Canadian Education & America’s Regression
While the U. S. rushes to completely nationalize education, allegedly to improve test scores, America’s nearest northern neighbor, Canada, is taking a different approach. “I don’t know why Americans don’t adopt the Canadian approach to education,” Jason Clemens of the Canadian Fraser Institute said last weekend at a seminar in Chicago.
In Canada, there is “no federal role in education,” Clemens said at the Friday conference sponsored by the free-market Atlas Network and the Illinois Policy Institute. Both spending and governance of education in Canada are “entirely provincial,” Clemens said.
While, over the past two decades, Canada’s national government achieved this fundamental transformation, test scores went up. “Canada spends less than the United States on education but beats the US and the OECD averages on PISA results,” Clemens notes.
The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development consists of:
AUSTRALIA | 7 June 1971 |
AUSTRIA | 29 September 1961 |
BELGIUM | 13 September 1961 |
CANADA | 10 April 1961 |
CHILE | 7 May 2010 |
CZECH REPUBLIC | 21 December 1995 |
DENMARK | 30 May 1961 |
ESTONIA | 9 December 2010 |
FINLAND | 28 January 1969 |
FRANCE | 7 August 1961 |
GERMANY | 27 September 1961 |
GREECE | 27 September 1961 |
HUNGARY | 7 May 1996 |
ICELAND | 5 June 1961 |
IRELAND | 17 August 1961 |
ISRAEL | 7 September 2010 |
ITALY | 29 March 1962 |
JAPAN | 28 April 1964 |
KOREA | 12 December 1996 |
LUXEMBOURG | 7 December 1961 |
MEXICO | 18 May 1994 |
NETHERLANDS | 13 November 1961 |
NEW ZEALAND | 29 May 1973 |
NORWAY | 4 July 1961 |
POLAND | 22 November 1996 |
PORTUGAL | 4 August 1961 |
SLOVAK REPUBLIC | 14 December 2000 |
SLOVENIA | 21 July 2010 |
SPAIN | 3 August 1961 |
SWEDEN | 28 September 1961 |
SWITZERLAND | 28 September 1961 |
TURKEY | 2 August 1961 |
UNITED KINGDOM | 2 May 1961 |
UNITED STATES | 12 April 1961 |
PISA is the Programme for International Student Assessment sponsored by the OECD. Canada achieved all of the above, ironically, under mostly left-leaning leaders who insisted it was a matter of “mathematics, not ideology,” Clemens said. Now if only the two party establishments in the U. S. would improve their computational skills….