School choice may be addictive: the more of it people get, the more they seem to want. Don't be fooled by news accounts of scant demand for the public-school choice provision of NCLB. That's a consequence of too few decent options for kids combined with foot dragging by school systems. Look instead at Florida and Cleveland, where the appeal of vouchers is spreading.
Though the Sunshine State's "Opportunity Scholarship" program is presently under a judicial cloud-as Florida appeals a circuit court ruling that it violates the state constitution-it's drawing hundreds more students than last year. Recall that this program kicks in when one's public school gets an "F" from the state accountability system in two years out of four. In that way, it resembles the NCLB public-school choice provision. In Florida, however, families also have the option of attending private schools at state expense, or public schools elsewhere. As of spring '02, ten schools enrolling 9000 youngsters were on the state's exit-eligible list. By the end of August, 577 students were claiming the state's $3900 scholarships to enroll in private schools-and another 900 were moving to other public schools. Meanwhile, some 9000 disabled youngsters are also taking their "McKay Scholarships" (which range from $4500 to $21,000) to attend private schools. Though these numbers are still just a small fraction Florida's two-million-plus K-12 enrollment, they're much larger than last year's.
Up north in Cleveland, by mid-August the Ohio Department of Education had received 2,200 first-time applications for that city's voucher program, ten percent more than a year earlier. Dozens applied within days of the Supreme Court's June ruling on the program's constitutionality. "I think people were just waiting to see what would happen," remarked a spokeswoman for the Department. The state has 5,523 vouchers on offer this year, up from 4,500 last year, but no additional schools are participating so there may not be room for all the would-be enrollees in the fifty or so schools that now accept voucher bearers. (As you may recall, Cleveland vouchers are meager-about $2250-so it's not economical for private schools to participate unless they are the low-cost kind and have vacant seats. As you may also recall, suburban public schools have declined to accept voucher recipients.)
Cleveland's public school system is starting to respond to the competition in a constructive way, trying to provide better options for that city's youngsters. With help from the Gates Foundation, it is opening new "small learning environments" for ninth graders. "Freshman academies" have started in three high schools. A "SuccessTech" program is enrolling 100 ninth graders and is slated to grow to 400, while an "Early College" program of similar size has opened on the campus of Cleveland State University. "What we're trying to do," explains superintendent Barbara Byrd-Bennett, "is to destroy the false perception that kids in Cleveland and in inner cities can't do this kind of work." Well and good. Given Cleveland's horrific drop out rate, it's long been clear that something needs to be done for the city's high-school students. But one may be forgiven for suspecting that this school system has also recognized-along with Justice O'Connor and her colleagues-that it no longer enjoys an education monopoly and that, if it wants to keep its schools open, its staff employed and its community placated, it must begin to do things differently.
Astute superintendents across the land are figuring this out. One of the ablest, Boston's Tom Payzant, announced at his opening staff conclave that "Some of you may not like charter schools, but they're not going away. The competition is real-for the resources and for the kids. We've got to meet it by saying we can do it as well or better." Indeed, the fiscal effects of that competition are more palpable than ever, as Massachusetts governor Jane Swift recently vetoed an appropriation that would compensate school systems for the loss of pupils to charter schools-costing Boston some $11 million this year. Payzant's proposals for school improvement include more "collaborative coaching" of teachers and greater cross-fertilization between the systems' charter-like "pilot schools" and the city's regular public schools.
In Dayton, Ohio, the Midwestern epicenter of the charter earthquake (19 schools with nearly 5000 children at present), a complicated pact is in the works between the school system and the city's business leadership that, if finally implemented, will include the system's cooperation in creating a charter or charter-like high school for youngsters emerging ninth grade from the community's many K-8 charters-and the use of a school-system building for that purpose. This nascent deal has many moving parts, including business support for a November bond levy and a three-year moratorium on more business-backed K-8 charters, plus new mechanisms for assuring results-based accountability in the school system. The high school plan also hinges on amending state law to stop penalizing school systems that create "conversion charters." (Under a vexing provision of Ohio's charter statute, such schools are no longer counted in the district's enrollment for funding purposes and their students don't count in the district's scores on state proficiency tests. The former provision discourages districts from creating conversion charters while the latter functions as a disincentive in cases where youngsters attending such charters might boost the district average.) So it's far from certain that this intricate agreement will gel. But it wouldn't even be on the table except for choice-driven competition and the system's realization-like Boston's Payzant-that this isn't going away.
Occasionally, the exodus of pupils from a troubled school brings immediate benefits to the school itself. As 175 of the 735 youngsters previously enrolled in Orlando's Mollie Ray Elementary School avail themselves of Florida Opportunity Scholarships to exit that school, the community is pitching in to improve it. U.S. News reports that "Businesses called to donate computers-and the technicians to wire and repair them. A home-builders association is organizing volunteers to help tutor kids and retrofit classrooms." No slouch at turning lemons into lemonade, Principal Joy Taylor is also touting the smaller classes and more individualized instruction that result from the sudden enrollment drop as benefits for those pupils who remain.
As we rue the foot-dragging that has characterized many school systems' response to NCLB's choice provisions, it's heartening to note these non-federal examples of consumer interest in school choice-no wonder this year's Kappan/Gallup survey showed an up tick in support for vouchers-and the reminder that it need not wait for Washington to pull the trigger.
