SES and Choice Participation Still Lagging

SES and Choice were abuzz in the education blogosphere this week. Here are the relevant numbers and here is the DOE report
that started it all. Quick summary: It's not good. 17% participation in
SES and 1% participation in choice. That does represent a small rise in
SES participation but little to no increase in choice.

Being somewhat
well read on this issue (here is my choice and SES policy brief), I tend to agree with eduwonkette
that yes, district communication is contributing to the problem, but at
some point we have to ask the question whether it is the policy itself
that is no good, not the implementation. I know it is often preferable
to blame the implementers rather than admit the policy itself was
flawed, but after 5 years of implementation we are still not seeing
much improvement, especially on the choice front. I hope that by the
time reauthorization finally does roll around, folks in Washington give
long, hard consideration to the possibility that choice and SES
themselves are the problem, not the school's use of them. Because the
last thing we need is more sanctions for not properly implementing the
first round of sanctions. There is a pretty standard rule in teaching
that if a couple students miss a question, they probably didn't study.
But, if 1/2 the class or more misses a question, it is probably a bad
question. That lesson seems to apply here.