The Problem With Parent Power

The voucher crowd is crowning about "parent power." 

The folks at Jeanne Allen's Center for Education Reform have been emailing about how the new federal vouchers buried in the Big Baloney Bill will boost parent power. They even run a webiste that tracks the "Parent Power Index."

Politicians and policy folks want to talk about giving parentsn more power in education. "Let's return the power over education to the parents," the pitch goes.

But there's a huge problem with that.

Let's consider two sets of parents. The Gotrox family of four includes two children, one parent who can afford to staya at home, and one parent with e high-end six figure income. They have two cars, a beautiful home, and plenty of resources. The Dodger family of four includes two parents who both work, one car, an apartment that is always waiting for one kind of repair or another, and at least one family member struggling with health issues.

So here's my question. Do these parents have the same amount of power?

CER argues we need parent power "because no family's income level, zip code, or child's level of academic achievement should dictate education opportunity." 

But choice policies do not fix any of these limits on parent power. In fact, the choice policies reformsters pursue make things worse.

"Parent power" means "parent responsibioity." It's a system that tells parents, "The responsibility is nyours. We're throwing it back on parent power, by which we mean just and only your parent power. The power of community and government will not be involved."

Choic e programs have been sold on the notion that only choice can fix the power imbalance between certain parents, but in practice, that's not how it works. Vouchers are used mostly by the Gotrux famnilies to keep sending their children to exclusive private schools. For the masssive power imbalance between the Gotrux and Dodger families, choice policies offer pretty much nothing.

There are ways that a choice system could address the power imbalance. They could, for instance, index vouchers so that the more your familiy needs, the more you get. But that would involve a fairly large transfer of wealth from the rich to the not-so-rich, and that's what many folk$ dislike about the current public system-- paying tax dollars to educate Those People's Children. 

The choice system could require private schools that accept taxpayer-funded vouchers to drop all of their discriminatory practices. But that would involve letting Those Peoples' Children into exclsive shiny schools part of whose appeal is that Those Peoples' Children can't get in.

Or, you know, we could try to provide schools with the resources they need to thrive and succeed, all of them connected to a networked system that guarantees every child in the country a shot at a decent education. We could call it a shared community and society responsibility. But again, that would involve wealthy people paying taxes that would be used to benefit Those Peoples' Chidren.

But that's not what these folks are aiming for . When Trump announces that Fed Gov has been running our Ed System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE,” what that means is that every person, every parent has to rely on the power they themselves have, however mnore or less that may be than the power other possess.

Mind you, these folks know all this. These are the folks that believe that in society, some people are just better than others, and it is not ust okay, but desireable for society to be sorted into different levels and statuses. Schools should not equalize, but sort. Parents with less power should not get to enjoy the same privileges as parents with more power. Ditto their kids. 

Parents have different amounts of power, and valorizing parent power is valorizing those power differences. It is valorizing inequity, an unsurprising stance in a country where praising equity is against Dear Leader's decree. 

So when you hear praise of "parent power," ask which parents, and what kind of power, and how much of that power, and do you rightly understand that the idea is for some parents to have more power than others. Are we talking about giving wealthy parents the power to tell poor parents, "Your kids are your responsibility, not mine, so go away and do it on your own."

This is a bad idea, not juts because it is so deeply committed to inequity and self-centeredness, but because, like so many other policies under this regime, it is shortsighted, as if chasing away scientists and chasing away immigrants and only providing the very best education to those who can afford it on their own--as if all of that won't lead to a future lacking the kind of people we need make this country work. Education for everyone is not just a service to parents, but a service to the entire country.