Accountability gets graded.

• Author: MICHELS, BOB
• Position: Cities and towns - Brief Article

We will all pay for Toronto s' waterfront project whether we like it or not

Report cards! Like most people, I used to dread them when I attended school, afraid that somehow I would not measure up and would be shamed in the company of my peers or my parents.

I can understand why teachers in Ontario are resisting the- notion, and municipal administrators and politicians are nervous about the implications of the new municipal report card system that the government intends to put into place next year.

On the other hand, we need to understand why we use report cards. There are three key principles involved.

Report cards allow society to impose common standards of excellence to be achieved, and they provide a common information base to assess whether or not the system is delivering the results for which it should be held accountable.

Secondly, report cards ensure individual accountability. School students, in return for the opportunity to learn some of the basic skills and knowledge that are needed to navigate life in later years, are accountable to their parents, their teachers and society to make a best effort to acquire that learning.

Thirdly, and perhaps most important in a democratic society that provides tax-funded services, report cards help to ensure equality of access and service at a fairly-shared cost, regardless of other factors.

Think about the rich diversity of Ontario.

In particular, think about how our population is strung out mainly along the Canada U. S. border, with the predominant cluster in the Greater Toronto area.

And think about the small, rural and remote towns, villages, hamlets and individual homesteads sprinkled across Northern and eastern Ontario, like chocolate bits sprinkled on the thick icing of a cake.

Amazing isn't it? The price of beer or a bottle of scotch is the same in Moosonee as it is in North York.

It is government policy. The recent changes made in education funding have the same desired outcome. The government now pro vides funding for classroom activities for each student in Red Lake on the same basis as it does for a student in Rosedale.

Society shares the costs of providing equal access to equal service to a commonly agreed standard. Well done.

Government has made great progress towards improving our highways and equalizing our access to telecommunications. Well done. So far, so good. But is equal access to and the equal cost of beer, liquor or an hour on the Internet the most important reasons for...