How the teachers’ union killed D.C. school choice
Bob Ewing of the Institute for Justice has a must-read, true-life tale of how Big Labor educrats killed the D.C. school choice program.
In a nutshell, the teacher unions bought off politicians to kill a program that improved the fortunes of thousands of the poorest kids in DC:
-The program saved taxpayers millions of dollars
-Rigorous studies by the Department of Education showed the program was a huge success, improving academic performance as well as the chance that kids would graduate
-Parents loved it: Four applications were filled out for every spot available
-The teachers unions bought off politicians to help themselves at the expense of thousands of the poorest kids in DC
-If the politicians that exercise school choice themselves voted to save this school choice program, it would have been saved
-90 percent of the kids forced out of the program were reassigned to failing public schools
It’s criminal educational malpractice and, as Ewing put it, the “education debacle of the decade.”
Your teachers’ union at work.
***
Previous D.C. school choice blog posts here.
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Once again we see how the liberals love poor black children….
…..As long as they can keep them down and make money off of them.
http://hindenblog1.blogspot.com/2010/03/crash-obamas-acid-test.html
and
http://hindenblog1.blogspot.com/2010/03/crash-separate-and-unequala-study-in.html
Hey! You voters in DC. How’s that Support the Unions thing working out for your kids?
Not so good huh?
But you see, this is exactly what the left wants. They want to keep them dumb so they’ll keep voting for Dems. God forbid they get a real education, grow up and understand the truth.
And yet it appears almost every bill that come up in dc has something in it to bail out the teachers union in some form! I really do feel sorry for parents who actually want to see to it their kids gets an education are not able to because of the teachers unions wanting to save their jobs!
L
Someday, blacks will figure out liberals are their new slave masters.
Wall Street Journal opinion piece from July 7 about Milwaukee: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704535004575348980568232888.html
This disgusting saga tells us just how concerned Obama and the Deemocrats truly are for poor and minority children (which in DC are very over-lapping populations).
Well YEAH that program had to go, der, you can’t have a government approved program unless some money’s being wasted ya sillies!
meanwhile AZ Schoolboard pres says we aren’t taxed enough!!
Why anyone lives in that s###hole DC is beyond comprehension.
People will cross jungles and deserts, cross the ocean on a homemade raft to get to the land of opportunity, and these parasites just sit there crying for handouts.
sheesh
Wanted posters of public unions need to be on billboards across the country. Use their own tactics on them.
All public sector unions must be decertified. Their existence is absurd and only of value to statists and anti-American collaborators.
I find it interesting that Bob Ewing, at best, glosses over the fact that actual academic performance did not improve.
That is a “huge success”? Are we simply sending kids to schools where it is easier to graduate without achieving any real substantive knowledge?
Most unions are obsolete if not tyrannical. Time to do away with them.
Not as long as the liberals force them into the socialist indoctrination centers. That way, they are taught about the KKK, but not that the democrats started it. They’re taught that Lincoln freed the slaves, but not that he was a Republican. They’re not taught that Republican Teddy Roosevelt integrated the gov’t and that democrat Woodrow Wilson segregated it later. They’re not taught that it was the big name democrats that killed the civil rights bill in the mid-50s and then tried to do the same in the mid-60s.
All they are taught is that big gov’t gives them money, so when you grow up, vote democrat.
The root cause is the boodle these people get from being in power. So to stay in power they sell their souls to people like the unions.
We need to cut the pay of all Congressman and the President to $100,000 a year, limit their ability to correspond for political purposes with with their constituents, take away any retirement benefits, limit Congressional staffs to ten people, and put them on Medicare for their health care while in office.
They are supposed to be public servants.
Chaps; A curiously selective citation. Why not include the rest?
A nearly 1/3 increase in successful graduation seems like a “huge success” to me.
Additionally, the quality of teaching in each of these schools was not reported in your piece. It could easily be that the unionized dolts teach in both types of school at about the same proportion.
Um…I specifically acknowledged the increase in graduation rates. You know…when I said this:
If you are concerned about selective citation, you should ask why Ewing uses different studies from the one he is talking about to bolster about highly dubious claim of “improving academic performance”.
I don’t know…Maybe you think that sending kids out in the world with the same lack of knowledge !!!but now with a shiny piece of paper!!! is progress. I don’t.
Interesting math too. 28% is a lot nearer to 1/4 than it is to 1/3. Not to say that 1/4 isn’t good, but why puff up your figures?
Another thing that Chaps failed to note:
This program had extremely strong support from parents, DC education leaders, and community leaders.
It didn’t matter one whit to Obama.
There is no doubt about his level of concern for children. Not any more than his level of concern for any individual American.
So did the DC gun ban. And most, if not all, of the social programs that you no doubt object to.
Amazing how the teachers enjoy keeping their boots on the necks of the children and parents in D.C. Also interesting how the disease spreads so quickly, from the halls of congress and the white house to the teachers unions, traveling along the funding tentacles and infecting everyone with greed.
Exactly. But the unions hated it. So, it had to go.
Teachers’ unions are a monopoly and should be decertified because of that. Let the tax money follow the student; get some free enterprise into the education system and watch grades, test scores, and graduation rates go up.
As the costs plummet.
It is amazing that the Collective loves monopoly as they do.
the first 2 highlighted portions tell you all you need to know about their agenda & motivation.
The academic performance of whom?
Are lottery winners that couldn’t find a private school to take them included in those numbers?
If so, that seems like a strange way to gauge a program’s success.
Which proves the point. They were told lies that more guns means more crime. When in reality it’s More Guns, Less Crime. It’s a fact.
They supported the social programs because they were sold a bill of goods. They supported the school choice program because they saw the results!
Another reason to do away with teachers’ unions and go to a voucher system. More facts will be taught.
Successful schools = educated electorate = bad news for liberalism. Dems can’t have that.
They are, but they also took out the ones that were offered and did not take the scholarship and found consistent results.
“Someday, blacks will figure out liberals are their new slave masters.”
I’m sorry but I do not think that accurately portrays the matter. You are leaving out some key pieces or steps or dots to connect.
The dots you are leaving out are the black leaders who are the biggest culprits. There are several layers in between “liberals” and blacks in general. Many, not all, black people are being played for suckers by their own. Jeremiah Wright, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, etc., are making a ton of money off their own folks.
Its a con and a scam for which the pain of acknowledging it and taking appropriate action is higher then the pain of going along with the pretend game.
Education, abortion, black crime on crime, fatherless children, drug use, all kinds of “issues” that if looked at honestly the black community should take the likes of Sharpton and Jackson, many of the black “professors” and run them all out of town on the proverbial rail.
Won’t happen. Reality too painful.
“educated electorate”
Some of the smartest most educated people I know are liberals.
Which merely demonstrates the paradox of “voluntary stupidity”; the net result of delusional thinking/believing/feeling.
“Teachers have to make more money… for the children.” = Teachers just want more money and don’t give a crap about children.
I’m going to disagree a bit there rag. I am more willing to conclude they get to their elitism honestly.
Simply look at how quickly elitism raises its ugly head on this very forum from “conservatives”….
That “Americans are just stupid…” stuff.
Oh really? How’s that? Because “Americans” don’t vote like we conservatives think they should so if they elected Obama, “they’re” stupid which means I’m not, or anyone who votes against Obama is not.
Talk about elitist.
Do those conservative folks who feel that way, are they deluded by their feelings, beliefs and stupidity?
“Teachers just want more money and don’t give a crap about children.”
Some teachers yes, some teachers no.
If you’ve been up close to the public school system its the administrators that tend to drive the dysfunctional system.
Yes. In most states, the spending for education is at or over 50%. Yet the teachers’ unions never seem to be able to perform their one function: teach.
They’re good at lying to people and telling them how “underpaid” they are, when in reality, they are paid quite well, thank you.
As for monopolies, the liberals oppose them, unless they are gov’t monopolies. In which case they aren’t monopolies, they are necessary levels of bureaucracy to ensure that all are treated fairly.*
* everyone suffers equally with gov’t sponsored inequality.
Yet they all keep voting for democrats and love their Obama!
“its the administrators”
I’ll also add its many of the rules and regulations imposed on school systems by local, state and federal guidelines that force schools to look a certain way, even if they are not, in order to receive necessary funding.
The system is not one that at the end of the day is about teaching Johnny to read.
But the system is as it is not because most teachers don’t care about students.
My church has a lot of teachers. I can assure you they are just as frustrated as many of us are about the school system.
Teacher’s Union: “Shut up and get back on the short bus you ingrates!”
I feel you, js. Part of the problem, I think, is that we tend to use words carelessly.
Americans are not stupid. Americans ofter act stupidly, and can be frightfully ignorant. As we know, you can fix the latter, while stupid is forever.
For any of us who love this country, education is part of our duty. And I do think there is a turning tide. One thing Obama has done is provide Americans with very clear object lessons, and a sharply defined set of choices. But I am an optimist…
Really? Really???
I want to see that raw data. The report claims that it “statistically adjusted” for that. What the heck does that mean, and what did they do exactly to statistically adjust for it? Why couldn’t they simply gauge the raw data.
I smell something rotten with this Department of Education evaluation of the program.
So let me get this straight. Math and reading scores were compared between:
1) a group of students that were not offered scholarships at all; and
2) a group of students that were offered scholarships, but might not have used the scholarship at all or as little as one year?
So basically, the academic achievement of the 351 students that fully used their scholarships were diluted by the achievement of 942 students that didn’t fully utilize the program for a large variety of reasons.
chap, get back to me when I can see the math and reading scores of those 351 students that fully utilized the program. I’m sure the Dept of Ed would be very willing to release that data if they’re hit with a FOIA.
“I feel you, js. Part of the problem, I think, is that we tend to use words carelessly.”
True enough but that was not my point. My point is about the hypocrisy on the part of “conservatives” evident in connecting liberalism to keeping the masses uneducated and labeling anyone who votes for the left “stupid” and then acting like the left are the elitist.
What is on display with that kind of thought process is simple plain old envy.
I am a conservative because I know what it means and why a government that is shaped by conservative idea is the best for the most of us. I don’t need to put the left down, put chap down, etc., to be a conservative.
We are not going to move folks in this country to conservativism if the best we can do is say the left is stupid and they want to keep the masses uneducated.
I have the full 2010 report up right now, but my adobe keeps freezing on me. But it is available. And from what I have seen, it clearly breaks down the full group of “Impact of Scholarship Offer” into “Impact of Scholarship Use.”
But, even taking the entire group, wouldn’t the kids that were offered but didn’t take the scholarship have to be performing WELL, WELL below the control group for them to counteract the potentially positive movement of the much larger subgroup that did take the scholarship? I think out of the 2,300 only 300 did not take the scholarship. So, if you are starting out at average, the kids that didn’t take it would have to be doing something like 8 times worse than the kids that did take the scholarship were doing better to get back to the mean score.
When truth is spoken plainly, the putdown is sometimes inevitable. Just sayin is all.
Posted my last one before I saw your post. Is that from the full 2010 report? And are you certain that the dilution is occurring in this manner?
“adobe keeps freezing on me”
On line adobe reader and flash plug ins are having “issues”.
Want to get this straight. Are we arguing about statistics?
I think so. The issue is basically that (we believe) the study focused on the kids that were offered a scholarship rather than those that used (or fully used) the scholarship in determining that there was no significant improvement in test scores.
I am pretty sure that they break out from this main group a subgroup just focusing on the kids that actually used the scholarship. But…I am not positive of the method they are using to do this and can’t really check it right now.
jsmiddleton, I find it difficult to care about the teachers since it is their union! If it is broken, fix it. They act as though they, the teachers, are the victims when they have the strength in numbers. They could break the union stranglehold. The question is, how many teachers care enough about the children, the real victims, to fix the system? Obviously not too many. Otherwise they would break the union, open the field up to include private schools and compete on a level playing field. So cry me a frickin’ river. When the teachers show some concern for the futures of their students, not just uttering platitudes and wallowing in self-pity, I’ll try to care. For teachers who really do care, consider this a call to arms and take a stand. If you think this is too stern a rebuke, ask yourself if you are part of the solution or just part of the problem.
“When truth is spoken plainly, the putdown is sometimes inevitable. Just sayin is all.”
So if my wife’s butt does look big in those jeans its a good thing for me to tell her?
There is truth and there is truth. We can enlighten and teach about the merits of the conservative ideas without equating liberalism to being uneducated.
The problem with that approach is we’ll get our asses kicked because WE change the subject from conservative ideas to “is the left stupid”. And then the very intelligent, smart and well educated left kicks our ass.
And we do it to ourselves.
We on the right and those of us on the right as a whole are not smarter than anyone or the left as a whole. The elitism present in that kind of thinking is no different than Al Gore telling me to turn off my front porch light because he’s smarter than me about global warming.
We on the right need to keep a focus on substance, on why conservative ideas bring about a better America for the most of us. A positive plan of action that results in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…
If the best argument we have is the left wants to keep people uneducated, get ready for 4 more years of Obama.
“I think so.”
Hope you all have fun with that…..
I think we should start a statistical study group and monitor folks who argue about statistics and outcome monitoring.
I don’t know. It’s the one linked in the article you linked.
I didn’t read every word of the entire report, but I could only find the bogus comparison after a thorough review. This report definitely seems flawed. A scholarship that isn’t used isn’t costing the taxpayers much money at all. Why would the performance of those students be counted at all?
Also, your 300 out of 2,300 estimate is not even close to accurate.
Dude, you really need to fix your adobe.
This is as close as I could find (from the 2009 executive analysis).
“This analysis uses straightforward statistical adjustments to account not only for the approximately 14 percent of impact sample year 3
respondents who received the offer of a scholarship but declined to use it over the 3-year period after application (the “never users”), but also
the estimated 1.6 percent of the control group who never received a scholarship offer but who, by virtue of having a sibling with an OSP
scholarship, ended up in a participating private school (we call this “program-enabled crossover”). These adjustments increase the size of the
scholarship offer effect estimates, but do not alter the statistical significance of the impact estimate.”
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/07/08/reason-tv-the-education-renaissance-of-katrina/
That kind of tells the tale…
All I know about public schools vs. charter schools/private schools is that in AZ generally kids do better in the charter schools across the board.
Consistently the best scores for college entrance testing, etc. in Arizona of course are home schooled kids.
So if the issue is which system produces the most educated young adults as evident in testing….
Home schooled kids blow everyone else away.
Then its charter schools.
Then its public schools.
I think maybe where I misremembered is the study follows 2,300 students total (including the control) and about 300 students each year decline the scholarship.
And the adobe issue is just one small part of the the problems my computer is experiencing. Time for a new one. Just been too busy to do so.
So if a school system and local government is keeping kids from having a choice to go to charter schools or home schooling, then that local system and those local politicians are most clearly NOT about helping Johnny learn to read.
Beyond that, the statistics thing, I’ll leave to you way smarter folks.
I still have to use my fingers to see if the illegal alien working at MacDonalds gave me the right change and how that peso got snuck in there.
No one is talking about stopping home schooling. And no one is talking about stopping kids from going to private school on their own dime. So it is a bit much to say anyone is losing their choice. Just the government’s duty to subsidize that choice.
Anyway…I don’t really have that much problem with a school voucher program.
“So it is a bit much to say anyone is losing their choice. Just the government’s duty to subsidize that choice.”
But if I am paying property taxes for public education can I than stop paying that part of my property taxes and instead divert that to charter school expenses?
In other words the government isn’t subsidizing any of it. My taxes pay for all of it.
Choice is not about paying. I am mandated to pay.
Moving it to the paying piece is a bait and switch.
This is about being able to choose where my dollars are spent and getting the biggest bang for my buck for my children’s best interest.
Yes?
Basically all the local governments would be doing is being the middle man.
Instead it appears they are being the middle man, collecting the taxes, AND taking on the role of the parents by directing how the money is spent, forcing choices on kids. Choices that have substandard outcomes as compared to other options.
That may be the revelatory quote of the day…
Not any more than a property owner without any children can refuse to pay the tax at all, on the theory that there is a public good to having a public education system even if you do not directly benefit.
Do you think you can (or should be able to) refuse to pay the part of your taxes that goes to the police department simply because you have decided to forego their services and hire a private security guard?
Yeah, that’s lame. I want to compare the test scores of those that fully used the scholarships to those that didn’t receive a scholarship. I bet the p-value (statistical significance) of those results are quite impressive. But that wouldn’t be what the Dept of Ed would want to allow anyone to know.
Some energetic blogger should file a FOIA to get the raw data.
What seems clear to me that
IF the issue is “How well did Johnny learn to read”, one comes up with a very different view of the matter.
IF the issue is how well did we preserve public schools and school employees jobs, you come up with a very different view of the matter.
If its all about Johnny learning to read, eliminating choice is a bad thing.
If is all about keeping the system intact, eliminating choice is a very good thing.
When any system acts in a way that is clearly about preserving itself, it is disingenuous to try to frame it otherwise.
Eliminating choice is about the school system, not about how well did Johnny learn to read.
When payment is withheld, choice is eliminated.
I’m sure Chap you’ve had experience with that very same principle along the line somewhere in terms of health insurance companies attempting to hide behind that same kind of thinking albeit the flip side.
“We’re not denying you the opportunity to have a procedure, we’re just not paying for it” argument.
For what it’s worth:
“Not any more than a property owner without any children can refuse to pay the tax at all.”
Actually on-going issue out here. The retirement areas where folks do not have kids and there are no schools at all in their communities fight that battle all the time.
Given that the southern states are becoming magnets for retirement communities as well I’m sure its an issue around you as well.
But the issues, “I have no kids so why do I pay taxes for schools” is not the same as “I’m paying taxes and have kids and I want my taxes to be used so that my child gets the best education” are not the same. Similar, not the same.
An old fart with no kids who doesn’t want to pay taxes is quite different than my local government is forcing my child to have a substandard education when there are choices or options when I’m paying taxes.
But the issue is not “How well did Johnny learn to read”. It is “How well do all our children learn to read.” It is easy to focus on the micro level and assume that the best direction (and results) are achieved in the same way as you go to the macro.
Good grief…
How will your little Chapettes be educated?
“It is easy to focus on the micro level”
I’d say that is hairsplitting where none is intended.
The testing here in AZ is on groups, not individuals.
Children as a whole do best on testing as already stated. Home schooling, charter schools then public schools.
If the sole interest is the children’s benefit, providing them access to the system that works the best in terms of outcomes is a no brainer.
So much so that taking action to limit access by restricting funding for choices, choices that have superior outcomes, can only be framed as about the system, not about the children.
Is the best Washington DC can do is play with statistics to call into question or cast doubt on the outcomes of charter schools, that’s not much of an argument on their part.
This is their argument? “Our children don’t need choices because charter schools aren’t that much better and we can prove it by statistics.”
“It is easy to focus on the micro level and assume that the best direction (and results) are achieved in the same way as you go to the macro.”
So Chap supports keeping Johnny illiterate so the masses can fail at doing math in our public schools?
What’s being left out of the argument here is that the D.C. school system has been plagued for years by decrepit, crumbling buildings, disciplinary problems, corruption, and theft. Not every kid who took advantage of school vouchers was destined to be a Rhodes scholar. What they offered was an opportunity for a poor kid to go to school in a decent, clean building, where he won’t have to worry about gangbangers beating him up in the john or shooting at him on the playground, or the cafeteria serving spoiled food.
Good point, but nobody makes you buy a gun. They do make you go to public school (unless you are rich enough to pay for private school ((and public school, since you still pay taxes)), but in that case, you probably don’t live in D.C. anyway).
Clearly you have never been to Georgetown or Foxhall.
DC actually has the 11th highest income in the US (when compared to other states).
Rags:
I know that there is a possibility…; but, what do you think the odds are that the author of that collectivist-sounding quotation – itself arguably revelatory – has kids, or intends to ever have any?
Which shows the fallacy of using simple income as a comparison.
What is the standard of living?
What are the average household costs?
Are there people in DC who cannot afford to send their children to any but the monopoly schools?
I have always been forthright and honest about the fact I have no kids and no plans to have one in the future, Master of Deduction. But if I do, damn certain they will go to public school. I met too many socially retarded kids from private schools in college.
Now THERE’s a revelation…and the basis of several dissertations.
Personally, I think most parents who allow children to attend MOST public schools are guilty of child abuse.
I was merely saying that there are entire swaths of DC that are very affluent. But that probably destroys your preconceived notion of it as a city filled only with dirty politicians and criminal welfare recipients.
Personally, I think this is a pretty stupid, uninformed and hackneyed thing to say.
Chaps, you exceed yourself today!!!
By what arrogance do you assume I don’t know anything about DC?
You left out slimy lobbyists!
I figured “dirty politicians” was broad enough to cover ex-dirty politicians as well.
Hmm… I am a father of grown children, and a grandfather.
You are without children of your own, and have displayed our relative degree of both information and thought.
But, by all means, keep up the demonstration…
Yes, of course someone that has been to both public and private schools in his life and has interacted with hundreds, if not thousands, of people who who have done the same, whose wife deals with educational systems on a daily basis (and tells me all about it), whose sister is a sped teacher (and tells me all about it) wouldn’t know anything about the relative values of such, Rags.
I think you mentally jumped the shark right around the time of that silly “Starve the Beast” movement you tried to get going.
Ewww…
fit, fit, roawaa…
Down, kitty…!
Perhaps you’ll take a little of you time…when you get your fur back down… and explain why you think civil disobedience is “silly”.
Could that be because a significant number of politicians make lots more than the average Joe, thus skewing the numbers?
My folks were in DC in May 09; said parts of the area made the inner city of Milwaukee look like the Taj Mahal.
Civil disobedience per se isn’t silly, Rags. Just when it is employed over silly premises.
Whenever funds are going to be cut for schools, the argument is always that the children will suffer and the teachers are for the children. The reality is that the teachers are for protecting their own jobs. The children are simply an excuse. The unions have preserved tenure and anything else which will protect incompetent teachers at the expense of the children. Neither the unions nor the teachers give one wit about the children or want to be accountable to the public which funds them. No taxpayer funded position should have the ability to have union representation.
Same here, Rags.
He’s not a father, but from the long vicarious list, he’s sort of “played one on TV” (pace old commercial).
And, of course, as a collectivist, he knows what’s better for a child than the child’s parents do.
To paraphrase: Never interfere with one’s opponent (of any type) when he is destroying himself.
**just sayin’**
I’m not a parent; I’m middle-aged. I still have a say in the future of my country, and how my taxes are paid & used. I’m not an ‘old fart’. If I ever had kids, they would’ve been sent to private, Hebrew school.
**just sayin’**
Chap,
Here’s a question. Why is it that you never see movies about a teacher/principal going into a run down, crime ridden private school and straightening things out?
Answer: Because if they were run down and crime-ridden, they’d be out of business because private school parents are generally more affluent and have a choice and will exercise it.
Next question: Why would anyone want to deny a parent without those resources the ability to put their child in a better school?
John,
We can’t forget that millions of people of very modest means send their kids to private schools…usually by dint of huge sacrifice and effort.
Private schools are not only for the affluent.
And many black parents want exactly what all Americans want…a choice. They express that in poll after poll.
But Barack Hussain Obama has said he doesn’t think vouchers…or choice…is the answer. And who gives a rat’s asp what he thinks…???
My parents were in that group as I went to both private and public school and will happily send my own children to private school if I’m able. My point was that these people are paying for the school out of their own pocket and are capable of removing their children from an underperforming private school.
It’s the balance that free market solutions provide. As much as the left espouses choice they have a vested interest in preventing it where it’s financially prudent for them.
So sayeth the kid who went to private school and sends his children there as well.
Well we can’t have kids succeed can we?
Keeping poor kids ignorant is really a hot button for me. I won’t go way off on a rant here, but this is evil. And let’s be honest – these are black kids – and for some reason Dems want to keep black kids ignorant. It really frosts me.
Oh, I think we know what the reasons are…and they are not just that they want an ignorant voter base.
The Great Society has done more to ghettoize people of color than anything in history…actually moving the black American family backwards since it began…while redistributing billions.
There is an opposing model; the U.S. military, which was the closest thing to a meritocracy I’ve ever known. Interesting that military people are so often presumptively conservative, yes?
One reason I am a capitalist is that it is the only system that is consistent with liberty. Another is its superior use of resources. Government schools are inimical to everything in which I believe.
So true. As a former recruiter for the military, I witnessed first-hand how well that system benefits all who partake of it. Many sub-standard acheivers from the public schools, barely making the cut for admission into the military, flourished- many going on to college, opening their own businesses or earning a commission.
Indeed, a model for meritocracy.
No doubt, but I highly doubt they were taking advantage of the voucher program. They aren’t likely to have a horse in this race. My point stands.
“Choice” is only acceptable to leftist morons when they get to choose for everyone else. Ergo, “choice” in abortion is okay as long as “choice” means murdering a baby. But “choice” in education is anathema…
Chappy is just demonstrating his motto: “Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum.”