- Email: [email protected]
Charters, Vouchers, and Public Education
Economics of Education Review 22 (2003) 641–654 www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev
Book reviews Charters, Vouchers, and Public Education Edited by Paul E. Peterson and David E. Campbell, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2001, 322 pp., US$19.00 (paperback) Recently, education became one of the hottest political issues in the US. According to the Gallup poll, it was the single most important issue in the 2000 presidential election. It ranked higher than even the economy, social security, health care or taxes. More than 90% of the voters responded that education was “extremely important” or “very important”. Such public attention on education seems to be based on two points. First, there is a widespread concern on educational equity. Many central city school districts have to struggle with funding shortages, as the bulk of school funding is based on the property tax, and property values in central cities have been steadily declining due to the suburbanization of middle and upper class whites. They also have to cope with a large fraction of students with economic, social, and behavioral problems. Consequently, many urban schools fail to provide adequate education to inner-city children. Second, there has been a growing concern that the academic achievements of American students fall behind in comparison to those in other countries despite the fact that the US spends the largest amount of money per pupil in the world. For example, according to the 2000 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) for 15-year-old students, the US ranks the 15th in reading, 18th in mathematics, and 14th in science literacy among 27 OECD countries(US DOE, 2001) In response to the public concern over education, mainly over K-12 public education, many reform ideas have been proposed, which can be categorized into three groups. The first calls for more education inputs, such as higher teacher salaries, smaller classes and so on. The second insists on more government control, such as mandatory testing of students, or school accountability measures. The third favors market-based reforms advocating school choice through charter schools and school vouchers. The book by Peterson and Campbell is on the third approach to education reform. Charter schools are established by a group of teachers, parents, or any interested party (including for-profit organizations) under a state charter. In exchange for state funds, they are supposed to deliver the education promised by the charter. If they fail to meet the promise, then the charter and funding may be withdrawn. The move-
ment is supported by reform-oriented school administrators, teachers, and parents who regard the bureaucracy of the current public school system as ineffective and believe that more flexible schools are necessary in order to create a more innovative education system. Although the first charter school was tried in Minnesota in 1992, 36 states and the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico now have charter school legislation only 10 years later. Currently, there are about 2400 charter schools in operation, and more than a half million students are attending those schools. Arizona, California, and Michigan are now leading the charter school movement. The school voucher program is a radically different school choice program. The government offers vouchers to students so that they can choose any schools, religious or non-sectarian private schools, public, or charter. However, under the existing voucher programs, most families choose private schools. The voucher program is supported by an odd coalition of inner-city activists who seek better education for their children and ideological conservatives who believe that free market ideology should prevail in the education market. Politically, it is less widely accepted. Candidate Gore was publicly opposed to it and candidate Bush was reluctant to use the term “voucher” during the presidential election campaign. The longest running voucher program is in Milwaukee. It started in 1991 with US$2500 vouchers to 1500 low-income families. The number of vouchers as well as the dollar amount has increased over time, particularly after the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the program in 1999 and the US Supreme Court decided not to hear the challenge to the State Court’s decision. Currently, US$5000 vouchers are awarded to 10,000 students in Milwaukee. The other voucher program in Cleveland is less extensive. Since the 1996–97 school year, a maximum US$2250 voucher was offered to up to 3700 students. While the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Cleveland voucher program in 2000, the US Supreme Court decided to take the appeal. The decision is scheduled to be handed down in June 2002. Certainly it would be a major case regarding the viability of the program. Currently, Florida is the only state that has a statewide voucher program in which students attending a school with a failing grade (F), which is determined by the state agency, are allowed to move to other schools. In addition to the three publicly funded voucher programs, privately funded programs were tried
642
Book reviews / Economics of Education Review 22 (2003) 641–654
in Charlotte, NC; Washington, DC; Dayton, OH; New York City; and San Antonio, TX. The recently edited volume by Peterson and Campbell will undoubtedly increase the level of debate by policy analysts on charters and vouchers. Besides the introduction by the editors, the book contains 14 essays on wideranging topics. The essays were first presented at the Program on Education Policy and Governance conference held at Harvard University in March 2000. As the editors and many contributors are well known advocates of school choice programs, the reader would not be surprised to find strong support for the programs throughout the book. Although the book contains substantial evidence on positive effects of the participating students in the programs, it would not be enough to satisfy all skeptics. The three papers in Part 1 deal with charter schools. In the first essay, Finn, Manno, and Vanourek summarize the previous findings on the charter movement: (1) charter schools are widely accepted; (2) they are more responsive to community needs; (3) in some communities, they affect the working of the public school system; (4) the charter movement may increase the school accountability effort, but it is too early to tell; (5) most of the allegations against charter schools (they will drive the public school system bankrupt, they would balkanize the community, they will invite reckless profiteers who do not care about education, and so on) turn out to be false or exaggerated; (6) it is not known whether charters boost academic achievement, or are more innovative in special education. In the next essay, Mintrom and Plank describe the politics of school choice in Michigan, where school funding is almost entirely provided by the state. They view the current policy impasse as a good opportunity to advance sound research-based policy-making. Fiske and Ladd describe New Zealand’s nationwide experience with self-governing schools similar to US charter schools. The authors caution that a good accountability system is crucial in order to make the charter movement successful. Four essays about school vouchers are included in Part 2. In the first essay, Greene reviews 10 recent studies on vouchers, and concludes that vouchers have positive effects on participating students. But, the program does not skim the best students, and therefore it does not create negative effects on public school systems. Moreover, private schools are more racially integrated and promote more political and civil tolerance than public schools. In the next essay, Moe argues that a substantial proportion of public school parents, particularly inner city parents, do want to send their children to private schools, and that the major reason for their desire is not from elitism or religious zeal but for better education. In the next essay, Viteritti provides legal arguments why the US Supreme Court should find the Cleveland voucher programs constitutional in the pending suit. Howell, Wolf,
Peterson, and Campbell evaluate the privately funded voucher programs in New York City, Dayton, and Washington. As the programs’ experimental designs are superior, they argue that the evaluations show convincingly that African Americans who switched from public to private schools score higher in achievement tests than comparable students who remained in public schools. In a recently published booklet, Martin Carnoy (2001) heavily disputes the findings of the “Peterson group”. He argues that research on vouchers in Milwaukee and Cleveland showed no effects to small effects for African Americans. Also, although research in Dayton, New York, and Washington, DC shows some gains for African Americans, several methodological issues make these findings problematic. Moreover, there are no significant test score gains for Hispanics and whites, and the different results across race should be accounted for. On Florida’s statewide voucher program, Carnoy also argues that Jay’s results erroneously attribute the performance and gains of the lowest-performing schools to the voucher program. When similar studies are duplicated by the data from Texas and North Carolina where there are no vouchers, the test scores of the schools designated as lowest performing also increase faster than those of the other schools. Part 3 examines how school choice affects existing school systems. Examining the Milwaukee Public School system, Hess argues that the voucher program in Milwaukee did not create wholesale changes in the public school system, as the threat of the program has not been substantial. Similarly, Hess, Maranto, and Milliman state that the charter movement in Arizona does not create responsive behavioral changes as the school choice proponents advocate nor does it adversely affect school leadership as school choice opponents argued. In the short run, school choice promotes already active reformminded leaders while the rest are relatively unaffected. In Part 4, two papers deal with another criticism of school choice, namely, the choice based system undermines the common citizenship promoted by the public school system. Campbell examines whether public school students display more civic proficiency. He finds that contrary to the expectations of choice opponents, Catholic high school students have more community engagement, higher political knowledge, and more tolerance. Similarly, using the survey data obtained from four Texas universities, Wolfe, Greene, Kleitz, and Thalhammer find that students who attended private high schools are more politically tolerant and civic-minded than those who attended public schools. Finally, two essays in Part 5 reflect on the evidence presented in the book and future directions. Both view the current evidence for school choice as substantial. However, as the authors acknowledge themselves, it would not be enough to convince all skeptics. As the
Book reviews / Economics of Education Review 22 (2003) 641–654
debate on school choice in the US is expected to continue, clearly more research on the topic is necessary.
References Carnoy, M. (2001). School vouchers: examining the evidence. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute. US Department of Education (2001). Outcomes of learning: results from the 2000 program for international student assessment of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science literacy. Washington, D.C: National Center for Education Statistics.
Sunwoong Kim Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA E-mail address: [email protected] doi:10.1016/S0272-7757(02)00033-X
A Notion at Risk Edited by Richard D. Kahlenberg. New York, NY: A Century Foundation Book. 2000. pp. x+356. Price: $15.95 (paper) More than twenty years ago William Bennet’s scathing criticism of public elementary and secondary schools, A Nation at Risk, galvanized the school reform movement in much the same way as Charles Murray’s, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, had done for welfare reform. Many advocated the complete dismantling of traditional public education through privatization and vouchers, while others focused on accountability and standards. Concerns about resource inadequacy and inequality were largely set aside in favor of a focus on inefficiency and incentives. This book of eight essays by accomplished education researchers raises a number of questions about this critique of the public school system in terms of both the extent to which public schools are failing and the underlying causes of any deficiencies. Many of the problems emphasized in the critique of public education, including poor quality instruction and leadership and disruptive student behavior, are considered in this volume. However, the essays also emphasize the problems resulting from resource inadequacy and inequality, described in detail in the chapter by Richard Rothstein. The final chapter by Ruy Teixeira frames the discussion with information on public perceptions of the state of the schools. Public willingness to spend additional money on central city schools coexists with strong support for high stakes testing and a substantial majority in favor of expanded choice. These opinions
643
taken together reveal a desire to devote additional resources to remedy the low education outcomes for many students, particularly those in schools serving predominantly poor and minority students, as long as schools are held accountable through choice or standards. The preceding chapters focus on different aspects of the education process that contribute to the low outcomes for many students and the benefits and potential pitfalls of specific reforms. Doris Entwistle, Karl Alexander and Linda Olson emphasize the importance of separating the summer from the school year in both analyzing public school quality and formulating policy. While their deemphasis of low quality schooling for disadvantaged children is at odds with much existing evidence and the failure of many summer programs raises doubts about their potential importance, a convincing case is made that non-school time has received far too little attention and financial support. In a discussion of discipline, Paul Barton documents an increase in disruptive behavior over time and far more behavior problems in schools serving disadvantaged students. This has both direct and indirect effects on student achievement, the latter coming through the link between such behavior and teacher turnover. The essay also recommends that good behavior be added as one of the standards over which schools should be judged, though it is not clear why excellent academic achievement would not be an adequate incentive to reduce disruptive behavior given the link between the two. Linda Darling-Hammond and Laura Post emphasize the importance of effective school leadership in their discussion of teacher quality. Inadequate personnel policies and excessive spending on non-instructional personnel are two of the factors emphasized by advocates of choice and accountability in their critique of the public schools, but the policies offered in this essay tend to downplay the role of incentives. Though the authors present a strong case in support of better teacher development, higher salaries, mentoring and greater teacher control over their jobs, they do not delve into the more fundamental issue of why poor leadership and inappropriate personnel policies pervade many schools and districts today despite the many efforts to improve teacher and administrator training and evidence of a very weak link between teacher effectiveness and post-graduate training. High standards and charter schools constitute structural changes designed in part to provide the incentives for improved leadership and instruction. Yet these reforms may generate adverse consequences, particularly for lower income and minority students. Adam Gamoran points out that high stakes testing may harm disadvantaged students, though there is some evidence that test score based standards raise achievement. The key issue is whether schools have the capacity, curriculum and leadership necessary to provide high quality courses for
Book reviews Charters, Vouchers, and Public Education Edited by Paul E. Peterson and David E. Campbell, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2001, 322 pp., US$19.00 (paperback) Recently, education became one of the hottest political issues in the US. According to the Gallup poll, it was the single most important issue in the 2000 presidential election. It ranked higher than even the economy, social security, health care or taxes. More than 90% of the voters responded that education was “extremely important” or “very important”. Such public attention on education seems to be based on two points. First, there is a widespread concern on educational equity. Many central city school districts have to struggle with funding shortages, as the bulk of school funding is based on the property tax, and property values in central cities have been steadily declining due to the suburbanization of middle and upper class whites. They also have to cope with a large fraction of students with economic, social, and behavioral problems. Consequently, many urban schools fail to provide adequate education to inner-city children. Second, there has been a growing concern that the academic achievements of American students fall behind in comparison to those in other countries despite the fact that the US spends the largest amount of money per pupil in the world. For example, according to the 2000 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) for 15-year-old students, the US ranks the 15th in reading, 18th in mathematics, and 14th in science literacy among 27 OECD countries(US DOE, 2001) In response to the public concern over education, mainly over K-12 public education, many reform ideas have been proposed, which can be categorized into three groups. The first calls for more education inputs, such as higher teacher salaries, smaller classes and so on. The second insists on more government control, such as mandatory testing of students, or school accountability measures. The third favors market-based reforms advocating school choice through charter schools and school vouchers. The book by Peterson and Campbell is on the third approach to education reform. Charter schools are established by a group of teachers, parents, or any interested party (including for-profit organizations) under a state charter. In exchange for state funds, they are supposed to deliver the education promised by the charter. If they fail to meet the promise, then the charter and funding may be withdrawn. The move-
ment is supported by reform-oriented school administrators, teachers, and parents who regard the bureaucracy of the current public school system as ineffective and believe that more flexible schools are necessary in order to create a more innovative education system. Although the first charter school was tried in Minnesota in 1992, 36 states and the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico now have charter school legislation only 10 years later. Currently, there are about 2400 charter schools in operation, and more than a half million students are attending those schools. Arizona, California, and Michigan are now leading the charter school movement. The school voucher program is a radically different school choice program. The government offers vouchers to students so that they can choose any schools, religious or non-sectarian private schools, public, or charter. However, under the existing voucher programs, most families choose private schools. The voucher program is supported by an odd coalition of inner-city activists who seek better education for their children and ideological conservatives who believe that free market ideology should prevail in the education market. Politically, it is less widely accepted. Candidate Gore was publicly opposed to it and candidate Bush was reluctant to use the term “voucher” during the presidential election campaign. The longest running voucher program is in Milwaukee. It started in 1991 with US$2500 vouchers to 1500 low-income families. The number of vouchers as well as the dollar amount has increased over time, particularly after the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the program in 1999 and the US Supreme Court decided not to hear the challenge to the State Court’s decision. Currently, US$5000 vouchers are awarded to 10,000 students in Milwaukee. The other voucher program in Cleveland is less extensive. Since the 1996–97 school year, a maximum US$2250 voucher was offered to up to 3700 students. While the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Cleveland voucher program in 2000, the US Supreme Court decided to take the appeal. The decision is scheduled to be handed down in June 2002. Certainly it would be a major case regarding the viability of the program. Currently, Florida is the only state that has a statewide voucher program in which students attending a school with a failing grade (F), which is determined by the state agency, are allowed to move to other schools. In addition to the three publicly funded voucher programs, privately funded programs were tried
642
Book reviews / Economics of Education Review 22 (2003) 641–654
in Charlotte, NC; Washington, DC; Dayton, OH; New York City; and San Antonio, TX. The recently edited volume by Peterson and Campbell will undoubtedly increase the level of debate by policy analysts on charters and vouchers. Besides the introduction by the editors, the book contains 14 essays on wideranging topics. The essays were first presented at the Program on Education Policy and Governance conference held at Harvard University in March 2000. As the editors and many contributors are well known advocates of school choice programs, the reader would not be surprised to find strong support for the programs throughout the book. Although the book contains substantial evidence on positive effects of the participating students in the programs, it would not be enough to satisfy all skeptics. The three papers in Part 1 deal with charter schools. In the first essay, Finn, Manno, and Vanourek summarize the previous findings on the charter movement: (1) charter schools are widely accepted; (2) they are more responsive to community needs; (3) in some communities, they affect the working of the public school system; (4) the charter movement may increase the school accountability effort, but it is too early to tell; (5) most of the allegations against charter schools (they will drive the public school system bankrupt, they would balkanize the community, they will invite reckless profiteers who do not care about education, and so on) turn out to be false or exaggerated; (6) it is not known whether charters boost academic achievement, or are more innovative in special education. In the next essay, Mintrom and Plank describe the politics of school choice in Michigan, where school funding is almost entirely provided by the state. They view the current policy impasse as a good opportunity to advance sound research-based policy-making. Fiske and Ladd describe New Zealand’s nationwide experience with self-governing schools similar to US charter schools. The authors caution that a good accountability system is crucial in order to make the charter movement successful. Four essays about school vouchers are included in Part 2. In the first essay, Greene reviews 10 recent studies on vouchers, and concludes that vouchers have positive effects on participating students. But, the program does not skim the best students, and therefore it does not create negative effects on public school systems. Moreover, private schools are more racially integrated and promote more political and civil tolerance than public schools. In the next essay, Moe argues that a substantial proportion of public school parents, particularly inner city parents, do want to send their children to private schools, and that the major reason for their desire is not from elitism or religious zeal but for better education. In the next essay, Viteritti provides legal arguments why the US Supreme Court should find the Cleveland voucher programs constitutional in the pending suit. Howell, Wolf,
Peterson, and Campbell evaluate the privately funded voucher programs in New York City, Dayton, and Washington. As the programs’ experimental designs are superior, they argue that the evaluations show convincingly that African Americans who switched from public to private schools score higher in achievement tests than comparable students who remained in public schools. In a recently published booklet, Martin Carnoy (2001) heavily disputes the findings of the “Peterson group”. He argues that research on vouchers in Milwaukee and Cleveland showed no effects to small effects for African Americans. Also, although research in Dayton, New York, and Washington, DC shows some gains for African Americans, several methodological issues make these findings problematic. Moreover, there are no significant test score gains for Hispanics and whites, and the different results across race should be accounted for. On Florida’s statewide voucher program, Carnoy also argues that Jay’s results erroneously attribute the performance and gains of the lowest-performing schools to the voucher program. When similar studies are duplicated by the data from Texas and North Carolina where there are no vouchers, the test scores of the schools designated as lowest performing also increase faster than those of the other schools. Part 3 examines how school choice affects existing school systems. Examining the Milwaukee Public School system, Hess argues that the voucher program in Milwaukee did not create wholesale changes in the public school system, as the threat of the program has not been substantial. Similarly, Hess, Maranto, and Milliman state that the charter movement in Arizona does not create responsive behavioral changes as the school choice proponents advocate nor does it adversely affect school leadership as school choice opponents argued. In the short run, school choice promotes already active reformminded leaders while the rest are relatively unaffected. In Part 4, two papers deal with another criticism of school choice, namely, the choice based system undermines the common citizenship promoted by the public school system. Campbell examines whether public school students display more civic proficiency. He finds that contrary to the expectations of choice opponents, Catholic high school students have more community engagement, higher political knowledge, and more tolerance. Similarly, using the survey data obtained from four Texas universities, Wolfe, Greene, Kleitz, and Thalhammer find that students who attended private high schools are more politically tolerant and civic-minded than those who attended public schools. Finally, two essays in Part 5 reflect on the evidence presented in the book and future directions. Both view the current evidence for school choice as substantial. However, as the authors acknowledge themselves, it would not be enough to convince all skeptics. As the
Book reviews / Economics of Education Review 22 (2003) 641–654
debate on school choice in the US is expected to continue, clearly more research on the topic is necessary.
References Carnoy, M. (2001). School vouchers: examining the evidence. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute. US Department of Education (2001). Outcomes of learning: results from the 2000 program for international student assessment of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science literacy. Washington, D.C: National Center for Education Statistics.
Sunwoong Kim Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA E-mail address: [email protected] doi:10.1016/S0272-7757(02)00033-X
A Notion at Risk Edited by Richard D. Kahlenberg. New York, NY: A Century Foundation Book. 2000. pp. x+356. Price: $15.95 (paper) More than twenty years ago William Bennet’s scathing criticism of public elementary and secondary schools, A Nation at Risk, galvanized the school reform movement in much the same way as Charles Murray’s, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, had done for welfare reform. Many advocated the complete dismantling of traditional public education through privatization and vouchers, while others focused on accountability and standards. Concerns about resource inadequacy and inequality were largely set aside in favor of a focus on inefficiency and incentives. This book of eight essays by accomplished education researchers raises a number of questions about this critique of the public school system in terms of both the extent to which public schools are failing and the underlying causes of any deficiencies. Many of the problems emphasized in the critique of public education, including poor quality instruction and leadership and disruptive student behavior, are considered in this volume. However, the essays also emphasize the problems resulting from resource inadequacy and inequality, described in detail in the chapter by Richard Rothstein. The final chapter by Ruy Teixeira frames the discussion with information on public perceptions of the state of the schools. Public willingness to spend additional money on central city schools coexists with strong support for high stakes testing and a substantial majority in favor of expanded choice. These opinions
643
taken together reveal a desire to devote additional resources to remedy the low education outcomes for many students, particularly those in schools serving predominantly poor and minority students, as long as schools are held accountable through choice or standards. The preceding chapters focus on different aspects of the education process that contribute to the low outcomes for many students and the benefits and potential pitfalls of specific reforms. Doris Entwistle, Karl Alexander and Linda Olson emphasize the importance of separating the summer from the school year in both analyzing public school quality and formulating policy. While their deemphasis of low quality schooling for disadvantaged children is at odds with much existing evidence and the failure of many summer programs raises doubts about their potential importance, a convincing case is made that non-school time has received far too little attention and financial support. In a discussion of discipline, Paul Barton documents an increase in disruptive behavior over time and far more behavior problems in schools serving disadvantaged students. This has both direct and indirect effects on student achievement, the latter coming through the link between such behavior and teacher turnover. The essay also recommends that good behavior be added as one of the standards over which schools should be judged, though it is not clear why excellent academic achievement would not be an adequate incentive to reduce disruptive behavior given the link between the two. Linda Darling-Hammond and Laura Post emphasize the importance of effective school leadership in their discussion of teacher quality. Inadequate personnel policies and excessive spending on non-instructional personnel are two of the factors emphasized by advocates of choice and accountability in their critique of the public schools, but the policies offered in this essay tend to downplay the role of incentives. Though the authors present a strong case in support of better teacher development, higher salaries, mentoring and greater teacher control over their jobs, they do not delve into the more fundamental issue of why poor leadership and inappropriate personnel policies pervade many schools and districts today despite the many efforts to improve teacher and administrator training and evidence of a very weak link between teacher effectiveness and post-graduate training. High standards and charter schools constitute structural changes designed in part to provide the incentives for improved leadership and instruction. Yet these reforms may generate adverse consequences, particularly for lower income and minority students. Adam Gamoran points out that high stakes testing may harm disadvantaged students, though there is some evidence that test score based standards raise achievement. The key issue is whether schools have the capacity, curriculum and leadership necessary to provide high quality courses for