A former champion of No Child Left Behind has written a book criticizing the policy as a failure, especially because it relies on standardized testing. Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch also says school choice is a bad idea:
"There should not be an education marketplace, there should not be competition," Ravitch says. "Schools operate fundamentally — or should operate — like families. The fundamental principle by which education proceeds is collaboration. Teachers are supposed to share what works; schools are supposed to get together and talk about what's [been successful] for them. They're not supposed to hide their trade secrets and have a survival of the fittest competition with the school down the block."
The idea of school choice fuels the charter school and voucher systems, and the hope is schools become better through a sense of competition. A steady, if unproven, criticism of school choice systems is that the best schools simply enroll the best students. Even if they don't actively do so, there could be a self-selection bias in the parents who actively seek out better schools to send their children to. But research found the biggest problem was that parents who were offered the chance to enroll students in better schools often did not do so. They liked the idea of the school as being part of the community. After looking at the data, Ravitch now feels that's an idea worth going back to.
-- Monica Potts
