A parent’s choice
How many times have you heard this argument against parental choice in education:
Not all charter/private schools are “better” than public schools?
No kidding?! And I don’t think most school choice advocates would ever try and imply that they are. But that misses the entire point about parental choice in education. Opponents don’t seem to realize that school choice is about a better educational fit for a a unique and individual student. Sure, sometimes you are talking about a failing school or, even worse, a failing school system, and in those situations you need a viable choice for the whole student body. But often times, the choice is about what works best for an individual child.
All children learn differently and have their own unique needs. Just the other day I was working with a 4-year-old on duplicating block models. I (wrongly) made the assumption he would be a tactile learner- wanting to touch and hold the block formation I made to physically examine how it was put together. Instead, he wanted to just leave it on the floor and look while he worked on replicating the pattern himself without touching the blocks I had assembled.
A simple example, sure, but you get the idea- not all kids will want to touch the blocks- not all kids will learn in the same manner- so no one educational environment will work well for all students.
And there are countless other reasons that parents may make different choices in education: location- perhaps a certain school is more convenient to home or work- or operates on more convenient school hours- making the family’s schedule easier and allowing for more family-time. Perhaps a different school offers a specialized program of interest to the parents, such as language immersion.
Whatever the parents’ reasons are, they should be the ones to make that choice. Not a bureaucrat who has never met the individual student or family. No computer system designed to simply assign an appropriate number of students to each school.
We shared this article with you on Friday in our news clips: A step toward school choice (from California’s Appeal-Democrat).
One of the most poignant comments from the editorial comes at the conclusion of the article:
Even if parents prefer their children attend lower-performing charter schools, their choice should prevail. To assert otherwise assumes that arbitrary standards must dictate, rather than parental rights. There may be myriad reasons parents prefer alternative programs. That decision should rest with them, not with bureaucrats or politicians and not with unions.
Exactly. Education advocates often lament the lack of parental involvement in education- and we agree that education does start at home with the parents. But if that’s the case, let’s get parents re-invested in education. Let’s put the decisions back in their hands. Let’s give them the choices, instead of cutting them out of the decision making process.
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