School Choice: It's Not for Everyone, and that's the Problem

This week is National School Choice Week -- a well-orchestrated PR event to celebrate "school choice."

The week of nationwide events even kicked off with a party in New Orleans complete with performances by The Temptations and Ellis Marsalis. It's a lot of fanfare in the name of choice. And choice is an attractive word. As American as apple pie, it's hard to pick an argument with choice. Options, we believe, are always good.

But that's not always the case.

When we talk about school choice -- which is most often associated with charter schools -- we can't let feel-good words and a glitzy campaign prevent us from providing our children with the best education possible. That means we must ensure our public education system is excellent, equitable and accessible to all children.

Unfortunately, these goals have become obscured by "school choice," which has become an end in itself -- even garnering its own week.

School choice doesn't magically improve education. Charter school proponents may argue that a free market, where parents get to pick and choose among educational options, will produce competition and better schools, but the data says otherwise.

Educational historian Diane Ravitch has found that study after study show that charter schools do no better than traditional public schools when it comes to learning gains. The findings are documented to devastating effect in her book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

Pointing to one major 2009 study of more than half the country's charter schools representing 70 percent of charter-school students, Ravitch reports that "37 percent had learning gains that were significantly below those of local public schools; 46 percent had gains that were no different; and only 17 percent showed growth that was significantly better."

The bottom line: 83 percent of charter schools are no better than traditional public schools.

That may not sound so bad but tax money -- and lots of it -- goes to charter schools. They also receive a little lagniappe from foundations. It means these schools usually spend much more per student than traditional public schools. In what economic system does competition mean spending more and getting the same or worse quality?

What's worse is the impact on the students least likely to be found in schools of choice: students with disabilities, students with unmotivated parents, students living in deep poverty or students simply unable to transport themselves across town to attend a better school. These students are the ones most likely to find themselves shut out of these schools and mired in a deepening cycle of failure.

Ravitch found that charter schools, particularly those in urban districts, enroll the most motivated students, students with parents pushing them to excel. "Regular public schools in the same communities get the students who did not win the lottery, plus all the less motivated students," she writes. And when you put these students together in a school, the peer pressure will "likely depress the academic performance of the motivated students" who didn't win the lottery.

This is unacceptable. We should not settle for it. And we certainly shouldn't celebrate it.

We benefit from public schools that provide all children with an opportunity to learn and flourish. Education is not a product or choice that only affects the child receiving it. It affects all of us.

Educational inequality also has a huge impact on our ability to compete globally. Many American students -- those who are white or Asian and those who attend affluent schools -- perform as well or better than those living elsewhere in the world, according to education expert Linda Darling-Hammond. But the performance of children of color, and of children living in poverty, is so much lower that it drags our national averages to the bottom of any comparative list, she writes in The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future.

As a nation, we rely on well-educated workers. We rely on the well-engineered products they create. And we rely on the dependable services they provide. A quality education for all children is key to achieving these goals. Quite simply, all of us benefit when Johnny reads well.

If choice is good, we must ensure that every child -- including the most disadvantaged and vulnerable -- has access to equal choices. We must ensure every child has access to the full range of opportunities that "choice" is meant to provide. And we must ensure every child has an opportunity to receive a quality education -- a concept truly worth celebrating.

 

Follow Maureen Costello on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Tolerance_org

Comments

[crazyindc1984]

03:21 AM on 02/21/2012

While it is noble to worry about the less fortunate, less motivated (children and parents), and disabled, it is equally treachorous to bring the top students down by trying to bring them all to a set standard / level. The real solution based on your findings would be to take all the children into the same school, but set up different levels of difficulty so the better students would be able to be challenged and motivated to excel. We do have this system to a degree, but it is in general one class per grade level of a small group of children. If we broadened this aproach, I think it would benefit the children who would take advantage of the challenges.

[Jason Lewis CFRE]

05:28 PM on 01/29/2012

You’re right- school choice does not magically improve education and I suspect you would be hard pressed to find many school choice advocates who would make such a bold claim. That said - school choice does open the educational marketplace to new ideas and innovations on a much broader scale. Consider for a moment- you suggest that 83 percent of charter schools are no better than traditional public schools- the flip-side of that same coin is that 17 percent of those charter schools are doing better than the public schools and it would be my hope that school choice would allow this small group to grow and expand.

It is admirable on your part to acknowledge the inequities we face in education and I appreciate your concerns for students with disabilities, students with unmotivated parents, students living in deep poverty or students simply unable to transport themselves across town to attend a better school. Unfortunately, your concern for these students must also force you to answer the question of what do we do for these students with the systems fails them?

For example, in Kansas City we have thousands of students who have been told they attend the worst schools in the country, their inner-city public schools have lost state-accreditation, and the suburban school districts won’t accept them despite MO law that requires them to do so. What you have here is a break-down of the same public system you are adamant to defend.

[J R M]

08:02 PM on 01/25/2012

Choice is not bad, but practicing it will inherently help some students and hurt others. If you allow the children of the active and concerned parents to select themselves into a school with fewer disengaged students, those kids are going to do better and the kids left behind, who now have more disengaged students are going to do worse. If you have schools with competitive entrance exams, those who get through are likely to get a better education that those who do not, simply because disengaged students were not admitted - even if the schools have exactly the same funding per student.

[Ellisha Gray]

06:20 PM on 01/25/2012

The idea behind charter schools is to see what works. The school comes up with a plan, and continues to get funding if its students are learning. We should be closing those charters that don't work and continuing those who do - that's where the competition aspect comes in.

[J R M]

04:08 PM on 01/25/2012

I see an all but unstoppable movement to increased usage of on-line learning tools. When I want to know how good a school is, I want to know first and foremost the cultural background of the children in the schools and secondarily the education of their parents. If the school is filled with children from cultures that value education (regardless of the income of their parents) - that school will be "good". If the children are from families that do not focus on education, this is much less likely.

I am sure I am not the only parent that will make the following calculation:

If the school is filled with kids who value education - send them to it.

If the school is mixed - many kids who value education and some who do not, send them to it and watch closely. If things are not going well, be prepared to take independent action to supplement it, particularly at middle and high school levels.

If the school is filled with kids who do not value education - do not send them. Home school / hybrid with on-line schooling. Canadian data shows that kids using structured home schooling exceeded public school advancement in elementary school. On-line schooling comes into its own in middle and high school.

Note that this takes intense parental involvement - but the results can be very good.