School Choice is Expanding like Never Before—Now Comes the Real Test
School choice is sometimes sold as a cure-all for underperforming public schools, other times it is deemed ineffective and a siphon of public resources. Both can be true, but this debate misses the point: school choice is not a guarantor of student success, nor was it ever intended to be. Its purpose is to provide choices, and most agree that choice is good. Not all choices will be good, to be sure. Indeed, there are poor-performing charter and private schools, just as there are ineffective district schools. When systems with school choice features fail, we ought to blame and reform the choices—they are clearly of poor quality—not ban the freedom to choose. It is grossly undemocratic to suggest otherwise.