Only in one city, Milwaukee, and in two states, Arizona and Michigan, have the new choice reforms created truly fluid education marketplaces for a sustained period. In the vast majority of cities and states, charter schools and voucher programs are either too young or too limited for the public schools to have responded in any significant way. How competition affects the students who remain in public schools, however, is a relatively unstudied question. Studies comparing students in private Catholic schools with students in public school, and students who receive a voucher to attend a private school with those who don’t, show substantial achievement gains as a result of attending a private school. Competition would be the proverbial rising tide that lifts all boats.įor the most part, the research is in on the question of whether students in private schools, using a publicly funded voucher or paying tuition, perform better than their peers in public schools after adjusting for all the background characteristics that affect achievement. They would be spurred to innovate in ways that improve student achievement and parental satisfaction.
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Their professional pride and livelihood in jeopardy, they would work harder, adopt more effective curricula, hire more talented staff, and turn the district office into more of a support center than a maker and enforcer of rules. Supporters of school choice believe that public school administrators and teachers would respond with equal vigor to the prospect of seeing their students and funding walk out the front door. Few analysts expected the Postal Service to be able to compete with its new rivals, yet several decades later it is a worthy opponent. Postal Service to lower its costs and offer new services, such as Express Mail. Market enthusiasts have always argued the very opposite: that competition will improve the public schools, just as the entry of Federal Express and DHL into the package-delivery market forced the U.S. “Skimming,” the term of art for this hypothetical phenomenon, may lower overall achievement, as the downward spiral of the public schools swamps any gains made by the students who take advantage of school choice.
Moreover, as the students leave, taking their per-pupil funding with them, the public schools will find themselves stripped of the human and monetary resources necessary to answer the call of competition.
The most scathing critique of voucher programs and charter schools is that they may bleed traditional public schools of their best students and most active parents, leaving the children who are left behind even worse off.