Student Choice, Not School Choice

President's Corner

LOVE PUBLIC education because it provides every child access to an education that prepares him or her to be a contributing member of our communities, our country and the world.

Public schools are the backbone of our democracy. They don’t choose their students, as may be the case with some private and charter schools. Rather, public schools provide an opportunity for every student to choose public education.

If our discussions about innovation and quality education center on school choice, we are missing the mark completely. Those discussions focus on the school and what the school offers all students. To advance a quality education, we must focus on personalized learning, which is student-centered, not school-centered.

Student Choice
The Dysart Unified School District in Arizona has 24 schools and an alternative program designed to meet students’ educational needs. The elementary schools not only offer comprehensive programs, but also include some unique areas of concentration, such as international studies, coding immersion, performing arts, STEM, academic acceleration and innovation.

Dysart’s comprehensive high schools house signature programs that expand learning pathways, such as engineering, architecture, cyber security, culinary arts, International Baccalaureate and various other options. Dysart also has an online school and an alternative program.

Students can take advantage of all these choices in one public school district, where staff members personalize education for all students by engaging them in their learning and helping them tap into their interests to enhance that learning. Educators throughout the district are providing flexibility and support around pace, place, passion and space.

Dysart is not alone in this innovation. Two other examples of visionary leaders who are part of AASA’s Personalized Learning Cohort, Karen Gaborik, superintendent of Fairbanks North Star Borough School District in Alaska, and Jeff Dillon, superintendent of the Wilder School District in Idaho, are driving the changes in their school communities to personalize education. They are participants in a public school movement across this country dedicated to transforming education.

Personalized Approach
If we want the focus to be on choice and innovation, we must stop pretending that the category of school — public, charter and private — determines which is the better option. The choice of school is not the key to a quality education. Rather, we must personalize education for each child. That is how we truly provide choice and drive innovation.

The work we must do to redefine a college- and career-ready graduate and redesign the students’ learning environment leads us to the path of personalizing education to sup-port student success. As we continue to reimagine education to meet the needs of the 21st-century learner, we have to move from school choice, an institution-centered approach, to personalization, a student-centered approach to education.

The only real discussion we should have about school choice is how to meet the needs of each and every learner and how to ensure our educational systems are preparing our students for their future. Investing in our public schools and supporting the 3R work ensures every student in our nation will have the choice of a quality public education.