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Policy Probe on School Choice
What is School Choice?
School choice means allowing parents to choose among a variety of schools.
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What are my Current Schooling Choices as an Illinois Parent?
Illinois residents have the option of the Educational Expenses Tax Credit, which provides an annual tax credit of up to 25 percent of education-related expenses (including tuition, book fees, and lab fees) that exceed $250, up to a maximum of $500 per family.
Illinois residents may also apply for their child to attend a public charter school. To learn more about charter schools in your neighborhood, visit the Illinois Network of Charter School’s website.
Illinois residents may be eligible for public school choice. It offers students enrolled in Title I schools, in need of improvement, an opportunity to attend another public school.
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How Do I find a Better School for My Child?
1) Explore the child’s strengths and needs.
2) Learn about the schools.
3) Select schools to visit.
4) Go visiting.
5) Arrange for testing.
6) Apply.
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What Do Look for in a Good school?
1) Pay close attention to the achievement scores, classroom size, parental involvement, staffing credentials at the school.
2) Explore your school options by talking with other parents, searching on the Internet or using guidebooks.
3) When you find a school that interests you, check out the school’s Website.
4) Go visit the school.
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What is the Difference Between Public and Private Schools?
Public Schools are funded through the federal, state and local taxes. When you pay your taxes, you are paying for your child's education and the education of other children in your community.
Private schools cost money. Private schools do not receive tax revenues, but instead are funded through tuition, fundraising, donations and private grants.
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What are Privately-Funded Scholarships?
Privately-funded scholarships are payments a private organization makes to a parent or an institution on a parent’s behalf, to be used for a child’s education expenses.
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What are Charter Schools?
Charter schools are publicly-funded, independent schools operated typically by an education management organization that has issued a “charter” and are granted more flexibility and autonomy in exchange for stricter accountability than traditional public schools.
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What are Benefits of Charter Schools?
Some of the benefits of charter schools includes…
1) Increased opportunities for learning and access to quality education for all students;
2) Creates a choice for parents and students within the public school system;
3) Provides a system of accountability for results in public education;
4) Encourages innovative teaching practices; and
5) Encourages community and parent involvement in public education
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What can School Choice Illinois Do for Me?
School Choice Illinois serves as a resource for parents, community activists, elected officials, business and civic leaders and the general public. We conduct school choice workshops, organize visits to the Milwaukee Parental Choice School Program, host community meetings and parent-focused seminars, and bring national school choice experts to coach Illinois leaders on school choice programs. Workshops and parent-focused seminars provided by School Choice Illinois focus on the advantages of school choice and parental rights.
Overall, School Choice Illinois educates the public about existing educational options available, the need for the expansion of educational options and its affect on parents, the community, public schools, and the State.
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What are Some of the Benefits of School Choice?
School choice allows parents access to an array of schools and lets parents decide where children attend school. School choice has been proven to lead to the increase in graduation rates, the decrease in dropout rates, an increase in school enrollment, more accountable school districts, and an increase in real spending per pupil.
When parents are given an array of educational options, parents at all income levels gain access to higher-quality schools and the competition compels all (public and private) schools to improve.
Not only does school choice positively benefit parents, families, and students, urban and rural communities, businesses and the State also reap these benefits.
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What is a Tax-Supported Scholarship (Voucher)?
Tax supported scholarships are payments made to a parent or an institution on a parent’s behalf using the funds set aside for education by the government to be applied toward tuition fees at a private or religious school.
Are there any states that offer tax-supported scholarships (vouchers)?
Arizona, Florida, Maine, Ohio, Vermont, Utah, and Wisconsin—and the District of Columbia have tax-supported scholarships to help students attend private elementary or secondary schools of choice.
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What Does the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA), Mean for Me and My Child?
The NCLBA, includes a parental involvement component to empower parents of supplemental education and to improve a child’s education.
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What is Public School Choice?
Public School Choice allows parents to choose from among different public schools.
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Is School Choice Against Public Schools?
No. School choice offers public schools an incentive to improve.
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As a Parent and Supporter of School Choice, How May I Help?
You can help by…
1) Being involved in your child’s education process;
2) Knowing your rights as a parent;
3) Developing healthy relationships with teacher, staff and school administrator;
4) Tell us why you support school choice; and
5) Join our cause and sign up to be a parent leader.
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Policy Probe on School Choice
Does School Choice Help Students Do Better in School?
A large number of high-quality studies have found statistically significant gains in academic achievement from vouchers. No such study has ever found that vouchers hurt academic achievement.
Charlotte
A 2001 study by Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute using random-assignment methods found that, after one year, students receiving a privately funded voucher improved six percentile points more than the control group in combined reading and math scores.
Milwaukee
A 1998 study by Cecilia Rouse of Princeton found that voucher students improved more than the control group by eight points in math over four years.
New York
A 2003 study by four researchers from Harvard, Columbia and Johns Hopkins universities found that after only one year in the program voucher students improved 4.7 percentile points more than the control group in math.
Washington D.C.
A 2002 Harvard study found that, after two years, African-American voucher students improved 9 percentile points more than the control group in combined reading and math scores. In the same study, similar results were found in New York and Dayton.
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Does school choice make public schools better?
A large body of studies shows that competition from school choice improves public schools. If all schools compete for students, public schools will have to improve to prevent students from walking out the door. No empirical study has ever found that school choice hurts public school outcomes.
Florida
A 2004 study by Jay Greene and Marcus Winters of the Manhattan Institute found that low-performing schools facing the threat of vouchers made significantly greater test-score gains than similarly low-performing schools not facing the voucher threat. The closer a school was to having vouchers offered to its students, the more dramatic the results.
Milwaukee
In a 2001 study, Caroline Hoxby of Harvard found that public schools more exposed to voucher competition had test-score gains over a three-year period that outpaced other public schools by 10.2 percentile points in math and 9.3 points in reading.
San Antonio
A 2002 Manhattan Institute study by Jay Greene and Greg Forster found that a San Antonio school district facing competition from a privately funded voucher program outperformed 85 percent of Texas districts in its achievement gains.
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Doesn’t school choice drain resources from public schools?
School choice programs do not drain money from public schools. Actually, they leave more money behind to educate fewer students. No state or city with school choice has seen its public school budgets go down.
National
A 2007 study by Susan Aud from the Friedman Foundation found that school choice programs have saved a total of about $444 million from 1990 to 2006, including a total of $22 million saved in state budgets and $422 million saved in local public school districts.
A 2005 report by David Salisbury from the Cato Institute summarized the finding of fiscal analyses of school choice programs in Arizona, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Florida, Pennsylvania, Maine, and Vermont. Due to the superior efficiency of private schools, school choice programs provided significant fiscal savings to state budgets and public schools.
Utah
A 2007 joint study by the Friedman Foundation and Utah Taxpayers Association found that a universal voucher program in Utah would save local public school districts $26 million per year because reduced instructional costs will outweigh reduced state funding.
Washington D.C.
A 2006 study by the Leon Michos from the Friedman Foundation found that the Washington D.C. voucher program saves the city nearly $8 million, and that even if federal subsidies were withdrawn it would still save about $258,000 due to the increased efficiency of school choice.
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Are private schools that participate in school choice programs held accountable?
Private schools are accountable to both parents (through choice) and the public (through existing accountability rules). Piling on burdensome regulations in the name of accountability would only hamper their ability to teach children better.
If a public school fails to perform, parents have no way to hold it accountable. On the other hand, private schools are not just accountable to parents, they are also accountable to the public. Private schools in every state comply with a vast array of health and safety regulations, anti-discrimination laws, as well as widespread voluntary fiscal audits, accreditation and testing. Furthermore, private schools are good largely because they are free to innovate. They can be creative in the classroom and more open to trying different approaches to help children learn.
More regulations do not always mean more accountability. Ultimately, the thing that gives the concept of “accountability” substance is the ability for parents to choose their child’s school. With that ability, they can take their child out of a school that is not doing the job and find a school that will.
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Will school choice turn private schools into over-regulated public schools?
One reason private schools do so well is that they do not have to deal with the same over-the-top bureaucratic red tape as public schools. Some worry that school choice will endanger that freedom. They fear that if school choice is funded through tax dollars, private schools would be heavily regulated in the name of accountability. However, the simple truth that private schools are already accountable should eliminate that fear. They are accountable to parents, who can pull their children out of a school that fails them.
Attempts to transform private schools into over-regulated public schools through school choice programs have failed in the past. As long as supporters of school choice remain vigilant, private schools will continue to enjoy the freedom that allows them to educate children better than public schools.
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Does the public really want school choice?
A majority of the American public supports school choice. Most important, parents of all backgrounds support school choice, because they know it is best for their children.
Numerous polls find that most Americans express support for school choice:
- 56 percent said that they would select a private school if offered a full-tuition voucher, 48 percent said they would do so even if only offered a half-tuition voucher (PDK/Gallup, 2004).
- 51 percent favored, and 40 percent disfavored, the idea of school vouchers to help send children to private or parochial schools (Associated Press, 2002).
- 69 percent supported vouchers even if public schools got less money: “What if that mean the public schools in your community would receive less money, then would you agree or disagree that parents should get tax-funded vouchers they can use to help pay for tuition for their children to attend private or religious schools instead of public schools?” (CBS/New York Times, 2001).
- 56 percent preferred the position that “government should give parents more educational choices by providing taxpayer-funded vouchers to help pay for private or religious schools,” compared to 38 percent who preferred the position that “government funding should be limited to public schools” (NBC/Wall Street Journal).
- 54 percent said yes, and 38 percent said no, when asked: “Would vouchers improve the public school system?” (CNN/USA Today/Gallup, 2001).
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Do a wide spectrum of Americans want school choice?
Contrary to the myths, school choice has broad base of support across all points on the political spectrum and among people of all backgrounds.
More and more Democrats are realizing that the government school monopoly is the single biggest obstacle to their goals of social justice and empowerment of the poor. In the past few years, there have been an increasing number of Democratic politicians who support school choice.
School choice also has diverse popular support. Polls show:
- 52 percent of Hispanic Americans agreed, and 39 percent disagreed, that “parent should get tax-funded vouchers they can use to help pay for tuition for their children to attend private or religious schools instead of public schools (CBS/New York Times, 2003)
- 57 percent of Hispanic Americans supported “allowing low-income parents to use taxpayer-funded vouchers to place their kids in private or church-run schools” (Latino Coalition, 2003).
- 57 percent of African Americans supported, and 43 percent opposed, “a voucher system where parents would get money from the government to send their children to public, private, or parochial school of their choice” (Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, 2002).
- 77 percent of African Americans supported school vouchers allowing parents to move their children from under-performing schools to more successful schools (Sacred Heart University, 2005)
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Is school choice constitutional?
Rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court strongly favor school choice. Because parents make a truly independent choice of where to send their children to school, there is no violation of the U.S. Constitution if they freely choose religious schools.
In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision to uphold the constitutionality of Cleveland’s voucher program. By a 5-4 vote, the justices made it clear that when an individual uses public funds to make a private choice – in this case when a parent uses a voucher to send his or her child to a private, including religious schools – it does not violate the First Amendment. This landmark decision is in line with a long series of high-court decisions.
In the end, whether or not voucher or school choice legislation is constitutional depends on how well the bill is designed in each individual state. If parents make a truly private choice of which school their child attends, if there is no financial incentive to attend a religious school over a non-religious school and if the program does not allow undue government interference with religious schools, chances are the bill will be looked on favorably by the court.
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Does school choice help special education students?
School choice for special education allows parents to find a school that matches their child’s individual needs. The evidence shows that disabled students using school choice are getting better services.
Florida’s McKay Scholarship program provides scholarship for students with disabilities to attend the school that best fits their educational needs. The McKay program is used by more than 15,000 of the state’s special-education students. A 2003 Manhattan Institute study by Jay Greene and Greg Foster found that 93 percent of McKay participants are satisfied with their McKay schools, while only 33 percent were similarly satisfied with their public schools. Also, only 30 percent of current participants say they received all services required under federal law from their previous public schools, while 86 percent say their McKay schools provide all the services they promised to provide.
The success of the Florida program and growing desire of parents wanting options for their special-needs children have led to the creation of a similar program in Utah and consideration in several other states.
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Does school choice really lead to more integrated schools?
There is the myth that private schools are more segregated than public schools. However, the best available studies show that the opposite is true. Private school classrooms are more integrated than public school classrooms, and school choice programs put children into more integrated schools.
Public schools are so segregated primarily because of residential segregation. In contrast, private schools can draw students from anywhere. In fact, because they offer a superior education and other attractions that are not available in public schools, private schools typically draw from a much larger geographic area. Furthermore, because private schools are better, parents are more likely to trust them to handle the challenges of a multiracial classroom environment.
Comparing segregation in voucher-participating private schools to segregation in public schools using valid empirical methods, studies have found that students using vouchers are attending private schools that are less segregated than the public schools they would otherwise attend.
- A 2002 Marquette University study found that Milwaukee public school students were more likely to attend racially homogeneous schools than voucher students, both in elementary schools (58 v. 50 percent) and secondary schools (44 v. 29 percent).
- A 2005 Manhattan Institute study found that Washington D.C. public schools differ from the racial composition of the metro area by a greater amount than private schools participating in the city’s voucher program (40 v. 34 percent) and that public school students are more likely to attend racially homogeneous schools than voucher students (85 v. 47 percent).
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