More Pudding Please
Competition shores up Oakland's school performance
by Arwynn Mattix
The Goldwater Institute
March 20, 2007
The Oakland and Compton, California, School Districts have been plagued with similar problems, but their education reform strategies couldn't be more different.
In Oakland, the district assigns a funding amount to each student, and the harder a child is to educate (based upon measures like family income and learning disabilities), the higher the amount. Rather than being assigned to a neighborhood school, families choose among all public and charter schools in the district.
Meanwhile, Compton still subscribes to the traditional "input" driven reform method: more money to schools to reduce class size, implement tougher curriculum, and hire more qualified teachers.
The results? In 2005, the year after it implemented the program, Oakland's scores on the California High School Exit Exam increased five points in English and six points in math. That same year, Compton's English scores stagnated and its math scores fell 2 points.
If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as the adage goes, then it's safe to say Oakland's parental choice strategy is far more palatable than Compton's micromanagement.
Arwynn Mattix is a policy analyst at the Goldwater Institute.
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