School choice options: Why do students make choices

The economic consequences that result from choice sound the biggest alarm for opponents. Can we allow the poorer schools to continue a downward spiral? Will the gulf between the educational haves and have-nots grow even wider? Will choice options reinforce old patterns of discrimination? hen the Ohio Legislature enacted SB-140, the Ohio Omnibus ~~J~ / Educational Reform Act, it received only mild public reaction.w V V Open enrollment was not to take place in the first year and its subsequent ramifications seemed far in the future. The law enables students from one school district to enroll in another school district providing the new school district is contiguous to the residential school district. It requires the accepting district to formally adopt a policy of acceptance of open enrollment students. This section of SB-140 also contains language designed to control &dquo;white flight,&dquo; but the interpretation of this provision has already led to a fed-eral court case (Equal Open Enrollment Association, et al. v Board of Education of the Akron School District- Case No. 5:96cV715). The other sections of SB-140 did not spur the heated debate that open enrollment did. While the other sections of the reform bill drained some fund-ing from home districts, the reforms had little impact on students directly. As soon as open enrollment became available to families, however, the Akron City Schools felt the effect. Akron’s school administrators claimed they were losing a large number of students to surrounding districts, caus-ing a drain on the budget. Similar scenarios have arisen in other states, and the responses across the country have been equally heated. Opponents of at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 6, 2016bul.sagepub.comDownloaded from 94 school choice everywhere have vigorously attempted to thwart the process before it spreads across a wider public base