I’m going to start here: I’m an advocate for school choice.

• Charter Schools: Dig ‘em. Work for one. Played a small, small, part in the largest revisions of charter school laws in our state back when I thought I wanted to grow up to be a lobbyist. In general, a huge fan of charters started by parents and teachers, but if companies can figure out how to turn a buck out of the education beast and still do right by kids; more power to ‘em
• Vouchers: I like those too. Hey, if private and parochial schools are crazy enough to take on all of the strings that come with public dollars then more power to those folks too.
• Home-Schooling: I’m alright by this as well. May have to do it for my son. Don’t really care about the money, but if you want to throw $5k my way to provide for an education in the home, well, I wouldn’t send the check back.

All of this is true and then things start getting sticky. One of my colleague’s school is converting from a traditional public school to a public charter school. I’m not sure why this would happen, I know it’s something that NCLB threatens to do if you don’t meet your testing results, but I don’t think that 1) That’s the case here or 2) Has ever happened. We were having a conversation about the conversion, and I was all happy in my little world of school-choice, when our conversation went somewhere that’s made me uncomfortable. Okay, maybe not uncomfortable, but it got me thinking.

Part of why I dig charter schools, and school choice in general, is that it gives people options. My father is fond of saying

The government’s only ever run two programs right. The building of national highways and GI Bill after WWII.The Old Man

With that being my frame of reference, and seeing as schools are not roads or the GI Bill, the government isn’t going to do a great job of running public schools.

Before you go all nuts on me and start lining me up with all sorts of right-wing crazies, I just want to say, they’re not wrong. Now you can line me up. With-that-said, I don’t like them. But they’re not wrong. I don’t like exercise either, but I don’t argue about it being good for me. Doesn’t mean I’m going to do any exercise either. Governments don’t run public education well, for a simple reason: governments can’t do anything well. It’s the nature of the beast. And let’s be honest, if I had to pick a government I’d rather have an ineffective one that leaves me alone most of time than an effective one that’s in my business or worse yet, I totally disagree with.

What’s that got to do with school choice?

The only way the school institution is going to budge is if people have choices. Now, they can all be government run schools if that makes you more comfortable, but until families can start making decisions about which schools their children attend not much is going to change.

And therein lies the problem.

For all of the talk I hear from schools around the nation about parents not being involved, the simple fact is that if the kid’s at a charter school the parents are involved at some level. The parents wouldn’t have made the choice to withdraw their kid from a traditional public school and then enroll them elsewhere if they weren’t involved. In many cases these “non-involved” parents provide transportation for their students as well. The fact is, there’s a level of parental involvement with these students which is higher than the kids I’m most worried about.

With traditional public schools turning into charter schools, and more and more educational options being offered to all students, what happens to the students who’s parents are totally uninvolved in their education? I’m not bagging parents here. You’ll never hear me do that for a simple reason: short of abuse situations there’s very little we can do about a kid’s parents and all too often schools take that out on the kid. If you get nothing else from this post, please remember the students did not pick their parents. It’s not their fault. Not even a little. But enough about the parents.

Back to the kids.

In a world of educational options what happens to the kids who’s parents aren’t involved in their educational experience? While the kids who’s parents are hyper-involved are getting their students into the “best” schools of choice (if they haven’t already yanked them into private schools) who’s standing up for the students who are left-behind? Who’s their voice? Who’s saying Hey, I know your parents aren’t real involved in this process. They’re not bad people. They’re just used to taking you to the school they’re told to go to. Let me give you a hand getting into a great public school.

Is it you? Is it me? Is it the school-choice advocates?

Other Questions

Is anyone doing this?

Do schools of choice make the situation worse?

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