Searching for ways to improve American public education, some of the key players in the school reform movement believe they have hit upon the answer. Giving parents the right to choose which school their children attend, they say, will help cure what ails our schools. A major debate has ensued with both advocates and critics weighing in, each side confident in the rightness of its position. As it stands, we lack definitive evidence on whether choice is likely to result in better public schools. But it's crucial that we learn more about choice and its effects, because choice has the potential for irrevocably altering public education as we know it today.
Choice advocates, reports Hofstra University researcher Mary Anne Raywid, share the beliefs that: (1) no one best school is suitable for all children; (2) diversity in the school structure and the curriculum is essential in order to help all students succeed; and (3) students will work harder and better in a learning environment that they have selected, rather than one that has been selected for them. These assertions are provocative, but they haven't yet been validated on a wide enough scale to warrant the adoption of school choice in every school district.
A recent report from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching suggests that we move cautiously with regard to implementing school choice. The report makes the following observations: choice does not necessarily improve student achievement; it is better educated parents who take advantage of choice; it may entail additional costs to implement choice; and choice could, without proper safeguards, widen the gap between rich and poor school districts. The report points to the need for an unsentimental examination of all aspects of school choice and its inherent consequences.
Where ASCD Stands
ASCD has taken several steps to provide leadership on the issue of school choice. In 1990, an ASCD-appointed panel published an issues analysis, Public Schools of Choice, that examined some of the major issues associated with school choice. The December 1990/January 1991 theme issue of Educational Leadership also addressed the topic of choice. And in 1991, the Association passed a resolution calling upon ASCD and its affiliates to play a leadership role in deliberating and helping to develop policies on school choice. (ASCD has also passed several resolutions against the use of government vouchers to subsidize parents wishing to send their children to private schools—more on that later.)
These actions have helped to provide members and others with background upon which they can make informed decisions about what role, if any, choice can and should play in their area. When considering an issue of this magnitude, which has the power to create extensive change, we must examine all aspects carefully and impartially to ascertain what benefits its wholesale adoption would yield to our schools. Despite the level of heat in the discussion, we must remain focused on the crux of the issue: What are the alternatives that choice provides, and how will students be affected by them?
Public Schools of Choice notes that during the last decade there has been a decided shift in how schools are perceived: from instruments to promote the public good, to a means to realize the private good. ASCD maintains there is a need to ensure that our schools reflect and serve the democratic interests of the general society.
The Voucher Question
Although most of the choice plans currently being implemented occur within the public education system, some are fighting to see choice extended to private education. These advocates support some variation on the idea of providing vouchers to parents to allow them to send their children to public or private schools. Recently, the voucher argument has been repeatedly raised as an "answer" to some of the problems in urban schools—and such a plan has already been established in Milwaukee.
As someone working in an urban setting, I am familiar with many of the deficits of our schools. But will a voucher system help remedy them? I don't believe so. The Carnegie study, for example, found that, to a large extent, better educated parents are usually the ones who participate in choice programs. This is reason to look warily at a voucher system. Parents must possess a certain level of political savvy and aggressiveness to investigate options and to follow through to see that their child benefits. Voucher advocates say this system will be available to all, but, in practice, it is available only to those vigilant parents who know how to seek and find the best school for their child.
Children and parents in urban schools need advocates who are watchful in the defense of their right to a quality education. When a family can claim its share of the education dollars and take them to a private school or to one in a more affluent part of a school district, urban schools are left with ever-diminishing resources. The entrepreneurial spirit and market economy philosophy, so important to proponents of unrestricted choice, might prove the undoing of some noncompetitive urban schools. The thinking is that schools will sink or swim with this kind of competition. What then if they sink? What of the children? Do they also sink?
Vouchers that lift some children from their urban public schools and place them in private schools, even in that same urban setting, should not be an option. Depleting the public schools and siphoning off financial resources is not the way to address the issue of low achievement in the schools. Instead, we should look for solutions that strengthen all schools and help children learn, wherever they happen to attend.
In the long run, we may find that some form of school choice will help to improve American schools and the students educated in them. If that is the case, then we should wholeheartedly endorse choice. However, at this point, consideration for the integrity of public schools and the empowerment of those parents who depend on them for their children's success must motivate us to seek ways to improve our schools within the public system, not abandon them through a voucher system.