What’s Wrong With School “Choice”
A recent piece in the New York Times explained how the Big Apple’s magnet-school program has been working—great for good students, and lousily for those who are more challenged. It’s a brutal recitation of how caring parents who want the best for their kids wind up with their hopes dashed, as test scores from the fourth grade determine which lucky students will move out of low-performing neighborhood schools to the more attractive magnet middle schools. Guess what? The neighborhood schools end up getting the poorest, lowest-scoring students, while their more accomplished, better-scoring peers get to move up in the world.
In other words, school choice siphons off the cream of the crop.
That’s great for the cream. But it sucks for the kids left behind.
I’ve written about this topic before. I’m the daughter of a public-school superintendent and a public-school teacher. I was raised to believe that the American system of public education was intended to elevate all the students it serves, not just those with high test scores or intact families or parents who speak English. But our reliance on property taxes to fund our schools guarantees that the offspring of the wealthy get better educations. And the growth of charter and magnet schools, on top of that, guarantees that only powerless and hopeless children are left behind in their neighborhood institutions of learning. And with the cream of the crop go their parents—often the only motivators for positive change in regions of the city where life is bleak.
I know it’s considered practical these days—admirable, even—to care about your own offspring to the exclusion of others. I know an “I got mine” attitude is de rigueur for parents desperately racing to get Junior into Yale. I understand the instinct. When times are tough, it’s natural to want to circle the wagons and protect your own. But the reason we care about children in the first place is that they’re weak and vulnerable. Shouldn’t we try harder to care about the weakest and most vulnerable more?
