Voucher Plan’s School Impact Seen as Limited : Study: Private California schools are so full they could accommodate only 1% of the other students.

The school-voucher initiative on the 1994 ballot will have far less impact than both sides claim, mostly because California’s private schools are so full that they could accommodate only about 43,000--less than 1%--of California’s public school students, a new study has found.

In a federally funded survey of the state’s private schools, the Southwest Regional Laboratory found that 75% would be likely or very likely to accept students transferring from public schools, but most are already operating at or near capacity.

Although many schools said they would expand classroom space to accommodate new transfers, it would take a “phenomenal expansion” or the reopening of many presently closed Catholic schools to create openings for even as few as 4% of California’s 5 million public school students, the report said.

“We conclude it is well beyond the capacity of existing private schools to accommodate so many students. . . . Therefore, a statewide voucher program will not significantly affect public school enrollment,” said co-authors Marcella R. Dianda and Ronald G. Corwin.

Backers of the voucher initiative attacked the study as biased and incomplete.

The initiative would give the parents of school-age children in California vouchers worth about $2,600 per child, which the parents in turn could use toward private or parochial school tuition. Opponents fear that it could sweep thousands of children--and the public funding that accompanies them--out of a school system already reeling from years of budget cuts.

Advocates of the voucher program have said it would force the public schools to improve by having to compete with private schools for students. But one of the authors of the study, Corwin, said voucher-supporters are “probably overselling their argument” because so few public school students will have access to private schools.

The report appeared to confirm one fear expressed by opponents of the voucher system. It would make private schools available to a “select group of public school students,” the report said.

Private schools informed the researchers that they are unlikely to lower their admissions standards to include more low-achieving students. They tend to enroll fewer special-education or limited-English-speaking students than public schools, the report said.

The researchers found that private schools that charge low to moderate tuition (up to $4,999 annually) are more inclined to accept public school students and have more space to do so than schools charging more than $5,000 a year.

“Because substantially fewer high-tuition and non-religious schools are receptive to a voucher program, public school parents wishing to redeem a voucher will find fewer of the most costly and, in some cases, most academically prestigious private schools participating in the program,” the report said.

The study also found that:

* Catholic and other religious schools are more inclined than non-religious schools to accept voucher students, but they also tend to be fuller: More than half are running at 95% capacity.

* Sixty-two percent of schools willing to accept students with vouchers charge less than $2,600 per year, the amount of the proposed voucher. But 40% of those that charge $2,600 or less said they would increase their annual tuition if they participated.

* Schools most likely to be open to voucher students have larger classes than other private schools, often as big as 32 students per class in lower-tuition private schools. “Parents who are looking to the private sector as a source of small classes may be disappointed,” the researchers said.

* Despite a stereotype, minorities are well represented in private schools, especially in Catholic and low-tuition schools. “A voucher program could even nudge some of the more elite schools toward greater diversity,” the authors said.

* Two-thirds of schools willing to accept voucher transfers reported that more than half of their teachers are certified to teach in California public schools.

The 26-year-old Southwest Regional Laboratory is a nonprofit research facility that gets its contracts and grants from federal, state and local agencies, including school districts. Corwin is a visiting sociologist at Southwest from Ohio State University. Dianda is Southwest’s program manager and holds a doctorate in curriculum and evaluation.

They mailed questionnaires to all 2,717 private schools in California that could participate in a voucher program based on enrollment (those with 25 or more students). Thirty-seven percent, or 1,004 schools, responded. Corwin said the sample is reliable because the respondents are a representative sampling of private schools across the state.

The study was immediately attacked by the Excellence Through Choice in Education League, the backers of the voucher initiative. Executive Director Kevin D. Teasley accused the researchers of bias, noting that Southwest Regional Laboratory’s board of directors is dominated by public school officials. “It’s an outrage,” Teasley said. “They are presenting themselves as nonpartisan, and they obviously have an agenda.”

Teasley said the researchers improperly concluded that there would be few spaces for public school students in private schools. They considered only expansion of existing schools, without projecting that scores of new private schools could open to meet the demand created by passage of the voucher program, Teasley said.

Survey Highlights

Here are the major findings of a statewide survey of private schools:

Three-quarters of the private schools in California would likely accept voucher-redeeming students from public schools.

Most private schools are nearly full. Under existing conditions, fewer than 1% of California’s public school students could find a seat in a private school.

Public school educators who worry that vouchers will enable private schools to skim off the brightest students from public schools are at least partially correct. Private schools that will accept voucher-subsidized transfers tend to admit students performing at grade level.

Those who maintain that vouchers will foster competition between public and private schools and that public schools would benefit from that competition are probably overselling their argument.

Catholic and other religious schools view vouchers more favorably than non-religious private schools.

Vouchers are not likely to produce more classroom capacity, only tuition relief for parents of existing students.

Source: Southwest Regional Laboratory