I recently finished reading Radical Dreamers: Race, Choice, and the Failure of American Education by Joseph Viteritti (a public policy professor at Hunter College and somewhat of a school choice historian).
I really valued the historical review of school choice policy and politics, especially because it broadened my understanding of how much more support there actually has been for school choice policy from the left (albeit in niche pockets and among selective activists) over the last forty years.
I appreciated the author's conviction that school choice should be about giving opportunity to those who don't otherwise have it (because of financial inequities in our society), and that school choice policies need to be structured to actually deliver on access.
That said, I felt like there was not only a major blind spot for the author, but also a continued commitment to ideas that underpin the fundamental failures he was otherwise attempting to diagnose.
I had to stop and reread a few sentences on page 188. The second full paragraph opens with a statement I agree with: "I describe my plan for choice as progressive because it is redistributive in purpose." But then he goes on to say, "I emphasize academic achievement because it is essential for any individual who hopes to have a productive adult life," and then ends the paragraph with, "choice is about dignity, agency, and power."
My career in education has been anchored in a reality — and among communities — that understand that the largest failings of public schooling have been its one-dimensional and militant focus on "academic achievement." Meanwhile, every adult who grows up and builds a life and career outside of academia knows how little these metrics determine their success.
"Academic achievement is essential for any individual who hopes to have a productive life." Maybe he was being slightly hyperbolic. Regardless, as someone who has stewarded environments over the last two decades that have allowed children to develop with their own choice, dignity, and agency — rather than being forced to learn the same things at the same times as everyone else — I know academic achievement to have very little to do with what determines who goes on to live a productive life.
It's possible I'm overemphasizing this assessment because it is bent toward my perspective, but I believe the latest groundswell of support for school choice (since the pandemic) is driven by different motivations (or perhaps clarified motivations) than those from the past.
An education system that thinks all five-year-old brains are ready and should be reading at the same level is doomed to create problems it can never escape. There's no way out for an education system that believes children should wake up at 6am, be separated from their parents and families for 40 hours a week, be shuffled from adult to adult (never building secure bonds with anyone), told what to do and micromanaged every moment of the day, graded and judged and praised — all in the name of good test scores.
People are wanting choice — the dignity and agency — to choose a completely different definition of education that embodies a different set of values. And I believe more and more educators are waking up (albeit slowly and in gradual ways) to the idea that young people themselves need choice in how their education unfolds and what it emphasizes.
Viteritti ends his book with: "There is nothing more oppressive than being told you have no choice." This is the fundamental cultural issue with public schooling — not just for parents in choosing a school, but for children in their lived experiences within school. In my mind, every student deserves the opportunity to dream.
The real risk for the microschool movement
It would be a huge mistake to take all of the energy and desire to redefine what a successful education should look like and funnel it all back toward standardized testing in the name of "accountability."
Public policy wonks will for sure be in this conversation over the next few years as school choice programs continue to proliferate and our compulsion to measure their impacts intensifies. We must understand that the failings of public schooling are because it is oppressive to children. In Viteritti's own words, because their experience "lacks choice, dignity, and agency."
When we start asking questions and seeking answers about the effectiveness of school choice policies, we need to understand what is driving educators and parents out of public schools in the first place. We need to look at how microschools (and yes, homeschooling) environments are leaning into a new set of cultural values that go well beyond content delivery and academic learning on compulsory timelines, but instead embrace a more holistic view of child development and a matured understanding of human psychology.
