PROS AND CONS OF SCHOOL CHOICE DEBATED: NO

TERRY SANFORD, D-N.C., is a U.S. senator. A former governor of North Carolina, he also has served as president of Duke University. He is the founder of the Education Commission of the States.

"It's time parents were free to choose the schools that their children attend," says President Bush. "This approach will create the competitive climate that stimulates excellence...."

The idea of choice in education has an appealing ring to it, but it is a putoff.

There are some noteworthy programs of choice within public school districts offering magnet or specialized schools. But there isn't ample evidence to show that this kind of choice is for everyone or even that it can reach a majority of students. A device that perhaps is ideal for some could add undue burden to others.

The danger lies in embracing the alluring thought that, in choice, we have found the solution to education's problems.

It is a flawed concept if it means the plan set forth in a publication of the Brookings Institution, "Politics, Markets and America's Schools." In effect, authors John Chubb and Terry Moe, senior fellows at Brookings, want to "shift away from a system of schools controlled directly by the government through politics and bureaucracy to a system of indirect control that relies on markets and parental choice."

One can deplore the smothering inclinations of bureaucracies without taking the irrational step of thinking schools can be constructed, displayed and sold in the manner of electric washing machines.

Yet, in getting rid of school bureaucracy, the writers would create another a "Choice Office in each (school) district" (not subject to governmental influence, I presume).

They propose that "public money will flow from funding sources (federal, state and local government) to the Choice Office and then to the schools." The school districts "will be little more than taxing jurisdictions that allow citizens to make a collective determination as to how large their children's scholarships will be."

There are other difficulties found in the authors' proposals:

"Each student will be free to attend any public school in the state.... To the extent that tax revenues allow, every effort will be made to provide transportation for students that need it...."

"Schools will make their own admissions decisions.... free to admit as many or as few students as they want, based on whatever criteria they think relevant..." (but subject to "non-discrimination requirements").

"The applications process must take place within a framework that guarantees each student a school, as well as a fair shot at getting into the school he or she most wants.... (but) some students may remain without schools...."

This plan is, at best, suspect if it leaves out some children, promises only an effort to transport kids to the schools they wish to attend, creates a new and unaccountable bureaucracy and reduces school patrons to the mere task of living in "taxing jurisdictions."

The problem with choice in vast rural areas is that the population is too small to afford it. In many urban areas, choice within the public school system has been implemented, but the risk remains that it will prompt resegregation or threaten that choices will be made on the basis of friends or convenience rather than parental opinion regarding quality of education.

We should not get carried away with the feeling that we have discovered Utopia with choice. We should treat choice as one idea that may work in some places, but not in others.

While choice rearranges structures, shifts motivations and fascinates its proponents, it is not an end. Still to be accomplished choice, or no choice is the magical exchange between teacher and student.