Our huge, diverse, and decentralized nation produces a wide variety of educational experiments and policies, whose impacts can be compared and from which important information can be gleaned. We have now had a half century of very different experiments with choice. Although it still plays a modest overall role in U.S. schools, it is growing rapidly and is heavily concentrated in districts with many of the nation's most disadvantaged students and most troubled public schools. Many choice advocates argue that it is the most important solution for the problems faced by millions of students in poor minority neighborhoods with segregated, high-poverty schools that fail to meet state and federal standards. Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom, in their book No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, see choice as central to a solution: “Unless more schools are freed from the constraints of the traditional public school system, the racial gap in academic achievement will not significantly narrow, we suspect.” They say that since middle-class white families can choose their schools through the housing market, shouldn't poor black and Latino families have the same choice? Yet, it turns out, they want to offer those families not a choice to attend the schools in affluent suburban neighborhoods but instead just some choice, which is usually another segregated, impoverished school under a different management system. They say, “Every urban school should become a charter.”5 Civil rights advocates of choice often want a much broader kind of choice under very different rules.6
Too often choice has been assumed to be good in and of itself. In markets there are, of course, good and bad choices. And there are markets with strong rules of the game, as well as those in which deregulation leads to abuses. All of us who have lived through the Great Recession know that unregulated markets can produce very bad outcomes. At a time when there is a severe shortage of public resources in most states and communities, when poverty and racial isolation have grown, and when the consequences of educational failure have increased, it is critical to examine the evidence on how well various forms of choice are working, and for whom. It turns out that there is much less evidence in favor of some leading forms of choice than one might suppose from all of the enthusiastic advocacy for them.7 If some forms of choice divert energy and money from more beneficial reforms or actually cause additional harm, we need to know about it.
Three Presidents Affirm Choice through Charters
One reason for the rapid expansion of choice, particularly in the form of charter schools, is broad bipartisan support. President Obama took the most assertive federal move in mandating this form of choice in states that had had few or no charters. While speaking at the National Urban League convention in 2009, he justified using emergency funds through his Race to the Top program to strongly press states to fund more charter schools.
Now, in some cases [when schools fail], that's going to mean restarting the school under different management as a charter school—as an independent public school formed by parents, teachers, and civic leaders who've got broad leeway to innovate. And some people don't like charter schools. They say, well, that's going to take away money from other public schools that also need support. Charter schools aren't a magic bullet, but I want to give states and school districts the chance to try new things. If a charter school works, then let's apply those lessons elsewhere. And if a charter school doesn't work, we'll hold it accountable; we'll shut it down.
So, no, I don't support all charter schools, but I do support good charter schools... . One school called Pickett went from just 14 percent of students being proficient in math to almost 70 percent. (Applause.) Now—and here's the kicker— at the same time academic performance improved, violence dropped by 80 percent—80 percent. And that's no coincidence. (Applause.)
Now, if Pickett can do it, every troubled school can do it. But that means we're going to have to shake some things up. Setting high standards, common standards, empowering students to meet them; partnering with our teachers to achieve excellence in the classroom; educating our children—all of them—to graduate ready for college, ready for a career, ready to make the most of their lives—none of this should be controversial.8
President Obama was suggesting that charter schools were better than regular public schools, that they were a “new thing,” that deep educational problems could be solved by taking control from public schools and giving public funds to semiprivate local organizations, that success could be spread to many other schools, and that there was some kind of serious accountability in place for charter schools. He highlighted a few charters that had reported large gains and characterized charter schools as local, community-based efforts, even though there are growing firms deeply involved in managing many of them. He said that he was giving states “the chance” to expand charters, but he was actually strongly and successfully pressuring them by making this a precondition for competing for urgently needed federal funds to avoid massive cutbacks.9
Presidential support for charters has been bipartisan and enthusiastic for more than two decades. Obama's predecessor, President George W. Bush, praised choice and alternatives in his first State of the Union address, in 2001: “Schools will be given a reasonable chance to improve, and the support to do so. Yet if they don't, if they continue to fail, we must give parents and students different options: a better public school, a private school, tutoring, or a charter school. In the end, every child in a bad situation must be given a better choice, because when it comes to our children, failure is simply not an option.”10 Bush was carrying on themes developed by President Bill Clinton in his last State of the Union Address, in which he highlighted his support for expanding charter schools as a key educational gain: “We know charter schools provide real public school choice. When I became President, there was just one independent public charter school in all America. Today, thanks to you, there are 1,700. I ask you now to help us meet our goal of 3,000 charter schools by next year.”11 Choice outside the public school system has been promoted as a major educational solution by leaders of widely differing political backgrounds. This movement is not the product of research showing that choice produces educational gains; that is usually simply assumed, even though research is, at best, mixed.12 The debate is not about evidence—it is often about ideology.
No one who has looked at stagnant achievement scores and graduation rates or examined the reality of many public schools that serve communities of poor minority children can deny that these children deserve something far better than the schools they are assigned to.13 There are many public schools that have been officially branded as failures for years under No Child Left Behind and state standards. They daily confront the personal and community consequences of concentrated poverty and often find it very hard to attract and hold the qualified, experienced teachers these students badly need. Accountability policies have documented the students’ poor outcomes, but threats, sanctions, and many other reform ideas have failed to work. The achievement gaps have been virtually unchanged in the high-stakes testing and charter school era.14
The opportunity for students in these schools to enroll in much better schools would clearly be a benefit. Much of the publicity about charter schools assumes that they are the best way to provide such opportunities. Choice is attractive, usually does not cost much, and leaves those already satisfied with their schools undisturbed, just where they want to be. The politics and parent eagerness are not difficult to understand. Yet the questions remain: Do the common forms of choice help students learn more, graduate, go to college, become better citizens, or get good jobs? Are there better answers?
After half a century of unfulfilled pledges to fix the most troubled schools, we need to be sure that this is not another empty promise. Are we betting on something that has no net educational advantages and might even increase the already dramatic stratification of school systems that gives the best education to the most privileged families and segregated and inferior schools to the most disadvantaged? Markets and competition sound good, but a look at the kinds of grocery stores and health care services provided by the private market shows that competition has not provided quality in poor and minority communities equal