EDUCATION NOTEBOOK:
The Dismal Record on Parental Choice in NCLB
October 2, 2006
When he signed his signature education initiative into law,
President George W. Bush stated that "Parents must be given real
options in the face of failure in order to make sure reform is
meaningful." But four years later, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has
provided few American families with real options.
Under No Child Left Behind, students in low-performing schools
are supposed to be able to seek out alternative educational
opportunities. Specifically, public schools that fail to make
adequate yearly progress over time must offer students the option
to transfer to a better public school or choose an after-school
tutoring program.
But few students have benefited from these provisions. According
to the Department of Education, less than one percent of the nearly
four million eligible students transferred public schools in the
2003-04 school year. About 233,000 students, or 17 percent of those
eligible, participated in the after-school tutoring program that
year.
For the students who were able to take advantage of choice under
NCLB, these new options may have been a lifeline from an otherwise
hopeless situation. But clearly these provisions have made far less
of an impact than the law's creators envisioned.
For that shortcoming, blame the public education bureaucracy's
poor implementation and lack of cooperation. The Department of
Education found that half of all public school districts notified
parents of the transfer option after the school year had
already begun, too late for most students to benefit from changing
schools. And less than half of eligible families were aware of the
after-school tutoring program, according to a Department of
Education focus group. Tutoring providers report that school
districts are often uncooperative, which leads to reduced student
participation.
Dr. Barbara Anderson of Knowledge Learning Corporation, a
tutoring provider, highlighted the lack of awareness at a House
Education and Workforce Committee hearing last week. "Our company's
experience indicates that too many parents remain unaware of
supplemental educational services and the process and procedure to
gain access to services," she explained. "Unfortunately, in too
many places, parent notification letters are full of legal terms
and long complex explanations that only serve to confuse parents."
Is it any surprise that so few students are taking advantage of
NCLB's choice provisions?
Given this poor track record, what can be done to give children
in failing schools better opportunities? One option is to tinker
with No Child Left Behind to improve access to public school choice
and after-school tutoring. Regulations can be changed to require
schools to give parents timely and clear notification of the
transfer and tutoring options. Monetary incentives could improve
public school districts' willingness to cooperate.
But reforms that take root at the state and local level show
more promise. One alternative to the No Child Left Behind strategy
is to give states and local communities greater freedom and
flexibility to use federal education dollars. The track record
under NCLB suggests that more successful school choice and
after-school tutoring programs can be implemented at the state and
city level with real cooperation from local communities.
San Francisco stands as a model for how real public school
choice can improve a school district. As education researcher Lisa Snell
has chronicled, the city implemented a system of universal public
school choice and school-based management in 2000. Families can
choose their children's public schools, and public school leaders
have the freedom to create school environments that appeal to
parents and students. This dynamic, according to Snell, has
"produced significant academic success for children in the
district."
As with public school choice, after-school tutoring is more
easily integrated into the education system when it's run at the
local level. A good example is Pennsylvania's enactment of
statewide and district-level tutoring programs. In 2003, Governor
Ed Rendell, a Democrat, signed into law the Educational Assistance
Program to provide tutoring to students in low-performing school
districts. In the program's first year, 46,055 Pennsylvania
students received tutoring in reading and math. Another statewide
program, Classroom Plus, offers $500 tutoring vouchers to
underperforming students. In 2004-05, 1,336 students received
vouchers. Sixty-six percent made progress in reading and 73 percent
made progress in math after receiving an average of 16 hours of
tutoring in reading and 14 hours in math.
All this demonstrates that state and local communities can more
successfully implement education reforms that work than Congress or
the Department of Education. As Congress prepares for the
reauthorization of No Child Left Behind next year, school choice
advocates should support reforms that transfer power back to the
state and local level-a more fertile ground for the most promising
school reforms to blossom..
Dan Lips is an Education
Analyst at the Heritage Foundation www.Heritage.org.