America has the best colleges in the world. According to the most recent ranking by Times Higher Education, which is based in the United Kingdom, America has 18 of the top 26 colleges in the world.
One of the contributing factors to our success is the fact that we have so many colleges. Every college student has school choice — over three thousand, actually. Granted, this may be hindered by geographical and financial restraints, but most every prospective college student has more than one school option.
This has forced every college to compete for students. Colleges have to strive to fit the needs and expectations of an extremely diverse student base. They have to make sure their teachers are competent, that their students are being prepared for their future, and that they offer different student activities, not only for the student’s benefit, but for the student’s resume as well. They know that students will look at their overall competitiveness, graduation rate, post-degree employment rates, and other telling statistics. To be concise, colleges compete like businesses.
But why can’t our primary and secondary institutions do this as well and allow government funding to follow students to the school of their or their parents’ choice? As long as certain needs and requirements are addressed, there isn’t any reason why school choice can’t be nationwide. Every obstacle, such as meeting the needs of special needs children, transportation, information access, constitutionality, and accreditation can be met.
The most obvious obstacle is addressing transportation needs. However, if school choice was mandated across the board, schools would be forced to make transportation available for as large of an area as possible so that their number of potential students would increase.
Another obstacle, especially for some specific groups of people, is simply choosing the right school. Difficulty in obtaining information, knowing what is best for the child, and knowing how the process works are all factors that can make it difficult to choose the right school. According to the CRPE, this challenge especially affect minority parents, less educated parents, and parents of special needs children. In the first two scenarios, a solution is reached by simply making an easily accessible information system. The second, however, is an entirely different issue altogether.
One of the main backlashes I have heard when discussing school choice is that special needs children will be left behind, as they will “no longer be protected by law.” This can be delicately addressed. Firstly, school choice doesn’t necessarily mean “no federal regulation”. Businesses and colleges are still regulated and school choice should be as well. Schools should still be required to accommodate students of all needs and abilities. Secondly, special needs students could (and should) have more funding made available to them and the school they choose. Quite simply, special needs children require more resources than the average student and allowing more funding for a special needs student would also help keep cost down for the general tuition at each school.
In addition to meeting special needs, all needs must be met. This can be accomplished by ensuring all schools meet certain requirements in order to be eligible to receive government funding. This could include things such as having qualified, competent teachers, a plan on how to integrate a statewide or nationwide curriculum, and certain facility requirements. In addition, goals that go above and beyond absolute necessity could be established to show schools what else they can do to meet students’ needs. These could include having a certain percentage of classes be at the college level, or having diversity in extracurricular clubs, sports, and activities. These opportunities are what really give each school its own personality and competitiveness and really help develop a student beyond traditional instruction.
Lastly, constitutionality is a substantial issue when it comes to making school choice nationwide. Our constitution demands separation of church and state which seems impossible when school choice is involved. How could a student’s funds be attributed to a religious school? Here, there are two possible solutions. First, ensure schools are allowed to have voluntary religious extracurricular activities during an activity period. Or second, allow religious schools to accept federal funding as long as that funding only went to non-religious education; basically, only if they had a thorough separation of religious and nonreligious education (along with budgets) that could be proven without a doubt.
Overall, school choice is definitely an attainable way to improve our nation’s education system. We just need to start the discussion and get that discussion all the way up to our lawmakers. We need to start lobbying and protesting and petitioning our legislature to make sure they start talking about this. This issue must be addressed so that it can help ensure our education is creating an informed voting populous, vital to the success of our republic.
If you would like more information about school choice (from someone who has actually seen it from the inside) watch the amazing Prager University below.
Sources:
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84
https://www.crpe.org/publications/how-parents-experience-public-school-choice











