A recent diary named
School Choice Is Not the Answer presented what I believe is a fundamentally flawed and badly framed concept of education. Frankly, the corporatist/fundamentalist alliance on the right has whupped our asses on the education issue with their voucher nonsense. To beat them, we need a positive response.
My suggested response is a two-part frame:
First, vouchers are about privatization, not choice. Vouchers are NOT necessary in order to provide school choice!
Second, the reason for school choice is different schools, not "better" schools. Every student has different needs and different dreams. One size does not fit all. A "good" school for one student may be a "bad" school for another.
My story:
I am the father of 12 year old boy-girl twins currently in sixth grade (middle school here). We live in Minneapolis, and have benefitted from the excellent school choices of the Twin Cities, which derive from mostly wise and just laws. Minnesota does not have vouchers. Instead, our school choices derive from two mechanisms - open enrollment, and charter schools. This system
works.
My children are currently in a small charter school that my wife describes as "Catholic school without the Catholic". It's not a religious school, but follows many of the techniques of Catholic schools - uniforms, strong core cirriculum, lots of homework, and parental involvement. Student life revolves around a planner notebook, used to organize and track homework and other stuff. Successful students learn to be highly organized, a big benefit for higher education. Unfortunately, while my daughter has thrived in this environment, my son has suffered - he needs a more individualized system. This is NOT a criticism of the school! I think the school is superb. The lesson here is that what works well for one student may work badly for another.
So next year, the kids are switching to another charter school. The new school is very experimental. It emphasizes "project-based learning", in which much of the student's education comes from self-defined "projects" from a week to a semester in length. Writing, science, history, art, and other subjects can all be learned as general principles when the student works on something personally interesting (there are also regular classes for subjects like math). Additionally, the school is organized as a teacher's cooperative, rather than separating "teachers" from "administration". There is no principal. Administrative duties are shared by the teachers, and the money saved goes to hiring more teachers. Hopefully, this will prove to be a better environment for both our children.
Now, I want to discuss some observations and principles in a general way. Responses are welcomed!
Vouchers are about privatization, not choice.
This is one of my frames, of course. This is an ugly combination of market-worship, where the free market is supposed to drive school success (even more nonsense than market talk usually is), and trying to funnel state money to religious schools. By providing an alternative that gives the official benefit of vouchers (choice) without its underbelly (privatization, religious schools), we can show vouchers for what they REALLY are.
Choice should be about different schools, not "better" schools.
Another important frame, this gets us away from the market-worship, test-driven mentality of modern right-wing educational models, and toward a system where freedom leads to individual success for everyone.
Experimentation is key to improving education. However, experimentation doesn't belong in the mainstream.
Remember, all teaching techniques were once experimental. However, history is littered with the remains of failed and forgotten educational experiments (remember New Math?) And improvements to education are always incremental. Trying unproven techniques on large public school systems can produce great risk for relatively small rewards. Charter schools can provide hothouses for experimentation, to learn what works and what doesn't without exposing the broader education system to risk.
Church and state must remain separate.
Public money should not be used to promote religious education, or schools operated by religious institutions. Catholic schools and the crazy evangelist mahdras will just have to pay for themselves.
Teachers should be certified, but not necessarily unionized.
Certification is important so teachers know what is and is not expected, and what has been proven to work and not work. Experimentation is good; reinventing the wheel is not. However, unions are basically standardizing bodies. They protect teachers from administrative abuse, but they also get in the way of new techniques. The trick is finding the right balance between protecting teachers as workers, and letting schools improve in their own distinct ways.
Inequalities are an inevitable result of choice.
There is an inevitable tension between freedom and equality that becomes blatant with school choice. Frankly, many parents don't care enough about their childrens' educations to take advantage of choice even when it's offered. They will send their children to the default local school, whether or not it's the best available. They will do this even if alternative schools are free as well. So alternative schools are self-selecting... they will be filled exclusively with the children of parents who care enough to make the effort. Those same parents are the ones who will work the hardest to make sure their children succeed in school, regardless of ability. Moreover, such parents tend to be talented and motivated in their personal lives as well, traits they pass on to their children. So when school choice is available, there will always be a sort of "brain drain" away from the default schools, to the magnets and charters and what not.
School choice is intertwined with busing issues.
This is where class and income really start to matter. How do the kids get to schools, especially faraway schools? Parents can't necessarily drive them every day. Right now, my children are bused over five miles, from Minneapolis to St Paul, when they could walk to our neighborhood middle school a mile away. Next year, busing won't even be available to them - school busing is run by the schools, and their new school isn't set up for it. We'll be sending them on the city bus, at our expense. This is fine for us, hardly a dent in our middle-class incomes. But it would be a severe strain on a poor family. Providing busing along with school choice is complex and expensive. There's also a side issue here with rural schools. Rural areas simply don't have enough students to provide much school choice.
The rich will ALWAYS find a way to separate their kids from ours.
Prep schools will ALWAYS exist. If vouchers could cover the cost of a fancy prep school, they'd simply raise tuition to keep it exclusive. The "good" private schools benefit from class more than funding. I think it's silly and potentially dangerous to put energy into making the upper crust sit at our table, rather than putting that energy into our own children's education.
There's plenty more to discuss here, but I think I want to sum it up with my own concept... I want to see a mix of well-funded public schools, open enrollment, publicly-funded nonprofit charter schools, private prep schools, and privately funded religous schools. THAT is choice and freedom, in the best sense I can make of it.