School Choice Falling Short

A severe shortage of classroom space in large urban school districts is undermining a new federal education law’s promise to give 3.5 million poor children the choice of better public schools this fall.

One of the key features of the “No Child Left Behind” law, touted by the Bush administration as a remedy for ailing schools, offers students from low-income families the opportunity to switch from troubled campuses to better ones in the same district.

But in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where nearly 230,000 youngsters qualify for transfers at public expense, there are as few as 100 seats available in better schools. Similar shortages are expected to limit access to top schools in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Sacramento and other cities.

School administrators and others say the new decree will not better the prospects of the vast majority of low-income students in more than 8,600 struggling schools identified by government officials.

“There are no empty seats in the best public schools,” said Diane Ravitch, an education researcher at New York University and assistant secretary of education under former President Bush. “If you don’t have any choices, then it’s hollow.”

In fact, some educators now believe that the failure of large school systems to deliver choice for legions of poor students could give new impetus to the private school voucher movement, which was recently reinvigorated by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

In most districts, including L.A. Unified, parents whose children attend the affected schools have not yet been notified of their transfer options. But some who have heard of the program are dismayed that they may be unable to take advantage of it.

“It’s upsetting. I’d like to have the best for my son,” said Elva Garcia Mills, whose son Daniel attends Belmont High School, one of 120 Los Angeles campuses that students can theoretically leave this year. “Some schools are better than others.”

Officials with the U.S. Department of Education acknowledge that crowded school systems may need several years to comply with the law. But they expect districts to make a good-faith effort this first year.

“Our goal here is to change our understanding of how public education is delivered,” said Eugene Hickok, undersecretary of education. “This will be the first time that federal education policy speaks directly to parents.”

The idea of letting parents choose better public schools grew out of a political compromise in Washington.

The Bush administration early on favored giving families of children in faltering schools federally funded vouchers to pay for tutoring or tuition at private schools. Democrats balked at the idea for fear vouchers would drain money from public schools. The two sides settled on offering public school choice.

Then, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that a voucher program in Cleveland allowing students to attend private parochial schools at public expense did not violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

Both sides in the case predicted that the decision would trigger a national push for vouchers, charter schools and other forms of school choice. If public school choice falters, that could fuel the voucher movement, some educators say.

“It’s a very sensitive issue,” said Dennis Van Roekel, vice president-elect of the National Education Assn., the country’s largest teachers union. “When people criticize what currently exists, their solution is to say we need to take children somewhere else. That is not a solution.”

The public school transfer option is part of a sweeping education law that President Bush signed in January. It also requires states to test students annually and demands that schools have “highly qualified” teachers within four years.

Several large urban districts call the new requirements on teacher quality and school choice unrealistic. The school choice provisions put a financial burden on districts, which must use federal funds to pay for transportation, tutoring and other services.

Many educators say the law is unnecessary, pointing out that many school systems and states already allow students to transfer to their choice of schools and programs.

All of the under-performing campuses affected by the new law landed on the federal list because they failed to adequately raise test scores for two years running.

Districts are supposed to give priority to the lowest-achieving children from poor families at these schools. But large urban districts have an enormous number of children in that category.

In Chicago, for example, officials have just 2,800 openings for 125,000 eligible low-income elementary students from 179 schools.

So the district is offering transfers to just 29,000 students at 50 campuses. Parents will learn next week whether their children get to move.

The space crunch is even more severe in Los Angeles, where nearly one-third of 736,000 students are eligible to attend new schools this fall.

Most of the district’s open classroom seats already are occupied by students bused from overcrowded schools or by others who attend magnet programs.

District leaders have identified 50,000 of the lowest achievers for the transfer option. But officials roughly estimate that they will have between 100 and several thousand seats available when school starts.

Supt. Roy Romer argues that money would be better spent supporting the district’s academic reforms in reading, math and teacher training, which he says are driving up test scores in many lower-performing schools.

“Just to move children from one building to another building does not guarantee that they are going to learn that much better,” Romer said. “We can take the existing school and make it work.”

Lupe Mendoza-Fernandez, a parent and teacher in Los Angeles, agreed.

“Running away doesn’t solve the problem,” said Mendoza-Fernandez, who works at an elementary school on the target list and has two children at a high school also on the list.

When you send “kids out to other communities, the children do not have the same opportunities,” she said. “They can’t stay for extracurricular tutoring because they have to catch the bus.”

The new law presents small rural school districts with another set of problems. In far-flung communities, students will have to travel great distances for better schools. Children in one Wyoming town, for example, face a 70-mile commute to the next-nearest school in their district.

Administrators say that losing even a few students from a small school can skew test scores. And school officials worry about the economic fallout in small towns with shaky economies if families move to be closer to better schools.

These concerns weigh on Don Middleton, superintendent of the Clear Creek School District in the Rocky Mountains about 35 miles west of Denver.

Middleton is notifying parents of the 200-student Georgetown Elementary of their option to transfer to another campus about 15 miles away in Idaho Springs. But Middleton also is urging families to stay in Georgetown, a tourist stop on Interstate 70 about midway between Denver and Vail. The town is known to locals for its historic buildings and its looping railroad.

“I have trouble getting teachers in a place like Georgetown,” Middleton said. “I just don’t understand the concept of abandoning a school in places where communities are distant and towns are different. I don’t see how it’s a viable alternative.”

Some educators say local officials should consider more creative options, such as running multiple schools in the same buildings or offering education over the Internet.

“If the public school systems have their heart in this provision, which they don’t, they would be coming up with imaginative forms of choice in their districts,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., an assistant secretary of education in the Reagan administration and head of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a private Washington think tank.

“What we see all over the country are districts basically trying to get out from having to comply in any serious way,” he said.

Most school districts won’t know the actual impact of public school choice until they hear back from parents in the coming weeks. But a handful of school systems have already set their rosters, and they say interest has been lukewarm.

About 2,300 students were eligible in the Howard County Public School System of suburban Baltimore, for example, but only 63 students’ families asked for transfers, district officials reported.

In the nearby Baltimore City Public School System, 30,000 students qualified but only 347 students’ families asked for new schools.

Still, Baltimore has just 194 open seats. And that means at least 100 students who seek transfers will not get the opportunity.

Officials in both districts say that parents want to keep their children off buses. And, they believe, most families are satisfied with their local schools.

“You want to live up to the letter and spirit of ‘No Child Left Behind’ as a school district,” said Baltimore Supt. Carmen Russo. “But in the long run, the answer to this is that all of our schools have to be better so no one has to flee them.”