In this study, Professor Easton points out that although Canadians spend tens of billions of dollars for education, there is little to ensure that good teaching is rewarded and bad teaching is penalized. Higher costs are built into the current public teacher salary bill as an aging work-force is paid almost exclusively on the basis of the teacher's education and experience. As a result, the educational consumer and tax-payer face rising per student costs with no corresponding assurance of rising educational quality.
The result of dissatisfaction with the public school system is to give additional impetus to the movement away from state-produced educational barriers. More flexible voucher and subsidy arrangements provide methods by which parents have greater choice in education, and offer the possibility that the cost to the taxpayer could also be reduced.
