Opinion
School Choice & Charters Opinion

Challenging 3 Common Critiques of School Choice

By Rick Hess — October 26, 2020 3 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Like it or not, 2020 has been a massive real-time experiment in school choice. Schools closed, home schooling was the default option for months, and families turned to a raft of alternative arrangements when it became clear that most schools wouldn’t reopen in any conventional sense of the word. As schools have allowed students back on campus, parents have had to choose whether to send their children back in person. Where school buildings remained closed, parents had to choose whether to rely on district-provided remote learning or turn to in-person or remote alternatives.

Yet, ubiquity hasn’t made the choice debates any less hyperbolic. After Secretary of Education Betsy Devos announced this spring that a small portion of the $13.5 billion in federal education relief could be used to support private schools, Sen. Chuck Schumer accused her of using CARES Act funding “not to help states or localities cope with the crisis, but to augment her push for voucher-like programs, a prior initiative that has nothing to do with Covid-19.” AFT President Randi Weingarten encouraged school districts to ignore the department’s guidance entirely.

As families and educators navigate the practical realities of the moment, plenty of policymakers and pundits are engaging in public posturing about choice that is frequently at odds with the facts. This all yields a public discourse that is often unhelpful and sometimes downright misleading. This is why I was glad to see Corey DeAngelis and Neal McCluskey’s new volume, School Choice Myths: Setting the Record Straight on Education Freedom. While DeAngelis and McCluskey will be the first to acknowledge they come at the issue with a pro-choice bent, they’ve done a service in challenging some of the familiar but suspect assertions that pepper public debates about school choice. The book assesses a raft of critiques, but here are three contributions that I found especially timely.

Public schools have an obvious advantage when it comes to creating good citizens and promoting democratic virtues. Patrick Wolf, a professor at the University of Arkansas, takes on this popular notion. He surveys the research on how private schools and traditional public schools fare on this score and reports that, if anything, the research suggests that private schools do a better job preparing citizens. Of 86 findings regarding private and public school effects on political tolerance, political participation, civic knowledge or skills, and voluntarism or social capital, Wolf reports that 50 point to a private school advantage, 33 no statistically significant difference, and just 3 a public school advantage.

Choice programs siphon money from public schools. Marty Lueken of EdChoice and Ben Scafidi of Kennesaw State University bristle at this assertion, noting that most choice programs leave more per-pupil funding for students who remain in district schools (since only a portion of per-pupil funds follow departing students). As they put it, “Public K-12 education is the only enterprise in our society (that we are aware of) that retains significant amounts of funding for customers it no longer serves.”

Voucher programs mostly help wealthy families because the amounts are too small to cover tuition costs for low-income families. Albert Cheng, professor at the University of Arkansas, notes that three-fourths of school choice programs are targeted toward assisting low-income families or children with special needs. He also notes that most parents who opt not to take advantage of choice programs don’t mention the size of the subsidy as a reason. Cheng also points out that residential assignment means that affluent families tend to have already selected their school when they buy a home, meaning that school choice programs will typically have outsized benefits for low-incomes families that haven’t had that opportunity.

In the midst of a pandemic that has turned millions of kitchen tables into makeshift classrooms and made school choice a prosaic reality in communities across the land, there’s a need for practical, plain-spoken assessments of how to make choice work for students and families seeking options. That makes this volume a particularly timely contribution.

Related Tags:

The opinions expressed in Rick Hess Straight Up are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School Choice & Charters Tracker Which States Have Private School Choice?
Education savings accounts, voucher, and tax-credit scholarships are growing. This tracker keeps tabs on them so you don't have to.
School Choice & Charters Opinion What's the State of Charter Schools Today?
Even though there's momentum behind the charter school movement, charters face many of the same challenges as traditional public schools.
10 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
School Choice & Charters As Private School Choice Grows, Critics Push for More Guardrails
Calls are growing for more scrutiny over where state funds for private school choice go and how students are faring in the classroom.
7 min read
Illustration of completed tasks, accomplishment, finished checklist, achievement or project progression concept. Person holding pencil tick all completed task checkbox.
Nuthawut Somsuk/iStock/Getty
School Choice & Charters How a District Hopes to Save an ESSER-Funded Program
As a one-time infusion of federal funding expires, districts are searching for creative ways to keep programs they funded with it running.
6 min read
Chicago charter school teacher Angela McByrd works on her laptop to teach remotely from her home in Chicago, Sept. 24, 2020.
Chicago charter school teacher Angela McByrd works on her laptop to teach remotely from her home in Chicago, Sept. 24, 2020. In Montana, a district hopes to save a virtual instruction program by converting it into a charter school.
Nam Y. Huh/AP