PATHS Through School Choice

Our Mission

To reform the public education system, not destroy it, through increased competition and accountability so that all children receive the best possible education – whether they choose public or private schools.  We understand the important role the public education system plays in society – it is the one place for children of all socio-economic backgrounds and races to come together to learn not only about academics, but also about each other.  We believe that the salvation of the public education system, if it is to serve all students, lies in creating greater opportunities through school choice.

What is School Choice?

School choice is about parents choosing the most appropriate educational setting for their children.  Instead of the government deciding where children will attend school, school choice programs allow parents to decide where their children will be educated.  Parents can choose between public schools, private schools, charter schools, or home schooling.  School choice allows all parents, regardless of income or ethnicity, to decide the best educational environment for their children.  School choice policies introduce accountability measures in education and can take the form of voucher programs, individual or corporate tax credits, and fewer restrictions on charter school development.

What School Choice is not...

The most popular criticism of school choice is that it will deplete the public school system of its brightest students and desperately needed funding.  Critics of school choice further argue that this depletion of students and funding will result in the inability of public schools to answer the call of competition. 

In an effort to respond to the critics, Caroline Minter Hoxby of the Hoover Institution (2001) documents the effects of competition and accountability on the public school system in the city of Milwaukee, and in the states of Arizona and Michigan.  Hoxby notes that Milwaukee provides a fair assessment because vouchers have been used in private schools there since the 1990-91 school year.  Similarly, public schools in Arizona and Michigan have experienced increased competition and accountability due to "generous" charter school laws. 

Hoxby asserts that fears of a "downward spiral" in the public school system as a result of increased competition and accountability aren't just "overblown," they are "simply wrong."  She explains that instead of public schools suffering from a "skimming" of its brightest students, what actually happened was the "very opposite of skimming: that schools subjected to the most competition [saw] their lowest-performing students leave for charter or private schools." 

Furthermore, opponents of school choice will argue that increased school choice leads to decreased funding of our public schools.  These critics assert that it is wrong to use 'public monies' for private schools. 

However, it is not ‘public monies,’ on the contrary it is the tax dollars paid by parents that would be used by parents to secure the most appropriate education for their children.  And instead of the monies being attached to a particular district, under school choice policies the dollars are attached to the child, following that child wherever he or she may go. 

To add even more transparency to the argument regarding competition and accountability and the effects on public school performance, it is important to consider other services you may use in the course of a day.  Think about your visits to the grocery store.  How does competition come in to play in this domain?  Certainly, most would agree that the quantity and quality of items in any given grocery store are affected by all the grocery stores in that area resulting in a better overall shopping experience for the consumer. 

School choice programs will further provide that districts not receive money for children that are no longer served in that district – certainly a reasonable position for most people.

SCHOOL CHOICE IS CONSTITUTIONAL

School choice opponents argue that school vouchers offend the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and therefore their use is unconstitutional.  Vouchers violate the Establishment Clause, opponents contend, because the use of vouchers channels public monies into private religious schools. 

However, on February 20, 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a Cleveland, Ohio school vouchers case, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.  The court ruled that the “state creation of private choice does not offend the Establishment Clause” because as in other areas of constitutional law, i.e. freedom of speech and equal protection under the law, the “fundamental requirement is an equality of opportunity, not a pre-ordained outcome.”

In deciding this case, the Supreme Court used the precedent set by the 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman decision, the so-called “Lemon test,” which states that a program must have a “secular purpose” in order not to offend the Establishment Clause; vouchers meet this test because vouchers are used for the education of all children.

Similar voucher programs that meet this test include the GI Bill and Pell grants, which provide college students public monies to attend the college of their choosing, whether it is public or private.

6  Strategies For Reforming Our Public Schools

1.  Establish a national test to measure student progress  more accurately

2. Raise compensation levels for high-quality teachers, especially in the areas of  science, math and Special Education

3.  Provide better information on school performance to parents 

4.  Eliminate district boundaries between schools allowing parents to choose the right school for their children, regardless of where they live

5.  Allow greater flexibility for schools to hire and fire teachers

6. Make school funding more transparent by attaching education dollars to the student instead of the school district

Ten Myths About Public School Financing

(from Businesswire.com, 10/9/06)

Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education releases Courting Failure: How School Finance Lawsuits Exploit Judges’ Good Intentions and Harm Our Children, edited by Eric A. Hanushek (Education Next Books, 2006).

The complete text of Courting Failure is available online at www.KoretTaskForce.org.

Courting Failure exposes the politics behind the education “adequacy” lawsuits now sweeping the nation and challenges the flawed arguments behind many of the judicial decisions. These lawsuits charge that students fail to learn because public schools are underfunded. Given enough money, the argument goes, schools would be able to meet their state’s educational goals. This claim, however, lacks any real scientific proof to substantiate it and dramatically oversimplifies the problem.

The “10 Myths of School Finance Adequacy” below exposes the half-truths and presents the essential facts every citizen should know. Courting Failure addresses each myth with evidence.

1. MYTH: Courts, because they are not political, are the best place in which to make educational funding decisions.

FACT: Courts are very prone to politics, as shown in the dramatic events surrounding the New York City court case (Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. New York). Decisions of the courts reflected political pressures.

2. MYTH: The spending called for in court judgments in school finance adequacy cases is based on careful scientific analysis.

FACT: The attempts to “cost out” the resources needed for an adequate education violate standard scientific rules and instead are political documents aimed at increasing funding for schools. The consultants providing these estimates never predict that student outcomes will increase at all with the additional funds they identify as being required.

3. MYTH: Performance of U.S. schools has shown the importance of increased funding and resources.

FACT: U.S. performance has been flat for 35 years, despite more than tripling spending per student (after adjusting for inflation). Thus, past efforts to lower class size and to seek better teachers have not had a discernible impact.

4. MYTH: Improved student performance necessarily requires additional funding.

FACT: Schools should first focus on how current money is being spent rather than on the question of how much should be spent. For example, an important constraint on schools is the amount of time for student instruction. Good use of this time -- involving sound academic curricula -- does not generally cost more than bad use of the time but gets much better results.

5. MYTH: With sufficient funding, schools serving disadvantaged populations have shown success.

FACT: A number of school systems -- Kansas City, Cambridge, New Jersey, “Abbott schools,” and others -- have enjoyed very large infusions of resources but have failed to show any improved student outcomes, even with judicial monitoring and educator-designed programs.

6. MYTH: School districts currently direct additional funds to educate disadvantaged students.

FACT: Even though the adequacy lawsuits call for extra funding to go to disadvantaged students, most school systems do not have accurate data on what they currently spend on various students. Moreover, disadvantaged students frequently receive fewer, not more, resources.

7. MYTH: Schools serving high-poverty populations cannot succeed.

FACT: A large number of high-poverty schools have shown that they can attain high student achievement. These schools, which repeat these educational feats year after year, concentrate on educational solutions, not simple spending.

8. MYTH: Improved student outcomes have resulted from past finance lawsuits.

FACT: Very little analysis has gone into assessing the results of past lawsuits. In every case where such an assessment has been made, however, little or no effect on student achievement has been seen.

9. MYTH: School finance adequacy lawsuits are a straightforward extension of equity court cases.

FACT: Equity lawsuits that have been argued for more than three decades are based on variations in spending that might be inequitable. Adequacy lawsuits, by contrast, presume that all differences in student achievement are due to the schools and can be corrected by the schools, taking courts into areas in which they have no expertise.

10. MYTH: Private school performance is about the same as public school performance.

FACT: An analysis of private schools indicates that, although student achievement appears similar, private schools achieve these results with significantly fewer resources. One component of this is ensuring that students are deeply involved in their own education, something that happens less frequently in the public schools.

Eric A. Hanushek, editor of Courting Failure, is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He serves as a member of the board of directors of the National Board for Education Sciences. Contributors to Courting Failure include Williamson Evers and Paul Clopton, Eric A. Hanushek, E.D. Hirsch Jr., Alfred Lindseth, Paul E. Peterson, Marguerite Roza and Paul Hill, Sol Stern, and Herbert J. Walberg. On the basis of the findings of these analyses, the Koret Task Force makes a series of recommendations in the volume about how to truly improve our schools.

The members of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education are among America’s foremost education scholars, brought together by the Hoover Institution with the support of the Koret Foundation. More information about the group can be found at www.KoretTaskForce.org.

The Hoover Institution, founded at Stanford University in 1919, is an interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic public policy and international affairs, with an internationally renowned archive. For more information on the Hoover Institution, visit www.Hoover.org.