PARENTAL CHOICE, MAGICAL THINKING, AND THE PARALYSIS OF INDIRECT SOLUTIONS
Parental choice #1: Seeking a school for their white children so they will not have to attend classes with black or brown children.
Parental choice #2: Seeking a school where their wealthy children will not have to attend classes with poor children.
Parental choice #3: Seeking a school where children will be taught Intelligent Design, but not evolutionary biology.
Parental choice #4: Not allowing their children to be vaccinated.
Parental choice #5: Smoking in the house and car while children are present.
I could continue for quite some time with the hypotheticals, but let’s turn to what we know about parental choice and education.
A 2007 study by a pro-school choice organization in Wisconsin reached the following conclusions:
Taken as a whole, these numbers indicate significant limits on the capacity of public school choice and parental involvement to improve school quality and student performance within MPS. Parents simply do not appear sufficiently engaged in available choice opportunities or their children’s educational activities to ensure the desired outcomes.This may be just as well. Relying on public school choice and parental involvement to reclaim MPS may be a distraction from the hard work of fixing the district’s schools. Recognizing this, the question is whether the district, its schools, and its supporters in Madison are prepared to embrace more radical reforms. Given the high stakes involved, district parents should insist on nothing less.
More recently, in School Choice Versus A Public System of Education: The Big Picture, Jan Resseger explains:
Promoters of school choice tout the idea that competition through choice will make everybody try harder and improve traditional and charter schools alike. But large studies conducted in the past year in Chicago and New Orleans show that parents aren’t always looking for academic qualityParental Choice, Magical Thinking, and the Paralysis of Indirect Solutions | the becoming radical:
