What could be wrong with school choice?

by Jeff Bryant

Everyone loves “choice,” right?

In a country where in a single year there are more than 100 new choices for what to use to brush your teeth, it stands to reason that maximizing “choice” might be a goal for all kinds of enterprises.

With that in mind, this week brought us “National School Choice Week”with its recurring theme that “parents should be empowered to choose the best educational environments for their children.”

In their reporting of a School Choice Week kickoff event in Houston, libertarians at Reason noted that Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) headed up the speakers. “The liberal Jackson Lee and the conservative Cruz may not have much in common,” Reason noted, but both seemed intent on pressing the case for school choice.

A blogger for the Houston Chronicle also highlighted the coming together of political right and left, crowing, “Who said Republicans and Democrats can’t come together?”

For sure, Republicans and free market enthusiasts of all kinds are going to continue to press for anything under the umbrella of “school choice.” But civil rights advocates – whether Democratic or not – need to ask, if school choice is about “empowering parents,” who is doing the “empowering” and what they are doing it for?

Same Old Wine

Public School Reform ?

Seth Sandronsky
Take the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. Add its heir, the Race to the Top Fund (RTT-TF), part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. Under NCLB and RTTTF, pupil scores on standardized tests are center stage in public K-12 school reform. Public school principals and teachers with students who fail to measure up to learning standards based on test scores face harsh penalties, ranging from schools closing, with employee layoffs, to openings of charter schools (brick-and-mortar and online).

There is more to this learning and teaching dynamic than meets the eye. For instance, off-stage are for-profit corporations. Their fiduciary responsibility is to private shareholders, not public interests. So what is the interplay between the corporate sector and public K-12 school reform?

We turn to Kaplan Test Preparation (KTP) schools.

Parents Protest over school closures - school "reform"

http://www.thenation.com/article/175532/are-street-protests-next-fight-over-education-reform#axzz2b9Kf7lwT

Amy Dean, The Nation

"As it stands now, if nothing changes, the schools are going to have to open without any adults in the large spaces where kids gather," predicted Philadelphia public schools parent Michael Mullins in late June….

As the showdown in Philadelphia indicates, the ongoing battle over education "reform" and school funding--topics often discussed in think tanks, political campaigns or Waiting for "Superman"-style media productions--is moving into the streets. 

Chicago and Seattle, too, have seen vigorous protests against austerity, privatization, high-stakes testing and union-busting. Such demonstrations together represent a forceful challenge to the corporate-financed push for "education reform" undertaken by the likes of Michelle Rhee, the former schools chancellor of Washington, DC. But these movements are more than mere isolated acts of resistance; in their demands, the outlines of a coherent policy agenda can be discerned--one that looks honestly at what it will take to bring quality education to America's least privileged communities.

One thing this movement has already accomplished is exposing how the education "reform" movement provides cover to Republicans and neoliberal Democrats who are starving the public school system. In championing privately run charter schools, the (self-described) reformers paint traditional schools as failures that should be defunded--even if those traditional schools outperform charters. By bashing teachers unions, figures like Rhee have helped politicians scapegoat the unions for fiscal woes, even as many of those lawmakers advocate cutting taxes. And by claiming that those who cite poverty's impact on student achievement are merely making excuses for sub-par teaching, the "reform" camp has played down the devastating effects of ruthless budget cutting.