A New Look at School of Choice
Well this article was pretty interesting. It appears the Oakland school district enacted a new way to utilize school of choice. Their system is based on one implemented five years ago in San Francisco. In an article on Reason.com (originally published in Education Week) Lisa Snell and Shikha Dalmia give an interesting take on a new example / way to look at school of choice. Oakland enacted a weighted-student-formula plan.
Under this program, kids are not required to attend their neighborhood school, especially if it is failing. Rather, they can pick any regular public or charter school in their district and take their education dollars with them; more students therefore means more revenues for schools. Furthermore, as the name suggests, the revenues are “weighted” based on the difficulty of educating each student, with low-income and special-needs kids commanding more money than smart, well-to-do ones. Schools have to compete for funding, but the upside is that they have total control over it.
Phew, that is a lot of information. I have to admit I am unfamiliar with exact concepts associated with school of choice, so my analysis may not be complete. But I will do my best.
First, it is school of choice. If a student is in a failing school she would theoretically be able to move into a more successful school within the district. What is interesting is the weighted aspect of the finance. Students with low-income or special-needs are given more money in the budget. This would entice schools, looking for as much money as possible, to make each respective school as attractive to these disadvantaged students as possible. The competition was extreme.
Meanwhile, Oakland hosted a daylong fair last month at which the district’s 120-plus schools could vie with each other to entice parents, handing out information about course offerings, highlighting accomplishments, and answering questions. In short, schools are being forced to sell themselves to each and every parent.
This sounds like schools being run as a business gone wild. The competition in this market is fierce. But if the competition leads towards schools desperately trying to do what’s best for the student, is this necessarily a bad thing? The article paints this system as the next great thing but I feel some reservation. Perhaps it stems from how I naturally shiver a little when I see the words ‘school’ and ‘business’ a little too close together in a concept.
Experimenting with School Choice
Lisa Snell and Shikha Dalmia
February 26, 2007
canknight said,
March 2, 2007 at 3:46 am
This is one of those situations where it becomes easy to sit on the fence. One one hand if seems like a good thing that schools are doing what it takes to attract as many students as possible. This would leave one to believe that there are more teachers being hired and the programs are being set up to maximize the potential of the students. The more schools attract than the better technology they are bound to get. It also gives parents a decision in the whole matter of where to send their kids. Here, there are different options, but it isn’t quite as easy in a set-up such as this.
I do think that there are some downfalls to this system. So what if many of the kids pick the same schools? Than all of the funding goes to these schools and what are the other schools left with. I think that this would bring about the same problems as NCLB has brought about. So a school begins to fail and loses a large number of their students. What happens next? If they are losing funding than how are they going to be able to start new programs or hire more teachers? How will they take the steps that will help their school rise from a failing level? It is a hard task to accomplish without any money. And then the schools that are attracting all of the students will eventually reach capacity. They will have to start limiting students and then will there be a selection process. It would become like college applications all over again, well actually before college. I don’t think this is a system that we would like to subject high school students to. It would be a situation of who could bring in the most money, or possibly who is the best athlete.
This is all aside from the fact that like you said, it would become more of a business to be a high school than a place with an emphasis on education. We do not want money to become the main focus of students and a school fair seems to be just that. The whole concept is forgein to me, and it is not something I envision at the high school level. Thanks for the good discussion.