Excluding “Over-the-Counter Children” to Protect Elite High Schools
The first time I heard the term “over-the-counter” children, I was with a group visiting New York City, where we were listening to a presentation on school choice in New York from a researcher who used the term in an off-hand way. We visitors looked at each other and someone asked, “What are over-the-counter children?” “They are the children who don’t participate in school choice,” we were told. “Their parents don’t fill out the high school application, or they arrive after the school year begins, or they are homeless. They just come to the school and try to register.”
My mind jumped immediately back to January of 1960, when my family moved to Havre, Montana on a day that I clearly remember was 35 degrees below zero. We spent our first night in the Siesta Motel because our furniture had not arrived. In the morning my mother took me to the Havre Junior High School to register me for the second semester of the seventh grade. I was sent immediately to class while my mother went off to get us settled.
I was an over-the-counter child. So were most of the members of the group at our meeting that afternoon in New York City. We talked about that term, “over-the-counter children,”
