Why is the left opposed to school choice?

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In the UK's experience the "free schools" are a nightmare. Middle class areas are being overloaded with a surplus of spaces, to the extent that well-performing comprehensive schools are being shuttered and replaced with weirdo new schools; while even less attention is drawn to the crowded comps. Not to mention these schools are allowed to be free of the red tape (including stuff like the standardised testing and  National Curiculum ordered by the same "education reformers" that demanded the free schools and academies in the fit place) that burden the comps (see also: the Tories none-too-subtle strangling of the NHS ).

Worse because the people running these things at best have "good intentions" the whole exercise becomes a bit farcical. There are at least a few schools which are running (and qualified for public subsidy), despite not having buildings, teachers or students. Even some of the top flagship schools have had some skullduggery - the Tory Right star teacher who praised Gove's reforms at a conference still has not opened her school (and she seems to be blaming everyone apart from herself, despite the fact that apparently all the fire exits led to a railway line and the project is now massively overbudget and cycled through three buildings several miles apart). Not to mention the Acadamies found promoting Biblical literalism and the like.

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Something I've noticed: people generally prefer to respond to idiots making stupid idealogical statements than more well-founded arguments.

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Muon, doesn't the standardisation of education serve to reduce the effects of family background on educational attainment, which is essentially the aim of the left? It is clear that the veritable patchwork of schooling choices produced by educational liberalisation is much easier exploited by upper middle-class families; and so serve to make the issue worse.

Not that I'm delighted with the idea of National Curriculums, because that comes with league tables and standardised testing and all associated silliness.

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Muon, doesn't the standardisation of education serve to reduce the effects of family background on educational attainment, which is essentially the aim of the left? It is clear that the veritable patchwork of schooling choices produced by educational liberalisation is much easier exploited by upper middle-class families; and so serve to make the issue worse.

Not that I'm delighted with the idea of National Curriculums, because that comes with league tables and standardised testing and all associated silliness.

Standardization doesn't help if communities have high levels of learners that lack support on the home front due to parents or their income. The teaching skills needed are different in those communities. Note, I'm not saying that we can't and shouldn't have common minimum standards for outcomes. I am saying that the skill set of the teachers should be matched to the needs of the students to best reach those minimum standards.

I think I'm catching your drift, although I'm curious about what you're leading to. Low-income families have an observable difference in attainment than high-income families; even if schools are funded the same. Therefore, some kind of mechanism is required to further equality of outcome. Your post (although not your partisan affiliation) would imply that low-income schools need a "subsidy" (for lack of a better word) to attract better, well-paid teachers than high-income schools (which already are effectively being subsidised by the already discussed effect of high income parents).

I'm not sure that voucher schemes (and the like) are an effective way to "subsidise" low-income areas (based on my British experience with the "free school" experiment) but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

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All schools should be the same. If we're in a situation where choice matters, we're doing something wrong.

So, we... Ban private and religious schools?

Obviously that would not work from an electoral standpoint, but I wouldn't really oppose the closure of faith schools and fee-paying privates. What good do they do, really?

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To be fair, I have especial grievance against the faith schools. I had a CofE  primary school right next to my house that would have made complete logistical sense to go to, but we weren't allowed in because our Christian credentials weren't fully fledged.