Some Clear Thinking on Choice

Both candidates have been talking about “choice” as it pertains to education. It’s a popular idea these days, especially as parents are demanding better educational opportunities for their children. But a recent article by the American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess suggests that choice alone isn’t enough to improve the quality of public education. Choice needs to be coupled with infrastructure and support to bring about innovation and success.

Choice means different things to each of the candidates. Barack Obama sees charter schools as the key to expanding public school choice. As such, he wants to double the funding for the Federal Charter School Program from the current level, $190 million, to $380 million. This program makes grants to states and other agencies to provide charter schools with planning, implementation, evaluation and expansion funding. Grants range from $10,000 to $20 million and between 30 and 40 are awarded each year.

John McCain believes that choice most often translates into vouchers that allow students to opt out of public schools. To start, he wants to expand the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides DC students with “scholarships” to attend private schools, from $13 million a year to $20 million a year. He also wants to expand federal funding for virtual education to $500 million. This money would provide students the opportunity to take courses they may not otherwise have access to online. Overall, McCain would like to create more equality of choice for students and parents across geographical and economic lines.

Clearly there are differences in how the candidates seek to achieve greater choice in education; one focuses on public school choice and the other would go beyond the public schools. Regardless, both candidates should consider Hess’ findings before embracing “innovative” choice programs and pouring federal dollars into new or expanded initiatives. In his article, Hess uses the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program to underscore that simply “providing” choice does not ensure that the choices are good ones or that innovation and school improvement will follow.

Even though 20,000 students are enrolled in Milwaukee’s 100 choice schools, academic achievement has not significantly improved across the district. Ten percent of choice schools are considered to have “alarming deficiencies” and few of the remaining 90 percent exhibit the type of innovation or excellence expected to develop in a choice-based system. The remaining traditional public schools have not done any better.

Hess believes that the absence of a “Milwaukee miracle” can be attributed to the lack of infrastructure to encourage and implement innovation, continued barriers to entry for new stakeholders, and limited quality control for choice schools. Unlike other sectors, which reward innovation and constantly seek new players and ideas, the education landscape remains an unfriendly terrain for entrepreneurs and reformers.

Hess uses the example of KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) charter schools to illustrate his point. Although KIPP is lauded as a great innovator in education, it has only opened 65 schools in its 14 year existence – barely scratching the surface of public education. By comparison, innovative companies like Google have become industry powerhouses in the same amount of time.

Hess posits that public schools in Milwaukee have not been able to respond to the competition brought on by choice schools because they lack the infrastructure and support to do so. He believes that good choice programs should provide remaining public schools with proper guidance to improve and foster actual competition.

Hess best sums up his opinion by saying: “Simply put, market reform is not just about choice; it is also about enabling market mechanisms to channel human energy and ingenuity into solving problems and satisfying needs.” Choice programs, whatever their manifestation, are not beyond this challenge.

However the candidates choose to incorporate choice into their education reform agendas, we hope that they heed Hess’ advice and incorporate greater infrastructure, flexibility and quality control into their plans. Milwaukee provides an important opportunity to learn from past mistakes to invest federal dollars more wisely.