Dive Brief:

• In a visit to Denver, NPR found a city with a relatively popular school choice program that has raised overall growth and graduation rates, but it hasn’t reduced achievement gaps, and low-income families still have limited access to the best schools.
• Transportation challenges limit family ability to choose certain schools, and more than one-third of the city’s lowest-performing students aren’t exercising their right to choose outside of their neighborhood school.
• The district has been strict about closing low-performing schools — whether they are charter or traditional district-run — but many of the closing schools have been in low-income neighborhoods, and the loss has destabilized communities.

Dive Insight:

Choice programs operate on the belief that competition among schools will create the necessary motivation for improving outcomes. In Finland, routinely recognized as one of the world’s best education systems, this idea of competition is antithetical to a reform plan that has worked to make schools equal, rather than rank them hierarchically.

With school choice topping the list of educational policy discussions, however, Denver might be a city to look to. Other cities can take note about how it got general community buy-in for the program, even in spite of regular school closings.