5/11/2017 – What Is The Purpose Of School Choice?
THIS WEEK: White School Secession … School Funding Fights Loom … Problems With Choice … Choice Fails … College Inequity
TOP STORY
What Is The Purpose Of School Choice?
By Jeff Bryant
“Many proponents of school choice contend the purpose of school choice was never about generating better results. It’s about choice for choice’s sake … But individuals don’t pay for public education; the taxpayers do. And the choices parents make about their education don’t just affect their children; they have an impact on the whole community … None of this is to say parents should have no education choices for their children at all … But why would I want a bad choice?”
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NEWS AND VIEWS
The Quiet Wave Of School District Secessions
US News & World Report
“When a judge ruled last week that the predominantly white Alabama city of Gardendale can secede from the majority black Jefferson County to form its own school district, the decision paved the way for the eighth such secession of wealthier and whiter municipalities in the state since 2000 … Dozens of school districts have similarly broken away from bigger ones – at least 36 since 2000 … 30 states have a process in place allowing districts to secede … only 17 require consideration be given to the secession’s impact on students, and only 6 require consideration be given to the impact on socioeconomic factors and diversity.”
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K-12 Spending Gets Caught In States’ Budget Fights
Education Week
“More than half the states this year missed their revenue projections, and many legislators are pushing their colleagues to pass more-conservative budgets this year … School spending, because it takes up such a large part of the budget, has sparked brushfires between parties and chambers … Kansas and Washington officials continue to fight over how to answer their states’ supreme court justices, who have deemed their spending unconstitutional.”
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Three Big Problems With School ‘Choice’ That Supporters Don’t Like To Talk About
The Washington Post
Executive Director of the Network for Public Education Carol Burris writes, “Public school choice programs, if carefully managed, can serve students well and/or promote a social good … Privatized school choice, in contrast, is quite different. Privatized school choice is the public financing of private alternatives to public schools … Privatized school choice will inevitably reduce funding for your local neighborhood public schools … Vouchers to private schools and other public school alternatives start small and then expand, increasing the burden on taxpayers … Additional administrative costs coupled with a lack of transparency waste taxpayer dollars and open the door to excessive legal and fraudulent personal gain.”
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The Broken Promises Of Choice In New York City Schools
The New York Times
“School choice has not delivered on a central promise: to give every student a real chance to attend a good school. Fourteen years into the system, black and Hispanic students are just as isolated in segregated high schools as they are in elementary schools – a situation that school choice was supposed to ease … There is a hierarchy of schools, each with different admissions requirements … Getting into the best schools, where almost all students graduate and are ready to attend college, often requires top scores … Those admitted to these most successful schools remain disproportionately middle class and white or Asian … Children who grow up in neighborhoods with low-performing elementary schools tend to go to low-performing middle schools, then on to high schools with low graduation rates and even lower college-readiness rates.”
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Top Universities Could Take Thousands More Low-Income Students, Study Says
The Hechinger Report
“Far more low-income students are qualified to attend the nation’s most selective colleges and universities than they enroll … Most have budget surpluses they could use to subsidize the neediest applicants … Most low-income students end up at community colleges and regional public universities with low graduation rates. But some 86,000 annually score on standardized admission tests as well as or better than the students who enroll at the most selective universities and colleges.”
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