Everyone Wants Choice

School choice proponents usually focus on the potential for school choice to provide more, and better, options to low-income students--those students for whom school choice is generally not an option. But when choice policies are put in play, whether its virtual schools, charters, or inter-district choice, middle-income parents are often also interested in the newly available options. And the reasons vary--convenience, finding the right fit, and simple school quality all play a role in who uses choice and how they choose. A few stories this week illustrate how suburban parents are using school choice:

Today's Las Vegas Sun reports on the first graduate of the county's virtual high school. Matt Sosa started off attending the virtual high school for medical reasons, but finished there because he felt it was the best fit for his learning needs--and he received his high school diploma without spending a single day in the classroom.

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday on a rift in Palos Verdes school district--a high-scoring, well-off district in which some parents are pushing to start a charter school to get away from what they see as a school system that is overly focused on test scores. But the parents that would be left, like many who criticize school choice, argue that the financial drain from the charter school will only hurt the remaining students.

And finally out of Rhode Island, an editorial in the Providence Journal arguing that parents should be able to send their children to school across district boundaries, both to allow parents to find the best school without having to buy a house in the right zip code and also to provide a way for parents to express their dissatisfaction with schools--by leaving.

There's nothing wrong with offering additional choice to middle- or high-income families, but policy needs to be designed, using transportation, targeted lottery systems, and equitable funding, to ensure that low-income students are the primary beneficiaries of school choice policies. And if policy is not sufficiently targeted, middle-class parents, as the above stories illustrate, will take advantage of the new options, potentially squeezing out the students who need those options the most.