Why is the left opposed to school choice?

[bedstuy]

I think TNF made some good points. 

It's correct that you can't expect a school full of impoverished students to compete with a suburban rich kid public school.  Many public high schools in the inner city have 30% of their student miss school on any given day. If you can't get your students to show up, you can't blame the teachers.  Many poor elementary schools have students show up to kindergarten already a year or more behind their rich peers who got top-notch nursery school.  Honestly, so much of this is SES and student effort, not teaching. 

My big problem with school choice is this: What about the kids whose parents aren't proactive enough to find their child a new school?  If you have a failing school and all the proactive parents and students leave that school community, it's going to go from bad to worse.  And, of course a charter school will look better.  If you can screen all your students and parents, just accept the bright, on the ball kids with involved parents, you're going to look more successful, even if your methods are no better.  That's cooking the books.

Here's where I differ though.  I think public schools are often totally mismanaged and need to be reformed.  I would prefer less red tape, less testing and assessment, more variety in what is taught and just less silliness.  Tons of standardized tests and bright-eyed Teach for America people are not going to turn a ghetto school into the peer of a rich, white enclave school.  If you think that, you're an idiot.