Stateline - Choice Options on the Increase

THE RANGE of enrollment options for parents with school-age children continues to grow. For example, only 14 states do not have charter school laws on the books. But some of the other choices, such as open enrollment within and across district lines, are being extended without much fanfare. The continuum of choices starts with options for alternative schools and programs, 'space available' open enrollment, charter schools, private and parochial schools, for-profit contract schools approved by district boards of education, private vouchers, and publicly supported vouchers in a few locales. Home schooling might be seen as the ultimate exercise of parental choice, but even that option is taking on variations as parents sometimes opt back into public and private schools for specific services or band together in a charter-type consortium. And as high school students begin to choose distance learning options or university Internet courses while still in high school, the range of possibilities grows even more complex. Generalizing about this phenomenon is difficult, because your range of choices depends on the state you live in, your affinity for the public schools, and your political beliefs. One generalization can be made: the number of options isn't decreasing, and none of the alternatives are going away. Indeed, parents will probably have more options available to them next year than they have this year. It will be interesting to watch how the public schools adapt to the spread of these options or even adopt new operational strategies as a result. Charter school debates seem to follow an evolutionary pattern as first-time legislation is debated, enacted, and altered. What Minnesota went through in 1991 (see Stateline, October 1993) seems destined to be played out again in the states just now enacting charter school legislation. The one aspect of the choice movement that is invisible is the amount of switching that parents are doing from year to year. Not all parents are staying with their first choice, and not all children in a family are choosing the same option. Perhaps dissatisfaction with a charter school or the simple selection of another enrollment option does not make a story worthy of nationwide media attention just yet. Or perhaps it's just easier for the media to jump on the public school monopoly as the culprit. Charter Schools Meanwhile, the charter school option seems to have become a political darling with few negative consequences for those who endorse it. A politician can support the concept and still leave enough wiggle room to tell different stories in different states. Choice can be made to mean state-funded vouchers in one setting and something that looks like an idea to strengthen public schools in the next. When President Clinton, in his State of the Union address, called for increasing the number of charter schools from 1,700 to 3,000 in the coming year, one certainly could wonder anew just what the federal role in education is supposed to be. After all, state funds, not federal funds, are diverted when charters go into operation. And while we were all contemplating the meaning of the Presidential pronouncement, along came a new publication from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) of the U.S. Department of Education. The State of Charter Schools 2000 is the fourth-year report on charter schools. It tells us that: ' three states (New York, Oklahoma, and Oregon) passed charter legislation in 1999, bringing the total to 36 states and the District of Columbia; ' 30 states and D.C. have charter schools that are in operation, with 1,605 sites operational as of September 1999 and an average size of 137 students per school; ' seven of 10 charter schools report a waiting list for new enrollment; ' 27 charter schools closed in 1998-99, bringing to 59 the number of charter schools that have closed since 1992; ' more than 250,000 students are enrolled in charter schools, representing a total of 0. …