Tonight Northshore school board directors will hear from a task force intent on cancelling the district’s learning Challenge Program for students. This popular program allows middle school students to voluntarily enroll in more rigorous courses in English, Science, Math and Social Studies. I learned of this controversy from the Eastside Education Network, which posts this description of the program by parent leader Nancy Chamberlain:

“The Challenge Program allows students from a variety of academic and socio-economic backgrounds access at their home school to rigorous classes that will prepare them for Advanced Placement (“AP”) and International Baccalaureate (“IB”) courses in high school. Students can choose Challenge in just one or all core subjects (English, Social Studies, Math and Science), and can make a new choice each year… 

Northshore School District instituted the Challenge Program in response to community input, and developed performance measures to assess the program. Since its inception, four-out–of-five metrics have shown increases in performance (ranging from 15-to-57 percent), with free-and-reduced lunch populations faring even better (38-to-118 percent increases.)  These students are taking Algebra I earlier, taking more advanced Math and AP classes, and more are meeting minimum college entrance requirements.”

Parents in Northshore have been forced to launch a political campaign to save the Challenge Program. The “Save our Challenge” group has gathered over 1,200 signatures in support of saving this program. Yet despite this parent outcry, and despite the Challenge program’s success, Northshore school officials appear to be intent on cancelling the program. If officials do cancel this program, parents will be stuck and their children will be held back in learning.  

As I recently wrote here, parents with education choice do not have to wrestle with controversies like Northshore’s. That is why officials in states like Arizona, Florida, Wisconsin and others give parents public school choice.

When controversies like this arrive, parents should be offered the option of enrolling their children in a public charter school. Failing that, since their popularity means most charter schools are oversubscribed, families should be offered an education scholarship of $9,000 (the amount the state spends per child now) to send their children to a school that works for them.

Only when parents are no longer stuck, and have the voluntary option to send their children, and their education dollars to a school which meets their learning needs, will school officials start listening to parents.