Three sides of the same debate

Choice, accountability, and autonomy

In the opening acknowledgments to Dr. George H. Wood’s Schools That Work, he concedes that he found out “how hard it is to sell a book on what is good about American schools.” His purpose, however, is clear: “Could every American school work so well for every child?” (1)

For the past decade, the debate over school reform has been fragmented into three debates: one of choice, one of freedom, and one of accountability. Choice remains dominated by the championing of voucher programs - an approach that this paper believes only serves to stratify the education system into schools of the poor and privileged. The continual rejection of voucher initiatives - most recently in Utah - speaks to the movement's ineffectiveness. Freedom has reached the forefront most specifically in the debate over charter schools - and with it, concerns over accountability. It is accountability, undoubtedly, that has been at the center of these three debates: it is a shorter word for the No Child Left Behind Act.

Rather disconcertingly, these ideas have remained more as points of disagreement than being embraced, as this paper sees it, as complementary. As this paper has argued, the No Child Left Behind Act is failing precisely because it lacks the flexibility (and incentives) necessary to enable schools to extend their efforts beyond the test alone. The result is an environment that avoids risks - and potentially great returns.

This paper is undoubtedly unwelcome and uncomfortable at the extremities of each sides of this debate. Its purpose has been to unite the underlying promise of choice, accountability, and autonomy. It must first confront the skeptics.

Rage against the machine
The first line of argument is the failure of federal oversight. "Since the [federal government] has been seriously involved in education 'we have suffered…a catastrophic decline in educational productivity, analogous to buying 1970s cars today and paying twice their original selling price,'" Neal McCluskey writes in Cato@Liberty, the public-policy institute's official blog. "So what’s the solution to all this?" Mr. McCluskey asks. "Universal school choice. Give parents control over public education money instead of giving it to the educrats, and make the schools compete ... Only then will the catastrophic flaw in top-down control at any level be eliminated, and the power structure for real accountability be in place." (2)

The source of his frustration is test-based accountability - which he argues, continues to diminish standards. Richard Rothstein writes in The American Prospect that this system "corrupts schooling in ways that overshadowed any possible score increases." One such consequence, he writes, is the goal distortion of undue emphasis placed on particular subjects and metrics. Even the specifics can be distorted: the No Child Left Behind Act demands proficiency of all subgroups, but by the very nature of statistical accuracy, the margin-of-errors spread farther— in short, “inaccurate accountability.” (3)

Kansas responds to this line of thought through part agreement and part argument. Mr. Rothstein’s questioning of goal distortion is more or less the same as this paper’s frustration with “entropy as the result of specificity” - and addresses it on several fronts. First, agreeing with Mr. Rothstein’s assessment of goal distortion, the paper’s understanding of a school’s effectiveness incorporates more than test scores.

It also agrees with Mr. McCluskey that accountability alone has and will continue to fail, but asks how will choice alone manage any better if schools cannot truly differentiate themselves from one another? Autonomy, too is needed. It is here that schools can move beyond merely teaching to the test, but transcending it, through curriculums and policies that are truly competitive.

This paper strongly disagrees that the federal government should not be a force in education—and questions how much so it truly has been ‘seriously involved’ in public schooling. The No Child Left Behind Act has failed precisely because it lacks assertiveness: without universal national standards—with which Mr. Rothstein supports, if proposed by a third party—it is in the states interest to limit standards to meet compliance.

The federal government must remain involved in the nation’s education, but it must transcend the ill-conceived frameworks in which it has been content with. In a nation wrecked by inequalities of funding and standards, it is the position of this paper that quite simply, the federal government must become a stronger force in this nation’s education. But it must be a focused force — uniting standards to reflect a united economic and democratic interest, and ensuring equality of opportunity, no less through guaranteed payment of tuition.

The opportunity is present, quite simply, to transcend beyond this wretched system of inherent inequality—and federal policies ineffective precisely because it accepts this as an unquestionable reality—to embrace a system that is truly both comprehensive and effective.

Dismal pickings
“School choice seems simple, straightforward,” editors Edith Rasell and Richard Rothstein write in School Choice, “but despite the apparent consensus, critics of school choice have raised a number of troubling questions. Will all parents be equally able with sufficient time and sophistication to choose the best school for their children? Will choice further stratify an already stratified educational system? In the past school choice led to segregated schools; will outcomes be better this time?” (4)

Amy Stuart Wells’ study of the choices of parents of inner-city African American students found that: Several factors, including expectations, racial attitudes, sense of efficacy, and alienation and isolation from the larger society, affect the amount of information parents and students have access to and the kinds of decisions they make. These factors … lead to educational decisions far removed from tangible measures of school quality. (4a)

Douglas Willms and Frank Echols offer an interesting insight on Scottish schools, where families are allowed to choose schools outside their neighborhood—the schools required to publish information on their curriculum, school discipline, and examination results. “Many families,” the summary reports “choose schools based on factors unrelated to achievement or academic quality.” They include, Jon Witte writes, geographic location and disciplinary climate as well. (4b,c)

Even the Scottish families who sought the highest academic quality were susceptible to a lack of meaningful information. Parents, Mary Driscoll writes, are also vulnerable to self-deception: adamant that their chosen schools were superior, in defiance of a reality that suggests otherwise. (4d)

Choice, Rasell and Rothstein believe, cannot be a “single factor solution.” They are right. Without an effective framework responsible for accountability—clearly and fairly assessing schools on all relevant factors so that parents may be truly informed, and thus empowered — choice is meaningless. The editors are correct—that unless an effort is made to unite standards by dismantling the unequal fifty-tier system of standards—school choice will only compound this fifty-tier mishap into a one-hundred tier monstrosity.

Without autonomy, schools cannot truly differentiate themselves—and will be continually bound to an uninspired approach to education that has continued to plague this nation’s schools.

What’s missing
This paper acknowledges that performance—no matter how defined—is not the sole influence in determining which school a child is sent to—nor should it be. This paper is not written in the interest of having students “pushed out of their neighborhood schools and onto a bus heading for the suburbs by an assertive parent.” (4) The failure of poor, urban and rural schools will not be fixed by outsourcing their children to better performing schools elsewhere.

School improvement must be organic, continuous, and close to home. It is achieved by giving school leaders the flexibility to embrace innovative programs such as KIPP as their school’s groundwork, and affording them the power to enforce. This power— ranging from what teachers to keep and recruit (and how much to pay them) — allows them to compete for talent.

With control of funding, school leaders can invest in their resources and facilities on which an environment that fosters education so fully depends upon. Thus empowered, no longer must school buildings be decrepit and void of books—not only because parents are equally empowered to move elsewhere, but because that there are no more excuses.

Think—but think clearly
This paper has not been disillusioned by either argument that education is in too much of the public interest to deny private (preferably, not corporate) interest, or too eager to embrace the fanciful notion that complete privatization can effectively regulate itself. John Kenneth Gailbraith sees the conclusion clearly: “I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I’m for that. Where the government is necessary, I’m for that… I’m in favor of whatever works in the particular case.”

This is a unique case— for, Jim Horning is right, “nothing is as simple as we hope it will be” — one that is at once faced with enormous responsibility and immense complexity. The government must exist in education to ensure the equality of standards and funding, to see to it that at minimum, all schools are fulfilling their responsibilities; the market exists to encourage schools, parents, and student to demand more of themselves, and be empowered to seek it.

John Chubb and Terry Moe of Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools finished their work with the conclusion that “private control means less bureaucratic influence; less bureaucratic influence leads to better school organization; and better school organization leads to higher student achievement.” (4)

This debate is a question of words—all of them political, and all of them polarizing. It need not be so. Private, autonomous, charter are all the same: independence. Choice is nothing more than the proper fit for school, student, and parent. The aim is to continue to diminish the variance in performance between schools - and now to address the large variance in performance within them without compromising diversity. This paper has recognized and addressed the very real risk of disillusioned parents by encouraging a greater transparency in total performance and satisfaction, while also encouraging schools in turn to work further in the students’ and their own, to indulge in unspeak, enlightened self-interest.

This encourages schools to actively recruit students—and also offers them the incentives to seek out and develop poor-performing students just as much so as the talented. It is then that schools embrace the challenge of an empowering education—and if such an equilibrium can be reached, this paper has succeeded.

(1) Schools That Work: America’s Most Innovative Public Education Programs. George H. Wood, Ph.D. Penguin Books. 1992.
(2) George's Will be Done on NCLB. Neal McCluskey. Cato@Liberty. The Cato Institute. 11 December 2007. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/12/11/georges-will-be-done-on-nclb/
(3) Leaving "No Child Left Behind" Behind. Richard Rothstein. The American Prospect. 17 December 2007. http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles;jsessionid=acp1XfueERQdql6HVB?article=leaving_nclb_behind
(4) School Choice. Ed. Edith Rasell, Richard Rothstein. Economic Policy Institute. 1993.
a - The Sociology of School Choice: Why Some Win and Others Lose in the Educational Marketplace. Amy Stuart Wells.
b - The Scottish Experience of Parental School Choice. J. Douglas Willms, Frank H. Echols.
c - The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Jon Witte.
d - Choice, Achievement, and School Community. Mary Driscoll.