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School choice the objective solution

Friday, November 9 at 12:00 AM

By Polly Baca

As a former member of the Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton administrations, I know firsthand how divisive political debate can be. In Washington, D.C., and in state capitols across the nation, few issues are able to transcend the political divide. Whether it is immigration, health care, taxes, or the economy — with virtually every issue, deep political trenches have been dug on either side, making progress in these critical areas next to impossible.

Unfortunately, the issue of education — and specifically education reform and school choice — is no exception.

For our children’s sake, we must work to bridge this political divide by setting aside our political bias and viewing the issue objectively. To do so, it might be helpful to answer a simple question:
If you had equal access to a school with a proven track record of success and a school with a proven track record of failure, to which school would you send your child?

Would a parent purposely send their child to a low-performing school over a high-performing one, if they had equal access to both? Of course not. For instance, the vast majority of our representatives in Washington, D.C., have the freedom to choose between a private school and a public school — and most choose a private education for their children. Yet the harsh reality is that many of these same representatives oppose school choice for families without their financial means.

Low-income families have no choices outside of their public schools. They are stuck with a system that has yielded the following results:

More than 1.2 million students drop out each year. That’s more than 6,000 kids per school day — one child every 26 seconds.

60 percent of high school dropouts come from low-income families.

Only about half of America’s Latino and African-American students graduate from public high school on time.

Add to these numbers the fact that of those students who do manage to graduate from a public high school, the vast majority are still not ready for college:

Nearly one in three freshmen accepted to four-year institutions fail college placement tests and must take at least one remedial course to learn skills they should have learned in high school.
Among community college freshmen, that number jumps to 42 percent.

Consequently, only 56 percent of college freshmen entering a four-year institution directly from high school manage to earn a degree after six years — one of the lowest college completion rates in the world.

These statistics clearly reveal an American education system in crisis. Yet, many refuse to acknowledge this fact, allowing politics to skew their perspective. But with such a track record, is it any surprise that more and more parents are choosing alternatives to public education?

In the past 15 years, charter schools, voucher and tax-credit programs, and private scholarship foundations, such as Denver’s Alliance for CHOICE in Education, on whose board of directors I serve, have flourished across the nation, answering the growing cries for help from parents desperate to provide their children with a quality education.

Forty states — including Colorado — allow charter schools ... there are now more than 4,000 such schools across the country, serving more than a million children.

Just last year, 28 states debated school choice legislation ... five existing school choice programs were expanded and five new programs were enacted, bringing the total to 20 school choice programs in 11 states, plus Washington, D.C.

With each passing year, more and more parents choose proven success over proven failure. They don’t let politics dictate their decision; they choose what’s best for their child. It’s time to view school choice objectively, not politically — and give choice to those who have none.

Polly Baca is the executive director of the Latin American Research and Services Agency.

READER COMMENTS

Monopolies are always hostile to the consumer, and there is nothing worse tha a union dominated educational monopoly.

There is only one way to excape the continuing madness and failure of k-12 and that's VOUCHERS, COMPETITION and CHOICE!

What are the unions afraid of?

Posted by Hank on November 12, 2007 10:17 AM

Just wondering....Is Bruce Hanson blaming the children? So, why bother because some kids just can't be helped. Unfortunately, this is a pervasive attitude in the public educational system. It is sad that educators would have this belief. Every child can learn --If you don't believe this then you should not be teaching or involved in the process. School choice would provide more opportunities for kids to learn. Kudos to Polly Baca -- she is right on.

Posted by Cali Nichols on November 10, 2007 12:24 PM

Proven success and proven failure. I would challenge Polly to take those teachers at the school with proven success and exchange them with the teachers with proven failure. In most cases, I would be willing to bet my first born child that those teachers that were succeeding will suddenly appear to have become failures. While there are certainly schools with great staffs and others with mediocre ones, the clientele of those schools are the biggest factor. There are some truly significant inequities in our country that fall along racial\economic lines, and these inequities will not be solved by simply giving children the opportunity to choose to leave their poorly performing school to attend a "better" one.

Posted by Bruce Hanson on November 9, 2007 08:42 PM

Many good reasons to have more school choice and/or vouchers. When a parent has the oppurtunity to choose and evaluate a school it automatically helps solve one of our problems; parents being involved.

Posted by brain on November 9, 2007 08:38 PM

All for the choice to chose where one's kids go to school. The more choses one has the better for the education system in a whole. It will force the gov. schools to improve and it will weaken the teachers union so to get rid of poor teachers faster.

Posted by cr on November 9, 2007 05:56 PM