Five Myths About School Choice By Casey Given This week is
National School Choice Week, a celebration of the efforts to
ensure every child in this United States has access to effective
education. School Choice Week presents a great opportunity to
counter the misinformation spread about the struggle to expand
disadvantaged students’ educational opportunities. Here are five
myths about the school choice movements that its opponents love
to circulate: 1. School choice is a radical idea. Every state in
the union has some sort of school choice program today – be it
charter schools, opportunity scholarships, private school tax
credits, etc. Even blue state bastions like California and New
York have some of the strongest charter school laws in the
nation, hosting hundreds of these innovative schools. Clearly
school choice has a bipartisan coalition of support that crosses
geographic boundaries and is in the mainstream of education
reform. 2. Charter schools perform worse than public schools.
Over the past two decade