The research backs these findings. Furthermore, in
places where school choice exists, variety in education has done little to undermine the
common school ideal that promises to teach all students equally in a like and equally
available setting. In fact, studies show that the ideal is more in evidence in private
schools—especially in the inner-city—than in the public school system.
Competition is the key.
Consider the results of the well-known public school choice experiment
in New York City’s District 4. In 1974, District 4 began allowing teachers in East
Harlem’s junior high schools to redesign and create new public schools and allowed
parents to choose the schools their children would attend. Before long, the program was
credited with raising reading scores and lifting the district from last place in 1973 to
15th in 1987 among New York City’s 32 school districts. The school choice plan also
attracted white students to the largely minority school district. Ten years later, in
October 1997, a report by Paul Teske and Mark Schneider of the State University of New
York confirmed earlier findings. The researchers found greater improvements in the
district’s math and reading test scores than those registered in New York’s
other 31 community school districts (where choice is not as available). Teske and
Schneider also found that the increased number of choice schools in District 4 correlated
directly with increases in math and reading scores.
On a much smaller scale, similar results occur when school choice
involves private schools—although it is too soon to assess academic outcomes.
In Milwaukee—the site of the first publicly-sponsored school
choice program—choice prompted all nine members of the Milwaukee public school board
to sign a fundraising letter on September 10, 1998, supporting Partners Advancing Values
in Education (PAVE)—a private scholarship program that makes choice an option for
many families in Milwaukee. "Parents have the right and responsibility to determine
the course of their children’s education," the board members state in the
letter. "[A]s members of the Board of MPS, our task is to support them in carrying
out that responsibility," they continue. "MPS can provide quality education for
all our children. . . . But until we make it happen, we ask that you contribute to
PAVE’s scholarship fund, both for the sake of the thousands of children immediately
at risk and for the sake of public education reforms in Milwaukee."
Albany’s Brighter Choice
Private programs like PAVE can, in fact, benefit public schools. In
1997, Virginia Gilder offered vouchers of up to 90 percent of the cost of private school
tuition (up to $2,000 a year) to parents in Albany, N.Y. whose children attended Giffen
Memorial Elementary School. Gilder’s vouchers, known as "A Brighter Choice
Scholarships (ABCS)," could be used for a minimum of three years and a maximum of six
for each student. The rationale for the program was simple: Giffen had the worst pupil
performance scores of any school in the region and had repeatedly reported that over 50
percent of its student body was not reading at state-set "minimum competency
levels." In addition, 96 percent of Giffen Elementary’s students were on the
federal free-lunch program. By September 1997, 20 percent of the student body, including
the child of the president of Giffen’s Parent Teacher Association, had used the
scholarships to attend a private school.
Not all the students who left Giffen remained in the private school of
their parents’ choice, however. The private sector can be more selective and dismiss
problem students more readily than most public schools. Since most Giffen students were
already underperforming in school, it was fair to assume that some would not meet their
private schools’ more stringent demands. In fact, of the 11 ABCS students who
returned to Giffen, only 2 were suspended from their private school for disciplinary
reasons, while one was suspended for being absent from school for over 30 days.
Meanwhile, this exodus sent a much-needed wake-up call to Albany public
school officials who immediately took steps to reform Giffen Elementary. Lonnie Palmer,
Albany’s superintendent of schools, transferred Giffen’s principal and replaced
her with a new principal and two assistant principals—one of whom was specifically
commissioned to oversee and boost academic performance. Palmer soon began interviewing
each of the school’s teachers and found cause to sack 20 percent of them. To help
bring about faster change, the Albany Urban League provided a $100,000 grant to help
Giffen students advance in reading. This year, the school scrapped its language arts
program and replaced it with "Success for All," a Johns Hopkins University
program that boasts particularly high success rates among low-income students. As Anne
Pope, the head of the Albany Branch of the NAACP, told The New York Times,
"[The ABCS program] has made [the school bureaucrats] take a look at what was
happening, or not happening, at Giffen, and take actions they may not otherwise have
taken."
The Evidence Supports Choice
Research shows that the long-term positive effects on East
Harlem’s District 4 or the over-night impact of ABCS on Giffen needn’t be
isolated examples of how school choice can improve the overall quality of public
education. Caroline Hoxby, an assistant professor of economics at Harvard University, has
looked at two traditional forms of school choice in various parts of the country.
Using Department of Education data, Hoxby compared metropolitan
districts where parents, through residential decisions, can choose from a range of public
schools to districts where parents have limited choices. She also compared districts where
parents could easily afford to send their children to private schools (and where there
were many public and private schools to choose from) with districts with less or no
public/private school competition. In areas where public schools compete heavily for the
same students, she found overall student test scores rose 3 percentile points,
students’ wage gains after graduation increased by 4 percent, and the probability of
college graduation increased by 0.4 percent.
In areas where public and private schools compete for the same
students, Hoxby’s research showed even more pronounced academic improvements. Among
students transferring from public to private school, Hoxby found a 12 percent increase in
future wage gains and a 12 percent increase in the probability of college graduation.
Hoxby also found an 8 percentile point improvement in the test scores of the students in
these areas who remained in public schools. From this research, Hoxby concludes
that public schools respond positively to competition by improving curriculum.
Any one school’s reaction to the challenges of school choice
depends a great deal on the fiscal rewards and penalties attached to the number of
students they gain or lose. In areas where several public schools vie for the same
students, the overall per-pupil expenditures decreased by an astounding 17 percent.
Whereas even those areas with high private school competition, but where the public
schools suffer no financial loss for losing a student, public school spending remained the
same. These effects are most pronounced in school districts that rely heavily on local
property taxes, because the threat of student desertion provides a strong financial
incentive to improve performance. Whether the same results can be found in school
districts that now allow public funds to follow the child to a public charter or private
school of choice remains to be seen. But Hoxby’s analysis offers substantial evidence
that we should expect similar results from other forms of competition in education.
Cooperation not Competition
Today, some of the most passionate defenders of public education are
engaging the private sector to solve public school problems. Rod Paige, the superintendent
of schools in Houston, Texas, is a public school advocate who sees that private schools
can help rid public school overcrowding. When Houston voters rejected a $390 million bond
measure in May 1996 to build 15 new schools and renovate 84 others, Paige turned to the
private sector. He suggested that some students from his 65 overcrowded schools attend
local private schools at district expense. Soon thereafter, the Houston school trustees
voted unanimously in favor of his plan. Board President Don McAdams told the Houston
Chronicle, "the more freedom you give people, I think, the more enthusiastic they
are going to be about public education."
As to whether school choice will destroy the common school ideal, many
private schools, especially Catholic schools in the inner-city, offer the best examples of
the ideal in action. Catholic schools are not only better equipped and have a proven
record of teaching inner-city students at a nominal cost, but they provide better racial
and economic diversity.
Recently, Jay Greene, assistant professor of government at the
University of Texas, looked closely at diversity in public and private schools. His
analysis of the 1992 National Education Longitudinal Study suggests that private schools
are in fact doing a better job integrating students of different races than public
schools. Greene found that 30 percent of high school seniors in private schools are in
well-integrated classrooms, as opposed to 20 percent of seniors in public schools. He
defines "well-integrated" as a class that has between 15 percent and 35 percent
minority representation, where the national average is 25.6 percent. Similarly, more
public school seniors attend school in highly segregated classrooms: 37 percent, as
opposed to 30 percent of seniors in private schools. Here, he defines "highly
segregated" as less than 5 percent or more than 95 percent minority representation in
a class.
Greene also studied civic values in the two settings and found that
private schools contribute to higher degrees of political participation, social capital,
and tolerance than do public schools. Adjusting for differences in backgrounds, he found
that people with 12 years of private education would vote 70 percent of the time in
presidential elections, while those with no private schooling voted 55.7 percent of the
time. He also found that 30 percent of those with 12 years of private education
would join a civic organization, compared with 22 percent of those with no private
education. And 50 percent of those with at least 12 years of private schooling would
tolerate letting members of their least liked group hold a rally, run for public office,
or teach in schools, compared with 40 percent of those with no private education.
These findings are starting to take hold. All across the nation school
choice is gathering momentum, not because people have given up on public education, but
because they realize that, in the words of Howard Fuller, former Superintendent of
Milwaukee Public Schools, "a school does not need to be run by government in order to
be ‘public.’" So far the evidence suggests that, when tried, school choice
improves the overall quality of education for public and private schools alike. Real
supporters of public schooling no longer oppose real school choice.
Select Sources on Choice
Blum Center for Parental Freedom in Education
• Distributes information regarding school choice efforts nationwide. Phone: (414)
288-7040; Web site: www.mu.edu/blum
Brookings Institution, Center for Public Policy
Education • Provides in-depth research and analysis on school choice and education
reform. Phone: (202) 797-6000; Web site: www.brookings.org
Center for Education Reform • Serves as an
information broker for national reform. Phone: (800) 521-2118; Web site: www.edreform.com
CEO America • Supplies information on private
scholarship programs nationwide. Phone: (501) 273-6957; Web site: www.ceoamerica.org
Children’s Scholarship Fund • Supplies
information on private scholarship programs nationwide. Phone: (800) 444-9662; Web site: www.scholarshipfund.org
Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation • Promotes
education reform through competition and choice. Phone: (317) 681-0745; Web site: www.friedmanfoundation.org
Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance
• Provides in-depth research on the impact of inner-city scholarship programs. Phone:
(617) 495-7976; Web site: hdc-www.harvard.edu/pepg/index.htm
Heartland Institute’s School Reform News
• Distills local and national headlines with reform-minded analysis in a monthly
online newsletter. Phone: (312) 377-4000; Web site: www.heartland.org/education/whatis.htm
Heritage Foundation • Tracks school choice
developments in each state and provides analysis of federal education reform initiatives.
Phone: (202) 546-4400; Web site: www.heritage.org/schools
Institute for Justice • Litigates educational
choice cases. Phone: (202) 955-1300; Web site: www.ij.org
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation • Publishes
in-depth analysis on education reform. Phone: (202) 223-5452; Web site: www.edexcellence.net |
