Giving Compass' Take:

· Writing for Education Next, Robert Pondiscio expresses his opinion that real school choice has the potential to effectively provide every student with a content-rich curriculum. 

· What is the current status of the school choice movement in the US? Is school choice an effective way to improve student outcome? How can donors make an impact on this front? 

· Here's more on school choice and school curriculum. 

Natalie Wexler is a name you should know, if you don’t already. A long-time education journalist, she has tirelessly championed essential work, serving as the board chair for Judith Hochman’s The Writing Revolution, and writing extensively and persuasively about the benefits of content-rich curriculum, our shared education passion. I’m eagerly awaiting her forthcoming book, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System—and How to Fix It. I expect it will top the best education books of 2019. Wexler’s is an essential voice and an authority.

That said, I’ve got a small bone to pick with my esteemed colleague. In a column at Forbes, she characterized a recent dust-up over school choice between me and Diane Ravitch, which took place at last month’s Washington Post Live education event. I favor school choice; Ravitch opposes it, even though we both benefitted from it.

It was “good theater,” Wexler wrote, “but it obscures the fact that the vast majority of schools—especially at the elementary level—offer the same dangerously flawed approach,” the kind of content-free, “skills-and-strategies” reading instruction that Wexler and I both routinely decry. “And,” she added, “the systems the government has put in place to help parents make good choices have only made things worse. How much value does choice have if there are few good choices and it’s hard to identify them?”

Read the full article about school choice by Robert Pondiscio at Education Next