For the Poor, School Choice Is Next to No Choice at All : Education: A system that creates ‘multitiered and unequal opportunities’ is not an option the Latino community can afford.

Why has the national Latino education leadership been so quiet on the subject of school choice?

To answer that question, place yourself in a typical classroom in almost any school where Latino children are the majority. Now imagine yourself answering a set of true/false questions:

1) My class is small; 2) My classroom has enough desks for everybody; 3) My classmates all have their own textbooks; 4) My school environment is safe; 5) My instructors are regular, fully credentialed teachers; 6) My teachers think I’m smart and encourage me; 7) My classes are interesting and demanding; 8) My school has excellent instructional resources; 9) My school has a strong academic reputation.

If you answered true to more than three of these questions you are the exception.

California’s 1974 Seranno vs. Priest decision, which mandated equal spending limits per pupil, did not alter the pattern of inequitable distribution of educational resources, nor did the education-reform movement of the past decade result in significant improvements in the conditions of schooling and the achievement levels of Latino students.

Latinos did not become politically empowered during the past decade, and therefore have not been able to make education policy and influence the delivery of educational services.

In the past, Latinos were not significant participants in the national education agenda. The debate over school choice offers us an opportunity to change this.

Secretary of Education Lauro Cavazos has proclaimed that “choice empowers people by bringing them into the decision-making process. It encourages teachers and principals to become entrepreneurs and structure their curriculum and standards; students are encouraged to become learners with options that direct and capture their interest, and parents become involved as decision-makers.”

Gov. Rudy Perpich of Minnesota, in whose state open enrollment made its debut, declares that “Families can make a choice about where to send their kids to school. School boards will have to respond to the market forces, whereas before they didn’t have to.”

But Ann Bastian, of the New World Foundation, argues that “choice . . . is not a quick fix for school improvement. There is nothing in the choice concept that makes it automatically achieve such goals as quality, diversity and democracy.”

Donald Moore, author of a study on school choice (“The New Improved Sorting Machine”), states: “In many instances, public-school choice is becoming a new form of segregation, creating multitiered and unequal educational opportunities.”

Who and what to believe?

In its principal manifestation (magnet schools), school choice does not provide better educational opportunities for all students. Rather, it reinforces inequities and stratification. In Lake Wobegon, Garrison Keillor tells us, all the children are above average. One would assume that all the schools of that imaginary community are, too. But what meaning does choice have if the schools in one’s community are bad or mediocre? If above-average schools are geographically inaccessible? Or if choice is restricted to above-average students?

Moreover, the analogy linking commerce and school choice, however appealing, is flawed. Latino purchasing power, for example, has not resulted in high-quality goods and services at lower prices in Latino neighborhoods.

School choice would be a significant option if Latinos were both economically and politically empowered. Until we are empowered, however, we must not allow the marketing efforts of school-choice proponents to distract us from the real and substantive tools that we must have to improve the education of all our children: small teacher-student ratios; good facilities; safe learning environments; substantive curricula; good instructional resources, and teachers, counselors and administrators with appropriate preparation and high expectations for their students. These can and should be provided to all children in all of America’s schools.