Today, Albany and Dougherty County news outlets are all a-buzz about the new state law allowing parents to pick and choose which schools they want their kids to attend, provided there is room at the school. Local school officials don’t seem wild about the plan, stating that it will add “unnecessary” difficulties. Me? I’m a bit mixed.
On one hand, the underlying principle is sound. Basically, create a free market-like environment where good schools will be at capacity and sub par schools will have to improve or continue to lose students. It’s been shown in several studies that money doesn’t equal improvement necessarily, so this would force those schools to step up and get things done.
On the other hand, there are a few problems. First is the fact that this is state law. Education needs to be handled, if it’s government handled at all, at the local level. The County school boards should have been the ones to make that decision or not, since they better understand the needs of their counties.
The second problem is that I’m not entirely sure that this will do any good. Here in Southwest Georgia, our school systems are bad. Shuffling kids within the system won’t necessarily improve the system, especially since the flagging schools know that only so many students can leave.
There’s a lot of work to be done on education in this country. School vouchers, private school tax credits, students picking schools, who knows what the answer truly is. However, I do know that I’m glad to see an option being tried that doesn’t involve throwing more money at the problem. Now, parents can have some say in their children’s education without having to pay out huge sums for private school while still being forced to support public schools.
Will this work? I’m skeptical, but hopeful. It’s entirely possible that the constant shifting of students will force each school to do better and ultimately result in significantly better schools. Only time will tell who’s right and who’s wrong.
Gainesville City Schools has had “schools of choice” for about 8 years now. This allows parents to pick from the 5 elementary schools, each having a different teaching style. The problem is there are 2 schools that are more popular than the other 3 and now they are over crowded. We no longer have school districts so someone trying to sell their house can’t claim to be in the best school district because even if they are next door to the school, the new owner probably won’t get in.
Our other problem is we allow county students to pay tuition to come into our sytem and ofcourse they pick one of the 2 schools that everyone wants. In our case a tuition student has a better chance of getting in than the person who lives next door.
It is a bad idea and I can’t believe the state passed such a stupid bill. What happens once the school has let kids in because they had room but then several kids move into the district after school starts? What if one school becomes “the School” to go to so people move there; do you then kick out the kids that don’t live in the district?
It’s a bad idea all around.
I know in Dougherty County schools, transfers from within the County stay at their other school until the end of the year, but I see your point completely.
I see their point, and the idea of letting the free market handle that is a move in the right direction, but the application needs more than choosing whatever public school you want, which is obvious from Gainesville’s experiences. There needs to be something to allow kids to get out of the public school system completely, and that will go a long way to relieve the strain on public resources.
Thanks for sharing that with me. Those are some serious problems that I hope are addressed, especially since we live near one of the better high schools in town, and obviously that’s where we want our son to go if he’s in public school. The idea that he won’t be able to doesn’t sit well with me if that’s indeed how it works in application.