So
this term keeps getting thrown around: School Choice. What is school choice,
you ask? Well, school choice districts implement a number of strategies to give
public school children and their families a “choice” in which schools they can
attend. Strategies include tax supported vouchers for private school tuition,
choice of going to any school in a particular district, and charter school
integration into public school districts.
In Newark, NJ school choice means for parents that they will get to
choose from any school in the district, including charter schools that will
help to improve the choice of schools available. The following excerpt is from
the One Newark Initiative website. ‘One Newark’ is what new Jersey State has
implemented as the new reform initiative for school improvement. (It’s also
about controlling urban space though, or so I’m finding…)
From the
One Newark Enrolls website:
What is One Newark Enrolls?
One Newark Enrolls
is a system of choice where all families can access great schools for their
children, regardless of the school’s status as district or charter. The system
is available to any Newark family wishing to enroll their child in a new school
for the upcoming year. Students may rank up to eight school choices – both
district and charter – on a single application. They will then receive a single
offer to attend the best possible school given their selections.
I
was just talking to my advisor about the mythical quality of this notion of
choice. The notion of school choice assumes that one makes mental decisions
between one or more things simply by judging the merits of that decision for
them. It doesn’t include geographic, economic, knowledge based or emotional
constraints. During the AERA annual conference some researchers presented work
that identified specific barriers to this notion of free choice in schools.
First
they talked about how economic constraints lead people to choose housing that
they can afford not one that is in a good school district. This issue alone
places people in neighborhoods, where their priority is affordability, not
education. So people don’t necessarily choose the neighborhoods or school districts
where they will live.
Second,
when economic constraints outweigh everything else, children’s caretakers are
not necessarily aware about schools or school choice policies in their school
district. They are largely unaware of which schools are good choices or that
they are allowed to choose from any school in the district. In recent
interviews, I conducted for a study, when asked about Charter schools,
community residents of a poor urban neighborhood expressed that they thought
there might be a cost associated with Charter schools and so did not pursue
them, because they knew they could not afford it. Further in another investigation of an open
choice district in New York City, the researchers found that because of the way
different schools approached open choice (i.e. some used applications, some
used geographic preference, etc.) parents received different messages when they
tried to register their students leading to whether or not they were able to
get their child in that school. For instance, one mom talked about being told
that she needed to fill out an application, so she left thinking that she
wouldn’t be able to get her child in the school. Thus the school choice is thwarted by a lack of money
and knowledge about education.
Finally,
Peter Sharkey, a colleague of and coauthor with Robert Sampson, talks about
violence in neighborhood and the effect on students. His study actually looks
at the connection between the ability to learn (cognitive function) and control
oneself (executive function) and neighborhood violence. He found a decrease in
both cognitive and executive functions following exposure to violence. We know
that poor neighborhoods contribute to a greater share of violence than more
affluent neighborhoods. In addition, suburban residents seem to experience less
violence than do urban residents. Soooo...essentially… if I live in a violent
neighborhood and I'm expected to sit down, shut up and take a test at school,
it may not be as easy for me as someone who didn't live in a violent
neighborhood. So now my choice of engaging in school effectively is not even my
own.
The
One Newark Initiative doesn’t address any of these issues. On the website that
State education department outlines how students will be assigned to schools:
How are students matched to schools?
After
the application closes, automated computer software will match each student
with the best possible school based on the student’s choices and the policies
of the enrollment system. This computer software is used in several other
districts with centralized enrollment systems, and has been customized for
Newark’s needs. Students will learn of their matches in April 2014.
The
issues around how economic constraints lead people to choose housing that they
can afford are completely out of the scope of work that a school district does.
Further the “algorithm” being employed to assign children to their schools
(based on their top three choices) will still continue to assign schools based
on mostly geographic preference (according to inside sources)…meaning that
students who live close to a particular school will be given preference for
that school, AND siblings of students are also given preference for a
particular school.
When
all of this is laid on a population that may not be unaware of all of the
twists and turns of school choice policy, how is the policy helpful? Further
Newark communities have been critical of the engagement around the One Newark
initiative, although school district officials have maintained that they have
held hundreds of meetings.
Finally
once the children have been assigned by the algorithm, how will schools deal
with different levels of violence around different school locations? Will they
allow students in a violent neighborhood to forego academic commitments on a
day when they’ve been exposed to violence? What if the whole district is
sitting for mandatory exams?
How
will the school district address these issues as they unroll this choice
initiative? It doesn’t seem as if these issues have been or even can be addressed
at this time. So, school choice in Newark… real or nah?
