Legacies of America's Educational Landmark, 126.
83. Parents Involved, at 798-99 (Justice Stevens dissenting).
84. U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, “Guidance on the Voluntary Use of Race to Achieve Diversity and Avoid Racial Isolation in Elementary and Secondary Schools.”
2
Choice Theories and the Schools
Gary Orfield
School choice has become so important in American educational policy discussions because it resonates strongly with the basic beliefs of many Americans and with important aspects of American social and political ideology. Wealthy business leaders who insist on data rather than theories in their own businesses pour money into charter schools based on a simple faith that markets relying on individual choice have transformative power and that governmental regulations and unionized work forces are the only basic obstacles to educational equity. Eli Broad, the Los Angeles billionaire whose foundation has had a great impact on current educational policy debates and trained many current school superintendents and administrators, has often expressed the views that public schools should be closed down, that teachers’ unions are a big problem, and that business principles could radically improve education. His foundation and the Gates Foundation contributed sixty million dollars to a 2008 public policy campaign to help shape the presidential debate, and their organizations have had large impacts on Barack Obama's education agenda.1 They are applying their political ideology of sweeping deregulation to education reform even as the nation struggles to recover from the extremely destructive impacts of excessive deregulation of banking and financial institutions. Sometimes the groups they fund attack researchers who present data that challenge these assumptions, targeting them with emotional attacks that claim they do not care about minority or poor students. Often these foundations seem uninterested in research and certain that choice is a powerful educational treatment for inequality. For example, proponents define charter schools as good in and of themselves because they are not part of public school systems and further justify them by the fact that many parents enroll their children there—regardless of whether they actually improve educational outcomes. This broad free market theory of choice has a strong hold on current policy debates and is the central focus of this chapter.
There was a dramatic shift in theories about school choice in the 1970s and 1980s, directly reflecting changes in politics and law. The discussion changed from the use of choice as a tool for pursuing integration and diversity to the idea that choice itself was the treatment for educational inequality. This chapter explores the roots of these theories and some of the basic logical and factual questions about them. Obviously, in developing a policy it is important not only to have a theory about how it might work but also to critically examine the evidence about the theory's logic and the validity of its premises. Since any theory leading to a value judgment or action prescription must have both value and factual premises, both will be discussed here. This chapter begins with the dominant theory of the present generation and then looks back at the evolution of theories about the relationship between choice and equity, ending with a series of hypotheses about choice systems that the rest of the book explores.
It is important to note that both what I call the market theory of choice, which has been dominant in the past three decades, and integration theory, which emerged in the civil rights era, share a constantly expressed central goal or value: providing better educational opportunities for students in inferior neighborhood public schools. The fundamental differences between these two theories are in their factual premises and in the relative primacy they give to individual versus group and community goals.
The market and integration theories both have fervent supporters and fervent critics. Some opponents of choice are simply opposed to choice, seeing it as inconsistent with equality and a uniform set of educational offerings and describing it as a strategy to undermine teachers’ rights and public schools more broadly. In many districts, students in regular schools and their parents complain of what they see as the preference given to magnets and charters. Jonathan Kozol, who has been a leading observer of U.S. schools for half a century, for example, points to the extreme stratification developing in Manhattan, where small “boutique” schools that serve elite populations are proliferating while a great many poor children attend weak schools.2 These are issues well worth debating but are not the subject of this book, which is devoted to examining more closely the kinds of choice, not questions of whether school choice should exist. In our society—where extremely unequal schools perpetuate and even intensify severe inequalities in opportunities and income, no significant forces are working to ameliorate underlying economic inequalities that are the most extreme among modern democracies, and school reform agendas are usually limited and unsuccessful—making the right use of choice is very important. While interventionist civil rights and social policies have been defeated in recent decades, choice is still an open policy alternative, and the debate over divergent choice theories is a priority. This does not mean that a much broader agenda of social and economic reform is not necessary. It clearly is if we are to have a more just and equal society.
Some theorists and policy makers treat choice as highly beneficial exactly because it creates what they describe as a market, and they believe markets by their nature produce better results than government. Paul Peterson, for example, writes, “Public education in the United States seems incapable of self improvement,” noting that expenditures have risen but test scores have changed little. He quotes another leading critic (and fellow Hoover Institute member), Eric Hanushek, who concludes that “productivity [the ratio of achievement gains to dollars spent] in schools has fallen by 2.5 to 3 percent per year.”3 Other theorists see choice as a two-edged sword. They favor certain kinds of choice not as ends in themselves but as means to correct inequality in education and rectify the clear inferiority of schools often educating minority and poor students. At the same time, they view unrestricted choice as a threat likely to compound inequalities and stratification. To them, choice is a potentially powerful tool for good or ill that must be channeled.
These contrasting beliefs and the theories that grow from them matter very much in policy decisions about choice. These different philosophies are based on divergent assumptions about the nature of markets, rights, government, race, and society but a shared conviction that predictable results will follow the adoption of certain kinds of policies. Because these assumptions are often decisive in motivating policy decisions and shaping the discourse about choice policies, it is important to examine them.
Though these theories arise from philosophical or ideological assumptions, the predictions that flow from them can be assessed though research. If data confirms the predictions, the theory is strengthened. But if the predicted results do not occur or very different results are found, the theory is undermined and the argument must be reformulated. A theory whose premises are disproved is not a reliable basis for policy, and a theory with contradictory premises needs clarification. This book is an effort to examine the conflicting propositions of these two outlooks and offer a theory that fits the observed facts, providing a basis for developing and implementing the most effective school choice policy.
AMERICA'S TRADITIONAL IDEOLOGY OF EDUCATION
Choice was virtually irrelevant to educational policy for the great bulk of U.S. history. The dominant ideology in American education from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1980s was that expanding the free, nonsectarian common school system and opening it to all would provide an equal opportunity for the improvement of all. Schools have been seen as a central institution for social mobility, for inculcating an understanding of national institutions and democracy, and for creating a common culture.4 While they have always fallen short of these ideals, these goals have been widely shared. The struggles to open opportunity to minorities, women, the handicapped, non-English speakers, and others have always included a focus on full and fair access to schools. The claim that educational opportunity preserves the possibility of fair outcomes if students work hard enough has
