To expand on this, “school choice” is sold to several different audiences:
The well-intentioned parents who say “I can pull my kids out of a ‘failed’ public school” which only serves to remove anyone who might provide accountability or volunteer support for said schools, creating a death spiral. Fixing this would require some way to make parents understand the common-good aspect. You might be trying to help your own little Timmy today, but at the expense of everyone, inclluding Little Timmy in 2055 when the skilled-worker economy has tanked in his hometown.
The whackjob brigades, who will gravitate to whichever school gets the closest to teaching the Bible as literal fact while still qualifying for as a non-private school that thus getting the costs covered by the state. In most cases, we don’t want these parents anywhere near decision making processes.
Narrow use cases where there’s a viable argument for a different school program. Some charter schools positioned themselves as “last chance” programs, offering things like customized schedules for kids forced to choose between high school and work, or online-only programs before Covid made it a big deal. A sufficiently resourced public school system should have similar ability to offer options, but if you have a lot of small districts, maybe they need some ability to form cooperatives to fill these gaps.
I never quote understood the patchwork of school systems in the US-- one town might say “all the schools under one district, covering 80,000 students” and the next town has five different districts for elementary only, then others for high schools, and none of them have market-making buying power for anything from textbooks to teachers.
To expand on this, “school choice” is sold to several different audiences:
The well-intentioned parents who say “I can pull my kids out of a ‘failed’ public school” which only serves to remove anyone who might provide accountability or volunteer support for said schools, creating a death spiral. Fixing this would require some way to make parents understand the common-good aspect. You might be trying to help your own little Timmy today, but at the expense of everyone, inclluding Little Timmy in 2055 when the skilled-worker economy has tanked in his hometown.
The whackjob brigades, who will gravitate to whichever school gets the closest to teaching the Bible as literal fact while still qualifying for as a non-private school that thus getting the costs covered by the state. In most cases, we don’t want these parents anywhere near decision making processes.
Narrow use cases where there’s a viable argument for a different school program. Some charter schools positioned themselves as “last chance” programs, offering things like customized schedules for kids forced to choose between high school and work, or online-only programs before Covid made it a big deal. A sufficiently resourced public school system should have similar ability to offer options, but if you have a lot of small districts, maybe they need some ability to form cooperatives to fill these gaps.
I never quote understood the patchwork of school systems in the US-- one town might say “all the schools under one district, covering 80,000 students” and the next town has five different districts for elementary only, then others for high schools, and none of them have market-making buying power for anything from textbooks to teachers.