First National Commission on School Choice Urges More Funding for Charters, Autonomy to Hire and Fire

11/16/2003

From: Margaret Ritsch, 202-457-8100, mritsch@lipmanhearne.com, or Colin Johnson of the Brookings Institution, 202-797-6310, cjohnson@brookings.edu

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 -- The National Working Commission on Choice in K-12 Education has concluded two years of study with a report that details the good that can be done if school choice is well implemented and the harm that can result if it is done quickly, carelessly, and on the cheap. The commission recommends ample funding, which it says will help prevent segregation, and more autonomy for all schools to hire teachers based on the "fit" between teacher capabilities and school needs. The commission also raises questions about the capacity of existing school districts to properly oversee choice.

The report, "School Choice: Doing it the Right Way Makes a Difference," will be released at the Brookings Institution at 10:00 a.m. on Monday, November 17.

The commission, which was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation and staffed by the Brookings Brown Center on Education Policy, was charged with examining how school choice works and how communities could develop new school options while avoiding choice's potential damage. The commission defines choice as any arrangement that gives parents options among schools.

The commission report says that if choice programs are implemented well, they can benefit children and improve schools, but identifies several risks of poorly designed choice programs: children left behind if their parents do not choose the new options; public schools left behind with the least-qualified teachers; and separatist schools that teach hatred or discrimination, or stratify students by income, class or race, and increased segregation.

"As we went about our work, we became convinced that the ideological fervor and conviction of those on each side of the debate mask a great deal of uncertainty," said Paul Hill, chair of the commission and a research professor of public affairs at the University of Washington. "Each side has asserted that particular outcomes of choice are certain to occur. However, as we soon learned, results good and bad depend on many things. The effects, far from being inevitable, depend on how choice programs are implemented."

American public education is no longer a monolithic, one-size-fits-all system, the report says. Options in public schooling are increasing at a surprising pace. Forty-one states have laws that provide for charter schools and six states have state-funded voucher programs. Charter schools and home schooling were both a rarity ten years ago, but today there are roughly 2,700 charter schools educating nearly 750,000 children. In 1999, some 850,000 children were being schooled at home, according to the National Center on Education Statistics.

The commission report asserts that choice in American public education will continue to grow, so it behooves elected leaders, policymakers, and educators to engage in careful, deliberate planning, including making sure there is adequate funding:

Avoid segregation: If poor and disadvantaged children are to benefit from school choice, then they must be targeted so they are first in line for new options. Moreover, new schools will need to accept public funding as payment in full, without requiring families to pay more.

To ensure access, schools of choice must have fair and open admissions processes, and they must not exclude students simply because their families cannot arrange transportation. Parents need information about their options so they can make well-informed decisions.

Don't skimp on funding: Scant funding limits how many school options can arise, the kind of instruction they can provide, and how long they can survive. When schools of choice lack sufficient funding, they have incentives to exclude those who are generally more expensive to educate: students who don't speak English, or who are poor or disabled. New schools will be of higher quality if they receive per-pupil funding at least roughly comparable to that of district-managed schools.

Implications for teachers' unions: Providers of new schools also need the resources and freedom of action necessary to provide good instruction. To do this, providers need to be able to hire teachers on the basis of "fit," and attract students and parents on the basis of their school's distinctive offerings.

No escape from testing and accountability: If choice is to lead to real options, then there must be some common testing so that parents and the state have good information about schools' basic performance on core skills.

Government also must play a role in ensuring accountability. It can specify academic outcomes that schools should attain, and withdraw financial support from failing schools.

What about the public schools left behind? One of the greatest dangers in implementing choice is the risk for children whose parents don't avail themselves of new options. To ensure these children don't remain in the worst schools, public schools threatened by the competition should get at least the same real, per-pupil funding as other district-run schools. Districts must spend as much money on poor pupils as on middle-class ones. Schools serving disadvantaged students should be free to hire teachers, set pay for staff with rare or critical skills, and make tradeoffs between salaries and the purchase of new materials, technology, or training.

Avoiding harm to social cohesion: Another risk to communities is the possible creation of schools that teach hatred or discrimination or that stratify students by income, class, or race. The report suggests requiring core civics courses that emphasize the values of equality, democracy, and tolerance, and constitutional principles of equality and freedom of speech. Communities also may want to establish clear policies for investigating complaints, and to cancel licenses of schools that violate their commitment to avoid separatist teaching.

Are states and school districts ready? State and community leaders, elected officials, and philanthropies all can play critical roles in improving the design and implementation of choice. The challenge will be greatest to government, which must build capacities that school districts and state governments lack. It must provide good information to parents, run fair admissions lotteries, ensure fair competition, and set reliable rules. Government must establish common student performance standards and take seriously the school licensing and de-licensing process on the basis of school performance, not political pressure. School districts, designed for centralized control of funds and teacher assignment, may not be up to the task of overseeing choice. States probably need to either re-mission school districts or create new entities to do the job.

While some believe that even careful, judicious expansion of choice threatens public education, the report says that it all depends upon how communities and policymakers proceed.

"It is equally possible that, just as Franklin D. Roosevelt used the power of government to save capitalism from itself, current state and local leaders can employ the power of choice to improve their chances of achieving the great goals of public education," the report concludes.

The National Working Commission on Choice in K-12 Education:

-- Paul T. Hill (Chair), director, Center on Reinventing Public Education Research, professor of public affairs, Daniel J. Evans School University of Washington, Seattle, Wash.

-- Julian Betts, professor, Department of Economics, University of California, San Diego; senior fellow, Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco

-- David Ferrero, director of evaluation and policy research, Education; The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, Wash.

-- Brian Gill, social scientist, The RAND Corporation, Pittsburgh, Pa.

-- Dan Goldhaber, research associate professor of public affairs, Daniel J. Evans School, Center on Reinventing Public Education University of Washington, Seattle, Wash.

-- Laura Hamilton, senior behavioral scientist, The RAND Corporation, Pittsburgh, Pa.

-- Jeffrey R. Henig, professor of political science and education, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, N.Y.

-- Frederick M. Hess, resident scholar, The American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C.

-- Tom Loveless, director, The Brown Center on Education Policy, senior fellow, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.

-- Stephen Macedo, Laurance S. Rockefeller professor of politics, the University Center for Human Values Princeton University, Princeton, N.J.

-- Lawrence Rosenstock, principal, High Tech High, San Diego, Ca.

-- Charles Venegoni, division head, English and Fine Arts, John Hersey High School, Arlington Heights, Ill.

-- Janet Weiss, associate provost for academic affairs, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.

-- Patrick J. Wolf, assistant professor of public policy, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

About School Choice:

From School Choice: Doing it the Right Way Makes a Difference A Report from the National Working Commission on Choice in K-12 Education

-- Choice is an integral part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

It requires that students in Title I schools be given choices if schools have not made adequate yearly progress and requires choice for students in "persistently dangerous" schools.

-- Approximately 2,700 charter schools exist in the United States, enrolling an estimated 750,000 children. Forty-one states have enacted legislation providing for charter schools.

-- State-funded voucher programs exist in six states-Colorado, Florida, Maine, Ohio, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Three states-Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania-also allow income tax deductions for contributions to private voucher programs.

-- Privately-financed voucher programs for low-income students exist in more than one hundred cities.

-- Thirty-three states reported having more than 1,350 magnet schools in 1999-2000.

-- The outcomes of choice depend upon how communities structure and implement it.

-- Low levels of funding limit how many school options arise, the kind of instruction they provide, and how long they survive. Per-pupil funding in charter schools and other choice options should be comparable to other district schools. This will help ensure more options and prevent "creaming" of the easiest-to-educate students in choice programs.

-- Disadvantaged students will benefit from school choice if their parents are given the first opportunity to choose and if the schools accept public funding as full payment for tuition.

-- To avoid segregation, districts must ensure that schools of choice have fair admissions processes, including lotteries for high demand schools. Students should not be excluded because their families cannot arrange for transportation.

-- Low-income, special education, and non-English speaking students cost more to educate. If funding does not reflect this reality, then schools will have incentives to avoid such students.

-- Existing school districts, designed for centralized control of funds and teacher assignment, may not be up to the task of overseeing choice. States probably need to either re-mission school districts or create new entities to do the job.

-- Providers of choice need the freedom to hire teachers on the basis of "fit" with the school's approach to instruction, and to attract students and parents on the basis of their distinctive offerings.

-- The surest way to encourage the failure of choice programs is to implement them quickly, carelessly, and cheaply, and be optimistic that at some point things will all work out for the best.

About the Brown Center on Education Policy and the Brookings Institution:

Established in 1992, the Brown Center on Education Policy conducts research on topics in American education, with a special focus on efforts to improve academic achievement in elementary and secondary schools. The Brown Center is part of the Brookings Institution, a private, nonprofit organization devoted to research, education, and publication on important issues of domestic and foreign policy.

The Institution maintains a position of neutrality on issues of public policy. Interpretations or conclusions in Brookings publications should be understood to be solely those of the authors.

For a full copy of the report prior to November 16, please contact Tucker Warren at 202-457-8100 or e-mail twarren@lipmanhearne.com. For information about other Brown Center events and publications, please visit the Brown Center's Web site at http://www.brookings.edu/browncenter. The Choice report will be posted on the website on November 16.