What Could Be Wrong With School Choice?
This week marked the annual National School Choice Week with events across the country promoting "education options" such as charter schools and vouchers.
Everyone loves “choice,” right? In a country where every year brings us 100 new choices for how to brush our teeth, maximizing “choice” appears to be the holy grail no matter what the enterprise.
It turns out there's a lot wrong with school choice.
As People for the American Way points out,
"National School Choice Week is deliberately designed to blur important differences in educational policies…National School Choice Week wants everyone to be so busy cheering and dancing for the broad concept of giving parents and students educational options that they don't stop to think about these distinctions."
We asked some of our Progressive Education Fellows what they thought about the important "distinctions" regarding the meaning of "choice." Here’s what they said:
Ashana Brigard, Southcentral Regional Fellow
When I hear the word choice, I understand someone is choosing not to invest in black native New Orleans.
After Hurricane Katrina, 125,000 native New Orleans, a lot of them the poorest and most black, did not come back to New Orleans. And while $71 billion came to New Orleans after the storm, black people here now have 18% less income and wealth. The millions of dollars poured into our education system mostly went to new charter schools and charter management groups and organizations, such as New Schools New Orleans. These groups funnel money to consultants and start ups, many not from New Orleans. In New Orleans we have 97% charter schools and only five traditional schools. And despite the millions being spent, many children and families are not getting what they need. We have 26,000 young people ages 16 to 24 who are not in school or working. They call them “opportunity youth.” They are products of the new charter school system.
One of the five remaining traditional schools is Benjamin Franklin elementary school, a
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