Opponents of school choice are great at coming up with witty one liners to make their point. A recurring example on X (formerly Twitter) is this: It is not “school choice,” it is “schools’ choice.”
The argument is that private school choice programs are inequitable because they do not open options equally for all students. In other words, private schools can deny admission to some applicants.
Take for example the admissions criteria I found online for one school. Students applying to the school must score in the top 30% on standardized tests, have excellent attendance (90%), have good grades, and submit letters of recommendation from teachers, counselors, or other administrators. In addition, the student and his or her guardian may have to pass an interview with the school and write an entrance essay.
Oh wait. Those aren’t the rules for a private school, but for a public school—Metro Academic and Classical School. Metro is a magnet school in the Saint Louis Public School District. Magnet schools are public schools that are allowed to have admissions standards. As St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Blythe Bernhard has reported, Metro is “thriving” and is the “highest-performing high school in the state.”
Many private schools have admissions standards, but most pale in comparison to Metro.
Opponents of private school choice use a lot of arguments to make their case but they fail to consistently apply those arguments to public schools. They say they oppose school choice because some dollars may go to rich families in private schools, but do not oppose publicly funding rich students in rich public schools. And they complain public schools will lose money if a student leaves for a private school but you’ll hear nary a word when a school loses money because a student moves to another public school.
The underlying element in all these school choice criticisms is a philosophy of control. As long as public funding goes to rich kids in public schools, or dollars flow from one public school to another, or admissions criteria are used in a public school system, the critics remain silent.
What then is the real opposition to school choice policies? It seems fair to wonder if what school choice critics fear most is losing control.
