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Parents know best

Kentucky's quest for school choice

By Joel Peyton, Jim Waters

Executive summary

When assessing the performance of our state’s public schools, a popular response by Kentuckians has often been: “Thank God for Mississippi.” However, even Mississippi ranks ahead of Kentucky when it comes to the amount of educational liberty enjoyed by parents. Why is this?

Relatively few Kentuckians fully understand the benefits that school choice offers to their children. This lack of understanding does not plague parents of means who have always had the ability to select better educational alternatives. Such parents are able to move into better school districts and work “the system” that favors the well-informed or pay for private-school tuition.

But for families without means, school choice advocates that parents – not addresses, zip codes, education officials or socioeconomic backgrounds – should determine where children attend school. And it comes in various forms, including:

Charter schools. Particularly worthwhile in urban areas, charter schools are innovative public schools that operate without the burdensome regulations forced upon many school districts by teachers unions and state education departments.

Vouchers. An education voucher is a government-issued certificate – much like the GI Bill was to returning World War II veterans – that allows parents to choose a different school for their children.

Scholarship tax credits. This school-choice program allows parents to obtain a tax refund for the amount of tuition they pay to send their children to public or private school outside the district in which they reside. Such a policy enables taxpayers – not just parents – to participate in making scholarships available to needy students.

Open-enrollment agreements. Such arrangements allow parents to choose – and the state to fund – a public school for their children outside the district in which they reside. Kentucky law currently specifies that districts may enter into such contractual arrangements and determine the conditions under which transfers may be permitted. As long as bureaucrats – and not parents – control these policies, many children will remain locked in failing schools.

Home schooling. At present, this is the only form of school choice available to, and completely controlled by, Kentucky’s parents. As a result, parents have been removing their children from the state’s public-school system faster than parents in any other state.

In nearly every other state, school choice is gaining momentum because the ensuing competition it induces shines a brighter light on failing public schools. As a result, public schools improve and children receive a better education. The same trend must soon emerge in Kentucky or its children will not be able to obtain the quality education they need to compete effectively in the 21st century global workplace.

Introduction

America’s schools were locally controlled and funded for more than 200 years. However, that rich legacy ended in 1839 when Horace Mann, the first Secretary of Education, organized state-mandated, publicly funded schools.1

Since then, local control of our schools has weakened considerably. As a result, little or no accountability exists to ensure our children receive the quality public education necessary to enable them to compete effectively in the evolving global marketplace.

Concerned parents are increasingly reluctant to entrust their children’s education – and thus their opportunities for future success – to inadequate schools. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, parents have been removing their children from the public-school system in Kentucky faster than families in any other state.2

Parents have reason to be concerned. Research indicates that American children are falling behind their peers in many other industrialized countries, particularly in math and science. A 2003 international test that included children from 29 other industrialized countries revealed U.S. students rank 24th in math skills, behind countries such as Poland, Hungary and Spain.3

All the while, spending on education continues to consume the lion’s share of most state budgets. Fifty-two percent of Kentucky’s current budget is set aside for preschool-through-12th-grade funding. Medicaid, the budget’s second-highest spending category, consumes only 20 percent of the budget.4

Still, the big spenders in the state’s education establishment remain dissatisfied, continually blaming Kentucky’s near third-world performance in public education on a lack of funding.

No credible evidence exists to document either: (a) the commonwealth spends too little on public education, or (b) spending more of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars will ensure Kentucky’s kids receive the stellar education they need.

In fact, recent trends indicate just the opposite. Kentucky more than doubled its per-pupil spending from $3,360 to $7,854 between the 1989-90 and 2003-04 school years. During that same period, the ACT college-entrance exam composite scores for our state’s school districts improved only slightly – from 19.6 in 1990 to 19.8 in 2004.5

Most countries spend less per pupil than America on education, but, in many cases, are getting better results. Why do parents put up with this performance?

In addition, a critical difference between the school systems in America and other nations is the presence of school choice in countries whose students outperform U.S. kids in key academic categories like math and science.

Even parents in many ex-communist countries have more educational freedom than do American parents.6 They know from hard experience that government-sponsored monopolies do not effectively meet societal needs. Yet for the most part, public education in “the land of the free and the home of the brave” remains a monopoly.

Unfortunately, Kentucky parents lack even the relatively small amount of educational freedom available to most families in other states. Ours remains one of only six states without legislation proscribing a statewide school-choice policy. Four of those states – North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Nebraska – have populations so dispersed that school choice, while still appropriate, is not as logistically possible as in other states.

This leaves Kentucky and Alabama as the only other states where parents, especially those without means, are, for the most part, forced to send their children to the school closest to where they live – regardless of the quality of education being provided by the school or whether it is the best one for their kids.

When assessing the performance of our state’s public schools, a popular response by Kentuckians has often been: “Thank God for Mississippi.” But even Mississippi ranks ahead of Kentucky when considering the amount of educational liberty enjoyed by its parents.

This raises important questions. How concerned should Kentucky parents be about our state’s lack of – and sometimes downright hostility towards – the quality of educational freedom found elsewhere? What do policymakers in the 44 states, District of Columbia and other countries with school choice understand that Kentuckians do not?

This report will address these important questions and more. But first, perhaps the question most frequently asked by Kentuckians: What is school choice?

What is school choice?

School choice means that parents – not addresses, zip codes, education officials or socioeconomic backgrounds – determine where children attend public and nonpublic schools.

Allowing such competition in the educational marketplace is often met with wrinkled brows by Kentuckians to whom the concept sounds foreign and unworkable. Somehow competition brings to mind a “dog-eat-dog” setting inappropriate for learning. To some, it conveys an environment that would produce a harsh surrounding inappropriate for impressionable children.

But where should children learn the benefits that competition creates in American society?

Kentuckians participate in the marketplace daily by making choices about everything from where to purchase their automobiles and homes to where they shop for clothes and dinner. Yet when it comes to one of the most important aspect of their lives – their children’s education – most Kentucky parents have few options.

In every sector of our society, competition results in more and better choices and usually lowers the cost of products and services. The same is true with education.

Thus far, the only reasonable alternative for dissatisfied Kentucky parents without means is limited to home schooling. Fortunately, an increasing number of educational alternatives are surfacing across the nation. Kentuckians should also have access to these choices.

These options now include charter schools, vouchers, scholarship tax credits and open-enrollment agreements. All of these alternatives meet our earlier definition of school choice in that they re-empower parents to make the best decisions for their children by offering an abundance of programs with demonstrably successful track records in other states and countries.

Let’s look at some of the various forms of school choice that parents in many states already enjoy.

Charter schools

Particularly appropriate for urban areas, charter schools are innovative public schools that operate without the burdensome regulations forced upon them by teachers unions, site-based councils and state education departments. In exchange for this greater flexibility in curriculum and methodology, charter schools must attain certain performance standards.

A great number of charter schools are exceeding expectations and quieting foes. However, some opponents refuse to be convinced.

A favorite tactic used by critics to show why charter schools “don’t work” is to cite the ones that have closed because they failed to meet their performance goals. Actually, the fact that many charters have closed their doors is because they failed to reach their goals – causing parents to remove their children – indicates that charter-school policies work! After all, we’re hard-pressed to identify a traditional public school in Kentucky that was forced to close its doors because it performed poorly and failed to meet parents’ expectations.

(Those who decry giving parents more choices are often the same critics who want to pour large amounts of additional funding into failing schools without requiring the kind of accountability provided by charters to parents, school systems and taxpayers in general.)

Another significant benefit of invoking a charter-school policy is that it provides an alternative to closing failing schools altogether, which could cause a desperate scramble among neighborhood families to find another school for their children.

Charters are increasingly taking over failing public schools across the country, including San Francisco’s Thomas Edison Elementary School, which had become known as a poster child for failing schools.7 The story of Edison’s turnaround is, in some ways, as inspiring as the life of the man whose name the school bears.

During the 1990s, test scores dropped precipitously at Thomas Edison even as other elementary schools in its district made noticeable improvements. According to eyewitness accounts, it was not uncommon to see students fighting, cutting classes and wandering aimlessly through Edison’s hallways.

The severe decline in the school’s performance and atmosphere resulted in “problem kids” being shipped into Thomas Edison from other schools. As a result, white, middle-class parents yanked their children out of the school, sending them elsewhere. The remaining student population was comprised mostly of low-income, poorly performing black and Latino students.

Administrators tried replacing the principal and all of Edison’s teachers, but nothing seemed to work. In fact, the school had four different principles during the 1997-98 school year alone.8

After implementing the typical litany of public-school reform efforts that rarely work, Superintendent Bill Rojas contracted the school’s operation to Edison Schools Inc., a for-profit education company. The results have been nothing short of amazing.

Edison Schools Inc. inherited a rent-free building, $4,200 per student provided by the state of California and various federal and state grants available for assisting low-performing, low-income, non-English speaking students. It promised better results.

After the company took over, it expanded the length of the school’s workday and year, implemented a structured academic curriculum, including “Success for All,” a national reading program used in all elementary schools managed by Edison. All students were required to take Spanish and teachers began spending two periods a day meeting with colleagues to discuss how to improve their teaching. They also began routinely meeting with parents.

These steps and others transformed the school into a virtual mecca of achievement.

Before Edison Schools Inc. took over, Stanley Schainker, an outside evaluator, called Thomas Edison “educationally bankrupt,” and said it was “the most dysfunctional elementary school that I have seen in my 35 years in education.”

Later, in noting the effectiveness of the school’s dramatic improvement, Schainker said: “Parents appear happy with the school’s turnaround. After all, they must feel a sense of jubilation to have their children in a safe school rather than a chaotic environment where real danger is ever present.”9

Defenders of the status quo try vigorously to deny the success of organizations like Edison Schools Inc., which now manages schools in more than 150 districts across the nation. Nevertheless, parents whose children previously had dark and desolate educational experiences now testify to their success. The transformation of failing schools – like the one that occurred at Thomas Edison Elementary – has placed their children on the road toward a better education and a brighter future.

The latest test scores indicate that Kentucky has its own versions of Thomas Edison Elementary School. Four of six Kentucky schools finishing in No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB’s) fourth tier – reserved for schools that fail to meet their adequate yearly progress goals for at least five straight years – are in the Jefferson County Public Schools district. These schools would be exceptional candidates for charter schools.10

According to stated policy of the Kentucky Department of Education, Tier-4 schools “are subject to the most serious consequences that include writing a plan for alternative governance.”11 Enacting a school-choice policy would make a reliable alternative – such as an intervention by Edison Schools Inc. – available to Kentucky superintendents struggling to find viable solutions for failing schools, especially when more traditional approaches fail.

But alas, Kentucky – unlike 40 other states – has no charter-school law. As a result, parents with children attending these failing schools in Jefferson County have virtually no options. If the state did have a charter-school law, such parents could band together to start neighborhood schools closer to their homes that are more accountable for the quality of education they provide.

Even Mississippi has a charter-school law. While it limits the number of charter schools that can be established and prevents for-profit organizations from managing them, it nevertheless authorizes them. The mere existence of this charter-school law provides Gov. Haley Barbour with a firm foundation upon which to provide parents in his state with more educational liberty.12

For once, Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher should take a play out of Mississippi’s education playbook. Thus far, to the question of “When?” Fletcher has consistently replied, “Not now. Be patient.” Every year he delays, multitudes of Kentucky parents helplessly watch their sons and daughters graduate, knowing their employment chances are hopeless.

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