Inspiration Beyond Our Borders: Educational Pluralism
The missing component of school choice conversations
School choice — the slightest mention of this controversial phrase in education circles can quickly send people behind their respective battle lines, ready to wage rhetorical war against each other. For nearly thirty years, our country has gone back and forth on which model is best for the far-reaching needs of a diverse 55 million children in our K-12 education system. And I think unfortunately, our country has failed to arrive at some consensus around how to design and structure high-quality schools because both sides view this as a zero-sum game.
In this American struggle between “traditional public” and alternative school models, we have collectively failed to realize that there are other countries that have embraced alternative models outside of our narrow definitions of who should be allowed to run schools. In an effort to embrace alternative views and resist the tyranny of binary decision-making, I argue that the United States should reimagine our schools more toward an inclusive model of schooling that several democratic countries use with great success — educational pluralism.
Ashley Berner, Associate Professor and Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, describes educational pluralism as follows: a school system in which the government funds and regulates, but does not necessarily provide, public education. In this model, Berner argues that pluralism relies on the following five assumptions for what makes a high-quality public education:
- The ‘right school’ must be accessible for all families.
- Education is not a neutral enterprise.
- Education is not merely an individual good but also a common good.
- Education belongs within civil society.
- Pluralism advances academic and civic achievement.
What I find intriguing, and dare I say, exciting, is that educational pluralism stresses a number of core elements that I think are necessary ingredients for top-tier schools: strong school culture, high-quality curriculum and instruction, and are held to some sort of accountability system. Opponents might argue that our current uniform delivery model of government-run public schools delivers on each of these measures; however, one doesn’t have to look far to realize that a pure market approach dominates our public schools with little consensus from state to state around what qualifies as high-quality instructional curriculum.
Knowing that our country’s current rhetoric around school choice feels somewhat stalled, coupled with the reality that the Covid-19 crucible for public schools, I believe that our education leaders and policymakers should take the time to study other countries’ models for how they structure schooling experiences. This strikes me as the prime opportunity to pass on the myth of American exceptionalism and learn from other democratic countries’ successes. Our country and student population are only growing more diverse, and I hope that we can explore and test how Berner’s construct of education pluralism might have a future home in the American education landscape.
