How About We Just Call Them Schools? Then We Can Focus On What Matters.
By Jennifer Wagner
Hear ye, hear ye.
Make way for the Official School Choice Language Brigade, summoned recently in response to terminology used by President Trump in his State of the Union address.
At one point in the speech, Trump referred to “government schools.” At another point, later in the speech, he called them “public schools.”
This is the stuff that vexes people with lots of unstructured free time, causing them to hem and haw and write pointed opinion pieces voicing support for one term or the other.
News flash: No one in the real world cares. They’re not focused on parsing terms of art. They’re worried about their lives, their families and getting through the rest of the week.
Real people don’t talk about K-12 education like we do, and if the goal of our movement is to connect with those people and share the idea that the school to which their kids are geographically assigned doesn’t have to be the school their kids attend, it feels like we’re pretty far off-base.
Let’s start with the fact that there are lots of schooling types out there:
- Traditional public schools
- Magnet public schools
- Public schools outside your district
- Charter schools
- Secular private schools
- Faith-based private schools
- Boarding schools
- Homeschooling
- Microschooling
- Unschooling
- Online or virtual schools
- Blended learning
- Customized learning
That’s quite the list, but you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t work in K-12 Policy World who can name or explain half of those. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee if you can define unschooling without looking it up. Heck, national polling tells us there’s still lots of confusion about how charter schools operate — and they’ve been around almost 30 years.
For most folks, “school” is the brick-and-mortar place you send your kids so they can learn. Your kids are assigned to that school based on where you live. The end.
So when we’re over here having our fancypants, la-di-da debate about whether to call traditional school “public” or “government” schools, WE ARE MISSING THE POINT ENTIRELY.
Most families start exploring options beyond their assigned school when they realize their kids need something different. Even then, they don’t necessarily go searching by schooling type; they go looking for what they need.
Instead of harping on what we should call assigned schools (if you were wondering, which you probably weren’t, that’s the term I use in my presentations on the language of school choice), we should be doing a better job explaining all the other options.
Do you have a high-ability learner who works best in a non-structured environment? There could be a magnet school designed for her.
Is your child on the autism spectrum? He might learn best in a private school set up to serve similarly situated students.
Maybe your child is being bullied or would learn better one-on-one. Where can you learn more about homeschooling? Would online learning make sense?
These are actual questions parents ask as they seek solutions from an increasingly choice-rich K-12 landscape. They’re the kind of questions we need to be prepared to answer as advocates. For those of us who don’t directly work with families, we need to help those who do make sure they’re prepared to discuss all the options.
That’s why later this year, we’ll be debuting a learner profile tool that’s geared toward families trying to figure out what kind of environment would best suit their child’s needs. We’ll also be overhauling our website to provide more information about school choice programs and more research that directly reflects why and how parents choose, how schools are funded and the outcomes of choice.
Until then, I think we can all agree that our efforts are best focused on making sure people understand that they have options, not arguing over which words we use to describe them.
Jennifer Wagner is a mom, a recovering political hack and the Vice President of Communications for EdChoice, a national nonprofit that supports and promotes universal school choice.
