Here’s something I never got to tell you.

About seven years ago, I wrote this post that went viral. I didn’t expect to see some popular public intellectuals sharing it with their audiences, and other public figures rebuking me publicly, either. Yes, the leader of the schools would try to reach out to me as did a few of his people. (I didn’t respond, but I did write another post about Capital Prep Harlem and another post in response to that.) I did foresee that a fair amount of scandal would follow both the school leader and the mogul. In researching Capital Prep schools back then, I saw how the confluence of bad management, hedge fund managers wishing to rinse their monies, minimal regulations, and music business models would drudge up the burgeoning school that landed a few blocks from where I live.

As New York Magazine reports, that’s exactly what happened. I wouldn’t have guessed to what extent.

After reading the NY Mag article and reading some of the accounts (including from people who left years ago), I had to sit there. I hurt for those who had to experience this firsthand. Even though I disagreed with his methods, I was hoping he would win. By “win,” I meant that he’d provide a solid alternative for families who have been disengaged from the educational process for decades. Families don’t send their children to schools expecting that the school, led by charismatic leaders from similar backgrounds, would treat their child awfully. Similarly, educators don’t expect to work for leaders who would later thwart their efforts to teach children well.

But, over the years, I saw protests from students, families, and educators, who had no way to address and redress the harm. I’d listen to other adults who could only speak to me about their experiences in this and other schools like this in codes because the feeling was still too raw.

“I told you so” isn’t the point. It’s not about one school leader, one music mogul, or even one type of school. It’s about the current notion of school choice.

On the surface, the argument for school choice sounds pitch-perfect. Everyone should have an opportunity to go to the school that fits them and their community’s needs. From a racial standpoint, it means students of color should have the chance to leave their under-resourced schools to more well-resourced schools like their wealthy-white counterparts do. Students of color, particularly Black students, shouldn’t have to withstand racial and other forms of identity-based discrimination from their peers, teachers, or principals to get a good education. Over the last two decades, the privatization of public education made it possible for even the most earnest adults to wave the “school choice” flag and scream that they were winning … something.

What’s more, the enactment of integration efforts has only led to white parents carving out their own schools – and districts – to evade sitting their children with “others.” Students of color should have similar options as well.

However, over the last three decades, we’ve also seen how the enactment of “school choice” has created levels of rot to the detriment of the very students who ostensibly stood to benefit the most from those policies. We already set up students for a certain level of failure when we create a lottery system or a standardized test for children to get a sound and basic education. The “losers” of the lottery matriculate in public schools where, regardless of the quality of the school, they still feel disenchanted for not getting in. For students who stay, they’ll get peppered with demerits for infractions ranging from not wearing their “behavior lanyards” around their necks to not “TRACK”ing their teachers.

The adults in the building fare no better, either. If only we all had the chance to listen to overworked educators, principals under duress, and schools having to co-locate and see the inequity immediately. The “results” may seem worth it in the form of graduation rates and achievement scores, but how this set of schools got these numbers leaves everyone but the school leaders disillusioned.

In naming these faults, one can point out that many of these incidents are also happening in public schools, and they’d be right. Specialized high schools and gifted and talented programs aren’t always helpful in this respect. Our dialogue about public vs. charter schools doesn’t serve this conversation well because it doesn’t include how independent and/or private schools also influence our school systems. But we shouldn’t be doubling down on practices that made public schooling awful for many, putting them in schools with less regulations, and calling it “equity.”

Rather, my prompt is to push for every school to be a great choice. To paraphrase Linda Darling-Hammond, America’s obsession with choice subverts a vision for equity and justice for our schools.

If families want to choose between an art-based school and a science-based school in the future, that’s great. If families want to choose a school that may better address their students’ specific needs, that’s fine, too. If families want to create a school that has more resources to the detriment of other students, that’s inappropriate.

What’s more, should a student not get into the school they wished to get into, the next bunch of options should also feel like great choices with a great education. That’s big vision work, and more of us need to invest in it.

In the short term, a good school – and by “good,” I mean “positive academic and socioemotional experiences for students, families, and education,” not “high achievement scores” or “inflated graduation rates” – is a good school, and I’m happy for students who get that. I’m an advocate for public schools, but I prefer my critiques push the dialogue forward, not back and forth. For the long term, we need to excise the idea that simply having a choice is enough. This dynamic often sets us up for false choices. I prefer that we remain vigilant about the education our children receive, and hopeful that all of our students can learn well.

These are the sorts of results we won’t see on test scores, but we’ll see them in our society. It’s harder to measure, but a better alternative than the one we’re seeing now.

Jose, who’ll have more to say on this soon …