Shopping for Schools

"School choice" is typically held up as a good thing. Allow parents to choose a school and they will leave bad schools which will pressure poor or average schools to improve while clearly identifying good schools since they will be full or oversubscribed. This market approach will solve one and all problems in education through simple evolution: only the strong survive. Adapt or perish.

Of course parents with money have always had "school choice". In particular, they were able to shop between public and non-public, and in the non-public world between religious or secular, forward-thinking or traditional, academic or athletic and differnet program types and philosophies. Clearly, if their money follows their child, schools will react and all will be rosy. Just look at how non-public schools are so much better than public, and do so much more with much less.

School choice thinking extends the ability to shop to parents without money, or at least to parents without their own money because their purchase would be paid for using public money. As we know, those with money to spend always spend it effectively and in the way which provides the greatest benefit.

So what could go wrong?

Well, the school market is not so neat. Some areas have only one school meaning no choice, which would result in a long commute to another area. The long commuting time presents problems of its own, for example getting up at a very early time and not getting home until very late, extra-curricular activitires may now not be possible, friends are no longer nearby. Ooen enrolment experience shows how leaving a neighborhood school has often unanticipated effects.

Where there is an alternative, the other school may not be any better or it may be religious, it may not offer the same language or music or supportive programs, or it may be selective and your child will not qualify for admission.

When people spend their own money, they tend to take more care. They tend to consider alternatives, to do research, even to see the spending as an investment rather than as consumption. After all, you can't spend it twice! They often involve themselves more fully in the investment, perhaps as volunteers, and are supportive to the point of becoming evaangelical.

When people spend someone else's money, that connection is lost and when it is public money, you don't even have to face the giver and explain what you did with it. If you think this is cynical, simply review almost any public expenditure by our elected officials and what happens if / when that expenditure is wasted.

Perhaps one of the saddest effect of school choice is the frequent school changes which can result. I remember meeting several parents who appeared to change schools evey year or two; one girl entering Grade Two was about to join her fourth school. She did have some issues, we discovered an undiagnosed issue related to vision, lighting and movement meant she was constantly distracted, but far worse was the lack of constancy and of belonging and the continual loss of friends caused by her mother's school choice.

School improvement should be the goal, and improvement should take considerable precedence over choice.

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