Mercedes Schneider reviewed a book about “competitive school choice.”
Kate Phillippo, associate professor of cultural and educational policy studies at Loyola University Chicago’s School of Education, published a book in March 2019, entitled, A Contest Without Winners: How Students Experience Competitive School Choice.
In her book, Phillippo offers details from the experiences of 36 Chicago Public Schools (CPS) eighth graders who attended one of two middle schools and who were vying for acceptance in a CPS high school of their choice.
Phillippo’s term, “competitive school choice,” is apt for two reasons: 1) the most prestigious and most preferred schools tended to be selective admissions (SA) schools, and 2) in general, CPS does not have enough places at schools that its eighth-grade students would actually choose to attend.
Let the games begin. (Indeed, one student likened CPS’ high school choice to “The Hunger Games.”)
In this “contest without winners,” students’ high school fates (and possibly, subsequent college and career fates) depend heavily upon their test scores and core subject grades from their seventh-grade year. If a student has an maturity/responsibility awakening in eighth grade, it is too late.
As it stands, Phillippo discovered (confirmed?) that with CPS’ high school choice demand, eighth graders were being asked to navigate a complex process of forms, meetings, and deadlines that was far above their developmental capabilities; students almost certainly needed some invested adult to effectively engage in CPS’ competitive high school choice process. However, that adult was unlikely to be a classroom teacher since teachers– to whom students often turned– felt the pressure to remain neutral in advising students regarding their choices due to the potential of being held liable if the student or parent were dissatisfied with the choice outcome.
Eighth graders who had an engaged adult available to help with the high school choice process definitely had an edge, as did students whose families had the means to devote resources (time, effort, money) to the process.
Too, Phillippo discovered that the competitive environment created a “me-first,” self-preservation attitude that negatively affected civic engagement among students. Though students might be learning lessons about civic responsibility in their classes, when it came to the pressured reality of securing that preferred CPS high school, application of civic responsibility was cast aside for the all-too-real lesson of “every eighth grader for him-/herself.”
Think of competitive school choice as a lesson in civics. Everyone for himself or herself. You are on your ow. There is no such thing as the common good.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As I have insisted and stated many times before, competition is what you do with people outside of your “in-group.” Inside of your in-group, the operative tool is collaboration.
An example is what would family dinners be like if the kids who did best in school that day got to eat, while the kid who did poorest went hungry. Would you have your kids compete over who gets fed? Why does that idea sound so strange? Do not the spoils go to the victors?
nicely compared: if only the average citizen thought through this educational mess using the same logic
Thank you, Steve. Your point is why I see “insidious competition” where others may see “racism.” I see that “racism” allows one to escape to and speak from the relatively simplistic surface of the iceberg, and from having to see and deal with the inherent structural reality that “we are being ruined by competition” (Deming) that operates deep down within the iceberg.
“Too, Phillippo discovered that the competitive environment created a “me-first,” self-preservation attitude that negatively affected civic engagement among students. Though students might be learning lessons about civic responsibility in their classes, when it came to the pressured reality of securing that preferred CPS high school, application of civic responsibility was cast aside for the all-too-real lesson of “every eighth grader for him-/herself.”
“Think of competitive school choice as a lesson in civics. Everyone for himself or herself. You are on your ow. There is no such thing as the common good.”
Kohlberg Stage of Moral Development Level 1.2: Preconventional, Self-Interest Motivation, same as Jabba the Trump. What a thing to be teaching kids!!!! The Hidden Curriculum is always the most important one in the long run.
Bob,
Yes indeed, “Hidden Curriculum is always the most important one in the long run.”
The reason why our “space programs” have worked is because of COLLABORATION among the scientists. DUH …
One more comment: This online everything has become just another FACTORY that pigeon holes people and puts them in SILOS.
i REFUSE to compete. Competition for brownie points has always raised my level of anxiety and I “hate” feeling anxious … bad stuff are released in our bodies.
Ever since the robber baron era, right-wingers in the U.S. have been trying to sell us the notion that it’s all about survival of the fittest–the Race to the Top that leaves the losers on the landings below. The vicious American monopolist John D. Rockefeller, for example, once told a Sunday school class,
“The growth of large business is merely a survival of the fittest. . . . The American Beauty rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grew up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working out of a law of nature and a law of God.”
A person like Rockefeller, who aggressively exploited others to amass an enormous fortune, excused himself by arguing that he was simply behaving in accordance with natural law. And so, of course, were all those Europeans, of his day and earlier, busily murdering and enslaving the indigenous peoples of earth.
But this was a misunderstanding of Darwin. What the theory of Natural Selection said was not that the biggest, meanest, most ruthless of creatures would inevitably gain dominion but, rather, simply that traits that leading to reproductive success would tend to be passed on, and one of the most powerful forces leading to reproductive success is cooperation.
Children are born in a tearing apart from the mother. Little wonder that their first sound is a cry and that their first instinct is to reconnect. As the GREAT child psychologist Alison Gopnik has observed repeatedly, children and toddlers long to be held close, to be rocked, to connect, to be part, to belong, to be helpful. This is VERY DEEP IN US, and the desire to help and cooperate and to be long HAS TO BE UNLEARNED THROUGH ABUSE of the kind that, for example, Jabba the Trump clearly experienced. Social Darwinism is alive and well today in the neoliberal ethos of those who are funding the Ed Deform movement. But those people don’t understand this other tendency in human nature, and they don’t understand the game theoretic value, in the long run, of cooperation. These are damaged people, and many of them are economists–paid court singers for their damaged overlords.
YEP!
Stated beautifully. Thanks for saving me the trouble. How did the likes of Rockefeller miss the pack mentality as a vital force? How did they miss the power of empathy in the progression of the human race?
One of the reasons why our species has so succeeded as to fill every niche and imperil all other life on the planet is that our big brains enabled us to work together, cooperatively. Ever since the Neolithic/agricultural revolution created civilization–intensely hierarchical states–we’ve had this tug-of-war going on between autocrats seeking to harness that cooperation to their own will and those who would harness it for the benefit of the whole, of the community, of the common good. Now, our very survival depends upon our finally getting this right, for the autocrat cares not for others or for the future but for preserving his or her current privilege. Power blinds its possessor, who becomes addicted to immediate fulfillment.
“And for the many who were not selected to attend their preferred schools (or any schools on their list, for that matter), they internalized the unhealthy (untrue) message that the System Knows Best and that their not being chosen meant that they must not be intelligent, capable (or of sufficient value). In short, students disappointed with the system-determined choice outcome often ended up believing that the disappointing outcome must mean that they, the students, were the disappointment.”
We have known about that believing in what the authorities say about us as the Foulcaldian concept of “subjectivization” or what is known more commonly as “internalization” for quite a while. As Wilson states in his never refuted nor rebutted dissertation “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error”, THE most important education analysis writing in the last 50 years:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.” (Noel Wilson)
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Well said, Duane!
Young Zhao quote from another post today:
“Today, factors associated with a child’s home remain much more powerful predictors of their future than do schools.”
In my own family of origin, all the negative social pressures of the Darwinesque pubsch system were brought to bear on my 3 younger siblings. [I was exempt. Like my Mom, I had the sort of verbal/ reading intelligence prized even over math/ science skills in mid-20thC, so academic paths were opened to me that I only barely earned, but grew into.] Two of my three siblings inherited our Dad’s profound dyslexia. The 3rd was afflicted w/that floating thing that is loosely defined as “underachievement.” I wouldn’t even believe in it except my own middle kid [who resembles him!] had the same thing. In their cases, it was a combination of high intelligence & high aptitude for some creative, hands-on skill unrelated to book-&-pencil that developed later.
So everything “school” was against my siblings from the get-go. They were always being defined in the negative. That they evidenced high intelligence despite poor achievement was always the kicker, causing them to be personally blamed for their failure to produce in the acceptable manner. [To pubschsys credit, the younger of the two dyslexics’ issue was diagnosed & addressed in hisch [late ’70’s], which pointed her toward eventual academic success– but there was negative pressure K-9.]
BUT. We had an extraordinary mother. Her college degrees were in Nutrition & Textiles/Design, but she continued lifelong to self-educate in personal interests spurred by motherhood, psychology and education, practicing skills thro girl scouts & other volunteer venues. She was fearlessly unconventional– so not intimidated by pubsch bureaucrats, and had an amazing lack of prejudice of any kind– so unconvinced by pubsch labelling of her clearly intelligent kids as ‘slow’ or whatever. She used her teaching skills doggedly, nightly on hw assistance & supplemental lessons tailored to her kids. And called on every connection she had to find enriching extra-curricular experiences for them, & always helped them develop their special talents–& independence– w/an eye to the future. These kids came out fine. Their Mom knew they would, & instilled the self-confidence denied by pubschsys, & showed them the way.
Good lord. All I knew before about CPS was Rahm’s closing 50 schools at a stroke of the pen – expansion of charters – plus consequences like kids having to walk across gang lines to get to school, or having to commute up to 2 hrs each way (public transp w/transfers) to get to the charters ringing the city.
I learned more here: https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/economic-perspectives/2017/5. It’s a good read– a well-balanced article on school choice in CPS. From 2002-2016, the # of hischs grew from 76 to 138! Many created by dividing big schools into multiple smaller ones [wasn’t that a flop in NYC?]. Hisch “school choice” includes everything from zoned nbhd schs to magnets to specialized curriculum to IB to advanced curriculum; almost everything requires selective admission or at least a lottery due to limited seats. What a nightmare awaits 8th-gr students & parents.
We were very happy in Brooklyn, & so did not want to move, even after husband’s job moved to NJ. But as eldest approached age 5 had to face facts. Our elem PS was a pretty good fit, but local midschs’ playgrounds were littered w/crack vials & syringes, & no way we could afford priv midsch tuition for 3 to patch thro to pubhisch. And who wanted to? Back then I saw close-up, thro friends, the madness of application process for magnet hischs [& our zoned hisch was truly terrible]. It looked worse than college application process. Raising 3 kids born w/n 4 yrs was hard enough w/o adding 4 yrs of agita at hisch transition.
This post confirms my concerns about the idea floated here periodically, that pubschs should be diversifying, varying their curriculum via separate schools under the aegis of the district, to counter the school choice movement. A little of that goes a long ways. I think maybe it can work if restrained to a max of 5% “alternative” schools, but once you’ve got a smorgasbord, you re-create all the problems inherent in a 2-&3-tiered school system.