Welcome to Educational Choice. Why Aren’t You Smiling?
Professor Jennings is the author of “The Scarcity Loop: How School Choice Reshapes the Rationing of Public Education.”
Good news, American parent!
Welcome to this year’s opportunity to choose your child’s school. Depending on where you live, you may now choose neighborhood schools, magnet schools, charter schools, Christian schools, virtual schools, microschools, homeschool and schools that are neither fish nor fowl, which meet in a trampoline park.
This is educational freedom.
Let’s get started. Create an account. No, not the account you use for everything else in the school district. We are a district of many accounts. Add your child using the code issued by the school’s guidance counselor. We’re sorry! That code is invalid. Please review the instructions. Codes are case-sensitive.
You are ready to choose now.
What kind of school would be the best fit for your child: STEAM, STEM, project-based learning, International Baccalaureate, performing arts, college preparatory, early college, career and technical education or a school with a website that just says “INNOVATION”?
You know your child best. Please be sure to research the options carefully.
However, you do not know the schools best. To that end, please attend your preferred school’s Open House. Open House begins at 10 sharp on Tuesday morning. Just that one Tuesday. We understand that you have a job, but our school is a good fit for parents truly committed to their child’s education.
At Open House, please determine whether the school has engaged teachers, a healthy culture, good leadership and a 21st-century bathroom. You will have 47 minutes.
A ninth grader named Madison will be your tour guide. Please ask Madison about the comparative effectiveness of the ninth-grade mathematics teachers. Next, please determine whether your child is choosing the school or the school is choosing your child. Sometimes you choose the school. Sometimes the school chooses you. Sometimes you choose the school, the school chooses you, and then an algorithm chooses whether the two of you were correct.
