The Gap Between Promise and Practice: Three Logics of School Choice Under Scrutiny

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Decades of advocacy has positioned school choice as a lever for transforming public education. The implementation of school choice policy, however, has often reflected the ideologies of state and local actors more than the empirical evidence or the educational needs of local communities. Indeed, several competing–and, at times, contradictory–theories of action undergird school choice policies across the country. In this panel, we consider three of these theories and explore if and how their aims are actually achieved in practice across diverse state and local contexts, including whether school choice instills educational improvement through market competition, expands educational opportunities for underserved students, and/or fosters greater educator autonomy and innovation. The papers testing each of these theories span methodologies–one causal quantitative, the second descriptive quantitative, and the third qualitative comparative case study–all aimed at understanding the extent to which these logics of choice bear out.

The first paper considers market logic. Advocates suggest that introducing new schooling options can disrupt the public school monopoly, compelling existing schools to improve to retain students and the funding that follows them — a dynamic often captured in the shorthand that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Using the 2011 expansion of vouchers and charter schools in Indiana as a test case, the first paper explores the statewide impact of expanded choice on education funding and student achievement in Indiana.

The second paper examines district-led choice as a vehicle for greater educational equity. Proponents of this theory of action argue that choice systems can—and should— be crafted to expand access to less-segregated, better-resourced schools for historically underserved students. Drawing on kindergarten application data from New York City, the paper simulates the desegregative potential of a “controlled” choice system in which a centralized algorithm assigns students to schools based on family ranked preferences. It tests four approaches along two dimensions: whether the unit of analysis is the individual student or the neighborhood, and whether assignment criteria are race-conscious or race-neutral.

The third paper explores whether charter schools enable local actors to exercise greater influence over school policy and governance. Proponents of early charters viewed these schools as mechanisms of decentralization that would foster educator and community-led models of public education and, thus, facilitate bottom-up school reform. Over time, such theories of charter schooling have been challenged by the proliferation of charter management networks (CMOs) that more tightly monitor schools through top-down management. Given these competing models, this study revisits the early premise of chartering and explores if and how educators and families in three contemporary mom-and-pop, or freestanding, charters conceive of and experience their schools as “incubators” for bottom-up school reform.

Across all three papers, the panel finds that these theories of choice are, at the very least, context dependent. The panel, then, will explore whether, and in what contexts, school choice policies fulfill their espoused policy aims and the role of state and local actors in enacting policies that are more consistent with the educational and social needs of their communities.

Policy Area

• Education

Chair

• Douglas David Ready, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Discussant

• Sarah A. Cordes, Temple University

Organizer

• Sierra McCormick, Teachers College, Columbia University

Individual Presentations

• Impacts of School Choice Expansion on Public School Finance, Inputs, Voter Tax Preferences, and Achievement - Presenting Author: Mark Junxuan Chin, Vanderbilt University

• Simulating the Desegregation Potential of Controlled Choice in New York City - Presenting Author: Sierra McCormick, Teachers College, Columbia University

• ‘Radical Decentralization’ Revisited: A Comparative Case Study of Educator and Family Influence in Freestanding Charters - Presenting Author: Trevor William Baisden, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Equitable Access in School Choice: Evidence from Washington, D.C. - Presenting Author: Michael Connolly Quinn, College of the Holy Cross