Students in approximately 8,600 schools across the country must be given the option to attend a higher-performing school this year because the school they currently attend has failed to make adequate yearly progress, U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige announced last week. The 8,600 schools are Title I schools identified by their states as "in need of school improvement" because they twice failed to meet state standards for progress. (Federal standards for adequate yearly progress, which don't apply until next year, are even tougher and will likely yield even longer lists of failing schools.)
States and districts are now scrambling to find higher-achieving schools for these children to attend and to arrange transportation to those alternative schools. In Baltimore, for example, 30,000 students are eligible to transfer out of failing schools, but only 194 openings exist in the non-failing schools that have been designated to accept transfers. In Camden, parents of children in failing schools were told that no other schools in the district had room for them, and that they should contact Camden's two charter schools or a nearby district, but those schools told a reporter that they have no room either. Some predict that parents will be reluctant to take their children out of neighborhood schools, and school officials in at least one district have mounted a PR offensive to convince parents to keep their children where they are and give reforms in those schools another chance to work. Many districts have not yet made arrangements to comply with the law, and with school starting in less than two months, it looks unlikely that we will be able to observe a full-fledged test of the effects of public school choice anytime soon.
"Schools setting limits on transfers," by Liz Bowie, The Baltimore Sun, July 10, 2002; "Federal Law on failing schools has states scrambling to comply," by Maria Newman, The New York Times, July 4, 2002; "School districts resists law offering kids better choices," editorial, USA Today, July 9, 2002