The Educationa l C o n s equences of Choice

There is ample evidence, according to Mr. Hill, that universal public school choice would strongly benefit all children, including the disadvantaged, by promoting candid and demanding relationships among teachers, parents, and students. Many members of the education establishment claim that universal public school choice would be of little value to the low-income and minority students who now attend the worst schools. They say that the best would take advantage of a larger pool of applicants to become even more selective than they are now and that that did admit disadvantaged children would not work very hard to meet their needs. However, there is ample evidence that choice strongly benefits all children, including the disadvantaged. Choice promotes the candid and demanding relationships among teachers, parents, and students that are essential to schooling. It can make the difference between that are apathetic providers of routine academic courses and that are true communities that develop students as whole people. Much of the evidence for these conclusions comes from my study of a privately funded voucher program, the Student-Sponsor Partnership Program in New York City. Under that program, individual sponsors pay tuition for low-income minority students - many of whom have failed in public and are not Catholic - to attend New York City Catholic high schools. The program selects students from the bottom of the New York City public school population. They and their parents have only to accept the opportunity offered. My study compared the educational experiences and achievement of these private voucher students with the experiences of similar students in public high in New York City. Other evidence is drawn from Robert Crain's study of nonselective magnet in New York City and my subsequent studies of site-based management and foundation-funded public high school reform efforts.(2) How Choice Affects Schools Starting with Milton Friedman, the advocates of choice have argued that competition is a powerful force for school quality. The attitudes and behavior of teachers and administrators in of choice show how competition affects schooling. Schools of choice need to attract students in order to survive. Though some can rely on a reputation for exclusivity or superior quality, not all can credibly claim to be the best. But every school can offer something that gives it an identity - a specific curriculum, social climate, or extracurricular program - that attracts the interest of parents and students. Once a school has established an identity, it must deliver on its promises well enough to keep current students from transferring out, to create brand loyalty among families with several children, and to attract enough new families to fill the entering class each year. The need for product differentiation encourages a number of behaviors that advocates of effective schools have tried to promote in public school staffs. School staffs have a strong incentive to articulate a mission for the school and to ensure that all elements of the school contribute to its attainment. The mission must also be easy to explain to parents. That means that it must be focused on what children will experience in school and what they will be able to do when they leave - not on subtleties of educational technique that may matter only to professionals. Once a school of choice has established an identity, the staff has a strong incentive to avoid major disruptions in the program. The demands of sheer economic survival also make teachers concerned about the performance of the school as a whole. If a school is forced to close because too few students want to attend it, all teachers have to find new jobs, no matter how well they have been teaching their own classes. Teachers therefore have strong incentives to keep their own work in line with the school's mission, to help one another, to identify weaknesses, and to ensure that variations in teacher performance do not harm the school's ultimate product and reputation. …