Enough with the Choices Already!

Choice has replaced accountability as the buzzword for the day. Choice for health care, choice for schools. And who could be against more choice?

If you want me to have a terrible time, drop me off at an unfamiliar grocery store. Im sure youve had this experience. Where is my favorite cereal? Is the cheap chicken with the organic chicken, or is it somewhere else? Are the best deals hiding in the international section? Is the toilet paper next to the paper towels, or are they halfway across Egypt?

Just thinking about it gives me a headache. Psychologist Barry Schwartz calls this choice overload. He refers to those who obsess over making the right choice as maximizers and, guess what theyre a lot less happy, on average.

If I had my way, Id organize every grocery store similarly. I could walk down an aisle and know, instantly, where everything is. Why do we need a thousand different ways to organize food products? Why do we need constantly to change and innovate Microsoft Office, Facebook , or a million other products that we use every day? Word processing hasnt changed in 25 years its just harder to find what you actually need among the 9,500 toolbars, themes, schemes and schematics.

I dont know about you, but I dont actually know which doctor is best, or even which school is best. Any information provided by the source itself is typically mere marketing. When Im sick, I might ask around and read reviews online, but I dont really know very much before I have to make a decision. I once picked a doctor because she had a celebrity name, and that made me chuckle.

Even when deciding where to apply for my Ph.D., my process was embarrassingly simple rankings and location, specifically weather and affordability. Sure, I talked to multiple students, and professors, and read their work. But what did I really know before I made an irrevocable choice?

This is the human condition. As we have seen with school choice, the same problem recurs. In life we are never given perfect information, yet school choice presumes that we all have the luxury to do what the affluent do obsess about where to go to school. Few things occupy rich peoples time as much as deciding on schools, starting as early as possible. These informed decisions typically rest on little more than reputation, ranking and innuendo. These things do matter, sure. But theyre hardly a sound basis for mass public policy, for handling the most important task before us as a nation.

If weve concerned about the quality of education, then lets improve the quality of what we already have. Choice doesnt even address the problem, and as recent studies have shown, it can even worsen it . In a time when the most frequent level of teaching experience is just one year , there are many smarter and cheaper solutions than choice. We could start by actually retaining teachers within existing schools instead of once again rearranging, relabeling and restructuring. Our solutions too often exacerbate existing problems.

The same old ideological approach frustrates me to no end. Will teachers ever get the respect they deserve, the quiet dignity of minding their own store? Not, it seems, anytime soon.