A real choice for schools during school choice week
School choice pundits have declared this school choice week in Texas. The argument de jour cites NAEP reading scores as evidence that school choice is the best option and that without choice things will just get worse. Here’s a school choice that would really be worthwhile: recognize that after thirty years of trying to make schools great under a test/punish/stigmatize philosophy maybe it’s time to admit it doesn’t work. (Here’s another: recognize that the so-called Texas miracle was a welcome artifact of a bad policy that finally got us to pay attention to underserved students, not a reason to keep touting what has never worked. But that will have to be for another time.) The fact is that no other profession regularly stigmatizes a significant number of its institutions as if doing so will create a continuous improvement environment for the simple reason that it never has and never will. That should cause us to ask a very pointed question: why keep doing it? Would we accept a system ...