A work in progress: Michigan's potent combination of interdistrict choice and charter schooling is forcing traditional public schools to take notice. Whether they respond is often a different story - Forum

Education Next, Winter, 2001 by David Arsen, David N. Plank, Gary Sykes

Some school districts have opted out of interdistrict choice for fear of attracting students who would alter their schools' racial or class composition in ways that would upset district residents.

Interdistrict choice tends to reinforce patterns of growth and decline in the residential housing market. Communities that had experienced long-term enrollment declines before the advent of choice policies have suffered further losses with the adoption of interdistrict choice policies. Growing districts have gained additional students through choice. Many fast-growing suburban districts do not participate in open enrollment, however, because they are hard pressed to accommodate rapidly increasing numbers of resident students.

Student mobility under interdistrict choice reflects a pattern of "upward filtering." Students are generally moving to districts with better educational outcomes and higher socioeconomic status than their home districts. On average, they are also moving to districts where the share of students who are African-American is much lower than in their home districts.

Michigan's interdistrict choice policies allow all of the school districts in a county to opt out of the state's rule regime and substitute one that they develop themselves. These local plans typically place limits on the number of students who may enter or leave districts within the county. Students remain free to leave the county altogether, but distance prevents such mobility for all but a few students. Where local school choice plans are in effect, fewer students enroll in neighboring school districts than in comparable areas elsewhere in Michigan. This form of collusion protects vulnerable school districts like Grand Rapids and Flint from a precipitous loss of students and revenues.

In most parts of the state, the heterogeneous interests of local school districts preclude collusive responses to school choice policies, and districts have consequently adopted a variety of strategies to take advantage of their competitive position in the education system. Several districts are actively seeking to attract students and revenues from neighboring districts. A key setting for this drama in Michigan is in mid-sized cities, such as Saginaw, Jackson, Pontiac, Niles, Adrian, Inkster, Ecorse, and Hillsdale. These districts have all lost substantial enrollment and revenue to neighboring districts with higher-income residents.

Net Results

The question remains whether these responses are likely to produce general improvements in the education system. Do schools and school districts have to improve the quality of the educational services that they provide in order to survive in the emerging market for schooling?

In most Michigan localities, school choice policies have had little impact. Charter schools cannot match the level of services that wealthy suburban districts provide, so they pose no competitive threat. Rapidly growing communities are likewise immune to competitive pressures from school choice. Choice policies are also unlikely to produce systemic improvements in rural areas because the potential market for schooling is too thin to support many new entrants. Interdistrict transfers in rural areas are motivated at least as much by convenience as by differences in educational programs.