The school choice

Wrestling with my inner libertarian

It’s school choice season in Denver right now, and my family is waiting to hear back about which (public) schools our children will be admitted to next year.

Colorado has offered statewide school choice since the early 90’s, which means that, in theory, any kid can attend any public school in the state, regardless of where they live. In practice, the parents have to be able to get their child to and from the school, and some schools get more applicants than they have seats. So it’s more accurate to say that parents can apply to any public school in the area, and if there’s room, or they win the school’s admission lottery, then the children can go there. Which brings us to February in my home.

As a parent who cares a lot about cities, and about autonomy for children, schools are critical. One of the main reasons people move to particular neighborhoods or suburbs is to get their children into particular schools. School choice loosens that coupling.

As a young adult, I felt that school choice was obviously the morally right policy. I don’t align closely to any particular political ideology, but I would say I lean libertarian. I think that freedom and competition are good. For many years, I would have argued for more than just public school choice; I would have told you we should give parents vouchers and let them pick whatever school they think is best.

The mainstream system, where public schools are based on zoning, and wealthy neighborhoods get the best schools (or, good schools draw in rich families who price out others) is obviously inequitable. And the fact that rich families can afford private school as an alternative, while most families can’t, is also obviously inequitable. School choice clearly helps level that playing field, and a full voucher system levels it even more.

But, now that my family lives in a school choice system, I’m deeply ambivalent about it.

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We are fortunate in that there are three public elementary schools within a mile of our house. For this discussion, I’ll call them School A, B, and C.

When we first moved to Denver, we were living three blocks from School A. We had missed the school choice window, but we were guaranteed a seat at the closest school. We were excited to have a school so close by, and to be able to easily walk the kids there and back each day. We heard good things from a few other parents in the neighborhood. We stayed exactly one semester before taking our kids out.

The reason is pretty simple. School A follows a very unorthodox curriculum and has an intense ideological lean. I’ll never forget going to pick up one day, and a giant group of kids were outside performing a mock protest. They were marching around and chanting, while the teachers watching were beaming at them and telling the parents how proud they were of their “little citizens.” We’re talking about a bunch of 6-8 year old kids who clearly did not understand the buzzwords they were shouting. Meanwhile, my kids weren’t learning math. We felt this was inappropriate for a public school.

This brings us to the two other nearby schools, School B and School C.

We initially applied to School B. It’s the most traditional elementary school, it has a “gifted and talented” magnet program, and is extremely highly rated. There are more applicants than seats at School B, so they use a weighted lottery to decide who gets in. As a new family to the district, my kids had not been assessed for the GT program, and it was also a few blocks further away (so not our closest school), so we didn’t get any “preference” in that lottery. One child got in, the other two did not.

We ended up enrolling in School C because they all got in.

School C is a public charter. They focus on raising student ambitions. They wear uniforms and emphasize discipline. And the school is much more racially and socioeconomically diverse than School A or School B. I don’t have data on the school, but it seems that every racial group in Denver is proportionally represented. The range of family incomes is also wide.

We see this as a huge benefit. While School A preached social justice, all the kids were white and somewhere between middle class and rich. School C doesn’t teach about racial tensions or social justice much, if at all. Instead, the kids get a lived experience that’s egalitarian and nearly “colorblind.” The only drawback of this is that School C is not rooted in the neighborhood. As far as I can tell, about 1/3 of the students live nearby, while 2/3 commute in. The school looks like a cross-section of the Denver metro area because it is.

Our kids have had a good experience at School C. They’ve done well academically, and we feel they’ve benefitted immensely from making friends of all different backgrounds.

But this school choice season, we’re waiting to hear if we got into School B. The kids are qualified for the GT magnet now. They’ve complained about being bored in class, and School C doesn’t have a more challenging track available. We’re hoping the advanced program at School B will be fun and engaging for them, and we see some upside of meeting a new group of kids who mostly live nearby. At the same time, we’re anxious about how it will work out, and feel it’s a loss for our children to move to a less diverse school.

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Now, we’ve discussed there being three schools in the neighborhood, but there are also neighborhood kids who commute out of the neighborhood for school. There are many reasons. Schools often have niche programs the parents are interested in. Or perhaps they started at a school across town when they lived nearby, and now they’ve moved but don’t want to change. Or the school across town is easier for the parents’ work logistics. Beyond the public schools, there are also plenty of private schools in the area. And to round it out, we know a few families in the neighborhood who homeschool.

One part of me see this and thinks, “this is what human freedom looks like, and that’s a good thing!” But as a parent who is very invested in my neighborhood, I also find that there’s a downside. My kids have friends in the neighborhood, but they don’t know a large percentage of the children who live close by. They all go to different schools.

I see two dilemmas here, and I find myself really torn.

(1) A lot of demand for school choice ends up being ideological.

We always wanted to put our kids in the neighborhood school. But when that school is more focused on encouraging activists than teaching multiplication… we can’t do it. To me, that school has broken trust. From the conversations I have with other parents, this seems to be a widespread problem.

School choice gives parents a chance to find a school they can trust. But on the other hand, it seems to create incentives for schools to actively tailor themselves to a particular ideology to attract parents and keep enrollment up. That in turn creates a huge burden on parents to find a school they feel is trustworthy. And it seems all but certain to me that this sorting must make polarization and tribalism worse over the long run, as people self-isolate into echo chambers. When we have fewer reasons to rub up against neighbors whose views differ from our own, we get less practice talking across differences, which makes us less civil!

(2) Commuting to school leaves the neighborhood weaker.

The school has historically been one of the core civic institutions in most neighborhoods, a common ground that brings families together and fosters relationships.

As most parents will tell you, you end up being friends with the parents of your kids’ friends. Kids are just so good at making friends, they pull you along for the ride. And that’s a lot of fun! But commuting across town for structured play dates is not fun, nor is having lonely kids who rarely see their favorite friends.

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Working through all of this, I reflect back to my childhood school experiences. In elementary school, we lived in a rural area and drove to a small, private school on the other side of the nearby town. I ended up homeschooling for middle school. Then we moved to Texas and I went to the local public high school.

I think the private school was fine, but I was too young to remember much about it. What I do remember is that I liked my school friends, but rarely saw them — they lived too far apart.

What I remember about homeschooling was that I had a blast racing through the subjects that interested me, but I got behind in the ones that didn’t. I also remember being very lonely.

My public school was bland, boring, and not academically challenging. But it wasn’t polarizing. It was the local school, and everyone who lived nearby went there.

It’s almost like, if we just had one school, and all the kids went there, and it was academically rigorous, and non-ideological… that would be pretty great for the kids and the community. But that isn’t how it ever was for me growing up. I know that a few places (and schools) like that exist, but we’ve had public schools for a century, and we clearly don’t know how to guarantee they turn out like this.

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I wrote this essay because it’s something I’m thinking about a lot this time of year, but I don’t have a critique, a recommendation, or an answer.

The system in Colorado seems to work in the sense that I don’t really hear neighborhood parents tell me they’re considering moving just for the schools.¹ That seems like a win! But it’s also a shame that there are obviously so many kids in the neighborhood who never meet, thanks to the “school commuter” lifestyle they live.

I think this is just a legitimately hard social problem. And for those of us who self-identify as urbanists, and care deeply about the vitality of our neighborhoods, I’m not sure it’s a problem we grapple with enough.

1. When I hear people considering moving out it’s almost always about wanting a bigger house than they can afford this close in.