The Fight over School Choice

By Susan Tifft

Detroit's new school-board president, a black, Harvard-educated lawyer named Lawrence Patrick, is in favor of it. So are Sharlyn and Charles Dahl, a white Minnesota couple who are considering ferrying their son across district lines next fall to escape their school's financial problems. But other parents and educators throughout the U.S. are against it, including the four black members of the Boston school committee. Last week those members tried and failed to defeat a new plan that will allow Boston's parents to choose where their children go to school, as long as racial balance is maintained.

Choice. The idea sounds so compelling compared with the tyrannical grip most public schools have over families. But it is a policy that excites divergent passions. "No school district can please all students all the time," Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich told educators who gathered in Minneapolis two weeks ago. "But without choice, school districts have little incentive to change."

Currently most school districts tell parents which public school their children must attend. It could be a school down the block or one across town in need of better racial balance. The problem, critics argue, is that parents have no say, and even bad schools are rewarded with full student bodies and tax revenues. That is beginning to change. In locations as diverse as New York's East Harlem, San Francisco and Cambridge, Mass., parents are now free to select what they judge to be the best public school in their district. Minnesota goes even further. It is phasing in a plan that by 1990 will allow students to attend virtually any public school in the state. More than 20 other states have passed or are considering bills that would permit students to patronize the best schools and flee substandard ones. Naturally, the most popular schools get the most money.

One of the biggest backers of choice is George Bush, who has called it a "national imperative." Choice, as Bush uses it, focuses on two major plans: magnet schools and open enrollment. In his budget address last month, the President proposed that Congress authorize $100 million annually to develop magnet schools, so called because they attract students by developing specialties in areas like drama, creative writing, science and math.

Open enrollment, the more common type of choice program, requires no federal dollars. States, cities and school districts simply give parents permission to move their children from schools they do not like to ones they do. Under some open-enrollment plans, parents are limited to the choices located in their district; under others, they can select from among schools in neighboring districts as well. In either case, the desire for racial balance can restrict the choice of schools.

Liberals like choice because it gives underprivileged students a chance for a better education. Conservatives like it because it is cheap, fosters competition among schools, and transfers power from administrators to parents. Says Chester Finn Jr., an Assistant Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan: "Choice has everything going for it, and nothing against it."

Not quite. Critics say the policy is racist and unfair, encouraging the most motivated parents and students to take their talents and tax dollars out of inner-city schools, which are predominantly African American and Hispanic. The hemorrhage leaves these schools with the neediest students and fewer resources with which to help them.

Minnesota, which has a small minority population, started the nation's first statewide open-enrollment plan this school year. So far, 435 students have transferred out of their home districts, taking $2,755 per pupil in state-tax revenues to their new destinations. More than 2,500 others have applied to cross district lines starting in September. In racially divided Massachusetts, however, a similar proposal has run into strong opposition from minority groups. Magnet schools often fare better. Since 1974, such facilities in East Harlem have lured thousands of students into the district and boosted its rank in reading scores from last to 16th out of 32 New York City districts.

Some politicians and parents see choice as a panacea for the ills of public education, but most educators view it as only one of many necessary tools. "Choice is a nice initiative, but it's not the answer," says California's superintendent of public instruction, Bill Honig. "It's the day-to-day support for reform that is important to improving education." And improving education, as President Bush well knows, will cost money.

With reporting by Sam Allis/Boston and Jerome Cramer/Minneapolis