Another school year is here — our annual reminder of the importance of the fight to ensure that all children, regardless of their background or circumstances, have access to an excellent education. Choice has created opportunity for millions of children, but reflecting on the movement’s success is not enough — we must prevent school choice from being absorbed by the blob.
Today, nearly every state allows charter schools and other forms of public-school choice. Almost
20 states
have tax credit scholarships, more than a dozen states have voucher programs, and nearly as many offer education savings accounts.
But because school choice, and most of the mechanisms for achieving it, are relatively commonplace today, charter schools — and even vouchers — are seen less and less as disruptive innovations and more as simply part of the fabric of education in America.
On the one hand, this is positive. It indicates that choice can work and have staying power. On the other hand, though, this success suggests there is a real risk the choice movement could become like the anti-education-reform blob itself.
So, this school year, we must ask what the school choice movement is, the principles its supporters embrace, and how the movement should engage. I suggest we start by thinking about the following questions.
Will choice become just another partisan issue?
Most of the first school choice laws were enacted thanks to passionate advocates from both the Democratic and Republican parties. Charter schools especially have long attracted significant support from both parties — this is not mere happenstance but was (and is) a reflection of the fact that these programs need political stability to thrive. However, this bipartisan backing has eroded on the Left, imperiling blue-state choice programs and, recently,
those at the federal level
. At the same time, since Republican efforts to turn pro-school choice parents into loyal voters have been mixed at best, there is the potential that the Republican Party could lose interest in choice, leaving red-state choice programs at risk too.
Will pro-reform policymakers give into innovation-killing regulation?
Research
shows parents make choices for a wide variety of reasons and not of all of them might seem like good ones to Washington academics, local school board members, or even you and me. Policymakers must resist the urge, though, to tamp down on parental preferences with which they may disagree. Parents deserve more than the ability to simply choose the best option as determined by “experts” or state report cards, and instead must be able to choose the option that they determine best meets their child’s unique needs. Children must be safe and able to learn at school, but how that happens should remain an open question.
Will practitioners and school leaders embrace the freedom to innovate?
History shows greater regulatory freedom rarely leads to innovative outcomes, especially in the education system. While school choice advocates have long touted the wonders that additional autonomy can bring, schools of choice overall still look quite similar to one another and to the traditional public schools they are designed to improve upon. The question remains, however, whether this uniformity is a result of the persistent power of the blob, the demands of parents, or something else.
This is not the way it was supposed to be. In the early 2010s, charter school operators like KIPP and Rocketship were supposed to bring high standards and customization to scale, and Joel Klein’s
School of One
implied that we were on the cusp of truly customized education for every child. While software-driven (and even AI-driven) curricula tools have grown by leaps and bounds in the years since, we do not seem to be much closer to the so-called
“Diamond Age.”
Will we focus on the number of children in good schools or the number of children in “our” schools?
Choice advocates have also typically embraced reforms for district schools too, even if those reforms might help public schools win back market share. However, if so-called reformers only embrace charter or voucher schools, they are failing to truly support parental choice and they imperil education reform more generally. Likewise, choice advocates must avoid battles over whether, say, charters are better than vouchers. Instead, they should advance the cause of all high-quality options chosen by parents.
As many models of school choice have moved beyond the growth phase and into maturity, new models must be enacted, ideally with less political heft required. During this school year, however, I hope that supporters of choice will not lose sight of the grander vision — not just the policies and politics — that have made this movement so successful.
Michael Brickman is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on higher education and cutting-edge innovation in education reform.
