SACRAMENTO, CA - In a recent op-ed, former New York Times education editor Edward Fiske and Duke University professor Helen Ladd claim, among other things, that school choice is bad public policy because it hurts poorly-performing public schools. Citing New Zealand’s quasi-school-choice program, Fiske and Ladd charge that
when more advantaged students left New Zealand’s poorly-performing public schools, these “downwardly
spiraling” public schools were left with disproportionate numbers of hard-to-educate students. Trouble is, Fiske and Ladd’s complaint assumes a static public-policy world. If they looked closer to home, they would have found that public schools respond to school choice by improving their educational services.

Take Florida, where a state appellate court has just upheld Gov. Jeb Bush’s school-choice program. Under the
Bush program, students in schools that receive failing marks in two years out of a four-year period are
eligible for government-funded “opportunity scholarships” which parents may use to pay tuition at private schools. A recent report indicates that Florida’s public schools are improving precisely because of the incentives provided by the choice program.

The report, sponsored by the Miami Urban League and several think tanks, discovered that “school officials
have been prodded into action” because of “the threat of Opportunity Scholarships.” According to the report,
“All across Florida, districts are implementing promising strategies for improving the performance of students attending ‘F’ rated public schools.”

In Escambia County, where the opportunity-scholarship program kicked in at two failing elementary schools,
the local district implemented major reforms including: extending the school year; blocking out 90-minute
periods devoted solely to reading and math instruction; and reducing the high mobility rate among families by
increasing transportation services so students can continue at the same school. In the past, high mobility
hurt students who started to learn a topic at their old school, but found that the class at their new school
had already finished that topic. Yet, as the report points out, high mobility “appeared to be tolerable
until [schools] lost pupils because of the state’s Opportunity Scholarship program.” Other districts are
also busy improving their programs.

Broward County is requiring Saturday tutoring for struggling students. Miami-Dade County has switched to
a phonics-based reading program. Lake County implemented the direct instruction/drill-and-practice
teaching methodology at its failing schools. And in Hillsborough County, the superintendent promised to
take a five-percent pay cut if any of his schools received a failing rating. The state has backed up these efforts with $1.5 billion in additional aid to districts. The key, though, is that this added funding comes with the threat of choice.

As the report says, “the important thing is that the [school-choice program] has instilled in the public schools a sense of urgency and zeal for reform not seen in the past when a school’s failure was rewarded only with more money that reinforced failure.”

As in Florida, the public schools in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and other cities improved themselves when faced with competition. Thus, if we want to improve education for all children, which includes improving the quality of the public school system, then vouchers are the answer, not the problem.

- Lance T. Izumi