Through school choice parents can free their children from a bad school and choose a more successful school that might also be more consistent with their values or religious ethos.
School choice is a central feature of today's progressive conservatism because it takes monopoly power away from the educational bureaucracy and puts it in the hands of parents.
School choice equips parents with the power to choose schools that are more likely to be consistent with their values and gives them and their child an 'emergency exit' from an inadequate school.
School choice is a key theme of compassionate conservatism because it most benefits poorer families - families who can't afford private education or an often expensive relocation to the catchment area of a good school.
School choice programmes have already been remarkably successful in America. Florida's under-performing schools, for example, started to improve dramatically once parents were given the power to take their children to a better school. It wasn't usually necessary for parents to exercise their 'power of choice' - only enough for the school bureaucracy to know that the parents and pupils were no longer the 'prisoners' of poor classroom discipline, uninspirational teaching or trendy educational theories.
Choice is not enough
A simple parental right to choose between schools is not enough to improve school standards. Competition between schools must have the potential to hurt the staff at bad schools and reward the staff of good schools.
Frederick M Hess, author of 'Common Sense School Reform', asks us to imagine the manager of a supermarket who was told that losing all of her customers would have no impact on her salary or job security. Her remuneration would also stay the same if she attracted more customers and had to work harder to service them.
A really effective school choice programme will see people who run and teach at good schools rewarded and people who run unpopular schools lose out.
A dynamic schools system will encourage religious groups, businesses and community entrepreneurs to set up new schools. These new schools have the potential to introduce new thinking into neighbourhoods that might otherwise have monochrome school systems. The elimination of all unfair barriers to school start-ups is an essential part of a school choice programme, therefore.
Means and ends
School choice is an essential mechanism for raising educational standards but it doesn't, by itself, 'paint a picture' of the kind of school system that conservatives believe in. It is vital that advocates of school choice describe the kind of schools that could flourish...
- Schools with strong values and strong codes of discipline...
- Schools that stretch pupils to achieve across the curriculum and prepare them for university...
- Schools that give children confidence and introduce them to the arts and history...
Parents need to know that if they want these sorts of schools for their children - choice can deliver them.
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