Don't think for a minute that June's Supreme Court decision upholding Cleveland's school-voucher program has opened the floodgates of education choice for American families. Opponents succeeded earlier this month in persuading a Florida judge to nix that state's exit-voucher program, whereby youngsters stuck in public schools that repeatedly fail to meet Florida's academic standards may take their money to private schools or other public schools. (His analysis, contrary to that of Justices Rehnquist, O'Connor and Thomas, held that, because many of these children opt for parochial schools, the program violates a provision in the state constitution barring state aid to sectarian institutions.)
But what really has education watchers twittering is how little actual choice is resulting from a new Congressional mandate that youngsters enrolled in failing "Title I" schools may exit them for other public (and charter) schools.
When Congress overhauled the Title I program last year in the "No Child Left Behind" Act, it included a provision somewhat like Florida's: if a Title I school fails for two straight years to make adequate progress toward its state's academic standards, the local school system must provide its pupils with "public school choice" and may use some of their federal dollars to pay for the transportation.
In the original Bush formulation, a student's choices would also have included private schools and public schools in other districts. But Congress instantly balked at "vouchers" and the White House quickly yielded. Then the education establishment pressed lawmakers to confine children's options to public schools within the same district. Hence Chicago children have no right to enroll in Winnetka's excellent schools nor Los Angeles youngsters in those of Beverly Hills nor Boston kids in those of neighboring Brookline. Their choices are limited to schools run by their present systems (and charter schools within district boundaries).
That does not create a lot of appealing options for kids in faltering systems that abound in failing schools and boast few good ones. But once the lobbyists were finished, that's as far as Congress would go. Except for one wrinkle that was barely noticed when the bill was signed in January: limited as it is, the school-choice provision applies right now-today, school year 2002-3-to more than 8000 Title I schools that have already lingered for two years or longer on their states' lists of education failures.
School districts across America were flabbergasted to learn this summer that they must immediately provide public-school options for those millions of youngsters.
How are they responding? A handful are behaving as they should. District of Columbia superintendent Paul Vance doesn't like this provision-he fears it will "drain" the abler students from the weaker schools in his troubled system-but is nonetheless seeking to clear a number of slots for youngsters transferring from the city's 15 worst-performing schools. "The law is the law," he told The Washington Post. "My job is to implement it."
Across the nation, however, many states and districts are resisting this school-choice requirement, deferring until it's too late for kids to switch, ignoring the law entirely or reinterpreting it in ways that suit them. Thus Education Week reports that "relatively few students will parachute out of low-performing schools this fall."
Many stratagems are at work to frustrate the new federal rule. In a matter of weeks, Ohio whittled its list of failing Title I schools from 760 to 212-not by improving the others but by fiddling with test scores and criteria. Rural South Carolina districts claim that they have so few schools that there's really nothing to choose among-and it's too much bother and expense to send youngsters to schools operated by nearby districts (which NCLB mandates in such situations "to the extent practicable.") Kentucky has decided to wait until mid-September to finalize its list of eligible schools. Texas is holding off until the end of August. By then, of course, the school year will be well underway in those two states and fewer families will want to move their children.
In some cases, it's not clear whether the district's limp response is due entirely to foot-dragging or to genuine problems of capacity. In Baltimore, where 30,000 children are enrolled in failing schools, the district says it has just 200 openings in better ones. In Chicago, a staggering 125,000 kids in 179 schools were originally deemed eligible to transfer but the system has somehow cut that list to 50 schools-and is now "pairing" them with other schools rather than giving students a full range of options. (It says that all 179 schools will get extra help with tutoring and suchlike.) Vance's Washington D.C. is providing pupils who want to move with four alternative schools-but has excluded many of the District's highest-performing elementary schools (which tend to be in upper middle class neighborhoods).
Notwithstanding such shenanigans, thousands of youngsters are changing schools under the new federal requirement, including such upscale places as Montgomery County, Maryland. Denver estimates that almost 5000 students will leave their neighborhood schools, though some are opting into other schools on the list of weak performers. (Down the interstate in Colorado Springs, principals of exit-eligible schools wrote personal letters to parents pleading with them not to leave.) And some families are making these moves for reasons having more to do with playgrounds and personalities than academic achievement. "It's hard to quantify why they picked what they picked," remarked the head of Denver's Title I program.
When all is said and done, however, it's just a few thousand poor children, not millions, who are fleeing bad schools for better ones this fall, never mind the explicit requirements of No Child Left Behind. Mainly what we're seeing is widespread flouting of that law's intent-and a federal government that can do little to make recalcitrant states and school systems change their ways. Though the Bush administration has revived its interest in school choice-filing an important Supreme Court brief in the Cleveland case and proposing tax credits for school expenses-it has few enforcement tools at times like this. The Education Department's hard-working, tough-minded undersecretary, Eugene Hickok, is monitoring the situation and intervening where he can, but nobody is about to cut off Title I funds to districts or states that dawdle over school choice. In fact, No Child Left Behind authorizes the withholding only of a smidgen of administrative money from states and districts that do not fulfill its mandates. Nor do any rewards-save perhaps in Heaven-await those that conscientiously provide solid alternatives for their students.
What we're really seeing, once again, is how the public-education establishment despises school choice, how little it will bestir itself to assist poor families trapped in failing schools to gain access to better schools (even within the same districts), and the hardball tactics it deploys to keep lawmakers from adding more exit doors. If angry, frustrated parents now ratchet up the campaign for private-school vouchers, tax credits and unlimited charter schools, that same establishment will have only itself to blame.
The lesson: Congress can paste whatever label it wishes on its shiny new statute, but when it entrusts a choice program to the same people who brought us 8600 failed schools in the first place, it leaves millions of children behind.
A somewhat different version of this article appears in this week's Weekly Standard. It's available to subscribers at http://www.weeklystandard.com.
"Parents Feeling Left Behind by Schools," by Scott Stephens and Janet Okoben, The Plain Dealer, August 17, 2002
"School Choice Falling Short," by Duke Helfand, Los Angeles Times, August 17, 2002
