From Passing the Policy to Parent Participation

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

OCPA carries my article on how it isn’t enough to pass a school choice policy; it’s imperative to help parents and schools get enrolled in the program quickly:

It’s essential to take this problem seriously. Getting participation rates up quickly is essential to the political survival of school choice programs. These programs strike right at the heart of a coalition of special interests that profit by exploiting the education monopoly. These interests will do whatever it takes to kill newly created programs.

Fortunately, the movement has a lot of experience with this and has a knowledge base to draw upon. And it will be needed:

The most difficult problem is that the families that need these programs most have the greatest difficulty accessing them. In general, the further up you go on the socioeconomic scale, the more plugged in to information systems people are (so they hear about the program) and the more time and ability they have for navigating bureaucracy (so they can use the program). The further down you go, the harder it is both to spread the word and to get people signed up.

Let me know what you think!

2 Responses to From Passing the Policy to Parent Participation

  1. Michael F. Shaughnessy's avatar Michael F. Shaughnessy says:

    Yes, communication, networking is imperative and your upper socio-economic groups excel at this while others are in survival mode.

  2. Malcolm Kirkpatrick's avatar Malcolm Kirkpatrick says:

    Parent Performance Contracting (PPC: search “The Harriet Tubman Agenda, The Proposal”) addresses this issue. Everybody understands employment.

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