A New Study Reveals Much About How Parents Really Choose Schools
18th January 2015
Since this is NPR, they have a behind-the-scenes political agenda that comes out in the writing as if by accident. A good example is this paragraph:
This last point is crucial because it suggests that a choice-based system all by itself won’t necessarily increase equity. The most economically disadvantaged students may have parents who are making decisions differently from other families. These parents appear to be more interested in factors other than academic quality as the state defines it. Maybe they have access to different, or less, information. If this is true, choice could actually increase, rather than diminish, achievement gaps within a city.
The first sentence is striking: What does ‘equity’ have to do with anything? A choice-based system isn’t striving for ‘equity’ but for quality of education. That ‘economically disadvantaged’ (great PC style, there) parents make different decisions from ‘other families’ ought not to come as a surprise to a moderately intelligent individual, nor the fact that these parents like schools that are close, have extended hours, and lots of extracurricular activity — poor people use public schools as free day-care, a though that not only doesn’t occur to somebody writing for NPR, but which is a thought they are carefully trained not even to think.