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“Vouchers” for all? Good reasons for all to have access to education marketplace

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On May 15, 2012 in Education and Public Policy, Education Research, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Editor’s note: After posting Howard Fuller’s concerns about universal vouchers last week, we asked Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, to offer his perspective.

It’s not hard to see why Howard Fuller might be skeptical of universal government education programs. Public schooling is one such program and it has done an atrocious job of serving the poor. But is its universality the cause of its failure? Fuller believes that the poor are forgotten and given short shrift under universal programs and that the wealthy are favored by them. If that were the case in public schooling, we would expect schools serving the poor to receive less funding than those serving the wealthy. In responding to Fuller, Matthew Ladner contends that this is indeed the case: that public schooling “systematically distributes more money per pupil” to wealthier kids.

Actually, though, that doesn’t appear to be true. According to the federal Department of Education’s Condition of Education 2010, Indicator 36-1, districts with the poorest students are the highest spending. Public schools serving these students are not atrocious because they are underfunded, they are atrocious despite the fact that they are the best funded districts in the nation.

Having voted to raise public school spending relentlessly for generations, and having chosen to direct the highest level of per-pupil spending to the poorest children, it is hard to believe that Americans are indifferent to the education of the poor.

A more plausible explanation of the facts is that Americans would love to see their poorest countrymen thrive educationally but don’t know how to make that happen. For generations they have been told by the media, academics, and political leaders that the solution is higher spending. They have gone along with that recommendation and it has failed utterly. A few are finally beginning to realize that, but they still don’t know how to improve matters.

But the school choice movement believes it does know the cause of the problem: the lack of alternatives. Middle and upper income families find it easier to pay for private schooling or to relocate away from the worst public schools. They have alternatives that the poor do not. As a result, they get better service. The movement’s solution is thus to ensure that everyone has alternatives.

And this brings us back to Fuller’s claim: that the poor will be better served by a school choice program targeted exclusively at them. Is he right? In answering that question, it helps to consider a few facts and distinctions that are usually overlooked:

• First, there is a difference between universal access to the education marketplace and universal participation in a government program;
• Second, tiny markets are dramatically inferior to vast ones;
• And third, it actually matters who is footing the bill for a child’s education.

Saying that everyone should have educational choice is not the same thing as saying that everyone should participate in a particular government program. Continue Reading →

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Not the “common school” myth again!

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On April 26, 2012 in Education Research, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

The assertion that school choice somehow exacerbates segregation and separatism in American society surprises me every time it pops up. The ideal of traditional public education, a “common school” available equally at no cost to all citizens to impart a high level of academics as well as a core set of American values, has always been a myth. Yet it has amazing staying power despite the facts.

Put aside a hundred years of state-sanctioned racism that outlawed education for slaves, and then engendered “separate, but equal” schools for another 90 years until the 1954 Supreme Court decision banned the practice. Let’s look at how this “common school” system serves Americans now.

The statistics on K-12 education in the Department of Education’s “The Condition of Education, 2011″ report are informative. Nationally, 31 percent of African-American students are in schools that have 75 percent or more African-American students. The figure is nearly 33 percent for Hispanic students. Nationally, 62 percent of whites attend a school with a population over 75 percent white, while those schools serve around 7 percent of the African-American and Hispanic populations.

When city demographics are analyzed, the segregation of traditional public schools dramatically jumps. Forty-two percent of African-Americans and 39 percent of Hispanics are in schools with 75 percent or more of those same students. Not surprisingly, school enrollment and especially urban school enrollment reflects how a public education monopoly assigns students to schools – by zip codes.

Another way to look at how this “common school” system is serving us is the distribution of the free and reduced lunch (FRL) population, which the Department of Education identifies as a proxy for low-income students. High-poverty elementary schools, those with 75 percent or more of an FRL population, enroll 45 percent of Hispanic students and 44 percent of African-American students. For whites, the enrollment is 6 percent in high-poverty schools. Nationally, urban areas account for 29 percent of our student population, yet 58 percent of all students in high-poverty schools live in our cities.

Combine this data with dropout statistics in the 40-60 percent range for inner-city minority populations, and abysmal academic outcomes for so many of the remaining students, and you have the “common school” myth stripped bare. Continue Reading →

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Harvard study: School choice reduces criminal activity among at-risk students

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On April 4, 2012 in Education Research, General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, Religious education, School Choice

A new Harvard study suggests another good reason to expand school choice: Reduced crime rates. High-risk male students who won a public school choice lottery in North Carolina committed about 50 percent less crime than their peers who lost, according to the research by David J. Deming, an assistant professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

“I find consistent evidence that attending a better school reduces crime among those age 16 and older, across various schools, and for both middle and high school students,” he writes in the most recent edition of Education Next magazine. “The effect is largest for African American males and youth who are at highest risk for criminal involvement.”

You can read all the wonderful, wonky details in Deming’s report, but several points stand out. Deming found the positive effects of choice on crime rates were greatest with the 20 percent of students who were most at risk. He also found that while those students didn’t necessarily get tickets into the best schools, they did get into better schools. (Essentially, they moved up, according to his quality indicators, from the lowest-ranked schools to average schools.)

As for possible explanations, Deming says there is little evidence to support the notion that students benefited because they were less exposed to crime-prone peers or neighborhoods. He gives more credit to the possibility that in higher quality schools, at-risk students were better learning marketable skills, and so were staying in school longer to increase opportunities for landing work.

I can only speculate on what Deming’s study means for choice options that go beyond public schools,  like vouchers and tax credit scholarships. But I think there’s reason for supporters of such options to be encouraged. Continue Reading →

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Obama’s inconsistency on school choice

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On March 5, 2012 in Charter Schools, Customization, Education Research, General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, School Choice

The Obama administration’s refusal to embrace parental choice in education is difficult to understand given its health care stance and the overall public policy direction that Democrats have advocated and embraced for decades. The most recent example is the controversy over the access to contraception under Obamacare.

Initially, the administration asserted that a woman’s and family’s right to choose to use contraception trumped whatever objections religious affiliated employers had to its use. Churches themselves were exempt, but not hospitals they operate. These religious employers would have had to honor the family’s right to choose contraceptives and at zero cost for all their employees. The White House backed off somewhat from the directive in the face of an uproar, but instead ordered that insurance companies have to offer and pay for such coverage separately when the religiously affiliated organization opts not to offer it.

This recognition of the family’s rights on such a personal and potentially life changing decision as contraception oddly does not carry over to education, which in the 21st century is more life changing than ever. Education once was third behind a good work ethic and a strong back for many middle class jobs. Today, education is a must for a middle-class standard of living. Continue Reading →

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Good job, now get back to work

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On February 28, 2012 in Education Research, Parental Choice, Private Schools, School Choice

Florida’s tax-credit scholarship program for low-income students got a pat on the back Monday at a State Board of Education workshop, albeit from a not-unexpected source. But the brief discussion that followed the presentation was a reminder that the oversight for these educational endeavors, even one that is now a decade old and the largest of its type in the nation, can benefit from open-minded questions.

The attaboy came from Scott Jensen, senior governmental affairs advisor for the American Federation of Children. (Full disclosure: John Kirtley, founder and board chairman for Step Up for Students, the nonprofit that oversees Florida’ tax credit scholarships, is AFC’s vice president.) The board workshop was focused on choice options in Florida, both public and private, and Jensen highlighted the state’s reputation as a national leader in a choice movement that has moved from fringe to mainstream in just the past decade.

The Florida scholarship is a model for other states, Jensen said, because its per-student scholarship amount – $4,011 this school year – is enough to give low-income parents real options. (The average for other states with such programs, he said, is between $1,500 and $2,000.) It has financial and academic reporting requirements. And it is a verified money saver for state taxpayers, according to, among other reputable sources, OPPAGA – the Florida Legislature’s respected research arm. “That has been helpful to us around the country as we encourage other states to adopt these programs,” Jensen told the board. “They’re very reluctant, given no track record in their states, to say it’s going to cost money or save money. The good work that’s been done in Florida is very valuable to that.”

But as we all know, the good work isn’t done yet. Continue Reading →

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Widening our school reform horizons

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On January 4, 2012 in Education and Public Policy, Education Research, General, Parent empowerment, School Choice

In the early decades of the 19th century, American education reformers followed eagerly the developments in European countries that were building systems of popular schooling; Horace Mann even spent his honeymoon touring Prussian schools! More recently, however, there has been a marked disinclination to learn from what – for good or ill – is happening in the schools of other countries. Now and again, it is true, there will be a flurry of interest in why measured performance is better in Taiwan or in Finland than in the United States, but the reports we receive commonly lack the context that would allow us to make sense of national differences.

Of course, there are increasingly rich data on performance outcomes, and studies that correlate these outcomes with different characteristics of national education systems. An especially powerful study, for those concerned with education reforms that include both accountability for results and the empowerment of parents and teachers through school autonomy and choice, was published a couple of years ago as School Accountability, Autonomy and Choice around the World, by Ludger Woessmann and others, including Martin West of Harvard.

Those who want more details on how different educational systems – at least those in Europe – function can turn to Eurydice.org or, for a broader but less detailed view, to OECD’s invaluable annual Education at a Glance  and to the reports of the World Bank and of UNESCO on a range of education issues. The new edition of our Balancing Freedom, Autonomy, and Accountability in Education, with chapters on more than 50 countries, will be out in four volumes in 2012.

But how to make sense of all this information and, especially, how to think about it in a systematic way that can serve as the basis for structural and governance reforms? It is not enough, surely, simply to assert that reading and math scores will go up if this or that change is made; efficiency in producing such measurable outcomes (while essential) is not the only result that a society expects from its educational system.

Americans often turn to decisions of our Supreme Court, such as Pierce, Meyer, Barnette, Brown, Yoder, Lau, and others, to articulate fundamental principles that should guide decisions about education, and we do so in ways that often go beyond the particular circumstances of the decision or its actual legal implications. We do this because we lack more general formulations of the right to education and rights in education, apart from the varied provisions of state constitutions. This makes it difficult to think and to discuss in a principled way and causes us to fall back on arguments about test scores as though they were the only issue in education. Continue Reading →

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While flawed, a new effort shines light on the demand for school choice

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On November 30, 2011 in Charter Schools, Education and Public Policy, Education Research, General, School Choice

The Brookings Institution’s ranking of school choice met with mixed results today, and properly so. But one conclusion that may escape attention should have profound implications for choice and school governance in the years to come: One of every two households engages in some form of school choice, and more would do so if given the chance.

The report is limited to an examination of quality and competition in the nation’s 25 largest school districts, but this hides the sweep of the enterprise. The Brown Center on Education Policy didn’t just look at public school choice within each individual system. It surveyed private options in each district’s boundaries, factoring in publicly funded alternatives such as vouchers or tax credit scholarships and paying attention to how performance is assessed. And it considered whether and how districts have embraced virtual education.

Thus, author and center director Russ Whitehurst writes:

… more than 50 percent of parents of school-aged children have engaged in some form of school choice, albeit primarily in the form of residential choice and private school tuition: two socially inequitable means of determining where a child attends school. There is little doubt based on the long waiting lists for popular public schools of choice that many more parents wish to exercise choice than are currently able to do so, and schools of choice consistently generate more positive evaluations from parents than assigned schools.

Each district was given a letter grade determined by factors as varied as the enrollment at “alternatively available schools” — which included charter and voucher enrollments — and student assignment systems where “preferences are maximized.” But, honest intentions notwithstanding, the methodology may be misleading. For instance, seven Florida counties make the list, with Duval County (Jacksonville) getting the highest overall ranking within the state. With apologies to Rick Hess, Duval has done little to actively enhance school choice.

While the Duval County school board has begun to authorize more charter schools in the Jacksonville area in just the last year, Duval is near last among Florida districts on the Brookings index in density of charter schools, according to 2010-11 data from the Florida Department of Education. Just 2.7 percent of the public school population in Duval is enrolled in charter schools. By comparison, Miami-Dade County’s charter school enrollment is at 10.2 percent of the county’s total public school population, but is ranked just 20th of 25 districts overall at Brookings.

The State of Florida has done more to create the conditions for choice that Dade has embraced, just as it has created and enhanced the means-tested tax credit scholarships to private schools that have penetrated nearly 5 percent of the eligible population in Duval County. The growth of, and prospect for more, publicly funded private school options led Duval County school board chairman W.C. Gentry to tell a radio interviewer one year ago, “Fundamentally, [school choice] is very bothersome. The notion that we would effectively dismantle a system of public education and give students and parents choice and go do whatever they choose to do is anathema to the basic underpinnings of our society.”

This is no attempt to discredit a report that was intended to celebrate “a fundamental rationale … in creating a vibrant marketplace for better schools.” In identifying an expanded definition of public education and a demand for more and better school options, Whitehurst brings sunlight to the differences between school systems in how they meet the needs of parents, and those differences often disappoint. Still, if the intent of the index is to create public awareness, a deeper dive is necessary.

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Five degrees of separation — a changing American anomaly

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On November 16, 2011 in Charter Schools, Education and Public Policy, Education Research, General, Parent empowerment, School Choice

Editor’s note: Gloria Romero is a former Democratic senator from California and the California director of Democrats for Education Reform. She serves on the board of the American Center for School Choice. Peter H. Hanley is the center’s executive director.

Only in education have we empowered strangers and geography rather than parents to make choices as to what is best for children. Essentially, parents and children are tied to the land — much like peasants under feudalism. Five digits, known as ZIP code, continue to allocate and segregate students. We use handy phrases like “neighborhood schools” and “local control.” But we don’t dare try that in housing, or healthcare, or places of worship. Racial discrimination was barred long ago, freeing us to live in any neighborhood. It’s unthinkable that a local health department official could look at your address and assign your child to a doctor or dentist. You are free to worship at the church or temple of your choice.

Yet in American education, someone in your local school district, who does not know you or your child, orders you each fall to send the child to a school based on these five digits regardless of whether its programs fit your child’s and family’s needs or delivers strong academic outcomes.

The best thing about the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law is that it opened our eyes — real data revealing a widening achievement gap for students of minority and low-income parents. We also learned that, too often, bargained contracts give highly effective teachers the choice to “opt-out” of schools where they are most needed. Further, many charter and independent schools have demonstrated that children in poverty can perform at high academic levels.

But, the times they are a changin’!

Gradually, ZIP code is being challenged and replaced with choice. Forty states have authorized public charter schools, which operate without many of the bureaucratic requirements of traditional schools, but with high accountability expectations. Between 1993 and 2007, the percent of families who were able to choose their child’s school, either within the public school system or at private schools, has increased from 20 percent to 27 percent.

Progress, however, has been uneven as the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) found that families with low incomes, composed of a single parent or of parents with only a high school diploma or less, and Latino families have not been increasing their ability to make educational choices.

This year, 42 states have introduced legislation, most targeted for the underserved, to create or expand school vouchers or tax credit scholarship programs. The latter allow businesses and individuals to receive a tax credit for a donation to a nonprofit organization that in turn provides scholarship money, mostly to low-income families. Already this year, 12 states and the District of Columbia enacted programs to permit parents to choose schools, including private schools, which best serve their children. Moreover, 15 states have introduced legislation modeled on California’s landmark Parent Trigger Act, which empowers parents to force change in persistently underperforming public schools.

NCES also found that parents who are “very satisfied” with multiple aspects of their children’s school rose dramatically as their ability to exercise choice grew. Data consistently shows at least a 10-percentage point difference for those that had public school choice and a 25-point difference for those that had private school choice over parents that did not have choice.

Americans value freedom and like choices in their lives, so these trends are not surprising. Indeed, some parents are willing to be arrested and even go to jail for trying to enroll their children in schools which they know can better serve their children. Parents will challenge ZIP code controls, sign petitions, and form turnaround movements when their “neighborhood” school is chronically failing. Yet opposition to expanding parental choice to all schools — including private schools — persists. These schools, especially religious schools, have served urban communities for decades, but have been closing at alarming rates. Aside from the strong academic credentials of most of these schools, a recent Notre Dame Law School analysis found that in Chicago “the presence of a Catholic school in a police beat appears to suppress crime.”

America needs more good schools, traditional public, charter, and private, which serve families well. We need an honest and forthright debate over parental responsibilities and choice in public education, especially whether five digits should continue to be the most powerful five degrees of separation from the American Dream. Whether it’s Johnny or Juanita, it’s time to make parents the architects of their children’s future.

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Continuing one researcher’s seminal work — a call to action

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On October 28, 2011 in Demographic Research, Education Research, General, Private Schools, School Choice

One of the most devastating arguments made for the school choice wars has been the observation by researcher Denis Doyle that public school teachers have long sent their own children to private schools at higher rates than the general public. His analyses of the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Census Bureau data has shown that while about 11 percent of average U.S. families send their children to private schools, more than 14 percent of public school teachers do so. This is, of course, the moral equivalent of a doctor warning away his own family from the hospital in which he or she works.

Doyle retired this year, and the American Center for School Choice and California Parents for Educational Choice would like to see this project continued. That data is typically available about three years after the actual census, thus we need to be up and running by early 2013. Although either of us would be pleased to lead this research, we do not have the funding presently to do so. We would be glad to have another organization take this on, but most important is that the analysis is completed.

We are hoping to expand this study to include not just public school teachers, but also public school administrators, who, with their six-figure salaries, are highly likely to be sending their own kids to private schools at higher rates still.

Denis deserves some kind of medal for his brilliant and extremely important work, but we suspect that his greatest legacy will be simply that his friends and colleagues have seen the enormous value in what he did and will carry on the torch. Is there an organization out there that would either fund the project or take it on itself?

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Why are we so focused on test scores?

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On October 20, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, Education Research, General, School Choice

Is it fair to classify as “dopes” those parents who choose schools that report poor test performance? Not if we only focus on test performance, which may be a muddy measure of how kids are benefitting, Rick Hess writes. Hess directs readers to a recent paper by several economists who examined the open-enrollment initiative at Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools and found substantive long-term gains. The enrollment plan launched in 2001, yielding, according to the study, higher graduation rates with no cream skimming.

“Among applicants with low-quality neighborhood schools, lottery winners are more likely than lottery losers to graduate from high school, attend a four-year college, and earn a bachelor’s degree,” authors David Deming, Justine Hastings, Thomas Kane and Douglas Staiger conclude. “They are twice as likely to earn a degree from an elite university. The results suggest that school choice can improve students’ longer-term life chances when they gain access to schools that are better on observed dimensions of quality.”

Earlier today on this page, Alan Bonsteel, the president of California Parents for Educational Choice, urged school choice groups to embrace the argument that enhanced levels of school choice can yield higher graduation rates. Similarly, Hess writes:

Maybe parents aren’t dopes. Maybe reading and math scores, at least on today’s assessments, are actually muddy measures of how much kids are benefiting. Maybe parents who express high levels of satisfaction with choice see that their kids are better behaved and more focused, disciplined, and academically engaged. Maybe they judge that this gives their kids a much better shot at a bright future, even if their short-term reading and math scores aren’t moving a lot … 

… Now, let’s be clear. I don’t know that any of this is true. But it seems as viable as the “parents are dopes” hypothesis. Yet school choice researchers have been so focused for two decades on examining whether choice lifts test scores that they’ve not yet spent much time exploring just why it is that parental satisfaction seems to so dramatically exceed the test score evidence. On the bright side that just means there are huge opportunities ahead. So, guys, how about it?

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