Rampaging Toward Choice - vouchers and charter schools in Washington, D.C

Reason, Jan, 2000 by Michael W. Lynch

It's an evolving mix. Still, as options have emerged for D.C. parents with modest incomes, some things are becoming clear. Urban parents want a choice, even when it means making personal sacrifices. They want schools that provide safety, respect, solid academics, and Bible-based values.

In Washington, where school officials routinely confiscate knives, guns, and razors, parents put a premium on safety, as they do in urban systems across the country. In the first seven months of the 1997-98 school year, there were 80 assaults with a deadly weapon, and 313 simple assaults reported in the D.C. schools, a system serving about 80,000 students at that time. Two students, both 16, were killed. Neither murder occurred on school property, but the incidents reflect a context of community violence in which the schools attempt to function.

D.C. parents also crave what no insulated monopoly provides: institutions that are responsive and respectful. They want their phone calls returned, their questions answered, and updates on their children's progress. Their goal is a simple one: to have their children prepared for college or, at a minimum, for a self-sufficient life. Given that D.C. public schools spend $9,123 per student a year, those demands are not unreasonable. Yet a third of the students drop out before graduating, and those that graduate function below 12th grade level. The University of the District of Columbia reports that it takes two years of remedial work to get a city graduate up to par. And these are the students who go on to college. It's easy to see why government school enthusiasts are incredulous that children could be better educated at far less cost.

Other structural issues are emerging as well. The longer children stay in D.C. government schools, for example, the further behind they fall. This has implications for political reforms as well as private programs. Private schools can get a second-grader caught up quickly, but an eighth-grader who is working at a fourth-grade level presents an almost insurmountable challenge.

Good, relatively low-cost private schools exist that will welcome former public school students and work to bring them up to grade level. And where money is available, myriad organizations will found new schools. Roughly one third of D.C.'s charter schools are specialized schools designed to meet the needs of the very students the public schools blame for their failures.

That is what Virginia Walden has discovered. Walden is executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, located in the basement of an apartment building four blocks from the headquarters of the National Education Association. She stumbled upon school choice when her son William started to get in trouble at Roosevelt High School. "As soon as he started going there he became a terror," says Walden. "He said if he did well in school he would get labeled 'smart' and harassed." When he brought home all F's without warning, Walden knew she had to get him out. "Two teachers didn't even know his name," says an exasperated Walden, who was active in the school's PTA. A neighbor offered to help send William to Archbishop Carroll, a Catholic high school. "We saw an improvement right away," she says.