On January 10, 1989, I was invited, along with about 200 others, to attend the White House Seminar on School Choice. It was to be a day of speeches and discussion, featuring President Reagan, President elect Bush and Education Secretary Cavazos. Many of us feared that the seminar would be a reiteration of Reagan's support for vouchers and tax credits to pay for students to switch from public to private schools and that Reagan would be passing that torch on to Bush. But that's not what happened, to the surprise of both public school and private school supporters.
Reagan, Bush and Cavazos spoke only of public schools and pushed the idea that having a choice of which public schools you could attend would strengthen public education. Bush went so far as to say that if parents were not required to send their children to the one assigned public school, many who now patronize private schools would re-enter public schools of their choice.
One if the strongest speeches of the day came from Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich, who has pushed through the most extensive statewide public-school choice plans in the country. He spoke of the great opposition he faced before the choice plans went through -- and the great turnaround in the opinions of the public and of professional educators since the choice plans started to work.
Under the Minnesota plans, Minnesota colleges can try to attract high school students by offering them courses for which they can get high school and/or college credit. Also, students may transfer from the school district they reside in to any other district in the state that has agreed to participate in the choice plan. The Minnesota choice plans are not like an unregulated market. Receiving districts can't just pick and choose their students. And state school aid follows students who transfer districts. It's easier to have a choice plan in a state like Minnesota, where state and not local funds pay for the majority of school costs (62 percent), because fewer local districts have a financial excuse for not accepting non-resident students.
What are the results?
□ Some students who dropped out or were on the verge of dropping out returned to complete their work in college campuses or in public school outside their resident districts.
□ Many high schools afraid to lose students to local colleges introduced advanced placement courses that had not been available before.
□ Parents' complaints were taken more seriously by school administrators because they now knew that parents could take their youngsters elsewhere.
□ Not very many students have taken advantage of the choice plans. Last year, about 5,400 used the postsecondary option (less than five percent of those eligible), and only 440 students used the general open enrollment option. Next year, the state expects 1,000 to use that option, which is still way under one percent of those eligible. Obviously, parents are not eager to move their kids out of their districts. But the possibility of choice has led more home districts to provide choices within their districts in order to hold on to their students.
□ About 3,000 students have returned from private and parochial schools to the public schools. This year, Minnesota will need to add over $44 million in state aid just to take care of these returning students.
Public school choice is likely to be a major issue in state legislatures in the years to come, and many of its good points were illustrated at the White House Seminar. But there are bad choice plans, too.
□ Plans that don't provide adequate funds and safeguards for all students to be able to take advantage of choice can result in reducing the diversity of schools and districts.
□ Plans that allow districts to pick and choose among applicants can leave problem districts in worse shape than they are now as motivated or achieving students are recruited out of a district while those with the greatest problems remain and have no peer or role models left.
□ Choice plans that include private and parochial schools can lead to public school decline in the short run and government regulation of private schools in the long run.
It's also important to see that although choice is a deeply held American value - and should be promoted - it is not a panacea. If public school choice leads to develop better programs in order to hold on to their own students and to attract students from other districts, that's great. But it's also possible to keep students and attract new ones by skimping on education and investing in a good football team or by using clever advertising. Also, schools with advantaged students may appeal to non-resident parents merely on the basis that their kids could be sitting next to students who have fewer problems.
School choice can lead to competition, to greater diversity, to innovation and school restructuring. But it doesn't have to. As in many commercial choices - for example, among junk foods - schools could provide the semblance of choice in a situation in which all of the choices are about the same and equally flawed. Choice does not automatically lead to superior alternatives.
Choice could in fact reduce the pressure for real change. After all, it's easier to switch than fight. And it's much easier to tell the public or reformers who are pressing for a fundamental reexamination of how schools work that everything will be okay now that individuals can choose schools and transfer if they're dissatisfied than it is to face up to the problems of schools and change how they work.
As we move ahead with public-school choice plans, we must not view tham as a substitute for rethinking what goes on in the inside of schools, how students are treated, how teachers function. There are lots of good arguments for choice. But by itself, choice will not get our youngsters to learn.