The current debate over school district rezoning here in Nashville has provided an excellent practical example of the need for a renewed discussion of school choice and the potential it has to revolutionize public schooling. I’ve been reading Chubb & Moe’s Politics, Markets and America’s Schools, which makes a number of interesting assertions, some based on research some theoretical, about the potential for introducing true, market-style choice into the public school system. They are critical of almost any form of bureaucracy as it exists, which they feel is the largest impediment to effective schools. They also all but dismiss continuing education practices for teachers, as they feel that the key to making teachers better is simply to empower them by giving them more control over their classroom; and that requiring higher education standards and certification for teachers is just an impediment to inviting more teachers into the profession. Oh, and that paying teachers more wouldn’t work either.
Having said all that, and believing that those arguments are riddled with holes, I would still recommend reading it because of the revolutionary ideas that it champions. The systems they would initiate are based heavily on the economic theories of supply and demand and free market dynamics, and are already at work to some degree in Cambridge, MA and East Harlem, NY, which are two fascinating examples of the possibilities of choice. In Cambridge, students and parents make a list of the top four schools in the city they would like to attend, and the district managers sort the students into the schools by taking into account those lists but also with an eye to keeping the student bodies of their schools racially diverse. Empowering parents and students with choice is a major factor in involving families with their schools, and that involvement makes for more motivated, and subsequently better, students.
Agree or disagree, it is always good to hear a new perspective on a topic with very immediate implications for one’s profession and family.
0 Responses to “School Choice”