<p>What do you think about it?
Does choice mean student/parent or combination thereof?
I feel strongly that input from the student should be strongly considered.
I attended an alternative high school, starting in 11th grade, in the suburbs ( my comprehensive high school began at 10th), H attended a smaller comprehensive high school in the city.
Our oldest attended the private prep that was connected to her middle school ( although at high school, we did research other options) & my youngest attended a large urban public after attending a tiny public alternative school.</p>
<p>Our school district has dissimilar high school opportunities for students. Few alternative choices & while the district states that 10% of seats will be held for those outside the school zoned area, that is not true for the most popular of the schools.</p>
<p>SOme in the district feel that all schools should be alike enough that they present similar options, others feel that isn't realistic and schools should be transparent about their strengths & since public transportation is used in high school, that more students should have choice.</p>
<p>What does your district do? are there choices?
What about " re-entry" programs or troubled kids- what resources are available?
Do schools have different graduation rates?
Rates of college preparedness?</p>
<p>Our city has few families compared to others of its size & fewer still that use the public school- still our schools still have good choices for some students & I along with many others are trying to fight to improve them so that they don't devolve into a dumping ground for kids who don't have any place else to go.</p>
<p>I think paying more attention to what kids are saying about the place they want to learn will help to serve more students.
I hope.</p>
<p>emerald, are you asking whether we think that districts should offer choice, or are you asking whether, in the context of school choice, students, as opposed to parents, should be the ones to make the decision?
What kind of choice does your district offer and how is it operationalized? Are you in an urban district?
Our urban district offers some choice in the form of magnets. The enrollment for these is by lottery, except for the creative and performing arts school where it is by audition or portfolio.
Answering the question about whether the students should be the ones to decide: I think that it depends on the student, but I believe that most 14 year olds need major guidance with this. When this guidance doesn’t come from parents, it needs to come from teachers. My daughter is a teacher in NYC where there is lots of choice and she puts a great deal of effort into helping the students with this. Her school consists of economically disadvantaged students.
For my own kids, I really steered them toward what I thought was right for them, and they thank me for it. My oldest daughter would have been happy attending our neighborhood school at the time, which had only 11 high achieving students in her grade. The rest of the school was extremely low achieving. I steered her toward a magnet program within another school which is not only larger, but has about 33% extremely high achieving, and another 33% pretty high achieving, while another 33% is very low achieving. Her magnet program only involved one or two classes a day, with the rest of the classes with the 33% high achievers. I just thought that she should have more of an academic peer group. We then moved, so that this school became our neighborhood school and the rest of the kids went there. My youngest daughter really wanted to try for the creative and performing arts school, and I did not let her. It is a fine school with good academic programs. But, I saw that many of the white kids were making a “Goth” or “Emo” appearance. The African American kids appeared more grounded. But, we are white and the kids unfortunately self-segregate. I know that I may be unfairly judging by appearance, but I just thought that this appearance was an indicator, and I did not want my daughter in that atmosphere. So, she went to the same school as the others, and now thanks me for this. I have since heard from parents whose kids really wanted to go to the arts school but then transferred from the arts school to their neighborhood school, with the social aspects as being the main reason. My daughter has now totally rejected colleges that she saw as “dominated by hipsters”. “It’s not that I have anything against hipsters, but I don’t want the whole culture dominated by them,” she says.
Regarding the other question, about whether districts should offer choice, this is a much more complicated question. On the one hand, I see how crazy and anxious this makes everyone in NYC. On the other hand, I think that some alternatives are good. On the other hand, I hate to see people move out of the district because they either didn’t get their choice, or the population of their “home school” becomes much lower achieving or has increased fights and problems because of choice. In an ideal world, all schools would be great and we wouldn’t have to deal with this.</p>
<p>Emerald, in answering your other questions, our district does vary greatly in its high schools. When all this reform is done, we will probably end up with about four comprehensive high schools with smaller magnet programs within them , a science and technology magnet, a creative and performing arts magnet, a neighborhood school with single gender academies that other students can also choose , a neighborhood school with a university affiliation that other students can also choose, a neighborhood school that is a “teacher academy” school where master teachers and new teacher “residents” teach (courtesy of our Gates grant), a neighborhood school with community college affiliation, and an International Baccalaureate magnet school. Career and technical education will be scattered among the schools. Of these schools, the single gender academy school, the university affiliation school, the community college school, and the teacher academy school have, in the past, had the lowest graduation rates, lowest college attendance and lowest achievement. The creation of these new programs is an effort to turn them around. The highest achieving school is one of the comprehensive schools, with a small magnet program within it.
With our new governor and reprehensible budget cuts to education, though, who knows where we will end up?
I always say, “If we had infancy reform, we wouldn’t need high school reform.” In other words, I think that infancy and early childhood accounts for most of the disparity.</p>
<p>Surely, there must be at least a few other urban public school parents out there who can comment on this thread! I think that this is a good way to find out what is being done across the country - I sometimes do research this by going to the websites of urban school districts, but can’t always appreciate the subtleties of processes that way.
emerald, do you think if you renamed it, it might attract more answers? Some people might not understand this title (for example, they may think you are choosing a prep school).</p>
<p>Most kids attend their neighborhood schools, but there are also a variety of special programs, some of which are selective.</p>
<p>We moved here when my son was in middle school and my daughter was in elementary school. When my son was in 8th grade and my daughter was in 5th grade, notices arrived about how to apply to selective magnet programs for the next level. Both kids said that they didn’t want to apply to those programs; they wanted to go to their neighborhood schools. My husband and I said that this was fine. The neighborhood schools were perfectly OK.</p>
<p>A few years later, when my then-8th grade daughter got the notice about the high school programs, she decided to apply to one of them. She was admitted. We allowed her to choose whether to attend the magnet or her neighborhood high school. She chose the magnet. It worked out fine. I suspect that the other choice would have worked out fine, too.</p>
<p>But we’re lucky. We’re in a school system where the schools are good anyway. In instances where students have choices (as my daughter did), they’re choosing between good alternatives. I see no reason to get involved when my kids are choosing between good alternatives.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the district we live in has only one high school. At one point a second high school was being planned, but changes in the economy and local demographics resulted in the one high school being enlarged instead. There are charter schools in the area, though, if one is willing to drive, and we have made use of them. I believe that having alternatives and choices is important. One size does not fit all in education. Having a choice and choosing a particular school can have a tremendous positive impact on a student’s attitude toward their school and education.</p>
<p>Well, having a choice is good, but it tends to be possible only in large school systems, and large school systems have a disadvantage of their own – endless bureaucracy and inflexible rules. There seems to be an attitude of “We’ve seen this situation before, and we know how to deal with it. Here’s how it’s going to be done” rather than “Let’s work out together how to deal with this issue.”</p>
<p>You are right Marian, and some of this bureaucracy and inflexibility comes from states, which sometimes have different rules for urban districts than for suburban or rural districts. For example, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have to hire from an “eligibility list” while other districts in PA do not.
I really think that this conversation is most relevant for those of us in urban districts. In our district, we have eleven high schools, so we are not all that huge, but there is considerable variability among our high schools. This is not a function of resource allocation by the district. It is a function of the socioeconomic conditions of society, parental involvement and support, and, I strongly believe, infancy and young childhood experiences of the students who attend these schools.</p>