The Education Gadfly Weekly

Council of the Great City Schools
June 2002

This is a valuable compilation of data for anyone trying to understand and improve urban education in the United States. Building on its 2001 report Beating the Odds-the first report to examine the status and progress of America's urban schools on state reading and math tests-the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) seeks to answer two fundamental questions: "Are urban schools improving academically?" and "Are urban schools closing achievement gaps?" The answer to both questions is "yes but not fast enough." Analyzing data from 57 big-city school systems in reading and math, the authors found encouraging evidence of gains in math and reading and a narrowing of achievement gaps, but despite a trend line that's pointing in the right direction, students in urban schools still score well below national averages in math and reading. More obviously needs to be done to improve urban education, but the report has some interesting things to say about the reasons for the improvement that we've seen thus far in big city schools. Until about six years ago, CGCS suggests, scores were stagnant in urban schools. This began to change when urban educators began to buy into the standards movement, which clarified why they were in the field of education in the first place, and what they were being held responsible for delivering. A fascinating subplot is the story of how reform efforts initiated by the federal government slowly trickle down to change behavior in urban districts. The standards movement was born in the mid-1980s, but it took almost ten years to impact America's urban schools. Beating the Odds II is worth reading. To do so, proceed to http://www.cgcs.org/reports/beat_the_oddsII.html.

Christopher Jepsen and Steven Rivkin, Public Policy Institute of California
2002

A new report from the Public Policy Institute of California draws attention to a major unintended consequence of California's Class Size Reduction initiative (CSR), begun in 1996 and targeted at kindergarten and grades 1-3. The initiative created many new teaching positions in a state that was already struggling to fill its openings. Veteran teachers from schools in high-poverty areas left to take positions in suburban schools, and some teachers in grades 4 and up moved to grades K-3. Math and reading scores did improve for students who had the benefit of both a small class and a veteran teacher. Those gains were offset, however, by declines resulting from the influx of inexperienced teachers to cover otherwise teacherless classrooms-an effect felt most strongly in poor and minority schools and also in the middle grades. Thus, the initiative had no appreciable effect on overall statewide average test scores even as it widened the gap between test scores for the rich and poor. The authors speculate that many of the newly hired teachers were not only less experienced but also less able than veteran teachers. If true, this could mean that the negative side effects of Class Size Reduction will persist even after the new teachers gain experience. The 100-page report-which includes copious tables and figures-concludes with policy recommendations. Most significantly, the authors caution against rapid, large-scale reductions in class size and suggest that future class reduction efforts should begin with low-income schools. The report can be viewed at http://www.ppic.org/publications/PPIC161/ppic161fulltext.pdf. - Rob Lucas

Paul Kengor, Wisconsin Policy Research Institute Report
June 2002

Writing for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, Grove City College's Paul Kengor reviews seventeen texts used in the state's public schools, where textbooks are selected by local school boards. Although most of them featured good coverage of touchy topics such as the slave trade, the use of the atom bomb, Japanese militarism, the Cold War, and the role of women in history and culture-all the while avoiding ethnocentrism and first world bias-the books ignore or treat lightly many fundamental topics like the importance of democracy and its development in the United States. Other "overlooked" matters include the treatment of women under Islam, terrorism, tribal warfare and dictatorship in Africa, the horrors of communism (including millions of deaths under Stalin), political and religious repression in China, and the dictatorship of Castro (who is depicted in some books as a hero). Kengor has included a chart of issues, events and people one would expect to find in a world history book and the number of times that each appears in the worst text he reviews, Global Insight. The Declaration of Independence, Woodrow Wilson, Otto von Bismarck and Canada do not appear there at all, though India appears 100+ times and Gorbachev receives sixteen mentions. This report, which should inspire all parents of high school students to take a close look at their child's world history book, is available at http://wpri.org/Reports/Volume15/Vol15no4.pdf or by contacting the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, Inc. at P.O. Box 487, Thiensville, WI 53092; phone 262-241-0514; fax 262-241-0774. - Janet Heffner

Sean Reardon and John Yun, The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University
June 2002

This report by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, written by Sean Reardon of Penn State and John Yun of the Harvard Ed School, starts badly by labeling project co-director Gary Orfield's foreword a "forward," an unmistakable sign of weak editing if not weak thinking. And in 55 pages it doesn't get a lot better. Its central contention is that private schools are more "segregated" than public schools-a claim that is, of course, extra-timely in light of the Supreme Court's voucher decision. That, in any case, is the headline attached to this analysis of federal private-school data (from 1997-98). The actual data, however, don't quite bear out the claim that private schools are worse than public schools for minority pupils. The authors acknowledge that, when it comes to Hispanics, private schools are better integrated than public, i.e. there is a higher proportion of white students to be found in private schools attended by Hispanic youngsters than those youngsters typically encounter in public schools. As for the black-white picture, the authors claim that it's worse in private than public schools, but their numbers undermine that allegation: "[T]he average black private school student was enrolled in a school that was only 34% white [while] the average black public school student attended a school that was 33% white." Not a heckuva difference, and not even in the right direction! None of this shows that private schools are "segregated" in the classic sense, with students barred from some schools and assigned to others, according to their skin color. Moreover, while the authors spin their findings as an argument against vouchers, the central racial fact of private schools is that relatively few minorities can afford to attend them; hence relatively fewer do. If they had more financial aid (vouchers or otherwise), more would attend. This is well demonstrated by much survey data in which low-income parents were asked what school they would choose if money were no object. If more minorities attended private schools, private schooling as a whole would be better integrated. (Today, it's 78% white, compared with 64% in public schools.) That doesn't necessarily mean that individual private schools would be better integrated. (One indisputable fact of school choice is that, given options, some families seek out schools attended by others like themselves even as others opt for more cosmopolitan student bodies.) But it almost certainly means that low-income minority youngsters would be getting a better education than they are today. Which is more important to their futures? You can learn more about (and obtain) this report by surfing to http://www.law.harvard.edu/civilrights/press_releases/private_schools.html.

William G. Howell and Paul Peterson
2002

As the voucher argument moves out of the judiciary and into the hands of policymakers, politicians and educators, there's never been greater need for clear data about how vouchers work and what effects they have. Just about everyone acknowledges that the perfect experiment or pilot program remains to be conducted. But today's best data come from a set of studies conducted by Harvard political scientist Paul Peterson and his colleagues. This important new Brookings book, co-authored by Peterson and William Howell, reports on five such studies. Three of them were "randomized field trials" in New York, Washington and Dayton. The fourth is the largish privately financed voucher program in San Antonio's Edgewood school district; and the fifth is an evaluation of the national Children's Scholarship Fund (CSF) program. All involve privately financed "scholarships" or vouchers, not the publicly funded kind at issue in the Cleveland case. Nor did they include the high and sustained student funding levels that are needed as part of a full-fledged voucher experiment (to determine, for example, whether there's a "supply response"). Nor did these programs (as yet) last more than 2-3 years before being appraised. But partly because they were privately financed, it was possible to structure them (other than Edgewood) with proper "control groups" of similar youngsters who did not receive and use vouchers. Hence the data are clearer here than in any other voucher research. The bottom line, as previously reported, is that using vouchers to change from public to private schools appears to reduce the black-white achievement gap although it does not have that effect on the education attainments of low income white and Hispanic students. (The authors thoughtfully explore why.) Though this is certainly not the last word on voucher research, and although it will be (wrongly) dismissed by readers who don't like its results-they will probably allege that the authors are voucher proponents and then ignore the data!-it is, as Dean John Brandl of the University of Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey Institute remarks on the jacket cover, "the most important book ever written on the subject of vouchers." It should be must reading for everyone interested in school choice or pondering the implications of the Supreme Court's recent decision. You can learn more from http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/press/books/education_gap.htm.

In a forceful editorial the day after the Zelman decision, The Washington Post hailed the ruling, restated the need for experimentation, and urged choice opponents not to become fixated on blurring of church-state lines. "We don't belittle the dangers. But the dangers of vouchers are hypothetical ones at this stage. The crisis in education is real."

That's the same pragmatic mindset that journalist Matt Miller embraces in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, in which he revisits the "voucher proposal for liberals" he first broached a few years ago in The Atlantic. Miller suggests that Uncle Sam fund an experiment in 3-4 big cities in which every poor child is offered a hefty voucher that could be redeemed at public or private schools, a voucher large enough to increase per-pupil spending by 20% or 30%. (This way, liberals can't object that the voucher drains cash from schools for poor kids.) When Miller first proposed this idea to conservatives, they liked it, but leaders of the teacher unions refused to even consider it. Miller warns that, if the unions are not open to this kind of experiment, they may soon be in for worse. At some point, he predicts, a Democratic presidential aspirant will be willing to stand up to the unions (and their "Sit tight-we've got a ten year reform plan" message to poor families) on the voucher issue.

While Miller believes that we may be near a tipping point on vouchers, the landscape of American education is already much more fragmented than most choice opponents acknowledge, with increasing numbers of students attending magnet schools, charter schools, privately run public schools, private schools, and even home schools, writes Tamar Lewin in The New York Times. According to Joe Viteritti of NYU, "we're redefining the concept of public education, not seeing it as being synonymous with neighborhood-run public schools but instead as a public obligation to provide every child with a decent education, whether it's through vouchers or charter schools. The basic assumption that the only way to educate children is in locally run, publicly run schools has been punctured." While there's no conclusive evidence that school choice has improved American education (though plenty of suggestive evidence exists), Lewin writes, the trend toward more school choice, both within the public sector and outside it, is probably unstoppable in a consumer society like ours where all kinds of choices abound, even though many people still fear that the splintering of our education system may damage civic life in ways yet unknown.

But while choices may expand, urban children are likely to find that one option continues to be closed to them: nearby suburban schools. In an op-ed in today's Washington Post, law professors Michael Heise and James Ryan argue that the most important opponents of expanded school choice are suburbanites who are satisfied with their schools and want to protect them from change. Suburban parents have largely succeeded in insulating their schools from desegregation decrees and from efforts to equalize school finance equalization, and persuading them to open the doors of their schools to students from urban districts will be a tough sell, Heise and Ryan write.

"Letting Parents Decide," The Washington Post, June 28, 2002

"The Liberal Voucher Opportunity," by Matthew Miller, The Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2002 (available only to subscribers)

"Alternatives to Neighborhood School Are Vaster Than Ever," by Tamar Lewin, The New York Times, June 29, 2002

"Taking School Choice to the Suburbs," by James Ryan and Michael Heise, The Washington Post, July 3, 2002

While the newspapers have abounded with reports of state and school-district concerns about the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the Department of Education last week announced the launch of a demonstration project aimed at helping states put the principles of NCLB into action. A $3.5 million grant has been awarded to the Education Leaders Council (ELC) to work with a select number of states and schools to develop integrated accountability and information systems that will boost student achievement and serve as models for other states. The project will provide principals, teachers, and parents with tools to help them use student assessment data to improve instruction and will provide technical assistance to policymakers to help them develop robust accountability plans in compliance with NCLB. The project, for which the ELC has engaged several partner organizations, will be evaluated by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a sister organization to the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. Interested state leaders are invited to apply by July 19. For details see "Secretary Paige Announces $3.5 Million Grant to Support No Child Left Behind Demonstration Project," U.S. Department of Education, June 28, 2002. More details are available at www.followingtheleaders.org.

The Supreme Court's voucher decision last Thursday produced cheers from many quarters, some of them expected (Institute for Justice, Senator Voinovich), others less so (President Bush, New Republic legal specialist Jeffrey Rosen). And of course it produced a predictable hail of negative reactions from teacher union heads, the New York Times editorial page, and sundry politicians.

In the chorus of commentary, however, one set of singers was notably muted: those who lead and speak for U.S. private schools. Tepid was the word that came to mind as I read their reactions. Sure, everyone in this crowd lauded the Court for making the right decision and everyone said nice things about freedom, the value of choice and the educational contributions of private schools. But there was practically no suggestion that U.S. private educators are ready to press for more vouchers so that their schools can serve more disadvantaged children.

The Catholic bishop of Columbus, Ohio, James A. Griffin, said that the high court's ruling was right but that the jury is still out on the effectiveness of the Cleveland program and he isn't counting on any more vouchers. He doesn't even seem to want them. Indeed, he told the Columbus Dispatch that he does not plan to ask the legislature to widen the program to include his community. (I had earlier heard through other channels that Ohio's Catholic leaders have no intention of becoming voucher advocates, never mind that most of the Cleveland youngsters taking advantage of this program are benefiting from their schools-and bringing millions of dollars into those schools.)

National Catholic leaders were slightly more bullish. Sister Glenn Ann McPhee, Secretary for Education at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, pronounced herself "delighted" with the decision and "encourage[d] members of Congress and state legislators to join Ohio and other states in offering scholarship or tax credit programs." But her statement also implied that such encouragement might fade at the first sign of opposition: "This decision in no way threatens the viability of the public school system."

Her counterpart at the National Catholic Educational Association, the estimable Michael Guerra, while terming the Zelman ruling a "great victory," sought only the moral high ground: "Now that the constitutional debate is over, advocates and opponents of school choice will focus exclusively on the public policy question: Is it wise or foolish for government to support the decisions parents of modest means would like to make about the schools in which their children are educated? We believe it is not only wise, but also just."

The National Association of Independent Schools was mute as an organization even as it posted carefully nuanced guidance for its members as to how they might want to answer voucher questions. For example:

"Would/do you accept vouchers?
CONSIDER- Would accepting vouchers affect your school's program (curriculum or position on standardized testing)?...
CONSIDER- Would vouchers allow your school to maintain its selective admission process?
DISCUSS the importance of finding the right match between the school's program and the child's abilities and style of learning....
CONSIDER- Are there enough openings for admission at your school to accept a large number of voucher students?"

Among the private-school reactions that I spotted in a brief web tour, the most gung-ho came from Joe McTighe of the Council for American Private Education, who declared that "This could be a watershed moment in the history of school reform if states choose to seize the opportunity presented by the court today." But he, too, then drifted into a mushy discussion of public-private partnerships.

What did America's private school leaders NOT say? They didn't say that they yearn to serve more children, especially poor, inner-city minority youngsters. They didn't say that they will fight for the legislative and political victories that might make that possible. They didn't demand fiscal equality whereby voucher-bearing kids are worth as much as students attending government-run schools. They did not, in short, say much that would lead an observer to conclude that the Court's ruling affords them and their schools an opportunity that they intend to seize. In truth, many seemed sheepish, wary lest someone think them insufficiently loyal to the principle of public education.

One might have expected the country's private schools to be the loudest voices in this chorus. Institutionally, they have the most to gain from Zelman. Morally, it vindicates what they do as a bona fide option for poor kids, one that society is now free to encourage. As educators, it says they can do more educating of more kids, including those who need it most.

But nobody said anything of the sort.

What is going on here? Why are private schools so diffident? I don't know for sure, but can suggest five possible explanations.

First, they may be behaving in a politically astute way, not gloating or divulging their plans, just calmly praising the court while remaining vague about what it means for them. (I wish I believed this, but I've never found private school people a terribly cagey bunch when it comes to politics and strategy.)

Second, they may be suffering from a touch of the Stockholm syndrome, identifying with their jailers and feeling nervous about saying or doing anything that might be construed as less than 100% support for public education. They have, after all, been in this policy prison for a very long time and are apt to have picked up some of its habits and values. They've lost their edge, their passion, their gusto, their mission to serve (and, in the process, to thrive).

Third, they may simply lack enterprise and vision. It's rare in the private-school world (outside its small for-profit sector and a few "Christian school" heads) to find educators who want their schools to grow, to open additional campuses, to recruit more clients. Most seem content to stick with what they are doing, keeping their schools as they are, more disposed to opt for a longer waiting list and greater selectivity-which in some circles confers greater status-than to educate more young people.

Fourth, they may really not feel ready to succeed with larger numbers of disadvantaged, at-risk and special-needs kids. In other words, they're not sure they're up to the education challenge. (And when insecurity about change merges with inertia and lack of enterprise, the combination practically assures continuation of the status quo.)

Fifth, some, maybe many, are nervous about the governmental interventions and policy shifts that they fear will accompany vouchers (or other public funding except-maybe-through tax credits. The independent schools are open about this: they don't want to embrace those state academic standards, take those state tests, or have the state tell them which youngsters to enroll. They'd rather stay poor, small and exclusive than let the government set foot on their campuses.

Voucher opponents are already playing on that last concern, insisting (e.g. the AFT's Sandra Feldman) on the proverbial "level playing field" for any "voucher schools." This, of course, poses a risk to private schools' independence and in its most virulent form could (as in some other nations) leave them independent in name only, subject to nearly every rule and procedure that entangles the regular public schools. (This is also a profound issue for charter schools.)

The "level playing field" is a shrewd argument in a country where most people value fair play and believe that competition should be based on equal terms. And it's partly right: I agree with Feldman & Co. that schools getting state dollars should have to take the state tests and report their results. That doesn't necessarily mean they must embrace the state's academic standards, however. When the test results come in, parents can judge for themselves whether their children's schools are focusing on the right things. So long as private (and charter) schools are willing to be publicly accountable for their results, they should be free to produce those results however they wish. And why not extend that principle to "regular" public schools, too? How about deregulating them instead of regulating their rivals?

The playing field, moreover, must be level from both directions. It's outrageous to expect the same results from private schools when they're given less than half the operating dollars per pupil that flow to government-operated schools-and no capital financing, either. (Charter schools end up with about 80% of the per-student operating budget but, in many states, little or no capital funding.) Fair is fair.

That means trade-offs, yes. Private schools keep their freedom of means but become subject to public accountability for results. Public schools get deregulated. And everyone gets the same per-student funding (perhaps adjusted upward for disadvantaged and disabled youngsters.)

But it does little good to suggest such policy precepts if private schoolers have no zeal to serve more children. And their first round of reactions to Zelman suggests that they're finding it easy to keep that ardor under control.

When the Department of Education recently reported to Congress on the state of teacher quality and teacher training in America, Secretary Paige concluded that teacher licensure today depends too heavily on training in pedagogy, and recommended that pathways into teaching be created for individuals who lack coursework in education (http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=54#802). In Saturday's New York Times, Arthur Levine, the president of Teachers College, argues that eliminating "burdensome education requirements" will "all but guarantee that our poor and minority youngsters living in the inner cities will continue to be left behind." Levine contrasts schools in affluent suburbs, where teachers arrive with much training under their belts, prepared to succeed in the classroom, with schools in inner cities, where, he says, teaching is viewed as a trade to be learned on the job. What Levine doesn't explain is that study after study has failed to find any evidence that teacher training provided by a school of education leads to more effective teaching. Of course, the extent of professional training is not the only dimension along which teachers differ between inner city and suburban schools; the former are less likely to have passed a test of basic skills, to have majored in the subject they teach, or to have attended a selective college. Given research that suggests that the academic skills and subject knowledge of prospective teachers better predict teaching success than the extent of ed school training, the Department of Education is right to turn the nation's attention from the latter to the former in its quest for better teachers. For more see "Rookies in the Schools," by Arthur Levine, The New York Times, June 29, 2002.

A New York state appeals court last week reversed a lower court ruling that the state was not meeting its obligation to provide students in New York City with a sound, basic education. The appeals court ruled that schools are obligated by the state constitution "to do nothing more than prepare students for low-level jobs, for serving on a jury and for reading campaign literature-the equivalent, the court suggested, of an eight- or ninth- grade education," according to New York Times reporters Robert Worth and Anemona Hartocolis. The appellate judges suggested that the lower court had overreached in defining what the state constitution requires, and that it was not the job of a court to set an ideal standard, but only to determine what a constitutional human right to education entails; barring catastrophe, it is up to politicians to make further decisions about education and to be voted out of office if citizens grow unhappy. While courts in other states have taken more expansive views of the state's obligation to provide an education, experts say that the differences among court decisions have more to do with how willing judges are to become involved in making policy than with the language of different state constitutions about education. For more, see "Johnny Can Read, but Well Enough to Vote?" by Robert Worth and Anemona Hartocolis, The New York Times, June 30, 2002.

Christopher Jepsen and Steven Rivkin, Public Policy Institute of California
2002

A new report from the Public Policy Institute of California draws attention to a major unintended consequence of California's Class Size Reduction initiative (CSR), begun in 1996 and targeted at kindergarten and grades 1-3. The initiative created many new teaching positions in a state that was already struggling to fill its openings. Veteran teachers from schools in high-poverty areas left to take positions in suburban schools, and some teachers in grades 4 and up moved to grades K-3. Math and reading scores did improve for students who had the benefit of both a small class and a veteran teacher. Those gains were offset, however, by declines resulting from the influx of inexperienced teachers to cover otherwise teacherless classrooms-an effect felt most strongly in poor and minority schools and also in the middle grades. Thus, the initiative had no appreciable effect on overall statewide average test scores even as it widened the gap between test scores for the rich and poor. The authors speculate that many of the newly hired teachers were not only less experienced but also less able than veteran teachers. If true, this could mean that the negative side effects of Class Size Reduction will persist even after the new teachers gain experience. The 100-page report-which includes copious tables and figures-concludes with policy recommendations. Most significantly, the authors caution against rapid, large-scale reductions in class size and suggest that future class reduction efforts should begin with low-income schools. The report can be viewed at http://www.ppic.org/publications/PPIC161/ppic161fulltext.pdf. - Rob Lucas

Council of the Great City Schools
June 2002

This is a valuable compilation of data for anyone trying to understand and improve urban education in the United States. Building on its 2001 report Beating the Odds-the first report to examine the status and progress of America's urban schools on state reading and math tests-the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) seeks to answer two fundamental questions: "Are urban schools improving academically?" and "Are urban schools closing achievement gaps?" The answer to both questions is "yes but not fast enough." Analyzing data from 57 big-city school systems in reading and math, the authors found encouraging evidence of gains in math and reading and a narrowing of achievement gaps, but despite a trend line that's pointing in the right direction, students in urban schools still score well below national averages in math and reading. More obviously needs to be done to improve urban education, but the report has some interesting things to say about the reasons for the improvement that we've seen thus far in big city schools. Until about six years ago, CGCS suggests, scores were stagnant in urban schools. This began to change when urban educators began to buy into the standards movement, which clarified why they were in the field of education in the first place, and what they were being held responsible for delivering. A fascinating subplot is the story of how reform efforts initiated by the federal government slowly trickle down to change behavior in urban districts. The standards movement was born in the mid-1980s, but it took almost ten years to impact America's urban schools. Beating the Odds II is worth reading. To do so, proceed to http://www.cgcs.org/reports/beat_the_oddsII.html.

Paul Kengor, Wisconsin Policy Research Institute Report
June 2002

Writing for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, Grove City College's Paul Kengor reviews seventeen texts used in the state's public schools, where textbooks are selected by local school boards. Although most of them featured good coverage of touchy topics such as the slave trade, the use of the atom bomb, Japanese militarism, the Cold War, and the role of women in history and culture-all the while avoiding ethnocentrism and first world bias-the books ignore or treat lightly many fundamental topics like the importance of democracy and its development in the United States. Other "overlooked" matters include the treatment of women under Islam, terrorism, tribal warfare and dictatorship in Africa, the horrors of communism (including millions of deaths under Stalin), political and religious repression in China, and the dictatorship of Castro (who is depicted in some books as a hero). Kengor has included a chart of issues, events and people one would expect to find in a world history book and the number of times that each appears in the worst text he reviews, Global Insight. The Declaration of Independence, Woodrow Wilson, Otto von Bismarck and Canada do not appear there at all, though India appears 100+ times and Gorbachev receives sixteen mentions. This report, which should inspire all parents of high school students to take a close look at their child's world history book, is available at http://wpri.org/Reports/Volume15/Vol15no4.pdf or by contacting the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, Inc. at P.O. Box 487, Thiensville, WI 53092; phone 262-241-0514; fax 262-241-0774. - Janet Heffner

Sean Reardon and John Yun, The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University
June 2002

This report by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, written by Sean Reardon of Penn State and John Yun of the Harvard Ed School, starts badly by labeling project co-director Gary Orfield's foreword a "forward," an unmistakable sign of weak editing if not weak thinking. And in 55 pages it doesn't get a lot better. Its central contention is that private schools are more "segregated" than public schools-a claim that is, of course, extra-timely in light of the Supreme Court's voucher decision. That, in any case, is the headline attached to this analysis of federal private-school data (from 1997-98). The actual data, however, don't quite bear out the claim that private schools are worse than public schools for minority pupils. The authors acknowledge that, when it comes to Hispanics, private schools are better integrated than public, i.e. there is a higher proportion of white students to be found in private schools attended by Hispanic youngsters than those youngsters typically encounter in public schools. As for the black-white picture, the authors claim that it's worse in private than public schools, but their numbers undermine that allegation: "[T]he average black private school student was enrolled in a school that was only 34% white [while] the average black public school student attended a school that was 33% white." Not a heckuva difference, and not even in the right direction! None of this shows that private schools are "segregated" in the classic sense, with students barred from some schools and assigned to others, according to their skin color. Moreover, while the authors spin their findings as an argument against vouchers, the central racial fact of private schools is that relatively few minorities can afford to attend them; hence relatively fewer do. If they had more financial aid (vouchers or otherwise), more would attend. This is well demonstrated by much survey data in which low-income parents were asked what school they would choose if money were no object. If more minorities attended private schools, private schooling as a whole would be better integrated. (Today, it's 78% white, compared with 64% in public schools.) That doesn't necessarily mean that individual private schools would be better integrated. (One indisputable fact of school choice is that, given options, some families seek out schools attended by others like themselves even as others opt for more cosmopolitan student bodies.) But it almost certainly means that low-income minority youngsters would be getting a better education than they are today. Which is more important to their futures? You can learn more about (and obtain) this report by surfing to http://www.law.harvard.edu/civilrights/press_releases/private_schools.html.

William G. Howell and Paul Peterson
2002

As the voucher argument moves out of the judiciary and into the hands of policymakers, politicians and educators, there's never been greater need for clear data about how vouchers work and what effects they have. Just about everyone acknowledges that the perfect experiment or pilot program remains to be conducted. But today's best data come from a set of studies conducted by Harvard political scientist Paul Peterson and his colleagues. This important new Brookings book, co-authored by Peterson and William Howell, reports on five such studies. Three of them were "randomized field trials" in New York, Washington and Dayton. The fourth is the largish privately financed voucher program in San Antonio's Edgewood school district; and the fifth is an evaluation of the national Children's Scholarship Fund (CSF) program. All involve privately financed "scholarships" or vouchers, not the publicly funded kind at issue in the Cleveland case. Nor did they include the high and sustained student funding levels that are needed as part of a full-fledged voucher experiment (to determine, for example, whether there's a "supply response"). Nor did these programs (as yet) last more than 2-3 years before being appraised. But partly because they were privately financed, it was possible to structure them (other than Edgewood) with proper "control groups" of similar youngsters who did not receive and use vouchers. Hence the data are clearer here than in any other voucher research. The bottom line, as previously reported, is that using vouchers to change from public to private schools appears to reduce the black-white achievement gap although it does not have that effect on the education attainments of low income white and Hispanic students. (The authors thoughtfully explore why.) Though this is certainly not the last word on voucher research, and although it will be (wrongly) dismissed by readers who don't like its results-they will probably allege that the authors are voucher proponents and then ignore the data!-it is, as Dean John Brandl of the University of Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey Institute remarks on the jacket cover, "the most important book ever written on the subject of vouchers." It should be must reading for everyone interested in school choice or pondering the implications of the Supreme Court's recent decision. You can learn more from http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/press/books/education_gap.htm.