The hottest educational issue these days is public school choice. A few states have already started. Many others are making plans. Each plan may be different, but the basic idea behind all of them is to give parents of public school students the right to leave the school they have been assigned to and attend another public school. In some cases the choice is restricted to other schools in the same district, while in Minnesota choices can be made across district lines. Many states are now picking up the Minnesota model.
There are many justifications for choice. Parents and students would be more committed to a school if they chose it. Different kinds of schools are good for different kids, and choice makes better matches possible. Under a choice plan, a family moving from one neighborhood to another could maintain continuity by keeping a child in the same school. Choice could make administrators take parents' complaints more seriously. Many parents merely want a change of teachers if there is a bad match between their child and the teacher - a reasonable request if their child is miserable. That kind of "little divorce" is hard to get now, but choice makes it more likely. Choice also could promote integration and attract private school students back into the public system. Some choice plans have already achieved those results.
It's also the case that in a free society, we shouldn't force people to do anything unless there is a compelling public interest. There is no strong reason why a given student must go to one particular school rather than another.
But among the major reasons advanced for choice, there are some pretty weak ones. It's argued that choice would automatically bring about wholesome variety and school improvement. Just as the market in a capitalist society results in companies competing to make better products, with individual consumers determining winners and losers, so too would school choice promote healthy competition and consumer satisfaction. Schools would come up with good ideas and work hard to attract and retain more students. Good schools would attract more customers and expand, just as producers of quality goods do. Bad schools would go out of business, just as producers of shoddy goods do. Choice, this set of arguments goes, would bring the accountability of the market to schools.
In the private for-profit sector, that is how things work. There is a lot of ingenuity because you can make or lose a lot of money. But that's not what happens in school choice plans. A school district that loses students loses at most only the money it takes to educate those students. Many large urban districts have been losing thousands of students over the years and, unlike profit-making businesses, have done little to stem the tide. Nor do they expand the school programs that have waiting lists or do something about the schools that are failing and being abandoned.
Similarly, why would any district want to attract more students if these students bring with them, at most, only the money it will cost to educate them? For the most part, gaining or losing students under choice plans does not result in making profit or losing profit and would therefore not act, as many claim, as a stimulus for improvement.
This is not to say that the potential gain or loss of students would never motivate school people to do things differently. Reputation is sometimes a good motivator. Also, if a school is in danger of losing many of its students, it may be closed down and its remaining students and faculty moved to other schools. This may create enough inconvenience, fear and pain to motivate change. Other schools may try to attract students because they have 16 students in a class studying French, and if they attracted 10 more students they'd have more money but no additional cost. The school district might like this deal, but the teacher and students whose class size jumps from 16 to 26 might not.
None of these is an argument against choice. There are plenty of good reasons to support public school choice, as there are reasons to approach it with caution. While these examples do not argue against choice, they do argue against viewing choice as a panacea that will bring the competitiveness and improvements of the marketplace. You can't simply assume that profit incentives will operate in a non-profit system.
There's a message in this for both supporters and opponents of public school choice. To supporters: The school system improvements and innovations you seek will have to come some other way. Choice is not likely to generate them automatically. To opponents: Stop painting pictures of huge student migrations. There'll be much less movement than you think.