December 21, 2008
School choice works. It’s that simple. That is the obvious conclusion from the Washington Post’s analysis earlier this week confirming independent reports that District children in charter schools are vastly outperforming students in the city’s traditional public schools. To quote from the front-page Post story, "The gains show up on national standardized tests and the city’s own tests on reading and math…. Charters have been particularly successful with low-income children." Also, "District school records show that charters also have better attendance and graduation rates than the regular public schools and that their teachers are more likely to fit the city’s definition of ‘highly qualified,’ meaning that they have expertise in what they are teaching."
These stunning successes are exactly what proponents of school choice have long predicted, and they track results in other parts of the country. In an interview with The Examiner, Robert Cane, executive director of the local non-profit Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, explained: "It’s all about enabling poor parents to get their children into schools that can best help their kids…. [The great test results] are largely attributable to the ability to shape the academic program to the needs of the students they are actually dealing with. They don’t have to get permission from a school bureaucracy."
Cane was speaking only about charter schools, but his comments also apply to "choice" options such as the congressionally funded DC Opportunity Scholarships, which students can use to attend private or parochial schools. More than 1,900 economically disadvantaged District children presently benefit from the program. Studies by the U.S. Department of Education and Georgetown University found that parents in the program were more engaged in their children’s education, more confident in their safety, and more focused on academic performance than those in the regular public schools. And a Manhattan Institute study showed that regular public school students are relegated to far more segregated education environments than the scholarship recipients.
The District’s charter schools enjoy broad support, and incoming president Barack Obama and Education Secretary nominee Arne Duncan are both avowed charter-school fans. Unfortunately, Obama has been far less supportive of private school choice options, even though some of his own daughters’ new classmates at Sidwell Friends, an elite private school, will be Opportunity Scholarship recipients. The goal should be to give as many families as many educational options as possible – because freedom, choice, and parental involvement clearly produce good results.