Educational Opportunity Center |
100 New St |
Syracuse, NY 13202 |
General Phone: 315-472-0130 |
Financial Aid Phone: 315-472-0130 |
Sector: Public, less-than 2-year |
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Latest Educational Opportunity Center News
A student's right to educational choices - North Lake Tahoe Bonanza
Steve McKibbenSpecial to the Bonanza November 13, 2005 Print Email Choice is a loaded word. Essential to the very act of choice is a decision between two or more options. It is no accident that a variety of passionate political agendas have co-opted the word, for choice is rarely neutral. School choice is a topic that raises the political passions of those with a stake in education, including families, students, teachers, unions, politicians, lawyers, taxpayers-in short, all of America. Education is the most democratic of all America's ideals, and everyone has an opinion about what students should be learning, what schools should be teaching, who should attend schools, who should fund schools, how students should be evaluated, how schools should be evaluated, how, who, what, when, where, why. Parents are experts, teachers are experts, academics are experts, politicians are experts, lawyers are experts. Sadly, those experts who are perhaps the most qualified-the students-rarely are asked for their opinions and even more rarely are heard.Despite what most experts believe, America has enjoyed a long history of school choice. It is a choice rooted in the fundamental belief that individual states are responsible for the education of their own residents; federal government - more available