Correspondence

Education Next, Spring, 2002

Furthermore, for decades, higher education in America has flourished as a wide-open system of tax-supported educational choice involving all manner of public and private institutions. Indeed, many failing K-12 public school systems exist side-by-side with networks of thriving public and private universities. Is this not evidence of competition's long-term success in the education sphere?

Given the widespread existence of choice and competition in K-12 education, it is demonstrably wrong to suppose, as Forum contributor Frederick M. Hess does ("The Work Ahead"), that "Efforts to cultivate competition may thus foster a culture of schooling that is alien to our educational heritage and may create an incentive structure that distorts educational priorities."

Likewise, in "Finishing Touches," Robert Maranto states," The animating theory of school choice has always been that it will not only serve as an escape hatch from dysfunctional public schools but also will spark public schools to improve. Thus far this theory remains mostly untested." For many low-income parents, choice always has been about equity, about having what other parents take for granted. The idea that the effect of choice is "mostly untested" again highlights the core problem with these three articles.

HOWARD FULLER

GEORGE A. MITCHELL

Marquette University

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Ripple effect

As the articles by Caroline Minter Hoxby ("Rising Tide," Research, Winter 2001), Robert Maranro, and Jay P. Greene show, incentives have the power to change behavior in ways that improve both private and public schools.

When Milwaukee was only a few years into its choice program, the school board did something it had never done before--it enacted standards for children to attain in math and reading.

Likewise, a group of parents in Minnesota tell a story of how they long wanted a Montessori elementary school in their community. They tried to cajole, petition, and urge local officials into creating such a program, without success. Then came Minnesota's charter school law, the nation's first, in 1991. Lo and behold, as these parents were putting the finishing touches on their proposal, the school district offered them the opportunity to create a new Montessori elementary school.

Ask the superintendents and school boards about the changes they enacted, and they'll tell you they were planning to do it anyway. That's what the principals and school leaders said in Florida, when they reacted to the state's voucher program with an unprecedented campaign to turn around long-failing schools and introduced new reading programs.

JEANNE ALLEN

Center for Education Reform

Washington, D.C.

Cloning Houston

Praise for the Houston school district comes at the expense of cities that have taken similar steps forward. Paul T. Hill ("Digging Deeper," Feature, Fall 2001) gives a passing nod to Chicago and Community District 2 in New York, but the progress in Houston is becoming less rare than Hill suggests. New data from Charlotte and Sacramento indicate comparable advances. A second tier of cities--including Fort Worth, Long Beach, Norfolk, Boston, Indianapolis, Louisville, San Diego, and Minneapolis--are posting gains that may be short of Houston's, but are exceeding their respective state averages. Moreover, cities like Baltimore and Cleveland are transforming themselves and have shown impressive spikes on state tests in recent years.