Mapping School Choice

May 21, 2003

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Program Participants

Paul S. Grogan, President & CEO, The Boston Foundation
Kathryn A. McDermott, Associate Director, Center for Education Policy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Assistant Professor, School of Education and Center for Public Policy and Administration, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
S. Paul Reville, Executive Director, Center for Education Research & Policy at MassINC and Lecturer, Harvard University Graduate School of Education
Howard L. Fuller, Former Superintendent, Milwaukee Public Schools and Distinguished Professor of Education and Director, Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University
James A. Peyser, Chairman, Massachusetts Board of Education and Chairman, Educational Management Audit Council
Theodore A. Sizer, Chairman Emeritus, Coalition for Essential Schools and Visiting Professor of Education, Harvard University Graduate School of Education and University Professor Emeritus, Brown University
James A. Caradonio, Superintendent, Worcester Public Schools

The following is a summary of the main points of the forum. It is not an exact transcript and should not be relied upon. This summary was prepared by State House News Service and is reprinted here with their kind permission.

Event Transcript
Despite numerous programs intended to give parents more choices about where to send their kids to school, opportunities are unevenly and inequitably distributed throughout Massachusetts and there's a stark shortage of choices for many parents, according to a study released today and discussed by experts.

The study was produced by the Center for Education Research and Policy at MassINC and sponsored by the Boston Foundation. The Center and Foundation co-hosted a discussion of the study this morning. Prepared by researchers at the University of Massachusetts' Center for Education Policy, the study maps for the first time school choice options in Massachusetts. It explores the landscape of choice options, including charter schools, inter-district and intra-district placements, METCO, magnet and pilot schools, private and parochial schools, home schooling, vocational education schools and private special education schools.
Among the study's findings:

• One in four Massachusetts students are in a setting over which their parents exercised some form of choice;

• There are no systems in place to ensure that choice is evenly distributed;

• Most students in Massachusetts are locked out of the METCO system, which served Boston and Springfield;

• There are long waiting lists for many alternatives to traditional public schools;

• Lower-income school districts are more likely to lose revenue when students opt into affluent districts;

• There's not enough capacity to meet new choice options mandated under the new federal education law.

Paul Reville, the Center for Education Research & Policy's director, moderated a panel discussion of the study's findings and opened up the forum at the foundation's Arlington Street headquarters by saying the report presents basic information that is sorely needed.

"There is no more urgent and divisive topic in educational policy than school choice, yet the basic evidence on who is choosing and where they are going has not been available to policymakers," said Reville.
Former Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Howard Fuller, a national school choice advocate who is now a professor of education at Marquette University, delivered the keynote address, which was followed by the panel discussion.

After an introduction by Boston Foundation President and CEO Paul Grogan, the forum opened with a presentation of the study's findings by Kathryn McDermott, associate director of the Center for Education Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The following is a summary of remarks, not a verbatim transcript:

Boston Foundation President & CEO, Paul Grogan: This is a terribly important issue. The study shows for the first time the school choice landscape. There is a market already in public education. It's not a perfect market. It has oddities and peculiarities. But many families have certain kinds of choices they are exercising. That's a central topic of the study. Not included in the numbers is the most significant kind of school choice that families try to exercise. That is families of means seek to exercise school choice through the real estate market. Any residential broker will tell you it is the number one driver of residential markets for families with children in America. There are lots of other variants also.

The subject has three dimensions for the foundation. The first is that we think choice is an important equity issue. Upper income families exercise significantly more choice. Lower income families have narrower or no choices. The effect of choice on urban revitalization is the second. It's no secret that the urban crisis of the latter half of the 20th Century was born of the large-scale departure of families from urban communities. Middle class families continue to be nervous about the quality of education in urban communities. A third dimension I would characterize as the impact of choice on reform of the mainstream system. There may be some relationship between the pace of reform and the willingness to embrace innovations if choice exists.

Paul Reville has had some transportation difficulties. It goes to show that if he lived in the city, he would be here already. [Audience laughter] He will be here though and I will pitch in for him. Katie McDermott will introduce the findings. She conducted the research. This is the first study to be released by the new Center for Education Policy and Research at MassINC.

Center for Education Policy at University Massachusetts Amherst, Kathryn McDermott: Our study had three main goals. We collected statistics on participation in school choice, charter schools and METCO, inter-district choice, choices outside public schools, vocational education and special education. The Department of Education provided most of the data. We intend to provide baseline information for debates on choice. Our general finding was that school choice is a reality for many but choice is unevenly distributed. Unmet demand for choice is quite widespread. The financial impact on school districts is substantial and unevenly distributed. Intra-district choice is widespread but difficult to track. The No Child Left Behind Act will be challenging to meet. The vocational education and special education systems are well developed and comprehensive. In the Boston region, private schools disproportionately serve white students.

In fiscal 2002, there were about 1.1 million students in all forms of education. About 970,000 attend all of the public schools - 25,141 are in regional vocational technical schools, 14,381 in charter schools, 8,318 in inter-district school choice other than METCO. METCO enrolls 3,313 students. There are about 133,000 students in private and parochial schools, 83,000 in Catholic schools. There are 6,327 who are attending private special education schools. And between 2,300 and 20,000 students are being home schooled. [Audience laughter] My guess is it's toward the higher end of this range. This is based on interviews with superintendents. A lot of families don't do the paperwork required to do home schooling. A federal report estimates between 1 and 2 percent of students nationwide are being home schooled. This is an area where we would love to conduct more research.

There are two kinds of charter schools, Commonwealth and Horace Mann. The cities are sending lots of students to charter schools. Look at the Cape and the Vineyard and Western Massachusetts. It's a phenomenon of where the charter schools happen to be located. Several suburban districts spend nothing on charter schools. Black students are somewhat more likely to enroll in Commonwealth charters, Hispanic students somewhat less likely. It would be great to know why families make the choices they make. Our research did not address that question. Something other than MCAS scores are driving these decisions. There could be a curriculum focus or school climate. It would be intriguing to know more. There is a huge unmet demand for charter school placements. DOE estimated 10,975 occupied waiting list places. Some kids may be counted two or three times. The average Commonwealth School has 305 on its waiting list; the average Horace Mann School has 31. It seems that wherever you open a charter school, it fills up. Inter-district school choice was part of the 1993 act.

METCO operates for only Boston and Springfield students. Students tend to move to more affluent districts with higher MCAS scores. White students are disproportionately likely to participate in the program. Springfield students have access to choice and METCO. In the Boston area, it's basically the METCO program or nothing. Because most Boston area districts don't participate in inter-district, students attend regional vocational technical schools. There is large demand for METCO. The average wait for placement is five years. Inter-district choice students are nearly 90 percent white, 4 percent black. METCO is nearly entirely black students. Taking the programs together, the proportion is higher black students. Hispanic students are still underrepresented. The Boston region has a higher percentage of private students.

The home-schooling population may exceed charter school enrollments. Nobody is talking too much about the impact of home-schooling on public education. Further research is necessary. How satisfied are students and parents with their choices? Does school choice affect performance, have financial effects on schools? What is the effect in cities and suburbs on racial and socio-economic diversity? And how can public policy produce a more equitable system of choice.

Audience Question: I'm confused about home-schooling. The law says anyone under 16 has to attend school.

Kathryn McDermott: I can give you anec-data, based on anecdote. Apparently nationwide a lot of families who home-school their kids never file the paperwork. It's not something school districts put a lot of energy into chasing down. I would not speculate how many families in Massachusetts might be in violation of the mandatory attendance law. They try to work with home-schooling families whose kids might want a chemistry class or to play soccer.

Audience Question: My only concern is we are mandated reporters. If it is someone not sent to school, that is a violation.

Audience Question: Are parents more likely to exercise choice in sending districts where MCAS scores are low?
Kathryn McDermott: We did not look closely at that issue. We could show where people were going from point A to point B. There is movement within the same general band of MCAS scores.

Center for Education Research & Policy Executive Director, Paul Reville: I got on an MBTA train from Worcester this morning and apparently it hit someone and God rest his soul, that individual was killed. I made my way and finally made it. So much for my faith in public transportation. I want to thank my colleagues for their work on today's program. The Center is dedicated to the idea of introducing evidence to the conversation that builds policy on more effective schools. This issue is complex, divisive and urgent. We begin this with a basic premise. Choice is a good thing. It's valued by Americans. It's part of the way we seek to control our destiny. The key question we address is can our current very uneven and arguably inequitable system of distribution be expanded? You have heard the report. Our keynote speaker to give us a national perspective is Howard Fuller, one of the preeminent spokesmen for school choice nationally.

Marquette University Professor & School Choice Advocate, Howard Fuller: It's a pleasure to be here. I have been on the road for seven days. If I babble, please excuse me. I am supposed to talk about the national map of choice and trends and talk about Milwaukee and wrap my experience as a superintendent. I was blessed to serve in Milwaukee for four years. You have to give your opening remarks. I had the fortune of having an individual, who is now my wife - she was superintendent of the Detroit public schools - we used to plan our opening remarks. We were not married then, just an item. People would say what do you want for your kids? I approached the job with the view that all 100,000 of those children were mine. For kids who wanted to go to college, I wanted them to graduate and go directly into the real college and not spend their first year in remedial education.

The second thing was for young people who wanted to go onto a job, we would give them the skills to get a job with a living wage. Irrespective of the path, they all needed to have the same rigorous education. You have to be careful about what you mandate. I was in charge, but not in control. The one mandate was that all 9th graders had to take algebra. You would have thought I would have asked for the end of the earth. We had math to get to the supermarket and on the bus. Algebra is a gate-keeping course. If you are going to flunk them in something, flunk them in something that means something, algebra. Now there are more low-income African American children passing algebra than were taking algebra. For me this was a real critical issue.

The third thing was I wanted some of our kids to have an entrepreneurial spirit. You need to come out with the view that I am going to create jobs and wealth for my community and myself. It's okay to do well. You can do well and do good. The mission of education is to prepare people or it becomes the practice of freedom. Any low-income children, particularly children of color, have to be prepared to fight, to engage in this transformation of this world. Education guarantees you nothing, but I can guarantee you will have nothing if you don't have education.

Let me move to school choice. I want to make six points. I am an advocate for school choice. My focus is on finding the ways and means for low income and working class black families to be empowered to decide where is the best place for my child to get an education. I am an advocate, but not an idiot. Choice is not magical and does not end everything. It's a mechanism. This is not ideological. I am not a free market person.

I find it intriguing how a black person who supports choice is viewed. Somehow this is some kind of conservative view. If you are black and stand up for something that liberals or conservatives support, you are duped if you stand for something that one of them is against. If you stand for something the liberals believe in, you are brilliant by their standards. I have decided that I am brilliantly duped. We were not down in my basement reading Milton Freidman and saying 'Oh my god, we need school choice.' It happened out of our own struggle to get low-income black children educated. Many of us understood the integration thing we put our hopes on was not educating large numbers of black children.

Second, any kind of public policy has pros and cons. There are problems with every public policy. You have to decide are there more pros than cons. I do not get enamored with tactics. I believe purpose ought to define everything. When you are committed to purpose, you are willing to change tactics. I am saying don't get committed to charter schools, but to the purpose of charter schools. It amazes me that school choice continues to be viewed as something new, that something has to be tested or proven. School choice is widespread unless you are poor. Everyone who has it values it and would never give it up. Bottom line, we are taking care of our children. People who teach in public schools that they would never put their children in demand that someone else's children have to stay there. People who make public policy always pontificate about what ought to happen to their kids, you ask them where are your kids going to school? Of course they say my child is in a private school. The hypocrisy that surrounds this debate is phenomenal. I was at an editorial board of a noted national newspaper. The editorial person was browbeating me about why she could not support vouchers. I said you are pontificating to me and your kids are taken care of. I said the Harriet Tubman School of Thought says I will do everything I can to help every child. The idea is to fight to end this kind of destruction of our children wherever it takes place. And I will rescue as many of them as I can. We have to fight to change the whole thing.

The other hypocritical thing I find is that with all my so-called liberal, left progressive friends - I have been able to maintain some of them - I am a power-to-the-people person. How could those of us who used to march around with this searing critique of the bureaucracy, what better way is there to empower people than to give them control over the distribution of money? Many of us who used to fight the bureaucracy, we are now the bureaucracy. You never trust a bureaucracy to free the people. Always you fight to give the people a way to fight the bureaucracy.

Third point: there will never be a conclusive study about school choice. Too many people are paid to make sure any study that comes out is questioned. There are people being paid millions of dollars in America to turn those words.
Number four: choice that empowers poor and working class parents will always be controversial. It's about changing the power arrangements, who controls large amounts of money in America and who decides where it goes. There is no way of getting around it. Tell me one social movement in this country that was not controversial. I am amazed at all of the people now who supported the civil rights movement. I went to the Million Man March. Ten years from now I don't expect to meet a single black man who wasn't there. There are now thousands of people that were in that Woolworth's. You can't have change in America. Change is the status quo without it being controversial.

Fifth point: we have to have a serious discussion about what is public education. I would argue that what makes public education public is does it meet the public's interest? Is it accessible? We can design delivery systems. What is the distinction between public education and the system that delivers it? The final point is choice is directly related to the reality of race and class in America. The struggle over choice is part of a continuing struggle over self-determination. The reality is in most cities, the school district is the largest employer in that town. For many black people, school systems are the entrée to the middle class. When you talk about radically changing these systems, you run smack dab into the economic realities of what a school district is. Neo-colonial strategists have never worked for the masses. Whether we like it or not, people can throw things at me, this is about race and class in America, about who has power and who doesn't, it's about the denial of equity. There are excellent and terrible public and private schools. I want low-income working class parents to have the capacity to decide amongst the options.

Some parents have one child in public school, one in charter, and one in private. Different children need different experiences. That's what I want. I am a gadget person, a DJ. When I was superintendent I did a dance for eighth graders. Kids were like who is this old dude? It's the superintendent. I said I know everything about your music, almost all of it I can't play. You can put 8,000 songs on this gadget. Kids love the beanbags to sit on in the stores playing with gadgets. If we think they will sit in rows and listen to us talk for an hour, we don't understand. Not only are we going to have to change our methods of transmitting knowledge, we have to change the underlying structures that support an industrial age that is no longer workable. We have to understand that sooner, or we are going to continue to lose large numbers of our children. We can't build enough gated communities to deal with the impact of us not educating large numbers of our children who are black and brown in America.

Paul Reville: We will now go to a panel for reaction.

Board of Education Chairman, Jim Peyser: There's a lot to respond to. Although I have heard Howard speak many times, I never fail to be moved and energized by his comments. Ten years ago when I got into the education reform business, I was at the Pioneer Institute. He gave a speech much like the one today. I left the conference and called the organizer and I ordered the tape. It has been a touchstone of my entire career, such as it is. Hearing the words again affirms the career choice I made. I want to comment on two things. One is the definition of public education. We confuse the institutions with public education. There is another component to it, accountability. In some ways, I was skeptical to the notion of accountability.

I felt the mechanisms were focused on compliance with rules and filling our forms. Nonetheless as I thought about it some more, I realize accountability is something choice advocates need to embrace. Consumers are not enough by themselves, in part because of the immaturity of this marketplace. People are spending someone else's money. So there is an inherent disconnect. You can't repeal the rule that he who has the gold makes the rules. We have to spend time thinking about accountability systems focused on results. Focusing on demand is not enough. We need to figure out ways to stimulate supplies of excellent schools. The study findings sound familiar and correct and add a great deal to the debate.

How can we continue to push choice and charter schools in a fiscal crisis? I hearken back to what I did before I got into education. I worked for Teradyne in the 1980s. In the late 80s, the semiconductor business was a disaster, much like it is today. We were in a very bad down cycle. The thing Teradyne did right was continue to invest in research and development and quality even as they were closing programs and selling off assets. When the turnaround came, Teradyne became the number one in their sector and grew two to three times. These are not times to retreat from things central to long-term improvement. Two things are essential: standards and accountability and parental choice, particularly through charter schools. We can't retreat from progress we are making. We're not rushing on either front. We are proceeding in a deliberate way.

Coalition for Essential Chairman Emeritus, Theodore Sizer: Four points I want to make. The first has to do with research and making a distinction between elementary and secondary schools. There is choice in secondary schools. Kids move. If my daughter Julie gets into the honors program, she will stay in the high school. If she does not she will go to St. Theresa's. There's a choice operation going on within high schools. It's worthy of resuscitation as a public policy issue. Point number two has to do with the patterns of charter schools.

The Parker School which I am associated with is on Devens. It has people on it who think they belong to a community. They have no power over where their kids go to school or selecting the school committee. There is the North Central School in Fitchburg. Our kids come from 40 cities and towns. We are ex-urban. We need an independent policy analysis.

Third point: why aren't more poor kids, kids of color in our region getting into the Lottery for Parker and North Central? The answer is they don't have advocates to work the system, to know what the Lottery system is, to meet deadlines. There is enormous demand for street-level advocacy for poor kids. There are non-English speaking families who arrived six months ago from the Dominican Republic. They need allies who know the systems well. Final point, which is really an issue. That is the limits of choice. Most high schools are remarkably alike. They open in September and stop in early June. They grade the kids by age. They have a curriculum. They are assessed by individual trial. All these are worthy points but there's only one set of ideas for the secondary schools. High schools are not open for kids even the majority of days in the year. The ideas, which drive the design and operation have not changed much in 100 years. There has to be incentive to do something quite different. We need to be far more imaginative in the charter school side.

Worcester Public Schools Superintendent, James Caradonio: As one talks about the conflicts of charter schools, the names keep changing along with the policies. Worcester has had a voluntary desegregation plan based on choice for all parents. Now we are engaged in a Carnegie grant to restructure our high school into 14 learning communities. On choice, it all depends on where you sit and stand. I believe right now that all of these positive reactions are hurting our efforts to actually change the status quo. As we try to provide choice programs, the resources are being taken away and given to other programs that are great ideas. Are you getting your money's worth as citizens? I wonder if performance really tempers the policy debate. Our magnet schools were always competing with one another. We are always competing in public education for funding. If you launch a program like charter schools and say it is primarily to introduce competition, remember Coke and Pepsi don't share syrup secrets. And then we get criticized for not sharing. Well why would you share?

We are very proud of our choice programs. A million dollars was taken away and given to other choice programs. Is there really a focus on student achievement? I can tell you I am quite confused. Our elementary schools, 4th grade level, 90 percent perform better than charter schools. I say wow, there's more money and more time. I don't know if the performance piece is important anymore. I wish the federal government put down waiting list as a way to measure average annual progress. We are dealing with happy parents but poor achievement. I guess I don't have the answer. Which one are we looking for?

In our district choice allows white parents to leave the school system at the upper grades. We have mandates about racial balance. We need a fair funding formula. Even charter school proponents say the formula needs to be fixed. I find the charter school issue has the Boston myopia - it's needed in Boston so it's needed the same way in Worcester and Springfield. The schools I am supposed to learn from don't have unionized faculty members. There is this idea that if you get rid of the unions you get high achievement. It's something I find to be not true. Analyses need to be more case study specific and not these very simple statistics that might lead to this wrong conclusion. I was asked to spice up the debate and I hope I did.

Paul Reville: What are the policy goals we ought to be striving for?

Howard Fuller: I know people are aware of studies in Milwaukee. Larger programs were called for that would allow people to do more research. The voucher programs tend to be small. By the time you get through with the political process, there are so many restrictions on the programs; you are looking at programs that are not what they could be. From a policy standpoint, I would like to see a program set up in a way so that it's not restricted or burdened down to the point that it's unworkable. The tradeoff is to have very clear accountability measures. I favor longitudinal studies that allow for value-added assessments that get at more than just standardized test scores.

Paul Reville: The point about parental satisfaction versus student achievement, which would we place a higher priority on?

Howard Fuller: Parents choose schools because they are smaller, safer, near their house. Some parents want their kids to be bused because they are afraid to have them walk a few blocks. Most parents like their school, even when it isn't working. Ask them about another school and they tell you it's the worst in the world. That's been consistent for a long time.

Jim Peyser: There are two ways to go at it. We are in a defensive mode in the current climate rather than trying to advance the agenda. Efforts are in place to scale back the agendas in place. Defending the beachhead we have established is the first objective. Beyond that, the next frontier for restructuring public education is in places where there is manifest underperformance. We have talked here about tools to raise student performance. Concentrating those efforts in places that need the most makes a lot of sense. We need to continue to have a dialogue here and move the process forward in baby steps, including vouchers. Those are areas where we need to make some progress.

Jim Caradonio: The funding formula really has to be looked at. It has to be more comparable. I would argue for a base rate. The way the funding is now, it just isn't a fair funding formula. The second thing is targeting. We tried to start a Horace Mann district. We smacked right into another bureaucracy. We need more targeting of these interventions than there has been in the past.

Paul Reville: If we could give everyone choice, would there be enough schools or educators to meet the needs of students who presumably would exit?

Theodore Sizer: If you are determined and patient, you can get scale. The best example is the City of New York. There are hundreds of schools of choice in the city. They have an advantage, a terrific transit system. It takes a few very committed, ferociously engaged and politically savvy people combined with a supportive union and a central administration that is supportive and willing to overlook things that don't exactly meet the letter of the law at the district and state level. You see it here in pilot schools. Boston is 10 to 15 years behind the New York experience. But sure, if you are patient and stay the course, I don't think we can put aside the notion of new kinds of schools on the basis that we could never pull it off.

Howard Fuller: One consequence of choice I did not think about 13 years ago was the level of new investment in the poorest parts of Milwaukee. I got crushed on a referendum to build new facilities. The charter schools, we are actually building new schools and a lot of private investment would not be there without the charters. The YMCA just built a new building, with a charter school as part of that. We have an empty hospital that is part science laboratory. We built from the ground up in a low-income housing project. It has created a very interesting investment opportunity that I did not perceive.

Audience Question: I am a Boston parent of three children in the public schools. I am concerned that we are focusing on the wrong dichotomy, charters vs. public. Can we unite around some basics to get to some of the equity issues you all seem to be concerned about - pre-school, kindergarten and after-school for all?

Jim Peyser: The administration proposed making the circuit breaker operational for the first time. It's included in the House budget in a different form. I hope we can come out of the budget with some additional resources for special needs students. In terms of pre-school, full-day kindergarten, the short answer is that's just a matter of money. We have finished the first round of education reform and are looking at long-term funding constraints. Within the administration those are all issues on the table and are getting more attention.

Audience Question: I am also a parent of three students in Boston and a policy advisor. How do we help parents make informed choices? It is so complicated.

Howard Fuller: We still have not figured that out. We are doing different things, door-to-door stuff. Parents have options under No Child Left Behind. We are doing everything we can, set up hotlines, gone door-to-door, and gone on radio shows. We have to keep trying to figure out ways to talk with parents. I don't want to say it's not working, but we are not there yet.

Kathryn McDermott: I don't know the answer to the parental information question either. Some of the informational barriers I think are high for the Hispanic community.

Audience Question: How do you see the disaggregation of data affecting school choice?

James Caradonio: I think the first way is the way the data is being calculated is about as good as the way Enron cooked up. We are going to get false stuff and people will run to the hills. A scathing article in the Globe on Revere, a great place to live but low MCAS scores, how tragic. I am worried about the morale of our teachers. People want to destabilize the school system so there will be more demand for other things.

Audience Question (Steven Leonard, City on a Hill Charter School): I have concerns about the funding formula and the painting of charter schools as the enemy. People of color live in Boston, Springfield and Worcester and in that context, I would like anyone on the panel to tell me that this data does not say that black, Hispanic and poor students in charter schools, especially in Boston, are closing the achievement gap far better than any other institution in the state. That is what the data says to me.

Kathryn McDermott: The closing of the gap is the most important policy question anyone faces. We were not able to get to it with this data. We hope to in the future.