The Privilege of Comparison and Choice; the Challenge of Public Kindergarten

Last week, I enjoyed the opportunity to lead several groups of visiting parents on tours through the cooperative pre-school where my younger daughter currently attends, and from which my Darling Daughter 1 (DD1) "graduated" last June.  A few days later,  I waited in the on-line cue to enroll my daughters in our favorite summer day camp.  By talking with these aspiring parents, and in setting my phone to alert me of the precise minute in which the camp registration opened, I was reminded this week of just how intent my husband and I have been about finding the right preschool and enrichment activities for our daughters.

I recognize the privileged choices that my husband and I have had as parents of young children, including the choice of caregiver, nursery education, summer camp, and extracurricular activities.  Moreover,  I am deeply appreciative of the fact that we have been able to look for and choose the "just right" option for each.  However,  I am also increasingly aware of the fact that this orientation to comparison and choice, and our commitment to selecting the best environments we can to foster our daughters' growth, has created quite a dilemma for us through this transition to kindergarten.  I now find myself wondering:  By choosing the public schools and not a private alternative, is it necessary to shed this desire to give our children "the best" we can?  Yet what is the alternative paradigm?  

It seems to me that the challenge for parents like my husband and me is to shift away from a consumer-driven orientation towards schooling to a more values-driven orientation, wherein the reason to choose the public schools is not because it can be ensured that our individual children will receive the "best" education possible.  Instead, the reason to enroll our children in the public schools is because of both the individual and the public good that can only be achieved if we collectively maintain our investment in the public schools.  In a report from the Center on Education Policy entitled Why We Still Need the Public Schools (Kober, 2007), the author asserts that there are six reasons why the public schools are necessary to the vitality of American society, which include: 1) to provide universal access to free education; 2) to guarantee equal opportunities for all children; 3) to unify a diverse population; 4) to prepare people for citizenship in a democratic society; 5) to prepare people to become economically self-sufficient; 6) to improve social conditions.  As an educator, it is easy to testify to the importance of our public schools for all of the reasons listed above.  And yet as a high aspiring parent, I wonder: How do I learn to trust that the public schools will serve my daughters well?