Mitt Romney recently proposed allowing $25 billion in federal money to be fully available for any school choice a student wants to make in order to “introduce marketplace dynamics into education.”
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of marketplace dynamics. I think in many circumstances it is the completely appropriate way to regulate supply, demand and price points, to determine who gets what, what products flourish and which services flounder. However, one basic premise of the marketplace model, that so many seem to forget, is that it does not provide for everyone. By definition, some people are left out of the market. That’s fine when we are talking about who can afford a car or airfare to Disneyland. It’s appalling when we are talking about who gets access to an quality education.
I’m not making a blanket argument against school choice. I’m not arguing that our public school model always has, or currently is, adequately serving our nation’s youth. But no matter how many charters, vouchers, parochial, cyber, home-school options are out there, no matter how many families are taking advantage of those options, THERE ARE STILL STUDENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS! (I hate writing in all caps, but it’s a point that is worth screaming.)
Charters and other school choice options are a phenomenal mechanism to experiment with new educational innovations. But take those lessons learned and bring them back to the public schools. The American dream is the idea that no matter where you start off in this country, through education and hard work, you can achieve. There are many who already call this a myth. We do nothing but prove them right when we continue down a path that accepts that public schools have failed and embrace a policy of abandonment.
The other, oft-overlooked, requirement for a well-functioning marketplace: the proliferation of information. The decisions that drive the market are supposed to be informed decisions. There is a well-ingrained concept of public schools in this country. A traditional method of educating our children that most parents reasonably rely on. How much research was required to determine which kindergarten your child should attend? How many applications did you have to fill out to ensure your child was “accepted” into middle school? How many specialized interests or skills did your child have to identify by the age of 13, to make sure they were getting a quality education? NONE. You buy a house or rent an apartment and your children attend the public school whose district you live in. Simple. Who will their classmates be? The children in their neighborhood. How far will they travel to get to school? Pretty much the same reasonable distance of every other student in their school. No one used the phrase “commute” to describe how they got to school in the morning.
Giving parents the ability to “vote with their feet”, as Romney proposes, is the kind of “empowered” spin that individuals who are in favor of more school choice focus on. I’ll even give them the benefit of the doubt that they believe it is simply that easy. But again it boils down to information. As a parent with limited literacy or computer skills, how are you supposed find the best school for your first-grader? How are you supposed to know that you have a choice, where to get the applications, how to work the system? Is the assumption that if you don’t know to make these decisions, your child doesn’t deserve a good education?
When many parents won’t know how to maneuver through the increasingly complicated mire of educational options, how do we ignore the fact that a growing proportion of public school-educated children will be the lowest achieving students who are most in need of all the educational resources we can give them. We start our most vulnerable children off in a flawed system that we continue to drain resources from. What reasonable person expects a child to succeed in those circumstances?
“Vouchers Unspoken, Romney Hails School Choice” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/us/politics/in-romneys-voucher-education-policy-a-return-to-gop-roots.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&hp
Too often I’ll read something online and want to turn to the person next to me so we can discuss/deconstruct/over-analyze/mock/ponder it together. I almost always have to resist the urge because the person next to me is not at all interested. This blog is a way to self-select folks who, hopefully, enjoy what I have to say and want to join in the conversation.
The topics will range from pop music to foreign policy to last night’s game to the book I’m reading. Just a heads up, I will be repeatedly extolling the virtues of the public library.
And in response... 