School Choice

This is a controversial topic in the US. Teachers’ unions fight this every time the politicians bring it up. The reasoning is that school choice creates the pressure necessary for schools to raise their performance. ‘Their’ performance means students’ performance, of course. After all, a school’s performance is not separate from a student’s performance.

This would be right if school performance was the result of only the efforts of teachers and students during the 6 hours that they are in school. We know this is not true. School performance also has a lot to do with what the kids gain at home. The socio-economic and educational levels of the parents determine the success of the child much more than the school environment. This is clearly demonstrated in the US, where schools in socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhoods consistently perform poorly.

In India too, there is now talk of allocating spots for socio-economically disadvantaged students in all schools. Quite predictably, the teaching establishment is reacting in a similar way in India too.

I am a special education teacher who strongly believes in an inclusive teaching environment. I want my students with disabilities to have access to the curriculum and resources that typically developing students take for granted. This thinking would also apply to economically disadvantaged students. They too should have access to the curriculum and resources that is typically available to all. It is to the advantage of such students to have exposure to a learning environment where the bar is set high, where students are expected to challenge themselves, where excellence is the norm rather than a novelty, and where well-stocked libraries and laboratories open up a world of wonder for them. I am forever crusading for my students to learn in such an environment.

However, I can also see the flip side. The advantage to our target students is easy to see. But, what about the schools? Can they continue to be excellent when the student demographic changes? Teaching homogeneous classes is far easier than teaching mixed groups of kids.

Teaching students who come from stable families, with educated parents, and a rich cultural tradition that values learning is very different from teaching students who have no academic support at home, who might be expected to work at jobs or chores after school, who have neither a place nor time to do homework, who don’t sleep well at night due to multiple, crying siblings, the list goes on. Put these two groups together, and it could very well be a teacher’s nightmare.

Teaching a heterogeneous classroom is a skill that has to be taught in teacher training programs before any legislation is enacted. Expecting untrained teachers to work miracles without equipping them to do so is bad policy. Putting the cart before the horse can hardly be wise.