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Free Market Policies and Public Education:
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WHILE SCHOOL choice programs can take many forms, each of which raises issues regarding the role and scope of public education, voucher programs -- proposals to provide families with public funds to be used at the public or private school of their choice -- are undoubtedly the most hotly debated alternative.
Both advocates and opponents of vouchers set forth arguments that, while tremendously passionate, are based largely on ideology, with minimal or only selective reliance on factual evidence. The result has been an antagonistic, vocal, highly visible confrontation between "believers" and "nonbelievers." Because the voucher issue has the potential to result in substantial changes in public education and will affect the lives of millions of children, it is important to examine what is known about voucher programs and proposals as the debate continues.
Toward this end, we will discuss questions related to the impetus for including voucher programs among the options provided by the current choice movement, the nature or structure of existing school voucher programs, and the findings of research on the effects of those voucher programs. It must be acknowledged at the outset that definitive answers about the fundamental goodness of publicly funded voucher programs are not now available and may never be. Our present purpose is merely to promote a better understanding of the issue.
Voucher Programs and School Choice
The school choice movement -- the notion of providing children and families with options for the school and educational program in which they participate without regard for the neighborhood in which they live -- includes a broad range of approaches. Among the many examples are magnet schools, alternative schools, charter schools, tax credits for private school tuition, intradistrict choice plans, interdistrict choice plans, and even alternative programs within a single school. Each of these, to varying degrees, offers parents the ability to select for their children educational options in curriculum, instruction, and philosophical contexts. Such programs are available, if not required by legislation, in each of the 50 states and in most moderate to large school districts.
Greater choice is made possible by providing families with money (in the form of a voucher) that can be used for tuition in any participating school, usually including both public and private schools. As a result, voucher programs differ from most other choice programs in at least three important ways. First, and usually most contentiously, the programs allow parents to use the voucher to select from among both public and private schools. Virtually all other choice proposals allow choice only among public schools or programs, though charter schools are, arguably, neither fully public nor fully private. Second, all currently operating voucher programs include schools with religious affiliations. The state-funded voucher program in Milwaukee was an exception until recent court rulings allowed the program to expand to include both secular and religious private schools. Third, unlike other choice approaches, 14 of the 16 existing voucher programs in the U.S. operate on private rather than public funding.1 It may be in this regard that they present their greatest threat to public education.
What Are the Arguments for Voucher Programs?
The case for parents to have greater choice and voice in their children's education is made by those of all political stripes and persuasions, from far right to far left; by members of majority and minority ethnic groups; by the wealthy and the poor, by the religious and the secular. Thus it is difficult to state precisely a single case that represents the position of choice advocates, particularly advocates of vouchers.
For some, the importance of vouchers lies in providing poor families, particularly those living in inner cities, the opportunity for educational choice that more affluent families have always possessed.2 By this argument, families with even moderate incomes routinely choose their children's school by the school district or neighborhood in which they choose to live. For families with higher incomes, additional choices are available through personally funded private school enrollment. Poor families have little or no choice in where they reside, often being forced to live in neighborhoods near the most dangerous and least effective schools. Voucher programs would diminish the inequality of available choices by providing more options for poor families.
Other advocates believe that allowing parents choices in the schools their children attend would promote greater competition among schools and thus would improve the quality of schools and encourage innovative approaches to education.3 The current public monopoly on education reduces or eliminates incentives for school improvement or experimentation because there is no "market share" to be gained or lost. Ineffective schools, no matter how effectiveness may be defined, suffer no ill consequences, and highly effective schools receive no tangible benefits. Such a system not only fails to support success but, combined with highly regulatory bureaucracies, promotes maintenance of the status quo. Change and innovation are implicitly discouraged through unnecessary red tape and the difficulties associated with obtaining official sanction or approval.
According to advocates, voucher programs would allow -- even force -- all schools to be as effective as private schools have been.4 Private school students routinely achieve at higher levels than public school students, students behave more appropriately in private schools, and parents are more satisfied with the quality of their children's education in private schools.5 These valuable outcomes of private schooling result, at least in part, from the competitive market-driven context within which private schools must survive, according to voucher proponents. Unlike public schools, private schools must meet the needs of a sufficient number of students and families to remain financially viable. As a result, private schools focus more on students' needs, on the interests and input of parents, and on ensuring that clearly defined goals for student learning and behavior are reached. Voucher programs would force every school, whether public or private, to become more accountable in order to remain viable. Parents would choose to send their children to schools that best met their needs, and less desirable schools would be forced to change or close.
How Strong Is the Voucher Movement?
While many of these arguments seem extreme and perhaps even a bit naive, they reflect the perceptions of a huge proportion of parents in the U.S.6 More than 95% of adults in the U.S. believe that parents should be allowed greater choice regarding their children's education. When asked whether they would support the redirection of some current education funding to provide vouchers with which parents could enroll their children in the public or private schools of their choice, 50% of public school parents said yes.7 Further, approximately 40% of current public school parents would send their children to a private school if they were awarded a publicly funded voucher.8 Among minority families and those living in the inner city, more than 80% of parents believe that state-funded vouchers are a desirable and an important approach to improving education. lt is clear that school choice in its many forms, and particularly voucher programs supporting enrollment in both public and private schools, is likely to continue to grow.9
What Is the Extent of the Voucher Movement?
To date, only two publicly funded voucher programs are operational: in Cleveland, Ohio, and in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The ambitious statewide voucher program in Florida will soon join this list. However, privately funded voucher programs currently operate in 14 cities across the country, and new programs, both publicly and privately funded, are in varying stages of development in at least 33 other cities. None of these programs serve more than a small percentage of eligible students within their regions, and most have been operating for only a few years. In spite of this, the character of these programs and the threat they pose to the long-standing nature and status of public education have raised the visibility of the issue and intensified the already emotional debate over the future not just of voucher programs but of public education in this country.10
The passionate and emotional rhetoric that accompanies almost any discussion of the voucher issue stands in nearly inverse relation to the amount of evidence that exists about the effects of vouchers on students, teachers, families, or schools. In total, only a handful of studies are available that have systematically examined either public or privately funded voucher programs. A lack of supporting evidence has never served to diminish the number or the fervor of stakeholders in any educational discussion, and in this regard the voucher issue is not unusual. However, the fundamental questions that voucher programs raise about the role and nature of public education and the ideological bases that underlie positions for or against vouchers seem to promote greater vehemence, passion, and unsupported speculation about them than might otherwise be expected. Thus more and more voucher programs are proposed and implemented. Opponents rage about their lack of effectiveness, the damage they do to public schools, and the racial, ethnic, and economic segregation they will cause, while advocates hold up the improvements that will accrue to education through the increased competition, greater family involvement, and increased accountability that they believe vouchers will create.
What Do We Know About Voucher Programs?
During the past two years, we and our colleagues have been involved in an ongoing evaluation of the effects of the publicly funded voucher program in Cleveland, Ohio. During this time, we have become acutely aware of the tremendous confusion that exists over the effects, real and assumed, of voucher programs in the U.S. As noted above, there are few studies from which facts about voucher programs can be drawn, and these provide confusing -- even contradictory -- results. Unfortunately, though perhaps not surprisingly, this confusion has allowed those on both sides of the issue to selectively use research results to support their positions, and highly publicized scholarly infighting among researchers involved in the issue has further undermined public confidence in the utility of educational research and the honesty of those who conduct it.11
There are few definitive answers about the effects of voucher programs. Too little evidence is available. Further, because much of the research on voucher programs has been conducted by advocates wishing to "legitimize" or "validate" the programs, the research reports are often made public through webpages or press releases and are seldom subjected to peer review. However, an awareness and understanding of the nature and findings of the existing research may help, if only slightly, to cool the inflammatory character of the debate. To that end, each of the currently available studies of publicly funded voucher programs is reviewed below. The goal of this endeavor is not to critique the research, but rather to make the reader aware of what has been done and what remains to be done as the voucher debate continues.
Research on Publicly Funded Voucher Programs
As noted earlier, privately funded voucher programs outnumber publicly funded programs by about seven to one. In spite of their numbers, privately funded voucher programs are much more limited in size and scope than publicly funded programs, serving small numbers of children within limited geographic regions and providing proportionally smaller tuition vouchers. Further, state-funded voucher programs will always be subject to substantially different sets of expectations and requirements, leading them to develop structures and methods of operation that are likely to be considerably different from privately funded programs. In addition, very little research is available on these programs, and all of it has been conducted by sponsors of the programs. For these reasons, the current review is limited to studies of the two publicly funded voucher programs: the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Grant Program.
The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program
The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program was initiated in 1990. When implemented, the program provided up to $2,500 in private school tuition for children in families whose income did not exceed 1.75 times the national poverty level. The funds used to provide the vouchers were deducted from state general equalization aid to the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). To be eligible, children had to have attended a Milwaukee public school during the preceding academic year, and the total number of vouchers awarded was not to exceed 1% of the total MPS enrollment. Qualifying schools, elementary through high school, were to be nonsectarian, to admit voucher students randomly and without discrimination, and to maintain voucher enrollments at 49% or less of total enrollment.
In its initial year, the Milwaukee program provided vouchers to 341 students enrolled in seven private schools. The program has expanded over time; it enrolled 6,000 students in 86 schools during the 1998-99 year and provided vouchers of nearly $5,000. Perhaps the most significant change in the program came in 1998, when the U.S. Supreme Court let stand the Wisconsin supreme court ruling that the program can include religiously affiliated schools without violating the state's constitution. The program's constitutionality continues to be in question, with appeals likely to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program continues to generate heated debate.
To date, three studies of the Milwaukee voucher program have been conducted. The original and most comprehensive study was that of John Witte and his colleagues, who were selected by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction to conduct a multi-year evaluation of all aspects of the program.12 Witte and his colleagues released annual reports during each of the first five years of the program, after which funding for evaluation of the program was discontinued. Shortly after the release of the fourth-year report, two studies of the program in which the original data were reanalyzed were released: one by Jay Greene, Paul Peterson, and Jingtao Du and the other by Cecilia Rouse.13
Beginning in 1990, Witte and his associates collected data on the students, schools, and families that participated in the choice program. The fundamental effectiveness of the program was judged by comparing data from participating students and families with those from nonparticipating MPS students and families.14 The primary sources of data were student school records (including achievement test scores, eligibility for free or reduced-price lunches, and so on), records maintained by the voucher program office (e.g., student attrition), and surveys of parents and students conducted by the research team. Throughout the evaluation, Witte and his colleagues examined the characteristics of the students and families who participated in the program, the characteristics of the schools that elected to accept voucher students, the effects of the program on those schools, and the effects of the program on students' academic achievement. Because John Witte presents a summary of the evaluation in this issue of the Kappan (see page 59), we will mention here only a few relevant findings.
Thus it appears that the voucher program in Milwaukee successfully met its goal of providing private school educational opportunities for the children of economically disadvantaged, inner-city families. Further, students attracted to the program were not, as many had feared, among the higher-achieving public school students but were instead among the lowest achieving. However, and interestingly, the families of the voucher children were better educated and more interested in their child's education, both before and after entering the program, than families of MPS students, though their involvement with the schools was lower before entering the program. Perhaps most important, the voucher program did not effect any consistent change in students' academic achievement. (Witte's article in this issue elaborates on this finding.)
The Witte evaluation remains the most thorough study of the Milwaukee voucher program to date and, as the first study of a publicly funded voucher program, was greeted with substantial attention. Voucher opponents hold up the study as evidence that such programs do not result in the desirable outcomes that advocates suggest, particularly improved student learning. Supporters of vouchers note that the program effectively serves poor families, does not draw high-achieving students from public schools, and improves parent involvement and satisfaction, even if it does not increase student learning (and that, they add, isn't yet clear).
The strengths of Witte's evaluation lie in the comparisons made -- using interview and survey data -- between voucher families and public school families. Findings drawn from these comparisons are consistent and reasonable. However, Witte's findings related to student achievement are open to question and much less clear. Student achievement data were based on scores from the lowa Tests of Basic Skills, which were administered by the schools independent of the evaluation and thus were subject to inconsistencies in administration, test preparation, or bias.
Shortly after the original data from the evaluation were released, researchers at Harvard and Princeton independently reanalyzed the Milwaukee data. In his article in this issue, Witte addresses the criticisms raised by Greene, Peterson, and Du, so we will not discuss them further here. As did Greene and his colleagues, Rouse also found a statistically significant and positive program effect in terms of mathematics achievement; she did not find such an effect for reading achievement. Much more judiciously than Greene and his colleagues, Rouse notes several caveats to her analyses and cautions that "these are average effects that do not necessarily mean all of the choice schools are 'better' than the Milwaukee public schools." Perhaps as important as her findings related to student achievement, Rouse suggests that "the data collection from Milwaukee should be applauded as it allows us to learn more about the effectiveness of this program than from many other reforms. Nevertheless, . . . an evaluation design that treats the participants (and control or comparison group) as a survey sample with independent follow-up, though more costly, would avoid some of the data problems experienced here.15
Across the three studies, it seems clear that the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program is effective in enhancing choice for low-income, predominantly African American and Hispanic families. Children of families who pursue the vouchers may be somewhat more "at risk" than the typical MPS student in that they are more likely to live in a single-parent home, are poorer, are achieving at lower levels, and have parents who are less involved in their education. Conversely, these children are somewhat less "at risk" in that their mothers are slightly better educated and they have fewer siblings. What is much less clear is whether participation in the voucher program leads to greater student achievement. Three independent investigations of this issue have produced inconsistent, sometimes conflicting, results.
The Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Grant Program
The most recent publicly funded voucher program was implemented in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1996. The program, the brainchild of Gov. George Voinovich, provides private school tuition scholarships (i.e., vouchers) to poor families within the Cleveland School District. In addition, the program offers tutoring grants to this same group of families, which can be used to obtain additional assistance for children who continue to attend Cleveland public schools. Vouchers and tutoring grants are awarded to families primarily on the basis of income but with an attempt to ensure that the relative ethnic enrollments of Cleveland public schools are maintained within the program. Consideration is given first to families whose incomes are at or below the federal poverty level and then to families with incomes of between 100% and 200% of the federal poverty index. Then, if any scholarships or tutoring grants remain, families with greater incomes will be eligible. Within each income range, scholarships are awarded through a random lottery process, structured to ensure that 75% of the scholarship recipients are African American.
In its first year (1996-97), the program enrolled 1,801 kindergarten, first-, second-, and third-grade children in 41 private schools. Of these, 635 were kindergarten students with no prior enrollment history, 526 were former private school students, and 640 were former Cleveland public school students. Three of the private schools were nonreligious, with all remaining voucher schools religiously affiliated (29 Catholic, three Islamic, six Protestant). Two of the three nonreligious schools were established by David Brennan, an active supporter of vouchers and a principal figure in moving the Cleveland voucher legislation through the legislature, specifically to serve voucher recipients. By 1997-98, vouchers were available to up to 4,000 children in kindergarten through grade 5, and the number of participating schools had increased to 44, including new schools sponsored by Brennan.
As in Milwaukee, the focus of the program was on providing educational choice and assistance to low-income, inner-city families, including the option of using state funds to defray the cost of private education. However, the Cleveland program differed from the voucher program in Milwaukee in three significant ways. First, the Cleveland program focused on children in kindergarten through third grade during the first year, with a grade to be added each of the next five years, rather than kindergarten through high school. Second, the Cleveland program provided state assistance to families that wished to continue to enroll their children in public school but wanted additional educational assistance from state-approved tutors. Thus the program not only supported private school choice but also provided additional options for public school families. lt should be noted, however, that the tutoring grant program has been much less visible and much less successful than the scholarship program. Third, and perhaps most important, the Cleveland program allowed parents to choose private schools with religious affiliations from the outset.
The legislation that established the scholarship and tutoring grant program required the Ohio Department of Education to conduct an independent evaluation of the program during the first several years of its operation. Through a competitive bidding process, my colleagues and I at the Indiana Center for Evaluation at Indiana University were selected to complete this project. During each of the past two years, we released annual reports detailing the evaluation activities and results.16 In addition to our state-sponsored evaluation, Greene and his colleagues have completed two studies of the Brennan-supported schools (named the HOPE schools) and have conducted a reanalysis of our first-year results.17 These four reports provide the limited source of empirical information on the Cleveland voucher program.
Metcalf et al. Beginning in April 1997, our research team began a multi-year examination of several elements of the Cleveland voucher program. During the first two years, our primary focus was on evaluating the effects of the voucher program on students' academic achievement and establishing a data set and procedures that would allow longitudinal evaluation of the program's effects for at least three years. Because all students who had applied for a voucher had been offered one, the ideal comparison group (consisting of students whose families had applied for a voucher but who had not been selected in the random lottery) was not available. As a result, it was critical that the evaluation of the program take into account other relevant variables that might affect students' academic performance.
Previous literature had suggested that students who participated in choice programs were likely to be among the most successful public school students. Thus the evaluation team felt it particularly important to obtain a measure of students' academic performance prior to entry into the voucher program. No consistent measure of prior academic achievement was available for kindergarten students or for students who had attended a private school during the preceding year. However, test scores on the California Achievement Test, Form E, were available for all current third-grade students who had attended Cleveland public schools as second-graders during the previous year. Further, Cleveland public school records for these students (and for a comparison group of children who continued to attend Cleveland public schools) included equivalent indicators of family income, family structure, gender, and ethnicity.
The sample during the first two years thus included voucher students who had attended Cleveland public schools as second-graders but used vouchers to attend private schools for third or fourth grade and a comparison group of Cleveland public school third-graders. In the late spring of 1997 and 1998, the Terra Nova Survey (CTB/McGraw-Hill, 1996) was administered by evaluation staff members to these students to obtain a current measure of academic achievement. Data on these students' prior achievement, gender, ethnicity, family income, and family structure were requested from the Cleveland public schools. Students for whom we could not locate records were eliminated from the study. Further, the two HOPE schools refused to allow their students to be tested during year one, and we were unable to include them in that year's evaluation.
Across the two years, our evaluations yielded the following findings:
Our findings seemed to support those from Milwaukee in that the voucher program did not promote increased student achievement the first year but had begun to show some positive effects by the end of year two. Similarly, Cleveland voucher students were more likely to come from single-parent households, usually headed by a mother. However, our study found some differences related to the characteristics of the participating students. Voucher students in Milwaukee were of lower income and somewhat more likely to be members of minorities than their public school peers, but students in Cleveland were of very similar income and ethnicity to students in the public schools. Further, whereas voucher students in Milwaukee were among the lowest-achieving students prior to their entry into the program, voucher students in Cleveland were achieving at slightly higher levels than their public school peers before they entered their voucher schools.
The early results from the Cleveland program were noted as preliminary, based on only the first two years of a multi-year evaluation and subject to the limitations of the evaluation. While the project addressed the concerns of Rouse and others related to control of the achievement testing process, it did not control for at least two important variables. First, no measure of parental education level was obtained, a factor related to students' academic achievement. Second, the study did not make use of a randomly assigned comparison group of students, thus leaving open the possibility that the voucher and nonvoucher students were different in important ways. My colleagues and I noted these limitations in our reports and developed methods for addressing them in future years. Nonetheless, release of the first-year and second-year reports provoked a flurry of attention from both advocates and opponents of vouchers and, like the evaluation efforts in Milwaukee, prompted reanalysis by Greene and his colleagues.
Greene, Howell, and Peterson. Greene, Howell, and Peterson conducted two additional evaluations of the Cleveland voucher program during its first two years. In their first study, they collected data to answer two questions: 1) What are the effects of participation in the voucher program on parents' satisfaction with their children's schools? 2) What are the effects of the voucher program on students' academic achievement? The first question was addressed through a telephone survey of 1,014 parents whose children had received vouchers and were attending private schools and 1,006 parents who had applied for vouchers but did not accept them and whose children were instead attending Cleveland public schools. The second question was addressed by examining fall-to-spring changes in the academic achievement of 263 voucher students attending the two private HOPE schools.
Parental interviews were conducted during the summer of 1997, after completion of the first year of the Cleveland voucher program. Response rates (number of parents agreeing to be interviewed) were 74.1% for recipients and 48.6% for nonrecipients (those who were offered vouchers but declined them, and those who were eligible for vouchers but unaware that they had received them). Thus Greene and his colleagues note that the findings are more representative of recipients than of nonrecipients. In reporting their findings, Greene and his colleagues include only those for recipients but indicate instances in which recipients and nonrecipients differed significantly. Their findings include:
In the second portion of this study, Greene and his colleagues examine fall-to-spring changes in achievement test scores of children attending the two HOPE schools. These schools were newly established specifically to accommodate voucher children for whom sufficient space might not be available in other private schools, and they are of particular interest. These schools announced from the outset that they would accept all students who applied for admission, including "many of the poorest and most educationally disadvantaged students," a fact that is borne out by examination of second-grade test scores. Further, the two schools enroll nearly 15% of all voucher students and approximately 25% of former public school voucher students.
From their inception, the HOPE schools integrated a program of self-evaluation that was to include administration of the California Achievement Test, Form E (CTB/McGraw-Hill, 1985) in the fall and spring of each year. Classroom teachers proctored each administration of the complete battery over a weeklong period. Generally, the investigators found that the students improved significantly from fall to spring testing, with aggregate results19 for 155 students including:
Upon collection of fall 1997 data, the investigators found the gains made by students during the previous year continued, though they diminished somewhat. For the 95 students who completed both fall 1996 and fall 1997 tests, Greene and his colleagues report:
Greene and his colleagues note that "definitive conclusions about the effects of the scholarship program on academic achievement depend upon the collection of additional data." However, they suggest that the generally positive and statistically significant gains made by these students are particularly impressive when contrasted with "the 1- to 2-point decline that is typical of inner-city students."20 Across the data on parental attitude and student achievement, the investigators find substantial evidence in favor of the voucher program and little evidence to support those who argue against it. They further conclude that the results indicate the need for choice programs to be structured to provide special funding arrangements when necessary and to ensure that students with special needs are not overlooked.
The second study, conducted by Peterson, Greene, and Howell, was a reanalysis of third-grade achievement data collected and then made public by our group. Peterson and his colleagues were critical of several aspects of the initial study, noting particularly our decision not to include in the analyses the unique test data for students in the two HOPE schools and suggesting that the second-grade test scores used as covariates in the original study were "dubious." Thus Peterson and his colleagues recalculated students' scores to a common metric, producing a larger sample, and then reanalyzed our original achievement data. They found:
Summarizing their report, Peterson and his colleagues indicate differences in methodology between their study and ours but note:
Both studies find positive choice school effects in some subject domains among third-grade students. Our results also find gains for students in other grades as well . . . . It is also worth noting that even the most conservative estimates of choice-school effects observed in Cleveland are comparable to those observed in Milwaukee after one year. . . . It will be of interest to learn whether the effects in Cleveland will accumulate over time, as happened in Milwaukee.23
The results of evaluations of the Cleveland voucher program are tentative and early; much more time and data are needed before conclusions can be drawn with confidence. Perhaps because the program is so new and data drawn from it limited, the findings of studies conducted to date appear to provide somewhat conflicting results. In general, parents whose children participate in the voucher program seem to be pleased with the opportunity they are provided and feel satisfied with the private schools their children attend. They based their decision to pursue tuition vouchers primarily on their interest in improving the quality of their children's education and their concern over the safety of their children's public schools. The effects of the voucher program on children's academic achievement are unclear.
Summary
Surprisingly little research has been conducted on publicly funded voucher programs. And, in many ways, the findings have been subjected to interpretations based to a much greater extent on ideology than on scholarly detachment. Unfortunately, there remains considerable misunderstanding of the results of research on vouchers, and confusion is exacerbated by highly public commentary from those on both sides of the issue. Nonetheless, examination of research related to school choice and particularly of publicly funded vouchers reveals some consistent, though undoubtedly tentative, patterns.
1. Parents whose children attend a private school using a voucher are pleased with the opportunity. Participating parents were dissatisfied with their children's former public schools and chose to enroll their children in private schools for improved educational quality and greater safety. Interestingly, and in contrast to some other studies of private school parents,24 religion or religious education was not a primary consideration.
2. Voucher programs can be structured to provide additional educational choice to families of children who may be at considerable risk of school failure. In both Milwaukee and Cleveland, it is obvious that the voucher programs have successfully targeted the families for whom they were developed. Participating families are of lower income than typical public school families, they come primarily from ethnic minority groups, and they are usually headed by a single mother. It is important to note, however, that when compared only with public school families at or below the federal poverty level, voucher families are smaller, the mothers' level of education is higher, and the parents' commitment to education is slightly higher.
3. Current programs suggest that only a very small portion of eligible families apply for available tuition vouchers. Voucher opponents cite this as evidence that dissatisfaction with public schools is not widespread,25 and they are probably at least partially correct. In Milwaukee, fewer than 7% of eligible families apply for the voucher program, and in Cleveland the percentage is slightly smaller and has decreased in the three years of the program. Neither voucher program has produced the mass exodus from public schools that was forecast. However, whether this reflects fundamental satisfaction with public schools, indifference, apathy, or lack of information cannot be determined until additional data are available.
4. The available evidence does not indicate clearly that voucher programs do or do not improve students' academic achievement. Supporters of choice, and particularly of voucher programs, frequently base their arguments on the academic benefits of choice for students. However, the very limited evidence to date does not indicate that students who participate in the choice schools will do better than they would have if they had remained in public schools. When prior achievement and relevant demographic variables are controlled, the achievement of voucher students is not consistently different from that of public school students. It is reasonable to wonder whether additional years will yield similar results. Both voucher programs are relatively new, with schools, teachers, families, and students learning how best to work within the new arrangements. Over time, the effectiveness of the programs may be improved. Nonetheless, current data provide no firm basis for a claim that providing families with educational choice will necessarily improve student learning.
Final Thoughts
What does all of this mean? Will the momentum for additional educational choice diminish? Will choice programs, particularly voucher programs, damage the current system of public education in the U.S.? Are publicly funded voucher programs "good"? What are the implications of all of this for educators? We do not yet have sufficient evidence to answer these questions, even for existing voucher programs, and a multitude of factors will affect the direction, extent, and nature of school choice in coming years. Still, some "predictions" are possible.
It seems unlikely that the tremendous momentum for educational choice will diminish; rather, it will probably increase. Families will continue to press for a wider variety of choices for their children's education, and policy makers, both conservative and liberal, will respond. Already more educational choices are available to families than at any other time in U.S. history, across both the public and private sectors. Magnet schools, charter schools, home schooling, inter- and intradistrict choice programs, and in-school programmatic choices are the rule rather than the exception. In an age of egalitarianism, the alternatives that have always been available to middle- and upper-income families will be rightfully demanded by families with fewer resources. Even skeptics admit that, for better or for worse, school choice is with us to stay.26
At least one implication of the choice movement for public schools is reflected in the paragraph above. Public schools must continue to develop programs to attract and retain families that now expect at least some range of choices. As forced busing for desegregation continues to decline while nonpublic alternatives become more prevalent, metropolitan school districts are presented with both a challenge and an opportunity. Students who previously moved from these districts to suburban schools now provide a larger potential market for public school education. Further, whereas previous attempts at desegregation relied on imposed school assignment, most efforts (e.g., the federal Magnet Schools Assistance Program) now focus on developing programs that attempt to improve racial balance by attracting targeted minority or nonminority students to schools. It seems, then, that at least one impact of the choice movement has been and will continue to be an increase in the number and variety of options that public schools will provide.
Will choice programs decrease public support, either sentimental or financial, for public schools? This question is more difficult to answer. Undoubtedly, if a substantial number of families are provided with and take advantage of alternatives to public education, the effect on public schooling as it has been conducted will be negative. If public schools serve a smaller proportion of school-age children, they will subsequently have a smaller, perhaps less vocal, base of public support. Concurrently, resources for public schools will diminish as funds are redirected. It could be argued that, if public schools fail to provide a service that is desired by enough people (i.e., customers) to remain viable, they should be forced to redesign themselves or close. Of course, while this situation is possible, perhaps even desirable to some, it is unlikely to occur. Though U.S. public schools must deal with greater competition than ever before, there is no evidence to suggest that nonpublic competition will ever be allowed to reach the point at which the public school system itself is endangered. Public education in the U.S. is a huge business. It employs millions of people, many of whom belong to a well-organized professional union with substantial political clout; it generates significant income for businesses that supply services and products to the schools; and it touches literally every citizen. To date, no choice programs, public or private, existing or proposed, have the potential to destroy the enormous enterprise that is public education in this country.
Is the educational choice movement good or bad? It seems untenable to argue that giving parents and families greater control over their children's education is bad. Fundamentally, greater family control, within certain limits, should be encouraged. Thus the question is probably not whether educational choice is good or bad, but rather the nature of the boundaries within which choice should be allowed. Many in the education establishment would argue that the framework should be relatively restrictive to minimize differences in the outcomes and benefits students derive. However, we take a different position and suggest that the widest possible range of choices should be made available and that, though it will not always be popular, the educational market should be allowed to operate. Doing so will not just benefit families and children but also stands to afford professional educators the opportunity to expand the ways in which we conduct our classrooms. Further, arguing to restrict parental choice in education means accepting some dangerous assumptions.
The position to restrict educational choices requires one to assume either that some families will make better choices than others or that someone besides parents -- presumably federal or state education authorities or education scholars -- knows what education is best for all children. The first point is obvious and can be conceded at the outset. Certainly, given the opportunity, some families will make much better choices than others and, as a result, some children will get a "better" education. However, taken to its extreme, this would suggest that families should be given no choice at all about their children's education and that teachers or local school authorities should have no latitude in the curriculum or instructional approaches that their students experience. Of course, even under these circumstances, differences in the ability of the classroom teacher would cause some students to get a better education than others, unless we are much more successful in producing and more willing to accept "teacher-proof" curricula than we have been in the past. And so, greater educational choice will mean that some children get a better education than others. But they already do, and eliminating choice completely would not change this. However, allowing families choice would give them a chance to move their children out of schools that they believe are not good for them.
Now we arrive at the second and related assumption that supports restricting choice -- that someone other than parents is in a position to determine what is or is not good education. If, in fact, this were true, there should be widespread agreement, at least among those sufficiently learned to know, about what schools should teach, how they should teach it, and what evidence they should provide about their effectiveness in doing so.
Education literature and the popular media provide daily evidence to the contrary. States rebel at the suggestion of a national curriculum or mandatory nationwide student assessment; local schools fight against state-mandated curricula or testing; and even within schools, individual teachers openly or passively subvert the district's curriculum. Even scholars of education cannot agree about what is "good" education or "desirable" educational practice. While there may well be one best education or curriculum or instructional approach (ours, of course), we don't seem to have identified it yet, and whether we ever will is arguable at best. But, until or unless a consensus is reached among all the stakeholders in children's education, it is unfair and patronizing to suggest that parents and families are generally less entitled or less equipped than others to make these determinations for themselves and for their children.
Educational choice will continue to be the most contentious issue in U.S. education for the foreseeable future. More and more families will be afforded more and more alternatives for their children's education. As educators, both pre-K12 and university based, we have a unique opportunity to use the educational choice movement to promote innovative, creative approaches to schools and teaching. In order to draw students and maintain enrollments, schools will be seeking assistance in developing and improving programs to make them more attractive to greater numbers of families. If we take advantage of this opportunity, we have the potential to make schools more inviting and supportive places for children. If we ignore the momentum for educational choice, we risk becoming increasingly irrelevant to our stakeholders.
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Last updated 24 September1999
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Delta Kappa International