There is a repellent stridency to the debate about school choice. Many
proponents of private school choice view it as almost a panacea while
opponents refuse to acknowledge real or potential gains from even public
school choice strategies. The result is a vitriolic exchange with both
sides talking past each other or trading insults about the other's motivations.
Many combatants are less interested in evidence than fighting an ideological
battle over the false choice between government and markets as the provider
of public education.
Too often missing from this discussion are two elements: thorough analysis
about the impact of choice on schools, and discussions of choice options
besides vouchers. Research into test scores yields modest but controversial
findings about gains in achievement but little information about overall
effects on school districts. The public dialogue focuses on vouchers despite
more than 600,000 students attending charter schools nationwide and the
popularity of these schools among parents.
To help fill the information deficit, education scholar Frederick Hess
of the University of Virginia examines the impact of choice on urban schools
in three communities -- Milwaukee; Cleveland; and Edgewood, Texas -- in
his new book Revolution at the Margins. Milwaukee and Cleveland
are home to publicly funded voucher programs and Edgewood has a privately
financed initiative.
Revolution will not please either side of the voucher war. The
book is not an unqualified endorsement of markets. At the same time, however,
it does not discount the benefits of greater choice and competition in
education. Because school districts are governed more by political than
economic logic, Hess finds more subtlety and complexity in how districts
respond when parents have a greater choice of schools than is commonly
assumed.
Economic theory dictates that education, like all products, will respond
to market incentives and pressures. Competition, therefore, is assumed
to drive change and especially improvement. In Revolution, however,
Hess examines how these assumptions work in practice, rather than in theory.
How, he asks, do school districts respond when they lose their monopoly
on public education and are faced with substantial competition? Hess finds
that the current education marketplace creates incentives for school districts
to react politically rather than substantively to choice and competition.
"School system officials are concerned not only with retaining customers
but also with satisfying the broader political community. Caring about
the satisfaction of both consumers and nonconsumers, officials find media
coverage highly salient," he writes.
In this environment, the structure and incentives of the education marketplace
must change if choice is to generate improvement. Policymakers have two
options for accomplishing this, according to Hess: continue the slow,
methodical pickax-like work of today's approach or introduce the "terrible
majesty" of a bulldozer by radically changing market conditions.
This is a problematic analysis for a voucher movement largely predicated
on the belief that simply giving parents a way out of failing public schools
will drive improvement. A slow pace of change illustrates the limitations
of choice as a stand-alone reform. Dramatic change requires more than
just choice. "The lesson is not that markets cannot drive more profound
change in education but that such effects will require changing the institutional
and organizational context of urban schooling," concludes Hess.
Although the book is more about vouchers than about charter schools and
other public choice options, Revolution holds important lessons
for reformers on all sides of the choice debate. First, understanding
substantive versus cosmetic changes in schooling is essential. The point
of school reform is to improve teaching and learning. Governance and other
arrangements are only a means to that end. If school districts' only response
to competition is advertising or small programmatic changes rather than
real improvements, then a competitive strategy is not working.
Second, the debate about creating an education marketplace with greater
choice will intensify. It's essential that reformers not lose sight of
the key principles of public education: equal access for all students
and public accountability for results. Because politically derived rules
will continue to govern the education marketplace, greater choice can
be married to these principles.
Finally, reformers must heed the central lesson of Revolution
and ensure that incentives and support for a vigorous education marketplace
exist. This means, among other changes, passing robust charter school
laws in every state, ensuring greater equity and adequacy in per-pupil
spending, reforming teacher certification requirements to expand the talent
pool, and creating greater autonomy and flexibility for school districts
within a results-oriented context. As the fulcrum in the education debate,
New Democrats are uniquely positioned to achieve these reforms.
Hess observes: "Unleashing competition requires harnessing individual
self-interest, lashing it to clear outcome goals, creating a marketplace
characterized by substantial competition, and giving individuals the tools
necessary to act in their own behalf." Because of politics and economics,
voucher programs will continue to be marginal. Charter schools and other
reforms are more likely to create the circumstances Hess describes and
truly unleash a revolution in American education.
