Tag Archives: school choice

School Choice and Enrollment Leverage in the Pandemic

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Leverage is designed to provide advantage.  Leverage when using a pry bar allows one to lift or move something that is otherwise unmovable.  Understanding the mechanical advantage of a lever helped early mankind build with stone and open the doors of later industry.  Not every lever is mechanical.  School choice uses the lever of money to influence decisions.  Choice is the fulcrum and enrollment and school money are the objects being moved by a parent looking for educational advantage.   

School choices offer parents a personal tool for addressing pandemic education.  It allows parents to examine available options and select the where and how their child will be educated.  Parental choice of schooling is without prejudice; it is a personal decision that is freely made and without subsequent repercussion.  Choice allows a parent to match their understandings and beliefs about the pandemic with an educational option and to re-choose as understandings and beliefs change.  And, re-choose again.

School choice was initially designed to allow parents in schools with chronically poor educational opportunity and achievement to enroll in schools that demonstrably provided better opportunities and achievement.  The idea of choice was to lever a child’s enrollment for improved educational equity and equality.

Like so many things in life, the use of the tool changed.  Choice has become a socio-economic- and political lever.  In some communities, choice re-established segregation from cultural and economic diversity.  In some schools, choice elaborated elitism.  In some schools, choice allowed those who could to leave and left a school community of those who could not leave depleted.  The tool no longer was a lever for educational equity and equality but for personal advantage.

Choice in the pandemic is a political and economic lever.  The power and threat are displayed in the following fashion by a parent addressing school administration or the school board.  “If I do not like your school policies, rules and decisions, I will take my child from your school and enroll in a school where I agree with their policies, rules and decisions.”  Most frequently, the parent is speaking about policies, rules and decisions related to in-person versus remote education and masking versus no-masking. On the face of this scenario, this is school choice.  In the reality of this scenario, this is economic leverage.  My child represents school funding and a parent controls where her child’s funding will be schooled.  A small school with a small economy may not be able to survive many losses of enrollment.  Or, may not be able to withstand the threat of “… there are a lot of families who feel the same way I do and they also will leave this school if you don’t change your policies, rules and decisions”.  A school may fear a significant run of disenrollments, like a run on a bank during a financial panic, that drains the school district. 

As with most things, one action begets another.  The loss of enrollment can diminish school pay roll.  Fewer children can diminish school  jobs.  Fewer children can diminish programs – not enough children for a football team or a school play.  The threat of disenrollment causes leadership to consider these “next” problems and that consideration can temper how leadership responds to the lever of threatened disenrollment.

Whoa!  At this point, the nature of school governance is completely distorted.  No school policy, rule, or decision can be made without the implied threat of disenrollment choices by those who disagree.  And, if the threat of disenrollment choices become the “decider” for future policies, rules, and decisions, governance for the good of the school community will be governance for the happiness of a few.  When the threat of the disenrollment lever works to change school policies, rules, and decisions, fear of disenrollment choice becomes the modus operandi – anything and everything done in the school may elicit the disenrollment threat.

The best response to such attempted leverage is this – and, make the best educational decisions and life goes on.  A school that is consistently focused on the equity and equality of educational opportunity and achievement, including the health and safety of all within the school, needs to stay the course of its policies, rules, and decisions.  These high ground qualities will sustain a school through the turmoil of both the pandemic and pandemic behavior.  Parents who persist in using school disenrollment as a lever for personal advantage or preference are not seeking the enduring qualities of opportunity and achievement inherent in public education.  They are into the self-serving politics of “I want what I want and if I cannot have what I want I will leave”. 

Wish them well, as life in the school goes on.

School Choice Is Complicated And Intentional

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One should not accept a blatantly generalized statement as Gospel, especially any statement ladened with politico-economic overtones. Parsing a person’s motives and self-interests is an important tool for screening generalizations for truth and untruth, transferability and usability. School choice is one of those subjects burdened with so many motives and interests that every statement that begins with “I support school choice, because…” should be rephrased as “My interest(s) in supporting school choice are …” or “The school I chose has/does/provides these things for me.” Clear reasons in clear statements for clearer understanding. At the end of the day, there are good and valid reasons for school choice as long as the self-interests are known.

A discussion of school choice begins with this understanding – argument about the legitimacy of school choice is a waste of time and resources. Consumer choice has permeated almost every marketable commodity in our contemporary life. And clearly, politics has made education a marketable commodity. Given that school choice is a fact of life, the discussion no longer is whether to choose but why and how to choose and how choice affects the education landscape.

Historically, there always has been some choosing of schools. For several American centuries, children attended a parochial school affiliated with the family’s religious preference. Most frequently, these were Catholic and Lutheran parochial schools, but Episcopalians, Seventh-Day Adventists, Calvinists, Mennonites, Amish and Orthodox Jews also provided parochial education. In southern states, there are hundreds of schools affiliated with fundamentalist churches. The discussion of faith-based school choices has a history of community acceptance and only the availability of tax-funded school vouchers brings parochial schools back into the new discussion.

Equally, private schools or academies have existed over time. Sometimes organized as military schools to educate boys with structure and discipline. Finishing schools for girls taught grace and style. Elite academic preparatory schools existed for families interested in their children attending prestigious colleges and universities.

Families always have had choices. The simple and single difference between choice then and choice now is that families historically paid to make those choices. Today, public money is becoming increasingly available to fund school choice.

Today there is a bogeyman of reality in the discussion of school choice that cannot be ignored. Government at all levels enforces a “sum certain” and a “zero sum loss” equation on the use of state tax revenues available to fund education. If the equation was “sum sufficient,” the bogeyman would go away. But, education funding is never sum sufficient. Politics today says that tax money no longer is connected to funding schools; tax money is connected to funding the education of a child and whither the child goes, there goes the money. This, the bogeyman tells us, makes school choice all about the money. If a child who was enrolled in a public school enrolls in a private or charter school, the public school loses money and the private or charter school gains money. With choice, there always are financial winners and losers.

In our consumer society, we should know these things about the choosing of schools. Traditionally, parents considered the local, neighborhood when they chose their home residence. “We want this house in this school district, partly because this house is in this school district.” For some, residence and school district no longer are connected. Regardless of the location of their residence, parents can choose the location of their child’s school – these are two independent decisions. Literally, “I have the right to choose where I want to live and I the right to choose where I want my child to attend school.” The caveat in this new paradigm is that parents who choose also are parents who transport. If you want your child to attend a school out of your neighborhood, it is your responsibility to transport your child to your school of choice.

At the same time, the new options of school choice are not equally available to all children. Engaging in school choice is a parental decision. For some parents, employment and paying the bills consumes them and engaging in school choice is something they do not have the time, energy or resources to undertake. The lack of money excludes children. Or, their child’s education is not important. The lack of interest excludes children. Or, their grandparents and parents grew up in the house or neighborhood where the family now lives and everyone in their family attended the local school. The disinterest in change excludes children. Or, the family lives in a rural area where few physical schools of choice are organized and the distance between school districts makes daily transport an unrealistic endeavor. Physical location and sparsity of options exclude children. School choice is an option for more affluent, motivated, urban/suburban parents.

There also is the issue of selective acceptance that creates a significant difference in who attends a public school and who attends a choice school. Public schools educate every child regardless of educational ability and challenge. That is the law. Choice schools do not. Because they are not accountable to the same state statutes as public schools, choice schools can decline to accept students with special education needs, the socially maladjusted, and those that create disciplinary problems once enrolled. These children are the responsibility of public schools and are generally excluded from schools of choice.

It is easiest to parse the reasons for school choice for older children than it is for younger children. Simply stated, given the schooling experiences of older children and the refining of their learning styles and preferences, academic interests, and career and continuing education goals, it is much easier to match an older student with a school choice option. It is more difficult to match a younger child with little experience and unformed preferences, interests and goals. In my experience, parents who are in tune with their older children and can discern educational options reasonably available to the family make very good use of school choice. I worked with a parent whose son was a highly-gifted diver and had outgrown the resources of our school’s swimming and diving program, the local YMCA, and private coaching in our community. His interests and goals as a twelve-year old were best served by moving to Florida and being home schooled so that he could devote the enormous amount of daily time required for training as a world class diver. He never attended a K-12 school again. I watched him compete in two Olympics. School choice worked for him because a quality match of child and school was achieved. I also assisted parents of children with gifts in dance and music to extend their education in specialty schools for ballet and violin, and children with interests in science and language to enroll in magnet schools for those subjects.

It is not so apparent for very young children. I observe that school choice for children in 4K through elementary school is not an educational decision but an associational decision. Parents with the resources to engage in school choice for their very young children are deciding “who their child will go to school with” and “who their child will NOT go to school with” more than they are choosing a school that matches their child’s interests, preferences and goals. Sadly, the decision regarding “who my child will NOT go to school with” creates a re-segregation of schools based upon family ethnicity and economics. Parents choosing “who my child will go to school with” are leaving behind schools with higher percentages of educationally challenged students and schools with diminished financial resources to educate those children.

School choice is not easy. It has, as the bogeyman tells us, real implications for the financial stability of schools, both public and private. Because school finance is sum certain and zero sum loss, there will be financial winners and financial losers. For secondary students who have refined educational preferences, interests and goals, school choice is a wonderful application of American consumerism. For students whose families are not educationally engaged or who have educational challenges and disadvantages, school choice creates educational backwaters and leaves them there. School choice also is creating a greater rift between families with financial resources and aspirations and leaves families without those resources with lower aspirations.

Finally, school choice is the child of politics and it was enacted to provide advantage to families that have the resources to choose. The monied interests that created the laws of school choice knew what they were doing when they put their money behind legislation that created school choice for their state. They created new schools for their socio-economic class, not necessarily for the improvement of their community or for the advancement of all children.

Self-Interest Drives School Choice

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School choice is self-interest and self-interest is what it is, self before all else. One can parse out all the other motives and characteristics that underlie school choice and the one common denominator is “I want to choose who my child will associate with in their school attendance.” Is self-interest a good or a bad thing? Not necessarily either. In a world that places the highest values upon “the Dream,” American or otherwise, giving people the opportunity to express their self-interest by choosing the school their children will attend seems an American thing to do.

Lest we forget, school choice is not a new phenomenon. Parents in our nation have made choices relative to the school their children will attend for hundreds of years and almost always on the basis of social association. Parochial schools, preparatory schools, military schools, and finishing schools have been part of the K-12 landscape since colonial times. In my hometown in the 1950s, my childhood friends spun off in many school directions. Whereas, most attended their local neighborhood public school, kids in my neighborhood also attended Catholic and Lutheran parochial schools. We played street ball and kick-the-can without any consideration of where our school desks were housed. When we left our elementary schools for junior high, several kids left the neighborhood for military school, most notably Shattuck Academy or St. John’s Military Academy. I remember overhearing our parents talk about “a need for discipline” and the next time I saw my friends they were home “on leave” with very short haircuts. And, when it was time for high school, the last culling sent several friends to selective college preparatory or finishing schools. They sent letters from Exeter and Phillips Academy and Patricia Stephen’s Finishing School.

Did these choices truly make a difference in the lives of the children they affected? That is a difficult answer to make. For my parochial school friends, their parent’s choice of a Catholic or Lutheran education was a commitment to sustaining their chosen family values. “Everyone in our family goes to St. Patrick’s” was a way of saying “we are and will be a Catholic family.” And, many still are these many years later. Attending a prep school in New England was a variation on the same theme as a parochial education. Going to Exeter said, “these are my peers and being in their social cum economic circle is an investment in a powerful professional future.” Most of my friends who went East to school stayed East in their professional and cultural adult lives. They truly became doctors, lawyers and business leaders. And, the girls who attended Stephens made the social register when they married; they were debutantes.

School choice has been with us a long time, but the choosing of a school in yesteryear was different than the burgeoning school choice issues of today. When we look at the child in the school choice discussion, school choice still is about associations. It is the parental determination of “who will my child attend school with and what advantages will accrue from those associations” that drives the specific selection of a school. Parents give lip service to matching their child’s learning needs to a particular pedagogy or curriculum. School choice is an aggressive election to move away from undesirable school associations and to move toward more desirable associations.

When we look at the adult in the school choice discussion, school choice is about power. It is the power of a parent to make the decision of school attendance and the political and economic mechanisms that support the parental power to decide. Whereas, parents always had the power to send their children to parochial, military, prep and finishing schools, they personally funded their choices. Today’s school choice discussion is all about the reallocation of public funds to support parental school choice decisions and getting at these large public funds is all about state and local politics.

One does not redirect tax-based dollars without writing new laws. Moving another step, one needs elected lawmakers to write new laws. And lastly, elected lawmakers need financial backing to assure that they remain elected. Hence, school choice today is not about a parent in the neighborhood who wants his or her child to attend a different school in order receive a more advantageous education. School choice is about getting candidates, and enough candidates, elected to office so that new laws will direct state money that otherwise would be allocated to public schools redirected to “schools of choice” and to vouchers for the public payment for a child to attend a school of choice.

Or, from a different perspective, school choice today is about reinstitutionalizing a child’s education. The old institution of public education is being taken down and the new institution of consumer- and commercialized-education is being raised up. The power brokerage necessary to create new institutions needs organization and funding and there is plethora of political action groups ready to funnel the dollars of large and small donors to purchase and sustain the legislative votes necessary to create charter and for-profit schools of choice.

Self-interest is a powerful human motivation. One should understand a person’s self-interest in order to predict their future human behavior. When the nominated Secretary for the US Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, states that she is “…in favor of charter schools, online schools, virtual school, blended learning, and any combination thereof, and frankly, any combination or any kind of choice that hasn’t yet been thought of…”, then one can predict that we have not yet conceptualized the extent to which school choice will be institutionalized. The fact that a wealthy political activist like DeVos is even nominated to head the USDE moves the actualization of self-interest in school choice from choice as an alternative to choice as the new mainstream.

One thing we can know is this, the school choice available to our grandfathers will be nothing like the school choice available to our grandchildren. In fact, public school may become so deinstitutionalized that PS #1 in your community will be the school of choice for only those who cannot or will not choose to send their children elsewhere.