I am happy for you, Mr. Drainville, you will perhaps be able to play bulldozer for real ! In a spectacular turnaround, your leader has resurrected the Third Link project. This gesture might inspire you. The Prime Minister shows you the way forward. Nothing is stopping you, on the chaotic road to Bill 23 (PL 23), from making a sudden turnaround!
This turnaround is timely: the detailed study of the Act mainly amending the Public Education Act and enacting the Act respecting the National Institute of Excellence in Education resumes on Tuesday, October 17. You have the power to suspend PL 23, thus giving yourself the stature of a statesman by building a bridge (yes, I know, it’s less sexy only a tunnel, but even your boss is starting to like the idea!) towards education circles and civil society.
Collectively, we could thus come to the bedside of our education system, find a consensus on the findings and deliberate on the means to be implemented.
In education, we would like to avoid dogmatism, as your leader says so well when it comes to public works! No more secret committees, projects written on a corner of the table. Does the public not have the right to be listened to when it comes to the future of education? To use your own words: “From the moment we say we will listen to you […], we cannot say “we will listen to you”, but only on certain ideas and we will not listen to you on others. » Well, this is a very different position from that which has prevailed so far during the preliminary analysis of PL 23 in committee!
As you are a statesman, I am convinced that the option of a suspension (like a suspension bridge!) can find its way into your memos! And to enable you not to ignore your convictions according to which it is necessary to justify a decision other than by emotions, for example those aroused by an electoral defeat, I suggest that you support it with research.
Is governance by numbers effective in improving state management?
The question is valid. The notion of new public management (NGP), difficult to define, designates projects for transposing tools and methods of management or organization of work from the private sector to the public sector. This transposition is based on the belief in the greater efficiency of the private sector. Yet, according to Hood and Dixon (2013), there is no hard evidence that NPM has resulted in doing more with less. On the contrary !
However, the first chapter of PL 23 endorses a regulation of education inspired by the NGP. It is then a question of being extra careful: are we going in the right direction? Should we rely on magical thinking or fact-informed caution? Observing the decline of public services since Lucien Bouchard introduced the NGP virus, I ask you: do you have tangible proof that this managerial medicine works?
Governance by numbers
On the other hand, is the policing of educational practices an effective means of combating inequality of opportunity in education? Again, the question must be asked. The second chapter of PL 23 is dedicated to the National Institute of Educational Excellence (INEE). Its aim is to transform the field of education in Quebec into education based on evidence (EBP). A true armed arm of governance by numbers, INEE holds out the hope of improving the results of our education system by increasing your control and that of managers over educational practices. Here again, there is no tangible evidence of the effectiveness of educational policies establishing EBP.
Contrary to what a group of institutional entrepreneurs leads you to believe, which you sometimes bring together in the greatest secrecy (hoping that it is not as part of a remake ofEyes Wide Shut), play in a bad movie like that of the American law No Child Left Behind will not allow you to leave your mark in the fight against inequality of educational opportunities in Quebec.
If this law contributed to establishing real police control in education and to destroying the public education system to gradually offer it on a silver platter (charter schools) to private operators, it did not contribute significantly to the reduction of inequalities between “poor” and “rich” students, as highlighted by Hanushek and others (2019). These authors conclude that there has been no significant reduction in this gap over the last 50 years, regardless of the policies adopted.
Should this discourage you and push you to immobility? No. By avoiding dogmatism and scientific fundamentalism, you can make history for the right reasons: establish the conditions for collective deliberation on the school that the Quebec nation wants to give itself and contribute to including it in a broader policy of the fight against poverty, which remains — by resisting the effects of teachers and schools — the main vector of inequality of opportunity in education.