Choicing into Choice

In an ideal world, every school in every district would be high-performing and capable of preparing students for college and careers beyond. However, this isn't the case today, and educators across the country are working to solve this. In the meantime, many school districts utilize a "choice" system. This system allows families to "choice into" a school that is not in their zone. The hope is that this system can provide students with the opportunity to enroll in a high-performing school if their neighborhood school is not.

Denver Public Schools has recently transitioned to using a single form for all students who wish to choice into a school that is not their zoned school. Depending on the admission processes for these schools, students can be enrolled via a lottery, performance, or first-come first-serve basis until the seats in the school are filled. Of course, students residing within the school's zone receive automatic admission, and the number of seats available after that depends on the capacity of the school and how many students from within the zone choose to enroll.

In theory, choice seems like a pretty good temporary solution to the public education crisis. To be honest, I don't think I can come up with a better way to ensure that as many students as possible are getting access to a good education while we work to fix the system as a whole. But I'm starting to realize that "choice" isn't as widely accessible as it seems. 

The first stipulation to this system is that students can physically transport themselves to the school. Most public schools provide transportation to students residing within their zones, but when students choice into a school outside of their zone, they become responsible for transporting themselves there and back. If the student has parents with access to cars and flexible work schedules, this isn't a problem - but then again, these aren't the students that the "social justice" aspect of the choice system hopes to serves. For many, choicing into a school means utilizing public transportation. This has many underlying issues, from unaffordability, to weather hostility, to just being a general time-suck. In my high school, it wasn't uncommon for students to leave their homes two hours before school started, take three or four buses, and still miss part of their first period. And this is assuming that they could afford the $35/month bus pass. Is choice possible for all? Yes, maybe. But is it realistic for most students? Absolutely not.

To get a taste of this system, my class had to take public transportation to our school placements this morning. For my classmate, Hannah, and me, this was a six minute direct bus ride downtown. But for others in my class, it meant leaving at 6:30 a.m., taking a bus and the Light Rail, and walking a significant distance. I'm not going to interrupt this intellectual prose with the photo of Hannah and me on the bus, but if you want a laugh, be sure to check out the picture at the bottom of this post.

Eagle Rock School, which my class had the opportunity to talk with today, takes an alternative route to the choice system. They eliminate the transportation factor altogether by requiring all students to live in dorms on campus. The school and professional development center, sponsored by American Honda, has a campus in Estes Park, Colorado. The high school, which is 100% tuition-free, accepts students via an application who demonstrate a lack of engagement in their current high school situation, a financial need, and a commitment to their education at Eagle Rock. While the school truly does open up the "choice" factor for students to whom it would otherwise be inaccessible, it relies on a great deal of student drive. For teenagers who don't demonstrate the same commitment to turning around their education, it is essentially not an option. So how else can we reengage this demographic and serve them equally?

Like I said, I don't have another solution for our need to provide students with an equal education while we are reforming public schools. And I do think that choice is founded on the right principles. The question now is how to make these choice-based systems equally accessible. This comes with transportation innovations, but also manners in which to inform families about the options that they have.

Oh yeah, and then there's the issue of ensuring that there are enough seats in high-performing schools for all students.

Eliza and Hannah ride the RTD bus to DDES; Eliza makes awkward face