Its time to stop with the false choices on school choice - By Rahm Emanuel

[DonViejo]

Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat, is mayor of Chicago. He served as White House chief of staff from 2009 to 2010.

By nominating voucher and charter school advocate Betsy DeVos to be his education secretary, President-elect Donald Trump has ignited another round of debate over school choice. Yet as cable-news talking heads argue about whether or what kind of school reform is needed in the United States, parents are having a different discussion at the kitchen table — one based on finding the best school, not whether it’s a “reform” school.

Promoting choice at the expense of quality isn’t an education strategy, it’s a political agenda. Rather, those of us creating education policy need to simply focus on providing the quality choices that students deserve.

We have seen successes when choice and quality have been pursued together. Some public charter schools, such as the Noble Network and Urban Prep in Chicago, have boosted graduation rates and increased college enrollment for low-income students of color. Noble’s graduation rate is above 80 percent, and 100 percent of Urban Prep’s 2016 graduates were college-bound.

Despite charter success stories such as these, however, most children will continue to enroll in their local neighborhood school. We need to ensure that those schools are providing a high-quality education, too.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-time-to-stop-with-false-choices-on-school-choice/2016/12/16/24c28050-c24d-11e6-9578-0054287507db_story.html?utm_term=.f77e995d76de&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1