Policy Advocacy, Inequity, and School Fees and Fundraising in Ontario, Canada

Fundraising and collecting fees are ubiquitous in Ontario, Canada’s public schools. Critics assert that these practices perpetuate and exacerbate inequities between schools and communities. In this article we present findings from a critical policy analysis of an advocacy group’s efforts to change Ontario’s fees and fundraising policies over the past two decades. Rhetorical analyses of 110 texts finds that the group constructed the problem of each policy similarly, targeted the same audiences, and utilized many of the same strategies to appeal to logos, Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 25 No. 40 SPECIAL ISSUE 2 ethos, and pathos in their struggle over the policies’ meanings. However, only one out of four of the group’s policy meanings became dominant. The discursive and critical policy perspectives grounding the study directed us to examine how neoliberalism and the policies’ shared broader social, political, and economic contexts can help explain this outcome. Specifically, the group’s efforts to change Ontario’s school fees and fundraising policies confronted dominant discourses that construct parents as consumers of education and responsible for their children’s success in a competitive world, promote the meritocratic notion that successful people deserve their success and the benefits it brings, view the government as responsible only for providing the basic requirements of education, and support privatization and marketization of public schools.

ethos, and pathos in their struggle over the policies' meanings.However, only one out of four of the group's policy meanings became dominant.The discursive and critical policy perspectives grounding the study directed us to examine how neoliberalism and the policies' shared broader social, political, and economic contexts can help explain this outcome.Specifically, the group's efforts to change Ontario's school fees and fundraising policies confronted dominant discourses that construct parents as consumers of education and responsible for their children's success in a competitive world, promote the meritocratic notion that successful people deserve their success and the benefits it brings, view the government as responsible only for providing the basic requirements of education, and support privatization and marketization of public schools.Keywords: school fundraising; school fees; Ontario; policy; advocacy; rhetoric Defensa de la política, inequidad y financiamiento escolar en Ontario, Canadá Resumen: Recaudación de fondos y las cargos escolares son omnipresentes en las escuelas públicas en Ontario, Canadá.Los críticos afirman que estas prácticas perpetúan y exacerban las desigualdades entre las escuelas y las comunidades.Este artículo presenta los resultados de un análisis político crítico de un grupo de defensa de los esfuerzos para cambiar las tasas de Ontario y de recaudación de fondos político en las últimas dos décadas.Se encontró que el grupo construyó el tema en una política del mismo modo, el objetivo de la misma audiencia y se utiliza muchas de las mismas estrategias para atraer a los logos, ethos y pathos en su lucha a través de los significados de las políticas.Sin embargo, sólo uno de cada cuatro de los significados políticos llegaron a ser dominantes; Esto nos llevó a examinar cómo el neoliberalismo y el contexto social, político y económico más amplio compartido por las políticas pueden ayudar a explicar este resultado.En concreto, los grupos esfuerzos para cambiar las tasas escolares y las políticas de recaudación enfrentan los discursos dominantes que han construido los padres como consumidores de educación y responsables del éxito de sus hijos en un mundo competitivo, promover la idea de la meritocracia (personas exitosa merecen su éxito y beneficios considera que el gobierno sólo es responsable de proporcionar los requisitos básicos de la educación y el apoyo privatización y comercialización de las escuelas públicas.Palabras-clave: Recaudación de fondos de la escuela; cargos escolares; Ontario; política; defensa; retórica Defesa política, desigualdade e financiamento escolar em Ontário, Canadá Resumo: Recolhimento de fundos e taxas escolares são onipresentes nas escolas públicas de Ontário, Canadá.Os críticos afirmam que essas práticas perpetuam e exacerbam as desigualdades entre escolas e comunidades.Este artigo apresenta os resultados de uma análise política crítica dos esforços de um grupo de defesa para mudar as taxas de Ontário e as políticas de angariação de fundos nas últimas duas décadas.Descobrimos que o grupo construiu o problema de cada política de forma semelhante, visou o mesmo público e utilizou muitas das mesmas estratégias para apelar aos logos, ethos e pathos em sua luta sobre os significados das políticas.No entanto, apenas um em cada quatro dos significados políticos tornou-se dominante; Isso nos levou a examinar como o neoliberalismo e os contextos sociais, políticos e econômicos mais amplos compartilhados pelas políticas podem ajudar a explicar esse resultado.Especificamente, os esforços dos grupos para mudar as taxas escolares e as políticas de angariação de fundos enfrentaram discursos dominantes que construíram pais como consumidores de educação e responsáveis pelo sucesso de seus filhos num mundo competitivo, promovem a idéia de meritocracia (que as pessoas bem-sucedidas merecem seu sucesso e os benefícios Considera que o governo é responsável apenas por fornecer os requisitos básicos da educação e apoiar a privatização ea comercialização das escolas públicas.Palavras-chave: Recolhimento de fundos da escola; taxas escolares; Ontário;política; defesa; retórica Policy Advocacy, Inequity, and School Fees and Fundraising in Ontario, Canada Fundraising to supplement public funding of education is ubiquitous in Ontario, Canada.Some schools raise close to $300,000 in a single year while others raise no money at all (Winsa, 2015).Citing disparities between schools, critics assert that fundraising perpetuates and exacerbates inequities between schools and communities by providing different kinds of educational opportunities and increasingly different schools, while others view fundraising as necessary and for some, even desirable (Winton, 2016).Private sources of revenue, however, have become a reality in Ontario's public schools, as they have in schools and school systems around the world (Ball & Youdell, 2008).Fundraising and collecting school fees to pay for goods and services reflect and respond to neoliberal discourses, including individualism, meritocracy, and privatization, dominant in the province (Carpenter, Weber & Schugurensky, 2012;Laitsch, 2013;Pinto, 2015;Porter, 2012).However, some citizens are actively resisting these privatization efforts in Ontario's public education system.In this article we present findings from our study of an advocacy group's efforts to challenge and redefine fees and fundraising policies in the province over the past two decades.Notably, while collecting fees from students to pay for learning materials, field trips, and other special opportunities is itself a means of fundraising, the group we studied, People for Education (P4E), and the government of Ontario treat the two phenomena as distinct so we did as well in our study.
We begin the article with brief discussions of neoliberalism and Ontario's education policy context in order to situate the province's fees and fundraising policies within its neoliberal climate.We then review the limited scholarship on fundraising and school fees.Next, we introduce our conception of policy and the aspects of discursive policy theories that grounded the study, including Hajer's (1993) argumentative discourse theory.After detailing our methodological approach, we turn to a discussion of our findings, which show that P4E used many of the same persuasive strategies in its efforts to influence fees and fundraising policies by redefining their meanings through appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos.These strategies include constructing the collection of school fees and fundraising to pay for basic learning materials and for enhancements as practices that undermine public education's commitment to equity and produce inequities between schools.Directing their argument towards the Ontario government and the general public, P4E cites research, data, and educators' words as primary strategies to appeal to these audiences' sense of reason and emotions.We show that some of P4E's policy meanings became dominant while others did not, despite the group's use of similar persuasive strategies in its change efforts.We conclude by proposing that this unevenness can be attributed to neoliberal discourses dominant in Ontario and highlighting contributions of the study to knowledge about advocacy and educational privatization in Canada and beyond.

Neoliberalism and Ontario's Policy Context
Education is a provincial/territorial responsibility in Canada, and Ontario's Education Act (1997) ensures publicly funded elementary and secondary education is available to all children in the province free of charge.As is the case in many places globally, Ontario's education policies support and promote neoliberal ideas and discourses dominant in Ontario, across Canada, and beyond (Carpenter et al., 2012;Laitsch, 2013;Porter, 2012).In this section we first outline important facets of neoliberalism (celebration of the free market, role of government, individualized responsibility, privatization of public services such as education) and present examples of how they have been taken up and promoted in education policies.We then discuss how these ideas are reflected and advocated in education policies in Ontario in particular.We end this section by introducing P4E, the focus of our study and an important policy actor in Ontario education.
Neoliberalism, as a "system of meaning" (Larner, 2000, p. 12), asserts that the economic, social, and political spheres are best organized according to market principles and advocates forms of governance that encourage institutions and individuals to embrace market norms (Brown, 2006;Connell, 2010;Larner, 2000).Forms of governance include but are not limited to governments, and they have consequences for subjects and the social world (Brown, 2006).While calling for reduced government budgets (Klees, 2008), neoliberalism sees the state's role as facilitating market conditions, attitudes, and behaviour (Brown, 2006;Olmedo & Wilkins, 2016).
Individuals, understood as rational actors, have a key role in the idealized marketplace.As consumers in the market they make informed choices between providers of goods and services based on the quality of the products under consideration.As providers compete against one another for customers for their products, the diversity and overall quality of goods and services improve.Applying these ideas to education means that students and their parents (i.e., education consumers) should be free to choose from an array of schools (education providers).Competition between schools for students is expected to force schools to diversify, innovate, and improve the quality of educational programs they offer (DiMartino & Scott, 2013).Parents may consult school rankings, report cards, or achievement test scores to determine school quality as well as attend information nights and conduct research on programs to inform their choices.
Importantly, since individuals are understood to be responsible for their choices they are also viewed as responsible for their successes and failures.When combined with dominant understandings of and assumptions about meritocracy (Littler, 2013), individuals who achieve success are viewed as having earned it through hard work and good choices and are thus entitled to the material and other benefits success yields.Similarly, failure is attributed to individuals and their poor choices.Consequently, neoliberalism encourages people to see themselves as individually responsible for their well-being and that of their families (Larner, 2000).So that competition appears fair, however, there must be a perception that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed (Naidoo, 2016b).
Creating the conditions for competition is an appropriate role of governments under neoliberalism (Naidoo, 2008, in Naidoo, 2016a).So, too, is helping to prepare a workforce that ensures the country's (or sub-national jurisdiction, such as a province or state) economic competitiveness in the global economic marketplace.Another way governments can support neoliberal ideals is to introduce policies that encourage privatization of and privatization in public services, including education (Klees, 2008).Ball and Youdell (2008) identify two types of privatization in education: exogenous and endogenous.Exogenous privatization in education refers to policies and practices that engage the private sector in the design, management, or delivery of public education and/or that enable the private sector to participate in and profit from public education (Ball & Youdell, 2008).These policies and practices include contracting out services to private providers (e.g., cleaning and food services), contracting out the delivery of education or other core education services (e.g., professional development training, curriculum design, student assessment), allowing for-profit companies to manage public schools, marketing and selling products in schools, public-private partnerships, and philanthropy, subsidies, and other forms of aid (Ball, 2009;Ball & Youdell, 2008;Bulkley & Burch, 2011;Molnar, 2006).
Endogenous and exogenous privatization often work together (Verger et al., 2016), and fundraising and charging parents fees to pay for goods and services provided in public schools are illustrative examples.Money collected from students through fundraising and fees is often used to purchase goods and services from for-profit companies.Gita Steiner-Khamsi (2016) explains that the basis for this now-common practice in the USA can be attributed to increased interaction between the private and public systems.This interaction results in each system adopting beliefs and mechanisms of the other.A belief from the private system adopted by the public system is that governments and the public sector are only responsible for providing what is necessary.People who desire more than the basics (such as those who want more digital memory space than offered for free by companies such as Dropbox; www.dropbox.com)should pay for it.Steiner-Khamsi (2016) notes that a fee structure is a common mechanism in the private sector, and Killeen (2007) describes benefit-driven financing where the beneficiary of a service pays directly for that service as "a hallmark of market-based economic activity" (p.34).Robertson (2005) argues that fundraising in Canadian public schools is a kind of user fee and another example of privatization by stealth.
Indeed many policies that reflect neoliberal ideals have been introduced or expanded in Ontario by school districts and the provincial government over the past few decades (Carpenter et al., 2012).However, the scope, speed, and tone of educational reforms introduced by the Ontario Progressive Conservative (PC) government following its election in 1995 was unparalleled (Pinto, 2012).Reflecting neoliberalism's and its public commitment to less government spending (Laitsch, 2013), the PC government cut spending on education by 22.7% (annualized to $1 billion), and many educators and parents decried the cut's negative impact in schools and classrooms (Gidney, 1999).
While parents have long had some choice between the province's four school systems (English Catholic, French Catholic, English public [i.e., not Catholic], and French public), the PC government introduced a number of privatization policies including a centralized funding model in which school funding would be allocated to schools on a per-pupil basis (with additional funds directed towards specific needs) and a tax credit for parents who send their children to private school (this policy was never implemented).It removed principals from teachers' unions and introduced a qualifying test for new teachers (Anderson & Ben Jaafar, 2006).The Ontario Ministry of Education, with the involvement of private sector actors (Pinto, 2012), developed a centralized, outcomes-based curriculum (Pinto, 2015) and rolled out mandatory province-wide Math and Literacy assessments for students in grades 3, 6, (Math), and 10 (Literacy).The Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), an independent organization at armslength from the Ontario Ministry of Education, was set up to design and oversee the testing process.
The Liberal government that came to power in 2003 continued to introduce policies that reflect and advance neoliberal ideas, including privatization (Pinto, 2015).For example, it created The School Information Finder tool which makes it easy for parents to compare schools' demographic data and EQAO test scores.This government also set targets for EQAO test scores and graduation rates and launched numerous policy initiatives in support of achieving them, including the creation of the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat and a boys' literacy strategy (Klinger & Wade-Woolley, 2012;Martino & Rezai-Rashti, 2012).Canadian scholars have demonstrated how the province's bullying (Winton & Tuters, 2015), financial literacy (Arthur, 2011;Pinto, 2013), entrepreneurial education (Arthur, 2016), and streaming (Zareey, 2013) policies support neoliberalism's emphasis on the creation of responsibilized individuals.
The group we investigate in our study, P4E, was formed in 1996 by a group of alarmed parents in Toronto whose children's public schools were negatively affected by the PC government's spending cuts (Winton & Brewer, 2014).P4E is an independent charitable organization that conducts research on public education in Ontario, publishes annual reports on publicly funded education, hosts annual education conferences, makes policy recommendations, and works with the media to publicize findings from the group's research in the media (P4E, 2017).Ultimately, the group works to "build connections between a strong education system and a fair and prosperous society" (P4E, 2017, para.2).P4E has consistently raised concerns about inequities arising from school fees and fundraising since its inception and called on successive governments to limit these practices in Ontario's public schools.

Research on School Fundraising
In Ontario, 99% of elementary schools and 78% of secondary schools engage in fundraising activities (P4E, 2015), and these activities take up the most time of parents on mandatory school councils (P4E, 2013c).In the US, 94% of elementary schools participate in fundraising, and of these schools, 76% fundraise one to five times per school year and 24% fundraise more than five times per year (Krueger, 2007).Despite its pervasiveness, research on school fees and fundraising policy in Canada and the USA is limited (Killeen, 2007).In this section we summarize the limited research on elementary and secondary school fundraising in these countries and beyond, including the collection of school fees.
Academic research on school fundraising has identified a wide variety of strategies used by schools and districts to raise funds, from selling goods to soliciting donations to opening up schools to tuition-paying international students (Brent & Lunden, 2009;Poole & Fallon, 2015).It finds that often schools and school boards turn to fundraising to supplement perceived funding shortfalls.The shortfalls arise not only as a consequence of less money flowing to schools, but also because the expectations of what schools will offer have increased as have the costs of providing education and constraints on how public funds can be spent (Brent & Lunden, 2009;Carpenter et al., 2012;Sattem, 2007).Fundraising has also been used to create schools that can attract more students (and the public funds they bring) under school choice policies (Howe & Ashcraft, 2005).Indeed, goods and services purchased with fundraised dollars range from school supplies, books, and musical instruments to technology, playground and sports equipment, swimming pools, professional performances, athletic and academic programs, gymnasiums, guest speakers, professional development for educators, and school excursions (Pistiolis, 2012;Sattem, 2007).Even teaching and other staff positions are paid for by fundraised dollars in some US states (Posey-Maddox, 2016;Sattem, 2007).Alternatively, money may be raised for charity and research, and some schools donate a portion of their fundraised dollars to schools that cannot raise much money through their own fundraising initiatives.
Scholars of school fundraising policy tend to be critical of the practice and adopt critical perspectives in their work (e.g., Pistiolis, 2012;Posey-Maddox, 2016), although some researchers have highlighted benefits of fundraising (e.g., Brent & Lunden, 2009).Many critics argue fundraising reproduces class inequalities.Posey-Maddox's (2013, 2016) research in Chicago public schools, for example, demonstrated that fundraising not only exacerbates disparities in resources and educational opportunities within and across schools and districts but it can also result in marginalization of low-income parents within schools.Similarly, Sattem (2007) demonstrated that parents in wealthier neighbourhoods possess social and cultural competencies that enable them to bring funds into schools whereas families in low income neighbourhoods face barriers to fundraising including lack of time and social and cultural resources.Research in Ontario finds that children in schools that raise less money also face greater external challenges, such as families living on social assistance and families categorized as low-income and single-parent households (Pizzoferrato, 2014).Concerns have also been raised about democratic decision-making and participation if parents who help fund school programs feel that they are entitled to a greater say in how schools are run (Posey-Maddox, 2016).
Our own research has examined efforts to change school fundraising policy in Ontario and implications of fundraising for critical democracy (Milani & Winton, 2017).We found that Ontario's school fundraising policy and that the practice of school fundraising within public schools undermines critical democratic efforts including equity, inclusion, participatory decisionmaking, and critical mindedness.Furthermore, school fundraising compromises the ideal of quality public education for all students as it constructs education as a private rather than a public good by shifting the responsibility of government funded education supported by collective citizens to individual students and their families.
In addition, Pistiolis's (2012) research in Ontario demonstrates that fundraising requires a great deal of time and energy of parents, students, teachers, and administrators and that the time and effort dedicated to fundraising took away from teaching and learning.Academic research has also shown a relationship between student achievement and fundraising in Ontario: Schools with higher amounts raised have students with higher levels of academic achievement (Pistiolis, 2012;Pizzoferrato, 2014).
Unique research studies and strong critiques of fundraising in Canada have been provided by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and news journalists.A 2006 survey of elementary and secondary schools across Canada sponsored by the Canadian Teachers' Federation, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and the Federation des syndicats de l'enseignement (Froese-Germaine, Hawkey, Larose, McAdie, & Shaker, 2006), for example, is the only national study of fundraising in schools undertaken to date.This study reported wide variations in the amounts raised through school fundraising across provinces, communities, school level, and language of instruction.For example, in 2003/04 Ontario schools raised $14,072 on average while schools in the North raised $27,700, and English schools raised more than French schools (Froese-Germaine et al., 2006).This study also found elementary schools raise more money through fundraising than secondary schools, and that secondary schools are more likely to charge fees than elementary schools (Froese-Germaine et al., 2006).
Studies and investigations by Social Planning Toronto (2011), P4E (2011b, 2012, 2013b), and Toronto Star journalists (Winsa, 2015;Winsa & Rushowy, 2011) demonstrate that how much schools raise through fundraising also varies based on families' income levels.For example, Toronto families with annual income levels of $200,000 and up in 2014 collected more than $500 per student in the 2012/13 school year while families with an annual income of approximately $40,000 or less only raised an average of $100 per student (Winsa, 2015).A recent study conducted by the CD Howe Institute (Guo & Johnson, 2017), a conservative think tank in Ontario, demonstrates that differences in average amounts fundraised by schools are related to small but significant differences in student achievement on provincial assessments of Ontario students in grades 3 and 6 (Guo & Johnson, 2017).
The literature on school fundraising exposes the prevalence of school fundraising, resources purchased with fundraised dollars, fundraising methods utilized by schools, reasons that schools partake in fundraising, various perspectives held by diverse groups on the practice of fundraising, and implications that fundraising has for students, families, individual schools, and public education as a whole.In the next section, we review current literature on school fees in Canada and beyond.

Research on School Fees
Like school fundraising, academic research on school fees policy is limited (Killeen, 2007).This predominantly descriptive research finds that fees are charged for a wide variety of items and services, from enhanced materials to yearbooks to summer school (Bouman & Brown, 1996).Often, studies of school fees are grounded in the fields of law, economics or school finance (e.g., Ah Tye, 1985;Bouman & Brown, 1996;Harris, 1987;Wassmer & Fisher, 2002;Zirkel & Gluckman, 1982).Wassmer and Fisher (2002), for example, demonstrate economic benefits to increasing school fees and investigate why the practice is not more widely adopted in the USA.Killeen (2007) demonstrates that media reports about the collection of school fees exaggerate their growth/prevalence in US schools and identifies school district influences on how much money is raised through school fees.However her study also finds that school fees is a source of revenue imbalance, albeit small, between school districts (Killeen, 2007).
Taking a critical position, Klees (2008) examines effects of school fees in primary schools in developing countries.He notes that the World Bank and some other bilateral aid agencies require school fees as part of its loan conditions (Klees, 2008).Similar to the global north, families in the global south have expressed that to cover the cost of school fees for their child(ren), they have had to choose between food and the cost of education (Klees, 2008).In Malawi and Ghana, following the imposition of school user fees forced upon them by the World Bank, the consequence has been a substantial decline in attendance/enrollment (Klees, 2008).Furthermore, "when fees are raised, large numbers of children from poor families withdraw from school or never start" (Klees, 2008, p. 314).Although the World Bank has explained that subsidies in the form of scholarships or exemptions should be provided to poor families to alleviate the challenges faced as a result of school fees, in practice and in the case of Nicaragua, such subsidies were either often nonexistent, insufficient or unworkable (Klees, 2008).
Adopting a rare Canadian focus, Bouman and Brown (1996) report the perspectives of teachers' and school administrators' in British Columbia on the practice of school fees.They explain how educators adopt conflicting taxation principles of benefit and ability-to-pay to justify the collection of school fees in schools.Further, they highlight teachers' and administrators' perception that school fees influence students' decisions about what courses to take and activities to participate in and that school fees negatively affect students from low-income families.
As is the case with school fundraising research, NGOs across Canada have examined school fees and their effects on students (e.g., Davidge, 2003;Froese-Germaine et al., 2006;P4E, 2015;Social Planning Toronto, 2011;Wohlgemuth, 2004).Froese-Germaine et al.'s 2006 survey of Canadian schools, for example, found that over 79% of schools charge user fees for a variety of services and programs including school supplies, sports teams, school clubs, and excursions; however, schools most often charge fees for school trips (Froese-Germain et al., 2006).The survey found that secondary schools are more likely to collect fees to pay for sports teams, clubs, and school programs than elementary schools (Froese-Germain et al., 2006).This survey also found variations in fees policies between provinces in Canada.For example, 41% of schools in British Columbia and Ontario reported they collected fees for materials whereas only 18% of schools in Quebec charged material fees (Froese-Germain et al., 2006).Although Froese-Germain et al.'s (2006) study includes school fees, the study focused heavily on commercialism in Canadian schools.
NGOs have raised a number of concerns about the practice of schools charging fees.Key concerns include hardship and embarrassment experienced by some students and their families who cannot afford to pay the fees and the subsequent exclusion of those students from participating in fee-based activities and programs (exclusion ranges from not participating in an activity to dropping out of school; Davidge, 2003;Social Planning Toronto, 2011;P4E, 2007, 2015;Wohlgemuth, 2004).Beyond the experiences of individuals and their families, critics assert that fees undermine the ideal of universal education, challenge the concept of education as the 'great equalizer', compromise fundamental values of public education including accessibility and equity, increase privatization of public schools, enable respective governments to further reduce funding for public education, and fees have increased concerns among taxpayers for public services and the public good (Davidge, 2003;Froese-Germain et al., 2006;Social Planning Toronto, 2011).
We turn now to a brief discussion of research that examines advocates' efforts to promote and oppose educational privatization before we introduce the theoretical framework that grounded our study.

Advocacy for and Resistance to the Privatization of Education
Scholars have given much attention to advocates of privatization in education.They note the rise of new policy actors, including philanthropic organizations and foundations (e.g., Ferris, Hentschke, & Harmssen, 2008), think tanks (e.g., Lubienski, Brewer, & La Londe, 2016), forprofit companies, and new non-profit organizations (e.g., Bulkley & Burch, 2011); how these new actors interact in policy networks (e.g., Ball & Exley, 2010); and the waning influence and engagement of traditional policy actors in education policy making (DiMartino & Scott, 2013).
Scholars have also taken note of resistance to privatization reforms, especially efforts and policies advocating various forms of school choice.They note that resistance often comes from groups most likely to be directly impacted by privatization or by those who oppose privatization on the grounds that it undermines the idea of education as a public good (Verger et al., 2016).Their work identifies groups of local, state, and national actors who have attempted to block or mitigate market-based reforms and these actors' resistance strategies (e.g., Chi, 2008;Cortez, 2013;Scott, 2011).Resistance by teachers unions has received relatively more attention than opposition by other groups.Studies of privatization policy advocates' and opponents' advocacy strategies find they engage in many of the same activities, including lobbying, striking, launching judicial challenges, forming coalitions, enacting civil disobedience, producing research, and supporting political campaigns and ballot initiatives (Chi, 2008;Cortez, 2013;Poole, 2001;Scott, 2011;Verger et al., 2016).Importantly however, advocacy groups that oppose privatization policies receive substantially less funding from philanthropists or foundations than do supporters.Many of the advocacy strategies identified in educational research are those used to disseminate advocates' arguments and points-of-view.Few studies attend to the construction of advocates' arguments themselves.Of those that do so, many examine how groups frame issues in policy change efforts (e.g., Anderson & Montoro Donchik, 2016;Itkonen, 2009;McLaughlin, Scott, Deschenes, Hopkins, & Newman, 2009;Verger, 2012).For example, Poole (2001) reports that the Nova Scotia Teachers Union found that their strikes generated support from teachers when they framed their arguments around quality education and protecting public education than when they highlighted implications of reforms on teachers' economic welfare.Adopting a less common focus on advocates' discursive strategies, Anderson and Montoro Donchik (2016) highlight discursive strategies utilized by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a policy actor part of an extensive policy network promoting privatization in the USA.They report that ALEC adopts the language of individual choice as part of appeals to its diverse audiences' beliefs in individualism and uses the terms "accountability", "entrepreneurial", "quality", and "scholarship" in recognition of the aversion of the managerial middle class to abandoning public education (Anderson and Montoro Donchik, 2016, p. 354).
Our study of the rhetorical strategies used by a group of ordinary citizens in Ontario opposing privatization policies in education is unique amongst studies of policy advocacy in general and education privatization in particular.Our research is grounded in a discursive perspective of policy and policy change, and we sought to explore how the meaning of fees and fundraising policies have been constructed and mobilized by P4E in its efforts to resist privatization of public education.We discuss our theoretical framework in detail below.

Theoretical Framework: Policy Cycles, Discourses, and Rhetoric
Rather than adopting a rational and limited view of policy as a government decision that aims to address an objective problem, we ground our study in critical policy analysis (CPA), Bowe, Ball and Gold's (1992) policy cycle, and discursive policy perspectives (Hajer, 2006;Fischer, 2003;Fulcher, 1999;Taylor, 1997).CPA views policy as complex and socially constructed, and critical policy scholars are interested in understanding how policies normalize ideas.CPA is particularly interested in the roles of language, power and power relations within policy processes (Diem & Young, 2015).Critical policy researchers recognize that policies' cultural, social, economic, and historical contexts influence how policies are defined and enacted (Fischer, 2003;Taylor, Rizvi, Lingard, & Henry, 1997;Weaver-Hightower, 2008).Bowe, Ball, and Gold's (1992) policy cycle attempts to capture the complexity of policy and proposes that policy takes place in three interconnected contexts: the context of influence; the context of text production; and the context of practice (Bowe et al., 1992).The context of influence includes struggles over policy meanings and the constructions of policy discourses.Texts representing diverse, contested meanings, including government and other institutional documents, are produced in the context of text production (Bowe et al., 1992).The context of practice includes what people do at the sites the contexts of influence and text production aim to influence (e.g., schools, school districts).Importantly, policy cycles are embedded within influences beyond the policies themselves, including cultural discourses, globalized policy processes, policy elites, and history (Vidovich, 2007;Winton, 2012).A discourse is "an ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categories through which meaning is given to social and physical phenomena, and which is produced and reproduced through an identifiable set of practices" (Hajer, 2006, p. 67).
Struggles over the meaning of a particular policy are evident throughout the policy cycle; our study focuses on Ontario's fees and fundraising cycles' contexts of influence.According to Hajer's (2006) argumentative discourse theory, policy actors refer to story lines in their struggles over meaning (Hajer, 1997).Story lines are concise statements that summarize and simplify complex narratives about what the world is like and should be like (Hajer, 2006).A dominant story line serves as "a subtle mechanism of creating and maintaining discursive order" (Hajer, 1997, p. 56).Actors mobilizing the same story lines in struggles over policy meanings form discourse coalitions that advocate or sustain particular interpretations of social situations (Hajer, 1997(Hajer, , 2006)).Discourse coalition members may not know one another, may not share interests, and do not engage in the same policy change efforts due to coordinated action or leadership (Hajer, 1993).The power of story lines is that they "sound right" to members of the coalition (Hajer, 1997).Whether or not a story line sounds right is influenced by its plausibility, the perceived credibility of other actors mobilizing it, the practices in which the story line is produced, and the acceptability of the story line for actors' discursive identities (Hajer, 1997).Policy changes occur when new story lines challenge, change, and reorder existing understandings.Actors aiming to change policy, then, need to find an "appropriate" story line (Hajer, 1997, p. 57).Thus, Hajer's argumentative approach recognizes the conscious and strategic engagement of actors who aim to influence others through argumentation while also recognizing that these actors and their efforts are constrained and enabled by social structures beyond their conscious control (Hajer, 1997).
Policy actors use various rhetorical strategies in their efforts to persuade others to interpret particular social practices as problematic and adopt policy responses that reflect the meaning they mobilize (Stone, 2012;Winton, 2013).Rhetoric includes all "the ways in which we attempt to persuade or influence in our discursive, textual, and gestural practice" (Edwards, Nicoll, Solomon, & Usher, 2014, p. 13).Leach (2000) identifies the following elements of rhetoric: the rhetorical situation (including exigence and audience), persuasive discourses, and the five rhetorical canons (invention, disposition, style, memory, and delivery).The canon of invention includes arguments based on three kinds of appeals to the audience: logos, pathos, and ethos (Corbett & Connors, 1999).Appeals to logos aim to appeal to the audience's sense of reason; appeals to pathos aim to appeal to the audience's emotions and values (Selzer, 2004); and appeals to ethos attempt to generate the audience's confidence in the character of the speaker/writer (Winton, 2013).The canon of disposition considers how language is organized for rhetorical impact.The canon of style is multidimensional and includes word choices, words' arrangement, figurative language, and conventions of reading, interpreting, and representing (Leach, 2000).The canon of memory was historically concerned with how well a speech was memorized; today, this canon is concerned with the mobilization of shared cultural memories in persuasive efforts (Lipsitz, 1990, in Leach, 2000).The canon of delivery, traditionally concerned with how well a speech was delivered, is now concerned with the relationship between the content of rhetoric and how it is mobilized (Leach, 2000).
Not all persuasive efforts achieve their aim, of course.Dominant cultural discourses at the macro level "establish the terrain on which political struggle takes place" (Fischer, 2003, p. 91).Further, Fischer (2003) explains that "to be understood and considered relevant, a speaker has to situate his remarks in -or relate them to -the recognized discourses in use at the time.... Ideas that do not draw on or interact with the available discourses will be dismissed as strange or irrelevant" (p.83).Our study investigates rhetorical strategies utilized by P4E, one member of a discursive coalition opposed to fees and fundraising practices in Ontario (Winton, 2016), in its efforts to influence fees and fundraising policies' contexts of practice and text production across the province.

Methodology
In the current study we focused on an advocacy group's persuasive efforts in the context of influence in Ontario's fundraising and fees policy cycles.Specifically, we asked: How has People for Education engaged in the struggle over the meaning of fees and fundraising policies in Ontario since 1996?We used rhetorical analysis, a type of critical discourse analysis (Winton, 2013), to answer this question.While approaches to critical discourse analysis (CDA) vary, they all involve examining language and meaning, attempt to unite text, discursive practices, and social context, and recognize that text is highly context-sensitive (Huckin, 1997;Taylor, 1997).Thus, findings from micro-analysis of texts must be considered within their broader context.The salience of the cultural, economic, and political contexts in education policy is evident in Taylor's (1997) research on equity and Britain's Education Reform Act and Henry and Taylor's (1993) study of Australian education policy and equity.Researchers using CDA are often interested in how the broader policy context enables particular discourses to become or remain dominant within policy processes (e.g., Thomas, 2005).In our study, after we identified the strategies P4E mobilized in their struggle over the meaning of Ontario's fees and fundraising policies we considered how the policies' broader neoliberal context of Ontario may have influenced the persuasiveness of the group's efforts to change dominant meanings of fees and fundraising policies.
We adopted a multiple case study design (Merriam, 2001) wherein P4E's campaign to influence fundraising policy and its campaign to influence fees constituted two cases; each of the cases was examined individually and then compared.Case studies help researchers answer 'how' and 'why' questions about complex contemporary phenomena (the 'case') within real-life contexts over which they have no control (Yin, 1994).Furthermore, the case study design is useful when aiming to explore and understand real world events over a period of time (Yin, 1994).The multiple case study design enables comparisons between cases that can yield knowledge about the similarities and differences across cases thus allowing broader understandings of each phenomenon to emerge (Bishop, 2010;Chmiliar, 2010).In the current study, we believed comparing the fees and fundraising case could help us identify which rhetorical strategies are more persuasive and better understand if, and if so, how the policies' shared neoliberal context may impact the struggle over the two policies' meanings.
Data for the rhetorical analysis in the fundraising case included 26 texts produced by P4E that discuss fundraising directly (including research reports, submissions to government committees, and media releases) and 51 articles published in Canadian newspapers since 1996 that contain direct quotes from P4E about fundraising.Only these quotes served as data in this study.Data for the rhetorical analysis in the fees case included 18 texts produced by P4E (this corpus also includes research reports and press releases) and 15 articles published in Canadian newspapers since 2002 containing quotes from P4E members related to school fees.The texts were identified and sourced through searches of the CBCA Education database (a database of resources on educational research, teaching, and educational administration in Canada), newspaper databases, the worldwide web, and from P4E's website.
Rhetorical analysis involves identifying diverse ways people attempt to influence and persuade others through discursive, textual, and gestural practices (Edwards et al., 2004;Selzer, 2004).In policy research, this analytical approach can be utilized to determine how arguments are constructed and mobilized to persuade audiences to adopt particular policy meanings and prescribed courses of action (Winton, 2013).Rhetorical analysis involves determining how actors construct policy problems and the audiences for their argument (i.e., the rhetorical situation) and identifying how they employ persuasive discourses and the five rhetorical canons (invention, disposition, style, delivery, and memory; Leach, 2000).Importantly, while our study focused on P4E's efforts, we recognize that P4E was one of many actors in discourse coalitions engaged in struggles over the meanings of fees and fundraising policies in Ontario since 1996 (Winton, 2016).
To conduct the analyses we first read the data in their entirety.We then reread them, highlighting words, numbers, and phrases that reflected the five canons of rhetoric, audience and problem (exigence).We assigned the highlighted text to the appropriate code named for these elements of rhetoric.The code for the canon of invention initially contained three sub-codes: ethos, pathos, and logos.We then reviewed each code and created sub-codes (or sub-sub-codes in the canon of invention) to capture differences within the initial code.For example, in the fees analysis the following phrase was initially placed in the code Problem/Exigence: "many schools rely on fundraising and fees to support their sports programs.This can exclude some students, or create situations where schools in prosperous communities can pay for better sports programs" (P4E, 2007, p. 14).Upon review of this code, we created sub-codes that reflected different aspects of the construction of the problem (e.g., for learning materials, variations).Once the rhetorical analysis for each case was completed we compared our findings.We then considered how cultural discourses and other aspects of the policies' historical, social, economic, and political contexts may have influenced outcomes of the struggle over the two policies' meanings.

Findings Policy Problems
P4E has consistently constructed both the collection of school fees and fundraising to pay for materials as practices that produce inequities between students and schools and undermine public education's commitment to equity for all students.In their 2001 Tracking Report, for example, P4E explains: School communities that have the capacity to do so buy textbooks, computers and classroom supplies….When school communities are raising money to provide basic classroom supplies and textbooks, and when the top 10% of schools raise as much money as the bottom 70% combined, we know that we are eroding one of the most important principles of the public education system -equity for all students….(p.12) As the above quote illustrates, P4E points to the differing abilities of parents to fundraise as contributing to the inequities between schools.While initially concerned with inequities produced through fundraising for basic learning materials (i.e., "basics" or "essentials"), over time P4E also began to argue that fundraising for enrichment was also problematic.The group's 2013 annual report, for example, states: "Ontario schools continue to rely on fees and fundraising to augment school budgets and cover the cost of enrichment.This reliance increases the gap between 'have ' and 'have-not' schools" (P4E, 2013b, p. 8).
Similarly, P4E has viewed the collection of school fees as producing inequities since the fees may exclude students from participating in various courses and activities in public schools.In 2002, P4E's Director explained that 75% of secondary schools were being charged fees for classroom materials or lab fees (Oziewicz, 2002): "It's material that you need, that you have to have for the courses that you're taking" (Oziewicz, 2002, para. 6).
As in the fundraising case, over time P4E began to construct charging fees for "extras" as problematic for the same reason.The group's 2012 annual report explains: "Fairness and equity are fundamental to strong public education….Schools where families enjoy higher-than-average incomes, for example, are more likely to have extended-day programs, charge fees that support enrichment and extracurricular activities, and fundraise at five times the level of schools with a high proportion of students who live in poverty" (P4E, 2012, p. 3, emphasis added).

Audience
P4E has aimed to persuade two main audiences to view the collection of school fees and fundraising as practices that promote inequity and in need of change: government policymakers and ordinary citizens of Ontario.Most of P4E's persuasive efforts in both cases are targeted to government officials.In the fundraising case, in its earliest days the group staged dramatic public events at government buildings to protest the cuts to education that were giving rise to increased fundraising (Winton & Brewer, 2014).P4E's Director also spoke directly to government committees about the group's concerns about the growing reliance of parent fundraising to make up for government cuts.In 1998, the group began surveying parents and principals annually about fundraising and fees in schools and publishing their findings in reports.In these reports P4E made explicit and implicit recommendations to policymakers; in its 2009 report, for example, P4E recommended that "the Ministry of Education develop provincial fundraising policy that has equity as its foundation, and that includes guidelines for corporate involvement in schools; guarantees for essentials in every school and clarity about private funding for capital projects and naming rights" (p.9).In addition, after 2005, P4E also publicly reminded the government that it had committed to creating a provincial fundraising policy but had not done so.In 2011, following the circulation of a draft of this long-awaited policy, P4E provided a direct response: We are concerned that the Ministry of Education draft guidelines for fundraising appear to support an expansion in the kinds of fundraising parents and school councils can expect to do for their schools….If these guidelines become policy, students from families with the capacity to fundraise in the hundreds of thousands of dollars may have better science labs, new gyms and auditoriums and greater access to 21st century technological advancements.(P4E, 2011a, p.1) Similarly, P4E has constructed the Ontario government as its primary audience in its calls for changes to school fees policy.In its earlier days, P4E reported on the prevalence of school fees, demonstrated they were used to pay for textbooks and other learning materials, and called on the government to "provide adequate funding for materials necessary to support or complement the curriculum" (P4E, 2002, p. 12).In 2009 it recommended that fees be "phased out" (P4E, 2009, p. 29), yet the following year it asked the government to "articulate a vision for education that outlines what things should be available to all students in every school, at no extra charge" (P4E, 2010, p 2).The group went on to say: "Once the overall vision has been established, then it will be possible to identify the "extras" that might be funded by fees, fundraising and corporate partnerships" (P4E, 2010, p. 2).By calling on policymakers to introduce a provincial fundraising policy and to enforce existing policy on school fees, the group constructs the government as both responsible for and capable of changing fees and fundraising practices through formal policy action.This construction also places responsibility for continued fundraising and school fees on the government should they choose not to act.
P4E has also mobilized its understanding of fees and fundraising as practices that produce inequity to the general public.Their construction of these policy problems were primarily mobilized to this broad audience through media stories.This audience has been positioned as one that shares the group's commitment to equity and thus is similarly upset by the inequitable outcomes produced by the collection of school fees and fundraising.

Rhetorical Appeals
P4E has used almost identical strategies in its efforts to persuade the Ontario government and other citizens in the province that collecting school fees and fundraising are practices that reproduce inequity, undermine public education's commitment to ensuring equal opportunity for all students, and therefore must be changed.Below we discuss a number of these strategies, focusing on those that fall within the canon of invention and referencing strategies from the other canons when possible.

Logos. P4E has used various strategies to appeal to its audiences' sense of reason (logos).
The collection and dissemination of numerical data has been a consistent and primary strategy utilized in both policy cases.The group acquires much of this data through an annual survey of schools across the province and distributes it widely through annual and special reports.
Numbers are used to demonstrate the prevalence of fees and fundraising.In 2015, for example, the group reported that "99% of elementary schools and 78% of secondary schools report fundraising activities by parents, students, and staff" (P4E, 2015, p. 13).As for fees, the group reported that in the 2014-2015 school year "93% of elementary schools report asking parents for fees for field trips.61% of elementary schools report asking parents for fees for extracurricular activities.78% of secondary schools report having athletics fees…[and] 91% of secondary schools report having a student activity fee…" (P4E, 2015, p. 14).The group has also tracked and reported the continued growth of fundraising in Ontario schools since 1998 and the changes to school fees practices since 2001.In 2011 it used numbers to support its argument that school fees were on the rise.
To demonstrate that fees and fundraising produce inequities specifically, the group publishes figures to show the wide disparity in amounts charged for fees and the overall amounts fundraised by schools.For example, their 2008 Annual Report states that: "In fundraising in high schools, the top 10% raised as much as the bottom 90% put together" (p.10).In 2015, P4E reported that "Schools report raising from $0 to $250,000" (p.13) through fundraising and that "78% of secondary schools report having athletics fees, which range from $5 to $1,200 [and] 91% of secondary schools report having a student activity fee…[which] range from $5 to $110" (p.14).Numbers are also used to help P4E make the case that fundraised dollars and school fees are used to purchase materials required for learning.For example, the group reported in 2015 that "47% of elementary schools fundraise for learning resources (e.g.classroom technology, online resources, and textbooks)" (P4E, 2015, p. 13).In 2007, they stated that "schools may charge lab and material fees for courses such as art, design and technology and science.The total a student might pay ranges from $2 to $50" (P4E, 2007, p. 20).P4E's use of numbers in its efforts to persuade audiences that fundraising and fees produce inequities is a common rhetorical strategy since numbers are symbols of objectivity, accuracy, and precision in contemporary culture (Stone, 2012).
Another strategy adopted by P4E to appeal to its audiences' sense of reason is the utilization of others' research and data to reinforce its arguments.In its 2008 Annual Report, for example, the group referred to research conducted by the Ottawa Social Planning Council that also found that school fees were a barrier faced by low income parents in the public school system.In their 2011 report, P4E combined their findings with demographic data reported by the provincial government and concluded that: when data from the Ministry of Education's School Information Finder are compared with individual schools' fundraising amounts, a fundamental inequity becomes clear: Schools with a high proportion of low-income families raise, on average, less than half the amount raised in schools with a low proportion of lowincome families.Thus, students whose families can fundraise or pay fees have access to better learning materials, more arts enrichment and more extracurricular and athletic activities.(P4E, 2011b, p. 20) A strategy adopted by P4E in its campaign against school fees that was not available to the group in its fundraising campaign was to emphasize that collecting fees is illegal.For example, in a 2002 news article P4E's Director stated that "The minister of education (has) said that user fees were illegal and shouldn't be being [sic] charged in Ontario schools…If the minister is indeed saying these fees are against the law then she needs to clarify her position because a huge majority of schools charge those fees" (Baillie, 2002, para. 6-7).Similarly, in their 2012 Annual Report, P4E cited Ontario's Education Act (the legal framework governing education in the province) which states that students have the 'right to attend school without a fee' (P4E, 2012, p. 23).
Pathos.P4E combines appeals to reason with appeals to its audiences' emotions and values.This strategy is evident in the group's reports wherein quotes from principals, parents, and others are placed alongside numbers.In the group's 2012 Annual Report, for example, the group includes the following statement from an elementary school principal from Toronto: "I think it's outrageous that some schools are allowed to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars so that their children can have computers, music and all the extras while the other schools have nothing.
Where is the equity in public education?"(p.22).The 2011 Report included a statement made by the Executive Director of Food Banks Canada who stated: "Year after year, demand at food banks spikes in late August and early September as parents find themselves having to choose between purchasing food or school provisions" (P4E, 2011b, p. 20).Quotes like these ones may elicit feelings of anger, sadness, and disappointment in the system and encourage audience members to be emotionally invested and sympathetic to P4E's construction of fees and fundraising as problematic.Statements from others also add legitimacy to P4E's argument that fees and fundraising produce inequity by showing that people directly affected by these practices share P4E's concerns (also an appeal to ethos).
P4E also describes the experiences of low income families to emphasize how fees and fundraising affect income groups differently.For example, P4E explains the following in their 2012 Annual Report: "Schools in the top 10% fundraise five times the amount of those in the bottom 10%.As a result, some children have a double disadvantage: Their families are unable to afford educational resources at home, and they attend schools where far less money is raised to cover the costs of enrichment and enhanced resources.If inequalities in wealth and income continue to increase in Canada, it is likely that many of these trends in schools will only intensify" (P4E, 2012, p. 8).Similarly, in the group's 2008 Annual Report, the group describes the burden of fees for some parents: "fees force many families to choose between a number of unpleasant options: pay the fee and experience financial hardship, go through the sometimes demeaning process of requesting help from the school to cover the costs, or have their child miss the enrichment program and possibly feel stigmatized" (p.10).In combination with its numerical data, P4E warns that problems faced by low income families are likely to grow unless action is taken by the government.
One of P4E's main arguments is that both the collection of fees and school fundraising undermine the province's commitment to equal opportunity for all students within public education.For example, P4E's 2011 Annual Report claims: "The fundamental premise of publicly funded education-that every student should have an equitable chance for success-is in danger because of an increasing reliance on fees and fundraising to support programs in Ontario schools" (P4E, 2011b, p. 20).In a 2013 news article announcing findings from that year's annual report, P4E's Director stated that "Part of the foundation of Canada is public education and we really need to take care of it…All you have to do is look to the south to see how vital it is to keep the system here equitable so all children have the same opportunities for an education" (Lajoie, 2013, p. A7).These quotes suggest that what we as Ontarians and Canadians value is at risk.Audience members are expected to become impassioned by this message since they are constructed as valuing equal opportunity and our public education system.
An aspect of style utilized by P4E that reinforces its arguments for reforming fundraising and fees policies is the use of metaphors.Metaphors help structure how the audience thinks about phenomena (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003).P4E uses the metaphor of "a gap between 'have' and 'have-not' schools" to describe emerging differences between schools based on what they can provide through fundraising and collecting fees.For example, in 2001 in an Opinion piece in the Toronto Star P4E's Director explained: One of the most important jobs of a strong public education system is to give every child an equal chance to succeed.Up to now, in Ontario, we've been pretty good at that.But the gap between "have" and "have-not" schools is beginning to grow.Parents in more affluent communities undertake fundraising to augment the system.(Kidder, 2001, p. A21) Ethos.Ethos, the ethical appeal, involves establishing credibility of the author or speaker (Corbett & Connors, 1999;Leach, 2000).For P4E to appeal to its audiences, the group must convince them it is credible and trustworthy (Corbett & Connors, 1999).P4E's rhetorical efforts to establish their credibility have changed over time as the organization itself has changed (Evans, Newman, & Winton, 2015).Initially, the group's credibility relied on its position as a group of parents concerned with public education and experiencing increased pressure to fundraise for their children's schools.This strategy is evident in a description of the group in one of their earliest annual reports: "People for Education is a group of parents from public and Catholic schools, working together in support of fully publicly-funded education in Ontario" (P4E, 2000, p. iii).After it began collecting data from schools, the group began referring to its research.Their ability to refer to evidence, the only evidence of its kind in the province, helped P4E establish itself as an expert on the ways fees and fundraising policies were enacted in schools.Citations of their survey findings and public accolades of their contributions to public education in Ontario by journalists and policymakers further enhanced their credibility.The regular attendance of high profile individuals at the group's events (including Ontario's Minister of Education) and P4E's membership on government advisory panels have further increased the group's stature.
As mentioned above, P4E draws on the research of other researchers and organizations to demonstrate that their findings and concerns are valid.For example, the group has referenced the research conducted by Social Planning Council of Ottawa, the OECD, and the US National Research Council to support the work the group has published.Additionally, the group's reports include quotes from principals and others whom have completed P4E's surveys to show that the group's concerns are shared by people in schools.Furthermore, the policy recommendations P4E makes in its annual reports construct the group as in a position to advise government.Finally, P4E has constructed itself as a defender of public education.In 2015, for example, the group explains: "People for Education works on behalf of Ontario's citizens to ensure that public education lives up to its promise" (P4E, 2015, p. iv).Statements like this one combined with two decades of highly visible and consistent participation in fundraising, fees, and many other education policy processes suggest P4E is of high moral character.

Changes, Continuances, Influences
A study of a group's policy change efforts prompts the question: What difference did their efforts make?To address this question we return to Hajer's argumentative discourse theory, which asserts that a discourse is dominant when it dominates how a phenomenon is conceptualized (i.e., structuration) and when it is institutionalized (Hajer, 2006).In this section we first discuss whether P4E's policy meanings have or have not become dominant in the fees and fundraising cycles' contexts of text production and practice.We focus on government texts and P4E's reports of fees and fundraising practices in schools because our rhetorical analysis found the Ontario government and general public to be P4E's target audiences.More specifically, we looked for evidence of structuration and institutionalization of P4E's story lines in government texts in the policies' contexts of text production and in their contexts of practice in order to determine if P4E's policy meanings have become dominant in Ontario.We then considered how neoliberal discourses and the social, political, economic, and historical contexts of each policy cycle may help explain the persuasiveness of P4E's rhetorical efforts.
In 2011, the Ontario government introduced the Fees for Learning Materials and Activities Guideline (hereafter the Fees Guideline).The objectives of the Fees Guideline are to "identify guiding principles and best practices; provide a foundation for school boards to develop or review existing guidelines, policies and procedures with respect to any fees charged to students in the regular day school program; and provide examples of appropriate and inappropriate practices" (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2011, p. 1).It states explicitly that resident students within the province have the right to attend school without the payment of a fee, and it includes textbooks and "learning materials that are required for completion of the curriculum such as workbooks, cahiers, musical instruments, science supplies, lab material kits and safety goggles" in its list of materials ineligible for fee charges (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2011, p. 3).However, the Fees Guideline also states that schools may choose to charge students for enhanced programs or activities (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2011).Our examination of the Fees Guideline andP4E's (2013a, 2015) annual reports that show a steady decrease in the percentage of schools charging fees for required materials or courses after the Fees Guideline's suggests that the now dominant meaning of school fees excludes fees for resources required for courses.
Importantly, student activity fees, athletics fees, and music fees continue to climb and the variation between schools in overall amounts collected remains great (e.g., athletic fees vary from $5 to $1,200 per student; P4E, 2015).The Fees Guideline permits these fees as well as fees for "enhancements or supplementary learning materials beyond the core curriculum" (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2011, p.1).The continued practice of charging fees for student activities, athletics, and music in schools and its endorsement in the Fees Guideline suggests that P4E's argument that schools should not charge fees because doing so promotes inequities between schools has not become dominant.
In 2012, the Ontario government introduced the Fundraising Guideline.This document reflects and mobilizes P4E's argument that school fundraising should not be used to pay for materials essential for learning.For example, it states "Funds raised for school purposes should not be used to replace public funding for education; and should not be used to support items funded through provincial grants, such as classroom learning materials, textbooks and repairs or for capital projects that significantly increase operating costs" (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2012, p. 1).The alignment between P4E's and the Fundraising Guideline's assertion that fundraising is unacceptable when it is used to fund resources required for learning suggests discursive structuration and institutionalization.However, P4E's 2015 annual survey shows that some schools continue to raise money to pay for textbooks, technology, and online resources.These findings suggest that P4E's argument that fundraising should not be used to pay for basic learning materials has not become dominant.
Finally, like the fees case, P4E's argument that fundraising produces inequities between schools has not become dominant in government texts or in the context of practice.The Fundraising Guideline (2012) permits funds to be raised for the purpose of complementing (and not replacing) public funding for education, and states explicitly that funds can be spent on resources such as supplies, equipment, scholarships/bursaries, awards, field trips, guest speakers, gardens, outdoor skating rinks, running tracks, and artificial turf (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2012).Furthermore, P4E's (2015) and Winsa's (2015Winsa's ( , 2016) ) research demonstrates that fundraising and differences in amounts fundraised by schools continues to grow across the province.
Understanding that cultural discourses and other aspects of a policy's historical, social, economic, and political contexts influence policy (Fischer, 2003;Taylor, 1997), we considered how they may help explain why one of P4E's policy meanings became dominant while the others remain subordinate.We note first that P4E and Ontario's successive governments mobilized a partially-shared argument about fees and fundraising, that is, that the government should provide the basic resources needed for learning in public schools.Funding the basic necessities helps to give the appearance that the government is providing all students with an equal opportunity for success while facilitating market conditions, an important role for governments under neoliberalism (Olmedo & Wilkins, 2016).As Naidoo (2016b) explains, the appearance of a level playing field legitimizes competition.
The idea that governments should supply the basics of education may also help explain why P4E's argument that fees and fundraising for extras create inequities between schools and undermines public education's commitment to equity has not become dominant.First, as already mentioned, asserting that the government should pay for basics suggests it is upholding this commitment.So, too, do statements in the Fees Guideline and Fundraising Guideline that state that paying fees or fundraising for enhanced materials is optional.Further, schools report to P4E that they have policies to offer subsidies or alternative programs to children who cannot afford to pay fees.These policies suggest fairness while placing the responsibility on parents and children to ask for financial assistance, ignoring the stigma of doing so.
Second, the notion that parents should not pay for materials and opportunities they desire for their children conflicts with an idea and practice popular in the private sector: people who want more than a basic level of service should and must pay for it.A fee-for-service model is one practice among many from the private sector Ontario's government has adopted.
Offering enhanced resources at an additional cost also gives parents who can afford to pay them an opportunity to equip their children with the advantages that these materials and opportunities provide.Neoliberalism's emphasis on individualized responsibility suggest that this is what parents should do since they are responsible for their children's success.Indeed, parents, as neoliberal subjects, may "consider it morally repugnant or irresponsible for themselves and others not to do so" (Olemedo and Wilkins, 2016, p. 5, emphasis in original).Parents' responsibility is reinforced and promoted in Ontario in part through policies of school choice, parent involvement, and school councils (Winton, 2016).Hajer (1997) notes that whether a story line sounds right to people depends in part on whether it is acceptable to their discursive identities.Asking parents not to provide their children with advantages when they have the opportunity to do so may not resonate with parents given the neoliberal construction of parents' responsibilities.Pressure and desire to ensure their children's success may help explain why school fundraising, a long-standing practice in some schools, took on new importance following cuts to education budgets in the late 1990s (Winton, 2016).
Further, the argument that fundraising and collecting fees for extras are problematic practices because they promote inequity may not resonate with parents because it conflicts with neoliberal discourses of meritocracy which constructs successful individuals as having earned their success and entitled to the benefits it yields.These benefits includes "successful" parents' ability to provide enhanced materials and opportunities for their children by paying fees and fundraising.
In addition, fundraising is heralded by many groups and individuals, including Ontario's government and even P4E, as a way to engage parents in their children's schools (which purportedly improves schools and often academic achievement; Ontario Ministry of Education, 2016) and to enhance school-community relations (Winton, 2016).Further, fundraising may provide some collective benefits to all children in a classroom or school even if only some parents and students participate (e.g., access to technology, special performances, field trips).

Contributions
The marketization and privatization of education are important phenomena in education systems around the world.More knowledge about these policy processes in the Canadian context is emerging (see recent special issue of the Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy at www.cjeap.ca),and the current study makes unique contributions to this understanding.First, while others have investigated the prevalence and implications of school fees and fundraising policies across the country (Bouman & Brown, 1996;Davidge, 2003;Froese-Germaine et al., 2006;P4E, 2011b, 2012, 2013b, 2015), our study is the first to examine resistance to them.
Examining how P4E has engaged in the struggle over the meaning of fees and fundraising policies and highlighting the meanings they have mobilized helps to broaden the scope of scholarly research on marketization of education in Canada.While policies supporting school and program choice exist in various forms across the country (Bosetti & Butterfield, 2016;Yoon, 2011), the school choice movement has not taken hold in Canada to the extent that it has in the USA, Britain, and some other jurisdictions.However, our research highlights that fees and fundraising policies may be another means of facilitating marketization in education if they enable schools to offer different materials, services, and programs to parents who choose (and can afford) to pay for them.As Posey-Maddox (2016) points out, fundraising enables affluent parents to not only consume but also produce the schools they desire for their children.
Research has examined strategies used by advocacy groups in their efforts to influence privatization and other education policies (e.g., Guo & Saxton, 2014;McDonald, 2014;Newman, Deschenes, & Hopkins, 2012;Opfer, Young, & Fusarelli, 2008).Many of the strategies identified (e.g., enacting civil disobedience, speaking to the media, disseminating research) fall into the rhetorical canon of delivery; that is, they are strategies used to communicate story lines to audiences.P4E, the advocacy group we investigated, used these strategies to mobilize its arguments that fees and fundraising should not be used to cover the cost of basic learning materials and required courses and that collecting fees and fundraising for enrichment produces inequities that undermine fundamental purposes of public education, yet only some of these arguments appeared persuasive.Thus, our findings demonstrate that strategies themselves are not enough to explain why discourses become dominant.
Further, many studies of policy advocacy suggest that changes to government policy indicates advocates' success.Weaver-Hightower (2014), for example, asserts that "influence can often be seen in the discursive alignment between policy makers and external advocates and interest groups.Power and success can be claimed for those whose ideas about a policy….getincluded in, and thus legitimized by, policy documents and their resulting interventions" (p.118).
Our research shows that changes to government policy documents alone is not a sufficient indication of policy influence.Ontario's Fundraising Guideline includes P4E's argument that fundraising should not be used to pay for the basics of education, but this practice continues in some schools nevertheless.This continued practice also highlights that evidence of structuration and institutionalization (Hajer, 1993) may be present in a policy's contexts of influence and text production but not its context of practice.
Using rhetorical analysis focused our attention not only on how P4E constructed the problems with fees and fundraising policies but also on how the group attempted to persuade its audiences to adopt their policy meanings through appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos.Our analysis showed that providing numerical evidence of inequities produced by fees and fundraising and personal stories about the impact of these policies were not persuasive enough to change dominant policy meanings in the fundraising case or to eradicate all fees in the fees case.However, P4E used these same appeals in its efforts to construct fees for basics as a problem, and this policy meaning did become dominant in government policy and in practice.The inconsistency of the persuasiveness of these appeals and the delivery strategies utilized by P4E suggests that other influences were at play.Looking beyond the fees and fundraising policy cycles to their shared broader context of Ontario where neoliberalism is dominant provides some understanding of the unevenness of P4E's influence.More specifically, these cycles exist within a social context that constructs parents as consumers of education and responsible for their children's success in a competitive world, promotes the meritocratic notion that successful people deserve their success and the benefits it brings, sees the government as responsible only for providing the basic requirements of education, and supports privatization and marketization of public schools.The unevenness of P4E's persuasiveness of their argument that neither fees nor fundraising for basics should be allowed within this shared context demonstrates that neoliberalism influences advocacy and policy cycles differently and reaffirms the importance of context on advocacy groups' policy influence (Opfer et al., 2008).
While our study focussed on P4E, we recognize that this group is a member of a larger discourse coalition (Winton, 2016) and that policy change (or lack thereof) cannot be attributed to a single policy actor.Indeed, policy networks comprised of actors from different sectors and jurisdictions have played a key role in facilitating and expanding privatization in education around the world (Ball & Exley, 2010;DiMartino & Scott, 2013;Verger, 2012).Hajer's notion of discourse coalitions challenges scholars to think about these networks as members of a broader coalition and consider what other actors, perhaps yet unrecognized, might be contributing to the privatization and marketization of public education.