Instead of countries delivering on their U.N. treaty commitments to the right to education, some have proposed that parental choice should drive the education “marketplace.” This approach varies across countries. In countries in the global south such as India and Uganda, families can “choose” to send their children to “low fee” private schools, or else their children will likely not receive an education. In countries in the global north like Sweden and the U.S., school “choice” usually happens when governments give parents the option to leave public schools. However, in both cases, governments place the responsibility on the family to figure out the best option for their child instead of fulfilling their child’s right to a free, equitable, high quality education.

Even more problematic is the reality that school “choice” does not guarantee a better education, for a variety of reasons. One issue is that, when a charter school or low-fee private school does provide a good education, everyone wants to go there and there are not enough spots for every student. And that’s the best-case scenario. The more common problem is that schools of choice do not provide higher quality education. In addition, they often exclude certain types of harder and/or more expensive-to-each students – those with disabilities, discipline histories, lower socio-economic status – as well as racial and ethnic minorities and second-language learners. These students may have lower scores on the tests used to judge schools or they may require extra attention from teachers, incentivizing these schools to choose their students, instead of students being able to choose their schools.[ii]

The results are not surprising because these schools compete with each other instead of providing education to everyone. School choice systems operate under a market-based rationale. In this marketplace, schools depend on competition to get students to enroll. This sounds like a great idea—the companies (schools) that produce the best product (education) have the most customers (students), while those that don’t will go out of business (closing the school). But market-based approaches require schools to seek a competitive advantage that leads to their exclusionary approaches. And when these schools exclude the more “expensive” students, these students end up in overcrowded and underperforming schools that lack basic services, or, even worse, without the opportunity for an education at all.