Hoover Institution - Policy Review - A Question of Capacity

Pat Rooney, the pioneer in privately-funded vouchers, is now developing a model that will enable inner city churches to open new schools at rock bottom prices. Already five of these "safe haven" schools have opened in Indianapolis and there are seven more around the country. Following the Rooney model, a man named Bernie Miller has already opened a Safe Haven School in Chattanooga in an abandoned church he leases from the Methodists. Next year in Chattanooga, through the generosity of the MacLellan Foundation, three new schools will open in community centers outside of urban housing projects.

The CEO America Horizon project in San Antonio should encourage similar innovation and adaptation. Over the next ten years, up to 14,000 low-income children in San Antonio’s Edgewood school district may use vouchers worth up to $4,000 to attend the school of their choice. Already two new schools have been created by the program and some existing schools have opened up new classrooms. As in Milwaukee and Cleveland, more development is happening in a shorter time frame here, because the voucher enjoys real buying power and the open market includes both public and private schools. According to Robert Aguirre, director of the Horizon project, "any recognized school under Texas law" qualifies for the program. "We trust the marketplace will find its own level."

Brother Stanley Culotta, the principal of Holy Cross Academy, is concerned that the west side of San Antonio has no Catholic girls’ school. He’s looking at possibly building one for 600 girls. In 1999 his boys’ school will be at maximum capacity. Already he’s acquired additional land for $200,000 and expects to spend $10 million building on it. Now that his school has gained a reputation for excellence in the area, he is looking to the community to help him with this expansion.

The Horizon project in San Antonio is the only district-wide private voucher program in the country. It is a harbinger of things to come. On average we spend $6,500 a year per pupil on public education. If tomorrow we were free to spend that money on private as well as public schools, today we could solve our capacity problems.

The "Neighborhood Effect"
of School Choice

Most people who leave the central cities for the suburbs cite three main reasons for their move: crime, the quality of life, and the quality of the public schools. Cities have been getting the upper hand on crime in recent years, while redevelopment efforts have made many central city neighborhoods more attractive places to live and work. But it will be necessary to restore all three aspects of city life before central cities can hope to reverse the exodus of middle class families.

"Good schools are the lifeblood of our cities," says education researcher Denis Doyle, "save the schools and we save our cities." Young families with children are the demographic group that is fleeing the central cities in the highest numbers. "The people leaving the city are those the city needs most to retain its vitality, namely, working- and middle-class families with children," says Doyle. "Cities that lose families with children are in trouble." Most cities are trying to fix their schools with more of the same ingredients that have already failed—more money and greater centralized control. It is time, Doyle argues, to try school choice as an urban renewal strategy instead.

The evidence in favor of such a strategy is growing. A Calvert Institute survey of people who had moved out of Baltimore, for example, found that among families with school-age children, the poor quality of the schools was a primary reason to leave for more than half of them. 82 percent expressed some dissatisfaction with the Baltimore public school system. Perhaps most significant is the finding that of those who cited poor schools as a reason for leaving Baltimore, 51 percent might have stayed in the central city if full school choice were available.

Urban scholars David P. Varady and Jeffrey A. Raffel, authors of Selling Cities: Attracting Homebuyers Through Schools and Housing Programs, offer corroborating evidence. Varady and Raffel note that Cincinnati has been more successful than other Ohio cities in stemming the exodus of middle class families because it embraced magnet schools instead of forced-busing to achieve desegregation. But even more significant, Varady and Raffel think, has been the role of Catholic parochial schools. "The Catholic schools are important for the city because they serve as ‘neighborhood anchors,’" they write. "The [Catholic] schools serve to promote a high quality of life, particularly for parents who are neighborhood-oriented. St. Catherine School and Nativity School are examples of quality schools that are helping to maintain racially integrated neighborhoods."

Some of the early experiences of pilot school choice programs in central city neighborhoods are encouraging. On Cleveland’s lower income east side, a voucher-supported Hope Academy that opened three years ago has contributed significantly to the revitalization of the surrounding neighborhood. At the time the school opened, an abandoned building located across the street attracted indigents, drunks, and prostitutes, and a nearby bar operated 20 hours a day. But the Hope Academy, said John Morris, who provides management services to the school, "became an anchor for the local community, leading to a community effort among people who didn’t even have children in the school. It pulled the neighborhood together to eradicate the bad stuff that had been going on."

First, the neighborhood convinced the bar owner to reduce his hours, which led to an immediate decline in public drunkenness and prostitution. The police, who hadn’t been much help at first ("They wanted to see if we’d stick around," said Morris), began patrolling more frequently and making more arrests. In the three years since the Hope Academy opened, there have been no auto thefts and only one burglary. There are no longer any bars on the school’s windows. "The revival of the neighborhood is a byproduct we hadn’t counted upon," said Morris.

A similar story comes from Pacoima, California, where Yvonne Chan, founder of the Vaughn Learning Center (a charter school where the mostly minority student body is required to wear uniforms), repeatedly asked the police to shut down a crack house located adjacent to the school. Frustrated by inaction, Chan ultimately bought the crack house for $8,000—with savings achieved by contracting out certain school services—and held a "bulldozing party." Neighbors cheered as the crack house was demolished and a new learning center was built on the site. Because California’s charter school law allows contracting out and exempts charter schools from the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage requirements, Chan was able to give the building contract to a neighborhood contractor and so further support the local area’s growth.

Sociologists have long studied the deleterious "neighborhood effects" of bars, liquor stores, card rooms, and corner drug dealers. The prospect of dozens of small schools that would emerge spontaneously with widespread school choice suggests that the "neighborhood effects" of school choice might go a long way toward revitalizing our central cities.

—Steven Hayward