CONCLUSION CHAPTER OF WHO CHOOSES? WHO LOOSES? by Richard F. Elmore and Bruce Fuller
Another common argument for enhancing school choice is that it will increase the quality and diversity of educational offerings and, consequently, boost student achievement. One version of this argument is that choice increases competition among schools, leading to a better fit between the preferences of parents and educators, a greater focus on learning in new school organizations, and hence more learning on the part of students. Another version of the argument is that bureaucratic administration distracts teachers and principals from their central mission and shifts their energy to the narrow demands of political constituencies. Substituting market incentives for bureaucratic controls reduces the role and costs of urban school bureaucracy, and refocuses the energy of educators on classroom innovation and student learning.
The evidence on this argument is mixed. Lockheed and Jimenez (Chapter 7) find in their cross-national study that achievement differences between public and private schools, after carefully controlling for the social background of students, favor private schools. They also find that while public and private schools are similar in resource levels, they differ both in the locus of management control--private schools focus more decisions at the school site--and in their degree of attention to academic learning--private schools focus more time on academic subjects. This evidence is consistent with the findings of Coleman, Hoffer, and Kilgore (1982), Chubb and Moe (1990), and Hannaway (1991), who highlight differences in achievement results and organizational characteristics between public and private schools.
Other analysts have suggested, however, that aggregate achievement differences between public and private schools are relatively small, that they may be explained by unmeasured motivational and other background differences, and that the variation among schools within the public and private sectors in both achievement results and organizational characteristics is wider than that found between the two sectors (e.g., Willms & Echols, 1993). This suggests that it is more important to understand the organizational characteristics of effective schools, whether public or private, than to focus on public-private differences (Murnane, 1985).
Witte's study (Chapter 6) of Milwaukee's public voucher program for poor parents choosing private schools suggests that achievement effects are weak and variable and favor neither public nor private schools. He also finds a relatively high turnover rate--about one-third-- among students whose parents have chosen private schools; this suggests that, at least in the early stages of the program, many parents see little advantage of private over public schools once they have experienced private schools.
The evidence from public school choice programs is equally ambiguous. Henig (Chapter 5) finds, in his study of Montgomery County magnet schools, that the curricular themes of magnet programs seem to have less influence on parental choice than other characteristics, such as the school's ethnic composition and characteristics of teachers. Henig concludes, "parents may not be looking for particular instructional themes and styles so much as for the kind of energy, creativeness, and extra resources that some schools build around their magnet programs." The major premise of magnet school programs is that parents of all races, income levels, and social backgrounds can be drawn to schools by developing schools around distinctive curricular and instructional themes. Henig's study suggests that active choosers may be basing their decisions on other grounds and that attempts by public school systems to engineer choices by creating alternatives may not work under permissive conditions like those found in Montgomery County. It is also possible that, despite the differences in labels among magnet schools, there may be very little difference in the actual curriculum and instruction within the schools. Hence, parents may be making reasonable choices by focusing on characteristics other than curricular themes. One of the earliest studies of public school choice, in the Alum Rock voucher experiment, found little evidence of systematic variation in instruction among schools that had nominally different themes; it also found that parents tended to choose schools based on characteristics, such as location, that had little to do with schools' curricular themes (Bridge & Blackman, 1978; Elmore, 1990).
These ambiguous findings about the relationship among choice, school innovation, and student performance lead us to the conclusion that introducing choice will not, by itself, result in large changes in educational programs or student performance. It does make sense, however, to think about choice policies operating in tandem with other educational improvement initiatives to foster variation in educational programs and to focus school leaders on student performance. Knowledgeable designers of public school choice programs have, for a long time, argued that choice plans need to be combined with policies that reinforce high expectations that all students will achieve and that pro mote the systematic development of alternative instructional strategies, rather than simply relabeling existing strategies (Fliegel, 1990). The evidence on differences between the bureaucratic environments of public and private schools also suggests that dramatically streamlining and focusing central school bureaucracies on supporting high-quality instruction in schools could result in more attention to student learning.
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Orfield, G. (1993). The growth of segregation in American schools: Changing patterns of separation and poverty since 1968. Alexandria, VA: National School Boards Association, Council of Urban Boards of Education.
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Willms, D., & Echols, F. (1993). The Scottish experience of parental choice in schools. In E. Rasell & R. Rothstein (Eds.), School choice: Examining the evidence (pp. 49-68). Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher from Fuller, B., & Elmore, R.F., WHO CHOOSES? WHO LOSES? CULTURE, INSTITUTIONS, AND THE UNEQUAL EFFECTS OF SCHOOL CHOICE, (New York: Teachers College Press, (c) 1996 by Teachers College, Columbia University. All rights reserved.), pp. 187-201.