School Choice Exists

In most debates and discussions about school choice, what is usually overlooked is that a good deal of choice already exists in education.

Choice exists at many levels in our education “market”.  Folks who have enough money can choose to pay to send their kids to private school.  Folks who have a little less dough and can’t afford, or don’t wish to pay, for private schools also exercise choice.  They have enough flexibility* to choose where they live and, by and large, choose to live in school districts that are known for quality education.

*By flexibility, I mean they can afford transportation and longer commutes to work.  They don’t have to rely as much on public transportation routes.  They can choose to live in communities with higher priced homes.

The middle market education choice drives local real estate cycles.  Suburban areas with plenty of land to develop have an incentive to provide quality schools to attract new families to develop the land and increase the tax base.

These suburban areas tend to continue to provide quality education as long as there’s land to develop.

However, once these areas run out about develop-able land, watch out.  School boards and administrators become complacent.  Why provide quality education?  The tax base is there.  If families won’t occupy the homes, maybe empty-nesters will.  Or better yet, once the tax base is funded from a good portion of businesses, who needs families?

This is based on observations in my own area.  The urban school district has been a corrupt and incompetent wreck for decades.  Why not?  It still gets funded.

Looking back 25 years, the hot suburbs of those days had the top school districts.  They used those school districts to attract middle income families from the urban core and new growth to the area to increase their tax base.

Now, those top-notch school districts from 25 years ago, with a few exceptions, have been superseded by school districts in the new suburban growth areas. Those 25-year-old suburbs have been nearly fully developed and the quality of their school districts are on a slow decline.  No longer are they the top notch districts.  They have very little incentive to maintain that status.

So, to a certain degree, school choice already exists for wealthy and middle-income families who can choose private and quality public schools.  It’s no surprise to me that these are typically known as the better schools.

Poor, urban families, on the other hand have less choice on where to send their kids to school.  They may not have the flexibility to live where they want.  They may rely more on public transportation to get them to work.  And they can’t afford private school.  It’s no surprise to me that these aren’t considered the best schools.  Why would they be?  They take the kids whose parents have little or no choice.  The parents don’t have many options.

So, wealthy and middle income families already have a certain degree of choice about where to send their kids.  Poor families don’t.  I’ve won a few folks over on the idea of vouchers by simply explaining this and asking them why they are against giving more choice to poor people?

Letting people have more choice on where to send their own kids to school seems to make sense, even if you or I disapprove of their choices.

When we try to assess the quality of a charter school (or any school) based on test scores, I think we miss something.  The fact that when given a choice, a parent chose something other than traditional public schools, is enough evidence for me that something went right.

My “choice” observations are based on what I see in my metro area.  Do they line up with what you see in yours?


3 thoughts on “School Choice Exists

  1. Seth:

    Many people like to comment, argue, debate, and so on about school choice. A robust debate is healthy. However, most people debate this particular issue without reading the core, the root proposition put forth by Milton Friedman in his 1955 enlightening essay The Role of Government in Education. That is, the essay is basically one of the first essays to discuss vouchers and bestowing educational funds upon the voucher-student-consumer rather than the institution. Link to the essay appears below.

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