Diversity, Neighborhood Schools, or Academic Needs School Assignments

With even national attention focused on the vitriolic battle here in Wake County over the recently elected school board majority's voting out school assignments based on socio-economic diversity in favor of neighborhood schools, both ideas seem to miss the larger point of focusing on the interests of the kids and their parents.

The biggest problem of mass public education is the disparate quality of schoolchildren and the desire to force them all through the same faux college prep curriculum. I'd like to see families have the choice of which school their child attends regardless of neighborhood, which simply serves to drive up home prices in some neighborhoods while driving them down elsewhere. Let's get away from bureaucrats selecting school assignments based on their personal preferences.

This type of competition would force schools to discover market niches that serve the interests of the parent-student-customer, lest they find themselves shut down as parents refuse to send their children there.

Some schools would specialize in a college prep curriculum, some in remedial education, others in vocational education such as technology and business disciplines, while others still could specialize in more specialized vocations such as pharmacology production and materials sciences. You would better serve the individual interests of the students by allowing for greater innovation in establishing curriculum and the delivery of education services, while providing education services that meet the specific talents, needs, and desires of the children/parent customer, and not the whims of the education bureaucracy and leadership.

My guess is that it would also cut down the prevalence of cliques and the animosity towards specific groups unfavored within larger groups. (i.e.,The result would be better sorting.) But alas, since this would expose to children that they are different from one another, which is antithetical to the mindset and interests of the education bureaucracy and leadership, it's not likely to ever happen.