Key issue on school choice should be: "Is it right?"

Recently there has been a push back from many in education on school choice. A recent claim is that school choice isn't very effective. Allowing parents to pick which schools their children attend doesn't raise test scores.

Paul Weyrich challenges this claim. Some Empirically Proven Value in School Choice:

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One of the arguments which opponents of school choice always make is that it would adversely affect the public school system. Opponents claim that the alternative schools would siphon off the best students, leaving those who remain who are the least able and the poorest and most disadvantaged students. Just as all of the rest of the arguments which opponents have made have proven false, so also has this argument.
The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice and several other Ohio and national organizations have conducted a study of the public schools which have been affected by Ohio's Educational Choice Scholarship program. It turns out that the threat of competition and losing students is causing these public schools to improve their academic outcomes.
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For me the bigger issue, the more important issue, is who should be in charge of education. Historically for thousands of years parents were responsible. They decided what was taught, when it was taught, and how it was taught. Slowly over time parents have lost their power to decide what their children were taught.

Our current public school system only got started in the 1850s, and didn't catch on nation wide until the end of the 1800s. At the beginning most school districts were pretty small and parents still had a lot of indirect influence. If there was a bad teacher, parents could talk to the school board and the school board almost always listened. If they didn't there was a good chance they would be voted out of office soon.

Today parents have little, to almost non-existent, influence on what happens in the public schools. The biggest choice they currently have it what house they buy. Some times they can get their child into a charter school, but for the most part parents are expected to stay out of the way, except for providing money to buy school supplies.

This is wrong. Parents are responsible and should be able to be permitted to be more involved in the education of their children. We need school choice not because it may be more effective, but because it provides a way for parents to make the important decisions about the future of their children.


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