What do the following have in common?

• Worcester Technical High School
• University Park Campus School
• MATCH Charter School

Beyond their citation in today's paper?

They all have self-selected populations.

Yes, University Park Campus School has 80% free and reduced lunches and a majority English-second-language population. Yes, MATCH has kids making all kinds of jumps in achievement. Yes, Tech is increasing performance. And, really, good for them for doing as well as all of them are doing.

But the basic question posed by today's article (and, apparently, yesterday's panel, 'though I wasn't there) is how we can make this work across the board for all kids.

It isn't a simple matter of more charter schools (sorry, Mr. Anderson, but this isn't nearly the freedom of choice issue you think it is). It isn't only about vocational training, or smaller classes ('though smaller classes nearly always help).

It's about kids and parents caring enough about education to make a choice about the child's education.

All of the schools cited about require a parent and a child to choose for the child to be there. This isn't the neighborhood school; none of these is a place one just ends up. You have to find out about it, fill out forms, attend meetings. Sometimes you have to volunteer, or arrange transportation. For younger kids, the parents have to be actively involved for it to work. For older kids, the students have to want to make it work (I know what time the bus to Tech comes down my street; those kids want to be at school to be out the door at that hour!).

That involvement and caring is always in any school going to pay off in the child's education. The schools that require it, however, have a population made up entirely of those families, however. You've concentrated the caring and parental involvement (and, incidentally, pulled them out of other schools, thus possibly diluting it there). Given resources, smaller classes, adults who have good support, classes that they love, those kids are going to succeed.

What about the kids who don't have that? The ones who have parents who aren't involved, who don't care, who don't know? What about the kids themselves that don't care?
That's the population that really is at risk here. Often, those are your "achievement gap" kids. They aren't going to self-select out. How we reach those kids sitting in classrooms today: that's the question we ought to be asking.