In this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Tamar Jacoby wrote about a recent high school graduate working at becoming a construction contractor—not as a last resort but as a deliberate career choice. Via his story and those of others seeking out quality career and technical education, Jacoby made the case for improving postsecondary options other than four-year degrees. She names three requirements of paths toward upward mobility—entry ramps at the ground level, training that leads to a job, and alignment to economic needs—and argues that as a nation, we should begin by showing more respect for practical training.
An analysis by WBEZ found that Chicago’s school-choice arrangement results in a system that sorts students into separate high schools based on their achievement levels. This leaves education leaders with a tough choice. On one hand, evidence suggests that low achievers benefit from having high achievers in their classrooms (at least if the differences aren’t too great), and under a system in which high achievers are placed in a school of their own, low achievers will lose out on these peer effects. But on the other hand, the same peer effects also lead these high achievers—most of whom are low income, in Chicago at least—to miss out on challenging instruction that could push them to go far. It is abundantly clear that high-performing, low-income students have been getting the short end of the stick for some time, including the belief that they ought to serve as a resource to low-achieving peers—an expectation that is seldom placed on well-off peers.
In an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch, Fordham’s Jessica Poiner addresses the recent lawsuit brought by School Choice Ohio against Cincinnati Public Schools and Springfield City Schools, in response to their shameful circumvention of public-records laws in order to prevent families from knowing about their school-choice options. She writes that rather than fearing the healthy competition that school choice engenders, school districts ought to embrace it. Competition advances academic outcomes, for it is one mechanism that drives public schools to improve. What’s more, it’s the American way.
