Rules-funding mix crucial to choice schools' success

December 6, 2003

The battle over school choice in all its variety is so polarized that some things that ought to go without saying need to be said. One is that school choice, in and of itself, is neither a cure-all nor a disaster, or, in somewhat more muted terms, neither beneficial nor harmful. What matters is how it's done.

That's the chief message of a report on school choice prepared by a national working commission under the sponsorship of the Brookings Institution (available at www.brookings.edu/comm/op-ed /20031117k12.htm on the Web).

The commission's view is that the success of a choice program, whatever form it takes, should be evaluated on four criteria: Benefits to children whose parents exercise choice; benefits (or at least absence of harm) to families that do not exercise choice; commitment to equal opportunity and desegregated schools; advancement of common democratic values and social cohesion.

Any form of choice that met these criteria should enjoy broad public support, and moreover they are concrete enough to be investigated empirically.

Commission Chairman Paul Hill, who directs the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington in Seattle, was in Denver recently and talked about the commission's work.

As he sums up the usual rhetoric, supporters of more school choice believe that children who are able to attend a school their parents choose for them will learn more, while those who do not switch schools will also be better off because their schools will improve to meet the competition. Opponents, in contrast, believe too much choice will increase racial and social isolation and make schools worse for children who are left behind because they'll have less money.

Hill's observation is that any of these are possible outcomes, but none of them is inevitable.

I'm mostly with the supporters on this, and in fact Colorado has gone rather a long way toward demonstrating that opponents' worst fears are unlikely to be realized. It allows families to choose not only among schools in their district, but among districts, as well as offering alternative, magnet and charter schools. That's quite far along the spectrum of gradually increasing options laid out in the report, and other states may note that the sky has not fallen.

Unfortunately, Colorado's attempt to take the next step forward was temporarily thwarted this week when Denver District Judge Joseph Meyer ruled that the state's pioneering voucher program was unconstitutional.

The Brookings report is most interesting and useful, however, for its attempt to identify specific policy decisions that influence whether outcomes are good or bad.

One is funding. Charter schools in Colorado, by state law, receive nearly as much in per-pupil operating funds as the other schools in their district, although they are disadvantaged in regard to finding suitable facilities. That means it is financially feasible to open a charter school, which tends to mean there are more of them. The same would have been true under the voucher program, with several schools planning to open solely to serve voucher students.

But if district or state policies sharply limit funding for charter or voucher students, that doesn't happen. As economists say, the supply response is weak.

Another important dimension is the degree of regulation. The more the rules for choice schools resemble the ones that strangle public schools in red tape, the less reason there is to start a new school. But if the rules are relaxed too far, there is an increased risk that some of the schools people want to start will fall outside the boundaries of what is socially acceptable.

Even considering just these two factors yields four very different kinds of programs, all of which, according to the report, are being tried somewhere. Limited funds, lots of rules; that sounds like Michigan's program, which doesn't take big risks but doesn't encourage the formation of many new schools either. Lots of rules with generous funding, the New York state model for charters, does lead to the creation of new schools, but they're pretty much like the old ones.

If the rules are relaxed, but the funding is low, the outcome looks more like Cleveland's voucher program, where virtually the only schools where vouchers could be used were religious schools, because no other private schools could operate on $2,250 a year per student.

The remaining possibility, where funding is comparable to what public schools receive, and the level of restriction is low to moderate, describes Milwaukee's program. Milwaukee, not by any coincidence, is widely regarded as among the most successful voucher programs, at least among people willing to admit that a voucher program can succeed.

Hill would like to see the differences between choice schools and other schools reduced.

"District schools should get the same freedoms as charters," he said. "And charters should get the same money."

Right on both counts.