School choice and focus option programs are at the very root of the problems facing PPS. The District has a duty and obligation to provide good schools in every neighborhood. Instead, PPS has expended an inordinate amount of time, energy, and resources attempting to compete with private schools for students whose parents want a "special" program for their child, and don't mind commuting across town to get it. Meanwhile, parents in neighborhoods with under-resourced neighborhood schools are driven to transfer out of their neighborhood. It is a completely misdirected and unconscionable strategy.
PPS' duty is to the great mass of students, not to a select few. In the end, open enrollment and focus option schools promote inequality. The affluent few get to choose, but everyone else is left behind. Neighborhood schools become the schools of last resort, the schools you go to when you have no choice.
We need an open and honest public debate about this ruinous policy of school choice and open enrollment. The only logical outcome of the current policy is the shuttering of poor-perfoming schools in marginal neighborhoods, as the Darwinian competition for students favors schools located in affluent neighborhoods. The only kids left in the decimated schools are from families who can't afford to take advantage of choice. It is a vivid illustration of Bush's America, where some have the good life and the rest are left behind.