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.