Making School Choice Work for All Families:
A Template for Legislative and Policy Reform

John E. Coons & Stephen D. Sugarman
Foreword by Reverend Floyd Flake
1999

Making School Choice Work for All Families is the one of a three-part series, Templates for Legislative and Policy Reform. The other two templates address the issues of academic standards and charter schools. The series recommends best practices and legislative language and highlights problem areas that arise when policy deviates from those best practices.

Written by University of California School of Law professors John E. Coons and Stephen D. Sugarman, Making School Choice Work spells out the options that drafters of a sound (and constitutional) school choice plan must weigh.

Justifying Choice

There are two general premises justifying choice in education: (1) the child’s own interest, and (2) the common good. Empirical evidence shows that student performance improves when children from low-income families transfer from a district public school to a school of choice, private or parochial, and remain in that school for at least three years. That data has emerged from studies of Milwaukee and Cleveland, the only two U.S. cities where children receive publicly funded vouchers, and from studies of cities where privately operated foundations award scholarships.

Professors Coons and Sugarman also make a social justice claim that "paren tal choice facilitated by publicly funded scholarships serves all . . . private and public purposes more effec tively than does the regime of coercion now imposed upon the non-rich."

Who Should Get Scholarships?

This question is one of the most important facing school choice proponents. As Clint Bolick points out in his foreword to this new study, the final answer is "generally dictated by the urgency of aiding children of poor families and by local political realities." While Coons and Sugarman favor proposals that target children in low-income families, they also consider scholarships for children facing a variety of educational experiences: in poor performing public schools, in bankrupt school districts, in high-crime schools, and children who are disabled and/or in special education.

Any school choice plan must take into account six factors: (1) the plan should target those children who would benefit most from choice; (2) the public should receive a clear explana tion of which children will benefit and why; (3) it should be reasonably easy for individual families to know whether their children are eligible; (4) administration of the eligibility process should neither cost very much nor require too much bureaucratic involvement; (5) enjoyment of the benefit should not unnecessarily stigmatize the child or parents; and (6) the selection criteria should not create perverse behavioral incentives.

Which Schools?

Coons and Sugarman believe school choice is an essential element in a broader school reform strategy, a strategy that will ensure that only those schools, public or private, that are popular prosper, and those that are shunned, perish. Policy makers should include public schools in a school choice scheme. This increases the odds that the plan will survive constitutional challenge. Including religious schools ensures that students and their families will be able to choose from the entire spectrum of available educational opportunities (especially since excluding parochial schools would greatly decrease the supply of available schools, especially in the nation’s inner cities). The authors propose an educational system with four distinct types of schools: (1) traditional public schools, perhaps rendered more accessible to transfers; (2) public charter schools, financed by scholarships; (3) participating private schools financed by scholarships; and (4) non-participating private schools.

How Much Should the Scholarship Be and Who Should Pay?

The three critical issues are (1) how large to make the scholarships; (2) whether the scholarships should vary in amount among classes of eligible pupils; and (3) whether the state or local school districts should pay for the scholarships. Related issues are whether schools should be permitted to charge more than the scholarship amount and whether a scholarship should be limited to a school’s present tuition.

Traditional public school finance creates problems for school choice plans. Per-pupil costs and revenues vary from district to district within a given state. At the same time, because both public and private school students will be receiving state funds, school choice opponents might charge that the scholarship plan "robs" the public schools.

Coons and Sugarman explore a variety of options to minimize the problems raised by the costs of the program. They point out that since private schools generally operate at a lower cost than public schools, scholarships could be set at an amount that is somewhat lower than the average state per-pupil allowance. The state or individual school districts should be allowed to capture the resultant savings. In addition, the authors recommend phased-in strategies to control costs.

Constitutional Problems

On November 9, 1998, the United States Supreme Court, in an eight-to-one vote, left intact Wisconsin’s school choice program. The Milwaukee plan allows students to redeem scholarships at independent and parochial schools. It now appears the courts are unlikely to strike down a well-drafted school-choice program, even if families are allowed to use their scholarships at religious schools.

Nevertheless, every state has different laws and constitutional provisions that could determine whether religious schools should be included in a school choice plan. Drafters of school choice programs should use the following strategies: (1) the benefit should go to the family or the child (even if it may be assigned over to the school); (2) the program should include choice among schools in both the private and public sectors and on terms as nearly identical as is practical and constitutional under local law; and (3) the scholarship amount should be large, but probably less than 100 percent of what is spent in a traditional public school. Coons and Sugarman also point out that if the scholarship were targeted to low-income families, courts would be even more likely to uphold the plan.

Criteria for Participating Schools and Admission Policies; Teachers in Choice Schools

Coons and Sugarman provide an exhaustive list of options for making schools accountable and accessible to students and their families. They recommend that a system of consumer information be imposed on all schools, both choice schools and regular public schools. But they urge that no new regulation be imposed on choice schools in matters such as curriculum, teacher-hiring policy, student discipline, and facilities.

Because it is of special importance, Coons and Sugarman devote a separate section to the admission issue and explore several options, including lotteries, giving schools some discretion, forbidden criteria, and special "reserve" clauses (for low-income children).

This Ideas In Action fact sheet is a digest of a longer study entitled: Making School Choice Work for All Families: A Template for Legislative and Policy Reform. The study is available through the Pacific Research Institute's Publications Department.

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