Commentary: School Choice Week celebrates options

This commentary was submitted by Democrat Jared Polis who represents Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. Congress.

With this week’s celebrations of school choice week all across America, I remain optimistic about the great promise and opportunity of offering effective public school options for parents and students.

Chief among these are quality charter schools, which are leading the way in student achievement in so many areas in Colorado and across the country. Online learning is another important public school choice opportunity to help students succeed, whether blended, supplementary or full-time. Districts also open focus schools or magnet schools that are open equally to families across the school district.

In Colorado, as in some other states, we wisely allow students and their families to choose schools outside of their neighborhood school and even their school district. Districts can take cues from parental demand to replicate and expand successful models with waiting lists and modify or close unsuccessful schools.

With Colorado legislators getting back to work and the State Board of Education passing important rules on charter and online school issues, it is essential that state policymakers focus on sustaining the innovations of school choice, while realizing positive student outcomes. Just in the past month, we have learned that charter schools boosted student achievement growth rates in Denver Public Schools by five percent, led by such outstanding schools as the Denver School for Science and Technology and West Denver Preparatory Charter School. These schools and others like them across the country underscore why charter schools are critical to our public education system.

They are a reminder to policymakers at all levels to ensure that laws, rules and other policies facilitate student choice.

For choice to be meaningful, there also needs to be a transportation component. Choice should not mean choice only for those who have parents who can take them to a school across town. Not including busing options or transportation reimbursement risks letting choice further stratify schools by income level.

Good school choice enhances, not detracts from, our public education system because the competition helps drive traditional public schools to do better and effectively meet the wide variety of student learning needs and interests. That’s why we are seeing such a huge increase in the popularity and student enrollments in charter schools in Colorado and the U.S. Even as the country as a whole experienced a massive increase in charter school enrollment last year, Colorado ranked 8th in its increase of 8,500 students, an 11.9 percent jump. We saw the opening of 13 new charter schools in our state just last year.

In Congress, I have worked with Republicans and Democrats to infuse some of Colorado’s successful charter school policy structures into federal law by amending the one bipartisan piece of education legislation to pass the U.S. House of Representatives, the reauthorization of the federal Charter School Programs.

My bill to expand and replicate effective charter schools would codify for the first time federal investment of dollars in this effort. This legislation also includes new language that I proposed prioritizing multiple charter authorizers, such as the Colorado Charter School Institute, and autonomous charter school food services.

When a school district is the only authorizer, it can put them in a very difficult situation, because they are sometimes the approval body and regulator of what some view as their own competition. While enlightened districts have embraced choice as part of a dynamic portfolio of public schools to better serve all families, too many districts continue to see them as competition with “their” schools.

In Colorado, it is critical that lawmakers, state and local administrators and other decision-makers not back away from the progress they have made in these and other areas by restricting charter schools’ access to grants, facilities and flexible contracting for student services. This is a struggle every legislative session and one that should come into sharp focus as we recognize the benefits of school choice during school choice week.

Similarly it is essential that the fast-growing online learning environments are not shut to Colorado students. Recent data shows that some full-time online schools are struggling, and others are performing comparably to other traditional schools in the state. This should come as no surprise. Our goal should not be to stifle innovation, but rather to identify successful online practices, build and replicate them, and improve schools that are failing.

If a particular school continues to fail, fewer parents will choose such a failing model resulting in its closure, but policymakers should not eliminate or suppress the entire online model. Some struggles in this emerging field are to be expected in the early years of any new model, especially when it involves technology and particularly when many online students have failed in traditional learning environments. Full-time online and part-time online learning can be an ideal setting for at-risk students and others who learn better with this approach. Additionally, blended online and supplemental online learning are helping students access classes that were previously unavailable to them. Technology and choice in general are supporting student achievement, and should be nurtured not weakened.

While the House considers the recently released Republican education accountability and teacher effectiveness bills, it would serve members well to remember the outstanding bipartisan work on the charter school act just four months ago, so this essential piece of legislation does not languish during partisan bickering and inaction. Children cannot afford stagnation, and the federal government has a critical and constructive role to play in empowering parents across our nation to make the best choices for their child.

As a founder and former superintendent of charter schools in Colorado for low–income students and English language learners, I have seen first-hand how charter schools and choice can help open doors for children who otherwise would probably not be in school at all. Children succeeding in school is a make or break issue for the economic strength and competitiveness of our nation and state. Empowering all families with school choice should be honored every week in word and deed, not just this week.

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