A Choice Revolution

Reihan Salam has a characteristically excellent post on school choice that has some bearing on the Conservatives’ proposed reforms in England. Reihan’s talking about the US and the suggestion that Milwaukee’s voucher programme hasn’t delivered as much as one might like, but his general argument applies to this side of the atlantic too. Bottom line: choice is not enough. Or, to put it another way, choice is a beginning, not an end*. As he puts it:

[C]hoice-based reform at its best creates an opportunity for educational innovators to create new models, deploy new technologies, etc. The ultimate goal is to create a flourishing educational marketplace that goes beyond the binary choice of going to school A or school B. We also want to create markets for focused solution shops that, for example, focus exclusively on recruiting high-quality teachers, offering specialized math instruction, developing strategies for integrating technology in the curriculum. Some of this already exists.