The Global Education Monitoring Blog just released a bulletin about the risks of school choice. The blog is published by UNESCO, which the Trump administration recently abandoned.
Be that as it may, its conclusions are evidence-based. The full report, which is linked on the blog offers extensive documentation and references.
The overall conclusion:
In the last three decades, reforms rooted in the school choice logic have been implemented in more than two-thirds of OECD countries, for instance. Across the 72 systems participating in PISA 2015, the parents of around 64% of students reported that they had at least two schools to choose from for their children.
However, a closer look at the evidence suggests that school choice often doesn’t work as it’s meant to, and can in fact increase inequalities and undermine quality education…
The main criticisms of market-oriented policies are that they benefit wealthier schools, families and communities, increasing inequality and segregation…
Studies have repeatedly shown that school choice benefits wealthier families, while further marginalizing disadvantaged parents and schools…
School choice is meant to strengthen accountability but often concentrates disadvantaged students in disadvantaged schools…
All these concerns indicate that governments should be extremely cautious in pushing forward reforms that promote an education ‘market’, as school choice may actually have negative effects on the quality and equity of education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“May” undermine quality and equity? How about “does”? That is the point, after all.
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Actually, it increases the literal equity/ownership of a vital public good by the Overclass, which is its intention.
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A little like headlines which still say “Climate Change May Cause Dangerous Storms.”
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New name: School ROBBERS (charters & vouchers)!
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I am sure that Common Core is exacerbating inequities. The Common Core curricula’s intentionally convoluted questions in math and ELA are supposed to build mental muscle power. Instead they’re forcing less-advantaged kids to mentally drop out of school at earlier and earlier ages. Instead of giving up in 8th grade, they’re giving up in 3rd grade or earlier. “If this is school, I can’t do it and I hate it.” Instead of prematurely forcing kids to do complex tasks that give even educated adults headaches, schools should be feeding kids the foundational knowledge in a lucid way that they can grasp. Doing this will empower kids to do the onerous tasks (should they choose to) LATER ON. Common Core and it’s based on are bankrupt and all teachers need to start speaking out more boldly about it. We see the damage.
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cx: “Common Core and the ideas it’s based…”
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I realize that anecdote is not the singular of data, but I thought you might be interested in a story. We had my younger daughter’s third-grade parent-teacher conference the other day. As I’ve mentioned around around here before, she switched this year from a progressive school to a public school. Admittedly, she struggles in reading and I have to admit the public school is doing a better job of getting her up to speed on that than her progressive school did. But what I found interesting is that her teacher gushed about how much and the sheer range of background knowledge she has that comes out in all her subjects – it’s what’s saving her bacon in reading and it has put her ahead in science and social studies, and even in math where she understands concepts far beyond basic operations. Neither I nor any of her teachers at her progressive school ever set out to teach her any specific knowledge, information, facts, etc. All of that background knowledge has been absorbed through pursuit of her own interests through her own activities.
Now, like I said, this is just one example, so maybe it doesn’t mean anything. My younger daughter is not typical in any sense of the word, even amongst her progressive school peers, so maybe it’s just her, not her progressive school education. But a constructivist approach apparently has not hurt her.
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Dienne, she clearly has some very engaged parents as well.
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True, and as I said, that’s only one example. But when I worked at the residential facility for abused/traumatized kids, we also used a more progressive approach, and those kids most certainly did not have engaged parents.
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E.D. Hirsch maintains that progressive education is fairly harmless to kids from advantaged backgrounds because these kids get so much background knowledge from their parents. These parents are often unaware of how much didactic instruction they’re providing, and unaware of how much world- and linguistic knowledge their kids are gleaning merely by listening to them speak. If only public school teachers understood that it’s the background knowledge, not practice at “reading skills” like using context clues, that makes your and similar kids good readers. My own nephews and nieces attend a private Montessori school. I’m not worried about them because their parents are a doctor and a lawyer with Potted Ivy and Ivy degrees and who compulsively teach, teach, teach at home, and read volumes to the kids every day. While I wish their school offered a more Hirsch-like curriculum, I’d rather they be there than at the dreary Common Core factory down the road.
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And while we’re on the topic of anecdotes, I found this one amusing and interesting: http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/
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While school choice has been presented as the “Holy Grail” of opportunity in the US, the reality is opposite. Market based education creates winners and losers, and in the US it translates the greater inequality, enhanced segregation and weakened public schools. The only academic gains of “choice’ come from selective charters with high attrition rates. Everybody else in this zero sum game is a loser. Except for a few highly selective schools, the public schools generally outperform charters, and they are democratic and accountable to the community without all the waste and fraud of the charter industry. In our country vouchers have been a failure, and the results are poor. Public schools offer far more options for students than most charters, and they operate efficiently with fully trained teachers.
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Let’s not forget this fact that is not mentioned. No country has ever successfully privatized its educational system! Parents should be skeptical about the marketing claims from “reformers.”
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I haven’t read the report and have no understanding of how children are assigned to public schools in other countries. But no one can say with a straight face that there isn’t a market-based, inequality-producing system in the US that long predates choice or charters.
https://www.zillow.com
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Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
School CHOICE does not work. It makes the world a worse place.
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Once there was a town where a group of parents wanted their children to learn more than they were presently learning. They attended school board meetings and tried to get the county to give the school more money. But the county father’s would not raise taxes and the state government refused to increase funding as well. So the parents decided to look into a private school where they could get more for their children.
When the county fathers got wind of all this political stirring around, they came up,with the idea of a magnet school where students could learn more. The parents were happy, taxes stayed low so the parents stopped asking for more money.
This story played out in several places I know. Is it a familiar story?
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