Choice, of Schools

Christopher Lubienski

School choice is a popular K–12 reform concept based on the idea that positioning families as consumers empowered to select between different educational options can lead to any of a number of desirable outcomes. Practices such as open enrollment, magnet schools, interor intradistrict choice, charter schools, and voucher plans are examples of policies that allow for the selection of schools by students and/or parents. School choice is advanced by different reform groups for different reasons, including efforts to improve academic achievement, limit rising costs, liberate choice, empower communities, assert parental authority over schooling, decrease segregation based on social characteristics, and inspire innovation and competition between schools. As a school reform endeavor, school choice has been relatively controversial in terms of advocacy, opposition, and outcomes. Rather than mandating specific practices for schools to follow, the power of school choice is that it tends to rely on structural changes in governance, where ...

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