I read with great interest this article on ‘Money and Influence’ in Atlanta’s education politics. While currently facing major challenges from the provincial government of Ontario, Toronto has a far more intact public school system than Atlanta. This is both a cause and a consequence of the differences in education politics. However, significant advocacy groups for market-based policies do exist. There are key differences in the scales of political power in the two cities. Unlike in the US, a ‘national’ scale scarcely exists in Canada, given provincial responsibility for K-12 education. As a result, the key political tension is provincial-local, similar to where state governments in the US have taken considerable power over urban school districts (Danley and Rubin 2019). While perhaps evident in Atlanta primarily through the intervention of national organisations rather than a shift in formal control, the tendency towards the scaling up or centralisation of education governance is widespread across North America, particularly where there are strong political conflict between the dominant political forces at local versus higher levels (Bocking 2018). The authors note that Atlanta teachers are not unionised and conclude by observing that the city ‘has historically lacked a truly progressive political movement’(X). The prominent role of Toronto’s teacher and support staff unions, representing nearly all nonmanagement employees, is perhaps the most significant difference in the cities’ education politics. And, while its strength has waxed and waned, there is an established centre-left in Toronto’s electoral politics, whose strongest institutional supports have been the labour movement and the provincial/federal New Democratic Party (NDP). In recent years, the centre-left has arguably enjoyed its greatest relative success at the school board level. ‘Progressive’ trustees, endorsed by education unions and/or NDP affiliated, typically comprise over a third to half of the Toronto District School Board. Their success is particularly noteworthy in the inner suburbs, where left-leaning city councillors and parliamentarians are uncommon. A small range of pro-market advocacy groups intervene in Toronto and Ontario’s education politics. The most important is the Fraser Institute, the largest national right wing think tank which since the 1990s has published widely circulated research reports that generally disparage the public sector, promote tax cuts and privatisation, and/or criticise unions. The Fraser Institute’s two main interventions in education politics are to advocate for public funding of private schools (reframed as ‘independent schools’) and to assemble the annual results of the government’s Education Quality and Accountability Office’s

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与安大略省多伦多背景的比较：对“金钱和影响力：慈善机构、中介组织和亚特兰大 2017 年学校董事会选举”的回应

我饶有兴趣地阅读了这篇关于亚特兰大教育政治中“金钱和影响力”的文章。虽然目前面临安大略省政府的重大挑战，但多伦多的公立学校系统远比亚特兰大完整。这既是教育政治差异的原因，也是结果。但是，确实存在基于市场的政策的重要倡导团体。两个城市的政治权力规模存在重大差异。与美国不同，加拿大几乎不存在“全国”规模，因为省级负责 K-12 教育。因此，主要的政治紧张局势是省级地方，类似于美国州政府对城市学区拥有相当大的权力（丹利和鲁宾，2019 年）。虽然在亚特兰大可能主要是通过国家组织的干预而不是正式控制的转变来证明，但教育治理的扩大或集中化的趋势在整个北美普遍存在，特别是在主要政治力量之间存在强烈政治冲突的地方本地与更高级别（Bocking 2018）。作者指出，亚特兰大教师没有加入工会并得出结论，该市“历史上缺乏真正进步的政治运动”（X）。代表几乎所有非管理人员的多伦多教师和支持人员工会的突出作用可能是城市教育政治中最显着的差异。而且，虽然它的力量有增有减，但多伦多的选举政治中有一个既定的中左翼，其最强大的机构支持是劳工运动和省/联邦新民主党（NDP）。近年来，中左翼可以说在学校董事会层面取得了最大的相对成功。由教育工会和/或 NDP 附属机构认可的“进步”受托人通常占多伦多教育局的三分之一到一半以上。他们的成功在内城区尤其值得注意，那里的左倾市议员和议员并不常见。一小部分亲市场的倡导团体干预了多伦多和安大略的教育政治。最重要的是弗雷泽研究所，这是最大的国家右翼智囊团，自 1990 年代以来，它发表了广为流传的研究报告，这些报告普遍贬低公共部门，促进减税和私有化，和/或批评工会。弗雷泽研究所在教育政治方面的两项主要干预措施是倡导为私立学校（重新定义为“独立学校”）提供公共资金，并汇总政府教育质量和问责办公室的年度结果。