It is interesting to see just how active discussions are on the subject of teachers’ pay and performance remuneration, but so little on the issue of parents and families being able to exercise choice in the matter of the schooling of their children.

Yet in a way the two are related. If parents were given the infamous voucher, and were able to choose the school they would prefer their children to be educated in, in way it becomes another form of performance appraisal at a more macro level.

I know the author hasn’t mentioned vouchers, but it would be one logical step on from the acknowledgment of real choice.

It is true, as a parent I have been encouraged to have my say, but the option of “exiting” to make a point hasn’t ever really been an option.

Caedmon

I'm not sure about vouchers. I would like to see some genuine modelling done to test how this concept might work in Australia. It appeals at a hypothetical level but our systems are huge compared to the geographic and demographic magnitudes of district systems in the US.

I do believe in choice, but this is always temprered by issues like transport for instance. I might choose a school, but unfortunately I can't get there. I am not sure that vouchers cover those sorts of costs.

I have linked voice and choice, because until a mechansim allows parents real choice, they should at the very least have a voice that should be listened to in the school their child attends.

I have intellectually gifted children who could not get their needs met in the public comprehensive system. My children couldn't choose to go to a Selective School despite the fact that they had been identified highly gifted by the Department of Education themselves and the comprehensive system struggled to meet their needs.

My children tried to apply for out of area placement in local out of area schools that might better meet their identified educational and social needs, they were high achieving, polite, respectful students and citizens who also excelled in sport and they were unsuccessful for an offer for placement in all these public schools. Even with requests for special consideration due to exceptional circumstances.

The system is choosing the students and that gives them power. Power to segregate, bully, victimize and payback those that they don't like or that speak out.

From my experience there is a particular dislike by some of certain groups, gifted children being one of them, outspoken parents being another.

If only I had a voucher!

http://jolandachallita.typepad.com/education/
Our children deserve better.

As an experienced teacher, I am not entirely sure about parent choice. Education has always been a way that a child had the oppotunity to "fly" - to achieve more than his or her parents. To have a new world of ideas and thoughts revealed. Would "choice" mean the child become trapped in the world - view adopted by his or her parents?
And voice - in my observation "parent voice" sometimes means the school office staff, who hold the executive positions on the PnC and who simply echo the ideas presented to them by the principal, their employer.
Would parents be attracted to the sort of smiley, relaxed teachers who keep children happy and calm with lots of colouring-in and low-educational-value "projects"?
Would we be giving parents the right to choose less - less education, more entertainment - for their children?
The Bad Apple Bullies website supports teachers who are dealing with workplace bullying, harassment, mobbing, discrimination and victimisation or "payback". Teachers can be put into a punishment program for engaging in this sort of professional discussion.

There is no longer any debate over whether parents want choice (they do) and whether they are more satisfied with their child’s education once empowered to exercise choice (they are).

Mounting research in the US shows that parents both want and know how to make informed choices for their children’s education. Studies over the past seven years from school-choice experiments, including the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, Dayton PACE Program, New York School Choice Scholarships Program, San Antonio CEO Horizon Scholarship Program, and Washington Scholarship Fund, show that choice can be an engine for parental involvement.

These studies indicate that parents with children in choice programs attend more school activities, volunteer more in their children’s schools, communicate more with teachers, and help more with homework.

On virtually every measure tested – school safety, discipline, instructional quality, teacher skills, respect for teachers, class size, and school facilities – parents are overwhelmingly more satisfied with their chosen school than with their given (zoned) school.

The public education system is the greatest barrier to parental involvement. It interferes with parents’ rights and responsibility to seek the education they believe is best for their children, and the monopolistic and paternalistic practice 'assigning' schools has fostered indifference among parents, many of whom feel little reason to pay attention when their choices are made for them.

If all parents had the financial ability to choose their child’s school, those schools would survive only if they placed students’ interests before all else. Teachers and administrators would have to improve their schools through the healthy competition that would evolve in a choice system. More important, school choice places higher expectations on parents.

Today, it is fashionable to hold parents responsible for cultivating their child’s educational and social progress, but parents have limited authority outside the home to fulfill that duty. Choice frees parents from the shackles of bureaucratic control and increases their ability to participate in their child’s overall development

On 25th October 2005, the Department for Education and Skills in the UK published the Schools White Paper "Higher Standards, Better Schools for All - More Choice for Parents and Pupils".

It says in part: "There is nothing more important than educating our children. Doing the best for their child is what every parent strives to do. And we must make sure that our school system is one that helps them to do that.

Because of the progress we have made since 1997 we can now take the next, vital steps. This White Paper sets out our plans to radically improve the system; putting parents and the needs of their children at the heart of our schools, freeing up schools to innovate and succeed, and bringing in new dynamism and new providers. We will ensure that every school delivers an excellent education, that every child achieves to their potential, and that the system is increasingly driven by parents and choice. To make that happen we need an education system that is designed around the needs of the individual – with education tailored to the needs of each child and parents having a say in how schools are run. To achieve that we need to reform schools themselves so that they have the freedoms and flexibilities to deliver the tailored, choice driven education we all want."

It would be an "education revolution" to read those words in any Australian state’s public education strategic document!!