School Choice 3-P Analysis
School Choice
By: Tiernan, Taylor, Stacy, Sarah, and Rachel
3-P Analysis
Hnrs-302-011H
Professor Adrea Lawrence
April 3, 2010
Policy Overview
What started as an idea eventually led to the implementation of vouchers and modern day charter schools. The overall purpose of school choice is to increase the well-being and improve the learning opportunities for all students. As a policy, school choice has been viewed through many lenses since its legal appearance in the 1980s, but the idea behind it has been evolving since the nineteenth century. Town Tuitioning systems, which were set up by the state, were the first instance of vouchers in the United States and are what gave students access to education when there was no district school to attend.
In the first half of the 20th century John Dewey thought of schools as a social system and encouraged “efforts to make schools the social, educational and recreational loci of their communities”(Charter Schools and Community Development). The development of charter schools expanded from this by not only focusing on teaching purposes, but also youth development, employment, and future planning. A growing number of educators and community developers could then share responsibility for the welfare of communal activity, and work together to reform education.
The development of school choice can be seen in three stages: The Market Phase, The Integration Phase and The Policy Phase (Viteritti, Walberg and Wolf 138). Each brought to the surface new interpretations of the rationale for school choice and justified their stance by providing well-grounded arguments. The Market Phase laid the economic framework down for schools while the integration phase highlighted the relationship between school choice and race. Southern school districts furthered integration efforts by responding to Brown v. Board of Education with tuition grants that allowed students to attend private “segregation academies”, which were exempt from the integration laws (Herzberg; Gerald). Vouchers became a way to exert educational choice and therefore promote efforts to integrate schools. Poorer families who could not afford to move would then have the opportunity to enroll their children in quality schools. The Policy Phase is the third, and current, phase where politics become the key instrument in education reform. Economic arguments came to the forefront and helped back support for legislation that would promote vouchers. Milton Friedman expressed how vouchers would increase the competition among schools and therefore make education quality more important (“Free To Choose Media Samples”). State legislation favorable to charter schools became of prime importance in 1991 when Minnesota created the first charter, and increasing state control has been seen in the 21st century.
There are often benefits for being seen as a high performing school, such as greater funding and better teachers, and the structure of education in the United States has been changing to reach this status. Since it has only been about two decades since charter schools were officially established, it is astounding that over a million and a half children are already educated through such a system (Lubienski and Weitzel). The charter school movement was founded on the idea that more equitable access to quality schools would be made available for students, and became more successful by introducing competition to the school sector.
Is the Policy Principled?
The evolution of the school choice idea into a full-fledged policy movement and the spread of the charter schools necessitate an analysis and critique of school choice/charter school within framework of education theory and development. Furthermore, H.S. Bola’s work articulates how a comprehensive policy analysis requires the assessment of “three interrelated questions: Is the policy principled?; Is the policy professionally sound?; and Is the policy practical?” (Bola 207). This 3-P analysis of school choice/charter schools will therefore examine these three different questions in order to thoroughly analyze the varying assumptions underlying this policy, the potential for implementation, along with outlining recommendations for policy revision.
The first question this policy analysis will address whether the policy is principled. H.S. Bola describes how “An answer to this question, of course involves an analysis of the principles and values of policy,” as well as, “Questions of ideology and theory of development and education are also implicated” (Bola 214). In evaluating whether school choice/ charter school policy is principled, first the values assumptions underlying this policy must be identified and critiqued.
As previously noted, the overall purpose of school choice is to increase the well-being and improve the learning opportunities for all students. This purpose highlights a value assumptions to charter schools, which is that school is purposeful beyond just an educative role. The philosophy of charter schools suggests that the purpose of schools goes beyond just classroom education but should also involve promoting student achievement on a broader scale. Essential to the success of this goal, is the argument that the school choice/ charter school policy model allows for increased student achievement by promoting innovation and accountability.
An additional value assumption of school choice and charter school policy places an emphasis on self-determination. Over time school choice policy has developed based on the assumption that individual parents, families, and students had the right to choose their own school environment, whether based on racial characteristics as in the 1960s or more contemporarily based on a specific school model with charter schools. This value assumption elevates the idea of choice as both desirable and a goal within the American education system. Moreover, this value on self-determination has been an important feature of the development from school choice as an idea into legal policy with charter schools.
The notion that autonomy is both good and necessary for charter schools to be successful in their educative purpose is an essential value assumption of modern charter schools. The guiding argument is that “charter schools need to be autonomous, self-governing organizations to enhance their potential for high performance” (Wohlstetter, Wenning, Briggs, 331). Concurrently, the various state legislation, passed over the last twenty years, authorizing charter schools all note the importance of autonomy, to different degrees. This argument also reveals how the values assumptions supporting school choice/ charter school policy place a premium on autonomy as central to policy success. This value assumption functions as powerful support for charter schools on a case-by-case or even state-by-state basis, but also reveals one of the central problems to the expansion of school choice policy at the national level. Any national legislation requires a degree of regulation, but “too much regulation will defeat the purpose of a system whose goal is to promote autonomy in schools” (Gill 225). So how would a national charter school system function? This question signifies one of the many roadblocks facing legislators, Local Education Agencies (LEAs), non-profits, and parents and teachers who might favor legislation allowing school choice, but currently lack the vision for how to transition school choice policy from an individual to a broader national level.
This emphasis on self-determination, autonomy, and choice highlights how school choice policy values the individual rather than the group. While school choice/charter school policy will have group effects in terms of promoting competition within the broader school system or the improvement or “reinvention” of the public school system, these are assumptions based on the philosophy that these goals will be accomplished by elevating individual choice (Bulkley and Fisler 2). This value on the merit of individuality mirrors the value assumption on the benefit of the free market model for education. School choice/ charter school policy assumes an education philosophy based on market model promotes innovation and accountability. Charter schools will be more accountable because they are forced to “meet the demands of parent and student consumers” (Bulkley and Fisler 3).
Additionally, this policy assumes that “the interplay of autonomy and market forces would make charter schools more innovative” (Bulkley and Fisler 2). This policy, however, sees no contradiction within the idea of elevating the individual while simultaneously benefiting the overall group. School choice policy suggests that individual, choice driven education policy will have a positive trickle-down effect on the public school system as a whole. This assumption is vested in the benefits of a market model for education. This policy, nevertheless, ignores one of the central tenants of a free market model, the stratification of individuals. A free market model is not based on equal access or equal benefit, but on a differentiated system of benefits based on competitive structure. School choice policy, therefore, is correct in its assumptions of the possible benefits for individual students, but negligent in its ignorance of how this policy could create unequal access and benefits for different students.
These values assumption on choice and the individual, however, also outline a less obvious but historically apparent assumption of school choice/ charter school policy, which is that segregated education is an individual right and possibly beneficial. The notion of segregation represents an important part of school choice history, and during the 1950s and 60s the idea of school choice was harnessed to resist racial desegregation of public schools. School choice/charter school policy today does not value racial segregation, but the idea of segregation is not irrelevant to the school choice idea. School choice policy is predicated on the idea that individual students and parents have the right to choose a school environment which best suits their educational needs. In valuing choice, school choice policy places a value on student’s right to self- segregate themselves based on self-determined factors, including differences in educational priorities or socio-economic considerations. Segregation in a historical sense is not a value assumption of school choice policy, but segregation in terms of separating students based on different sets of criteria is entirely relevant to school choice and charter school philosophy. Moreover, the implications of this value assumption should be further analyzed when determining the need for policy revision to the values assumptions of school choice/charter school policy.
Is the Policy Professionally Sound?
The principle of school choice has taken form as a policy in school vouchers, charter schools, and cyber charter schools. A question of interest to education professionals and to the elected officials who craft policy is whether or not these policies are professionally sound. H. S. Bhola explained, “The question here is about the soundness of policy in regard to the theoretical understandings and research knowledge in the particular policy domain” (217). To determine whether or not these policies are professionally sound, their descriptive assumptions must be addressed. For each of these policies, the common underlying descriptive assumption is that school choice, whether enacted as school vouchers, charter schools, or cyber charter schools, will foster competition among public and private schools, resulting in the creation and maintenance of higher quality schools with better student outcomes. As explained in our policy history, this descriptive assumption was first articulated in 1955 in “The Role of Government in Education” in which Milton Friedman “advocated a market approach to education” and theorized that “the appropriation of public funding for non-public schools would create a market of new educational providers” (Viteritti, Walberg, and Wolf 138). Though Friedman proposed this argument for school vouchers, it also underlies charter schools and cyber charter schools.
If these policies are professionally sound, “the theoretical understandings and research knowledge” of the education field should support the descriptive assumption of “a market approach to education.” (Bhola 217; Viteritti, Walberg, and Wolf 138). This market approach to education is meant to “spur traditional public schools to improve through competitive pressures” since “traditional public schools will work harder to prevent students from leaving so as to avoid losing funding and enrollment” (Imberman 850, 862). Evidence of this improvement has been studied using student standardized test scores and students’ recorded behavioral incidents. A study that measured these factors showed that the presence of charter schools among traditional public schools had negative effects on the mathematics and English standardized test scores of students enrolled in traditional public schools (Imberman 862). The presence of charter schools had no effect on student attendance and negligible effects on students’ recorded behavioral incidents (Imberman 862). In similar studies of the effects of school vouchers, “the best research to date finds relatively small achievement gains for students offered education vouchers, most of which are not statistically different from zero” (Rouse and Barrow 17). For cyber charter schools, there is no research literature that suggests that students enrolled in cyber charter schools perform better on standardized tests than do traditional public school students (Cavanaugh). This information suggests that the market approach to education has not fostered competition among traditional public schools and other schools that improves student outcomes.
Another assumption of the market approach to education is “that competition and choice will spur changes in schools to be more innovative, which in turn will lead to better student outcomes” (Preston, Goldring, Berends, and Cannata 318). Here, the focus is mainly on innovative practices in the field of education. In a study that defined innovative practices as practices different from those of traditional public schools in a geographically limited local context, the researchers found that charter schools do not implement more innovative practices or different innovative practices than do traditional public schools (Preston, Goldring, Berends, and Cannata 324). The exception is charter schools’ elimination of teacher tenure (Preston, Goldring, Berends, and Cannata 327). Tied to the assumption that the market approach will drive innovation is the assumption that increasing the number and diversity of education providers will increase innovation and student achievement. However, a study that tested this assumption found that “the type of institution [local school board, postsecondary institution, nonprofit organization, or the state department of education] that authorizes a charter school has no statistically significant relationship with mean levels of student achievement” (Carlson, Lavery, and Witte 265). Further, the charter schools with the least variable student achievement scores and arguably the fewest fluctuations in quality were authorized by local school boards, which are traditional education providers (Carlson, Lavery, and Witte 265).
The implementation of school choice as a policy through school vouchers, charter schools, and cyber charter schools rests on the assumption that a market approach to education will encourage innovation among education providers and improve student outcomes, particularly student standardized test scores. At this time, research does not show that these policies create the intended consequences, suggesting that school choice policy does not have a professionally sound base from which to justify its expansion.
Is the Policy Practical?
When we ask whether school choice policies are practical, we are asking how possible it is to implement the theories whose principles and professionalism we have assessed.
Because most policies concerning school choice are developed at the state level, it is difficult to make a generalized judgment. Even federal policies, such as No Child Left Behind, surely encounter different difficulties in implementation in different states, and even in different school districts.
Studies in Texas, California, and Indiana on the relative efficiency of charters found that, on average, there was no significant difference in cost efficiency between charter schools and public schools (Gronberg, Pérez, and Akey). These results suggest that charter schools are equally financially practical to regular public schools. However, all three studies qualified their conclusions by saying that the consideration of other factors, such as school size, could yield different results, and that charter schools were found to be much more heterogeneous, with many schools falling far to either side of the average. This is a testament to the vast variety of factors affecting school choice programs and the resulting diversity of situations, and to how difficult it is to make an overarching judgment on the financial practicality of charter schools.
A report by the United States General Accounting Office found that areas in which charter schools commonly lack resources include facilities, start-up funds, and, to a lesser extent, necessary expertise. Acquiring these three things is the biggest challenge faced by new charter schools. The process of getting a charter approved is expensive. Even with grants from the Public Charter Schools Program, new charter schools often struggle to finance programs and facilities. New charters, especially those started by small groups of parents and teachers, may lack the legal and business background to practically apply for a charter and manage a school. These struggles suggest that the current charter schools policies in general are not practical. Of course, like any other factor, this varies between states, with some charters benefiting from more available state-level grants (United States General Accounting Office).
Just as much as there is variety in situations in which school choice is implemented, there is a wide variety of ways that it manifests, and just as many varying opinions among stakeholders. Of these manifestations, we’ve explored school vouchers, charter schools, private schools, and cyber charters. Federal and state governments have tended to favor the implementation of school choice, at least experimentally, as evidenced by the NCLB legislation at the federal level, and individual charter and voucher laws at the state level (“School Choice: Vouchers”). There are several different entities that can provide charter schools, including local education agencies, non-profit organizations, businesses, universities, and groups of parents and teachers in a community. All of these groups might be in favor of legislation allowing school choice. Many stakeholders in public non-charters oppose school choice legislation because of charter schools’ potential to draw funds and focus away from non-charters.
The training, knowledge, organizational tools, and support that are required to practically implement school choice can differ from those needed for the regular public school system. A charter schools benefits from the support of the establishing body, be it a university, business, or local community, and in this way can be better attended to than the non-charter public schools that are one of many of an LEA’s responsibilities (Samuels). On the other hand, charter schools often do not enjoy the support that comes from being in a close network of other schools. Training and knowledge of implementers of school choice, including state governments, LEAs, school administrations, and teachers, can vary as much as in non-charter situations.
School choice is a vast and complicated collection of policies, and it is not helpful to try to label it en masse as either practical or impractical. However, this analysis demonstrates the need for more studies on the effectiveness of different iterations of school policy in different situations. The data from these studies could distinguish what is practical and what is impractical about implementing school choice, and provide a basis for more informed and effective policies.
Works Cited
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