Russ Walsh posted this column earlier this year. I am reposting it now because it is an insightful critique of DeVos’s ideology that choice is always good.
Walsh points out that there are many choices we used to have that we don’t have any more. We are not free to smoke where we want. He remembers the thick smoke in the teachers’ lounge. I remember the smokers on the commercial airplanes. He remembers the days when we drove without seat belts. We no longer have those choices. One could make a long list of the things you cannot do because of their effect on the common good, which overrides your personal choice.
School choice undermines the common good by taking resources from the schools that we are all obliged to support, even if we don’t have children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“We are not free to smoke where we want. He remembers the thick smoke in the teachers’ lounge.
Hell, I remember teachers smoking in class!
When I was in college, students would dip and chew in class, and spit into paper cups.
When I was in college, students never smoked in class or dipped and chaw. That was considered vulgar and we were learning how to be proper ladies.
It’s a very good article. But I wish all such articles would spell out– for the benefit of those who aren’t, like Betsy DeVos, “numbers people”– that society is not wealthy enough to provide multiple K-12 options of reasonable quality to all comers. That is why we pool our resources. Given the inequalities inherent in our school-funding methods, many areas struggle to maintain reasonable quality for a single option. Divvying up the pooled resources in a poor area to provide additional options has only one possible outcome: alternatives are created at the expense of the base system.
Excellent observations.
Added you post as a comment to the post of Julain’s 8 reasons.
The presumed value of “choice” is one of the many false assumptions in “reform.” How can a system that creates winners and losers be acceptable in a democratic republic? Why are our policymakers promoting schools that enhance segregation and injustice? Public schools built our nation, and they serve the common good. Free Markets are no solutions, just more winners and losers. Instead of investing in schools that aspire to help all, many of our leaders are slashing funds to encourage the failure of the very schools that serve us all well. We need to stop the destruction of one of our most valuable public assets.
They only promote them because their donor/masters need to get a return on investment. Most of these charters maintain a real estate component, a management component. At Teacher’s Village in Newark, there are 3 charter schools, and more than 100 “low cost” apartments for teach for america teachers to live during their “tour” with tfa. The real estate moguls got paid, the head of construction got paid, the architect(s) got paid, the politicians got paid. You know who is PAYING for it? The taxpayers – the building got tax abatement and deferral for years. Now, 2 more buildings are being built in the same area near and around NJPAC. Why anyone would want to live in downtown Newark escapes me; its been a dangerous ghost town after 5pm for the past 30 years. People go to concerts at the Rock, and get beat up afterwards when trying to get to their cars. Newark Bears stadium has been left to rot for the past 4 or so years. So, now they are building high rise apartments for tfa. Good gracious.
“School choice undermines the common good by taking resources from the schools that we are all obliged to support, even if we don’t have children.”
I think the effects could be much worse than that, in time. There’s the immediate hit- that’s one part- but I think voucher recipients (particularly higher income parents who are using the voucher as a subsidy for private school tuition) could stop supporting public schools completely.
The funding could fragment and fall apart. In that situation we could end up with the worst of both worlds – a 5000 voucher that isn’t enough to support 90% of students in public OR private schools.
We have about 50% lower income in our school. When we need to pass local school funding it is absolutely essential to sell it to the higher income half. They will not support schools their children don’t attend. This is a political reality.
If higher income parents here were able to create a private, publicly-funded system and split off from the lower income group completely, they will do it.
This won’t slam poor public schools and it won’t slam rich public schools, but it will kill solid public schools in the middle. Schools with a variety of income levels will be destroyed because these schools are really fragile- it’s a kind of shaky alliance of parents with differing income levels and we need the higher income parents on board.
Betsy has likely never played or heard of the game “would you rather” because one must choose between two foul choices. Would you rather kiss Betsy DeVos or Donald Trump? See? Neither is appealing.
Choice for the sake of choice is ridiculousness, and in some cases, like in Newark, NJ, parents/students have little choice at all. I do not know if the “One Newark” app is still being utilized, but parents using it when it was first introduced, in one particular instance, didn’t get any of their choices. Instead, four siblings were sent in four different directions, having to take public buses, in the dark of early morning. There was no consideration for the age of the students, or the hardship on the parents. One Newark was (is?) all about getting “butts to fill those high quality charter school seats” because parents who did NOT want their kids to attend charters were assigned to charters in certain instances. Parents who lived across the street or down the block from their neighborhood school had entry denied to their kids. It was a mess. Months into the school year, the transportation issue was a nightmare.
When the politicians shutter a school that was K-8, and a charter reopens in its place and is K-1 or K-2 intending to add a grade each year, the kids who got the boot when their school closed are shuffled all over the city to other locations. It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. It certainly isn’t “choice.”
I hope someday our politicians get it right, but I won’t hold my breath.
This is an article regarding Detroit Schools as it relates to this post. Turns out choice isn’t always a good thing.
http://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2017/04/29/detroit-schools-education-achievement-authority/100278366/