and inefficient, unresponsive bureaucracies. Even with the best of intentions and highly-qualified teachers, monopolistic school systems invariably disappoint.

The opponents of school choice argue that offering parents their choice of schools would lead to all kinds of undesirable effects such as a two-tiered education system; a mass exodus from publicly-funded schools; social and religious fragmentation; the emergence of fanatical and/or fraudulent schools; and inefficiencies resulting from duplication of administrative costs. None of these arguments holds up to an empirical assessment of education practices in jurisdictions with more school choice. (For a summary of these and other school choice myths, click here.)

The first argument in favour of school choice is based on parents’ greater familiarity with their children’s educational needs and the fundamental stake they have in their children’s welfare. Since parents are much more likely to know what is best for their child than school board officials, parents are in a better position to oversee their children’s schooling. Furthermore, parents are more likely to take ownership of their children’s education if they have played a part in choosing it. The research clearly demonstrates that the more parents are involved in their children’s education, the better students perform.

The second argument in favour of school choice involves fairness. As things stand, well-educated, affluent parents either work the system to get good service for their children or have the opportunity to enroll their children in private schools. For example, many well-known politicians (while professing strong support for public education) send their own children to private schools. Parents without the know-how and/or resources of more affluent families are forced to settle for whatever school comes their way. Expanded school choice offers less affluent parents improved access to better education options, and as a result the overall level of student achievement and parental satisfaction rises.

The final argument in favour of school choice is an economic one. For at least 20 years, most provincial governments have been working hard to improve their public schools. Unfortunately, there has been no corresponding increase in either academic achievement or parental satisfaction. This performance failure is precisely what economic theory would predict: monopolistic school systems cannot directly produce good schooling. A shift to school choice would transform and energize schools by moving power from governments, bureaucracies, and special-interest groups to school-based educators and parents.

The best way to test these competing theories is to look at the provinces with the most school choice – Alberta, BC, and Quebec. These three provinces repeatedly do better than the other seven provinces on tests of student achievement. Alberta, the province with the most school choice, has the highest student achievement. The Atlantic provinces, which offer the least amount of choice, consistently record the poorest results on tests of student achievement.

When it comes to the problems that opponents of school choice predict, there is no evidence that any complications have actually materialized in Alberta, BC, or Quebec. For example, in those provinces there is actually a smaller achievement gap between high- and low-income students than in the other provinces. There has been no mass exodus from publicly-funded schools. There is no evidence of greater social and/or religious fragmentation. No fanatical and/or fraudulent schools have emerged.

Canada has had government-run education for 150 years. To assess the implications of this monopolistic approach, it is instructive to compare the automobile industries in East and West Germany between the years 1945 and 1989. Both countries started off at essentially the same economic level in the aftermath of World War II.

Forty-four years after the War, East Germans were lucky to own a Trabant, a car so dirty and dangerous it has achieved cult status since disappearing from East German roads more than 10 years ago. It was powered by an anemic and smoky two-stroke engine, and its body was made out of pressed cardboard. A 1989 BMW, on the other hand, was one of the most advanced and well-made cars in the world. Even the lowliest car made in West Germany – for example, an Opel or a German Ford – had excellent comfort, performance, and reliability.

What was the defining difference between the car industries of the two Germanys? One operated under practical monopoly protection of the East German state, while the other innovated performance and customer satisfaction based on competitive pressures in the West German marketplace.

Accordingly, in the Canada of 2006, we really have very little hope and imagination for how satisfying a BMW education could be. Only wide-open school choice will reveal how good schools can become.