Magna charter? A report card on school reform in 1995

Policy Review, Fall 1995 by Finn, Chester E Jr, Ravitch, Diane

Nothing, of course, elicits tougher opposition from defenders of the public-school status quo than voucher schemes (and similar ventures that go by different names), even when such plans are aimed precisely at those disadvantaged children who are most likely to drop out of public school. But the idea is not going away. Meanwhile, privately-funded voucher projects also continue to multiply, from New York's Student/Sponsor Partnership, to the Golden Rule program launched in Indianapolis in 1991. Today 23 programs reach more than 10,000 students.

We believe that it is just a matter of time before children from needy families in most parts of the country will be able to carry their vouchers (or scholarships or whatever they may be called) to any accredited school. We understand that some private schools fear government regulation, and may decline to participate. We recognize that public aid should be targeted toward those students in greatest need (as is now the case in higher education); and we acknowledge that the Supreme Court will have to sort through the constitutional questions posed by inclusion of parochial schools. (Recent Supreme Court decisions in this domain have encouraged voucher supporters.)

Still, it must be noted that, in the meantime, primary and secondary schooling is becoming increasingly anomalous as vouchers come to prevail in most other domains of U.S. domestic policy. Even President Clinton has endorsed vouchers in job training and in public housing. Moreover, much of the rest of the world--from Australia to Chile to the Netherlands--treats publicly-subsidized private-school attendance as routine and normal.

CONTRCT MANAGEMENT

Paul Hill's superb new book Reinventing Public Education sets forth a comprehensive vision of how this approach could work in the future--and why it is apt to work better than direct operation of all schools by the school system's central office. Meanwhile, Educational Alternatives, Inc. (EAI) continues to manage a number of schools in Baltimore and recently added Hartford, Connecticut, to its portfolio. The superintendent of schools in the District of Columbia has tried to revive his plan to engage EAI to run some of D.C.'s troubled schools. A private management firm is functioning as "superintendent of schools" in Minneapolis.

The Edison Project opened its first four schools in 1995, with others due to follow if these succeed. And at least two other companies are already active in this field in the United States. Sabis is an international group that has been running a school in Minnesota and recently added a second (charter) school in Springfield, Massachusetts. Nashville-based Alternative Public School Strategies has reached an agreement with little Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, to run one of three elementary schools in that community--a school in which 78 percent of students receive free or reduced-price lunches. (The future of this contract, however, is shadowed by ambiguity in the laws of Pennsylvania as to the legality of such an arrangement.) More companies and communities will surely follow, probably including big corporate guns such as Disney, which is creating a school in Florida that many view as a prototype.