School Choice

creating a Diversity of approaches to Educating Kids

for Fractally Generative Pattern Language

Context

• We want our kids to end up as young Agency-filled adults capable of Making A Living, understanding the universe, dealing appropriately with their fellow humans, and being responsible citizens of an Open Society. (Goal Of Educating Kids)

Forces

• education is a Wicked problem
  • people don't agree on the goal of schooling
  • people don't agree on how to improve the outcomes
  • so a Monoculture seems like a bad structure to use
• see Educating Kids for a long list of other forces

Solution

• meta/goal: increase Diversity of structures/styles/goals
• reduce frequency of Standardized Test-ing.
• School Choice: have enough liquidity in the market to let students change school any year, have the funding follow the student.
• maximize Power and Accountability at the Principal level.
• make more Public Schools into Small Schools (Shopfront Schools), make it easier to start/close a school (Red Tape)
• bring back Vo-Tech and ApprenticeShip programs
• allow/support Home-School and UnSchooling models
• challenge/barrier: how accredit unconventional schools so that they can accept School Vouchers?
  • the original Sudbury School used to be accredited but no longer is.
  • dealing with individual Home-School-ers is even messier, with states varying a lot in their tolerance.
  • Tax Dollars For Religious Schools?
• challenge: how allow some money to go toward Virtual Learning and Educational Technology (e.g. a non-free Personal Learning Environment)
  • have the primary school pay for it - but will they resist?
  • let student/parent allocate?
    • accredit resources - like with Text-Book-s - way too much overhead/delay?
    • maybe a limited slush budget for "semi-accredited" resources?
• challenge: what about "undesirable" students? Will they get left out, or warehoused? (Would that be a change?)
  • their voucher would be worth as much as anyone else's
    • for disabled kids, they'd probably have a higher voucher amount
      • 13% of Public School kids currently categorized as disabled?
      • Special education, which requires speech pathologists, psychologists and trained teachers, and sometimes special facilities and equipment, can cost four times more than general education. Federal funds only cover a fraction of the extra expense. Public Schools of Philadelphia, for example, spent $9,100 per regular education pupil in 2009, $14,560 per pupil with milder disabilities and $39,130 for more severe disabilities, according to a consultant's report that compared special education costs. Other districts cited report similar numbers: Los Angeles Unified spent $6,900 to school a regular education student, $15,180 for a pupil with milder disabilities and $25,530 for a child with significant needs.
      • at the other end, should TAG kids get more money than average kids?
• other challenges/recommendations - see School Reform