Give parents school choice
The supposed purpose of testing is to hold schools “accountable,” but it doesn’t and can’t. The only way to hold schools accountable is to allow parents to vote with their feet and remove their children from schools that don’t serve them.
Yes, that requires parents be able to make a judgment regarding what they want from their schools.
Right now, there is no incentive for parents to work very hard in holding their schools accountable because they have very little, if any, power to change anything. When they try, they are met with bureaucratic backlash and red tape.
How many parents are able or willing to jump through all those hoops? Not many. And when they do, it rarely results in systemic changes. If they’re lucky, they might get their specific situation addressed. But administrators and teachers won’t re-evaluate their full approach to the matter to address future problems.
If you are dissatisfied with your local grocer, restaurant, or bank, how likely are you to expend a lot of effort into changing that company’s ways? You are more likely to switch stores or not patronize that bank or restaurant anymore.
In that manner, the market allows companies that fail to meet consumers’ need to go out of business, as consumers flee to better providers.
Where’s the choice in education? Unless you have the time, energy, and money to home school or pay again for private school, you are stuck in the government-monopoly school.
The correct approach to education is not to force one-size-fits-all education down parents’ throats. A far superior approach would be to allow competition in schools so parents have choices.
Once parents have real choices, they will then have incentives to consider what they truly want from their schools, not simply fight a bureaucracy that resists change.
Lois Kaneshiki
Duncansville