The School Choice Myth

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?