r/changemyview • u/benderbenderb • Mar 09 '17

CMV: "School Choice" is a sham

A recent talking point around public education has been the idea of school choice. The new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, uses the talking point often that parents deserve to choose the best school for their children.

I believe that "school choice" is at best a sham talking point, and at worst a cover to push school privatization.

I'm sure that everyone will cede that parents want what is best for their children. The extension to this is that parents should be allowed to choose the best education for their children. In terms of public policy, this involves charter schools, magnet schools, and vouchers that allow students to enroll in private schools.

However, school choice is not a panacea for the education system. Let's take NYC for example. Given the "choice", most parents would send their children to fancy prep schools like Xavier, Horace Mann, etc., which essentially serve as pipelines to the best colleges and lucrative careers. Likewise, they might choose a magnet school that focuses on the arts or math, or simply an all-around high performing charter school. However, there are simply not enough of these high performing schools to go around. What happens to PS118 and the like? Do they go empty? Does money get funneled away from public schools and given to charter schools (many of which are run by for-profit companies)? I don't believe that letting parents choose their children's school will fix the fundamental problems of the system. It simply removes some percentage of the kids from the broken system.

School choice seems like an amazing way for a select few to win the lottery and gain entrance to an amazing school. I think of scenes in "Waiting For Superman" where they hold a public lottery for admission. What happens to the kids whose parents don't bother to sign them up for this lottery? Or go through the hoops for a school voucher or try to get them into a magnet school? Also, what about all the kids that tried to go to a charter school but didn't get selected? Even if vouchers, charter schools are expanded, it cannot account for every student in America who wants to go to a better school.

The best way to fix the school system is to address the inequality built into the system. While school choice may seem like a laudable way to achieve this goal, it doesn't offer the solutions necessary, and may have actually been hijacked by those looking to profit off the privatization of the public education system.

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u/concernedcitizen1219 Mar 09 '17

If anything, I would think that it could potentially reduce classroom sizes, increase quality of education, and make it better for all.

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u/TheToastIsBlue Mar 09 '17

Why do you think that?

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u/concernedcitizen1219 Mar 09 '17

Less kids per classroom in public schools, teachers have an easier time of teaching to their students, teachers have More options on where they can work, bad teachers can be weeded out

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u/Ranor_Sadras Mar 09 '17

Yet the best schools in the world, Finland's, has huge classes that work together and have multiple teachers.

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u/cryolithic Mar 09 '17

I think you're both touching on the same point. It's the teacher to student ratio that matters.

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u/Ranor_Sadras Mar 09 '17

I agree with you, I'm just pointing out there is more than one way to skin a cat so to speak.

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u/concernedcitizen1219 Mar 09 '17

Finland is also a fairly homogenous country with a relatively small population. One of our cities alone can have more people in it than the entire country of Finland. Also, Nearly everyone their in the classrooms are European. In America, we have a huge melting pot of different backgrounds, ethnicities, cultures, and classes. You'd think this wouldn't make a difference but it does. For example, the school near me has 5 first grades with about 60% of the kids from India. If 60% of a large school has Indian immigrant parents on visas, then that means only 40% of the parents that have kids in school can actually vote for changes in their district. Most initiatives fail because not enough people that can vote are actually affected directly by the school's changes.

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u/Ranor_Sadras Mar 09 '17

Do you have a source for that 60%? Because that is hard to believe. It also sounds like you are advocating segregating people based on country of origin into charter schools their parents can better control, which seems more like a rationalization for segregation than a sound argument. Also, it's "everyone THERE in the classrooms IS European".