School Choice: A Lesson from New Zealand

by Polly Cleveland

I have long supported school choice--confined to public schools. My son attended primary and middle school in District Three on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. District schools are subdivided into small units, each with its own program and principal, competing to attract students from all of Manhattan. At IS 44 on west 77th Street, my son's Science School was one of eight middle schools in the same building. Other schools included a theater school, a bilingual school and a school for children with disabilities. The schools shared sports and extracurricular activities--notably an award-winning choir, in which my son sang. Every morning city school buses brought children from both ends of Manhattan; some traveling over an hour. Although the neighborhood is mainly white, at least two thirds of the students were Black or Hispanic. Despite large class sizes, teaching was excellent. Parents were enthusiastic and involved. I myself accompanied the choir on tour; my husband helped with the annual Science Fair, other parents helped with painting and repairs, and managed the Sunday flea market on the playground.

Despite the success of District 3, and of similar experiments in Manhattan Districts 2 and 4, the experiment never spread to the whole of the New York School System. I attributed this failure to entrenched bureaucracies in other districts, and hoped the City would eventually impose choice on them. I was wrong.

Advocates for choice claim benefits not only for those children who actually transfer to new schools, public or private, but for those who don't. Competition, they say, will force sclerotic public schools to improve their performance. The same logic supports the movement for charter schools, which allow greater flexibility of curriculum within public school systems. However, studies of pilot choice and charter schools have begun to trickle in. While long-time advocates (like Caroline Hoxby) claim success, most studies show that, all else being equal, choice and charter schools on average contribute little to student performance.

Meanwhile, in 1992, in a fit of free-market enthusiasm, New Zealand implemented a top to bottom choice system within the public schools. Schools are ranked into 10 levels, based on socio-economic and ethnic composition of the students. Lower ranked schools, with proportionally more disadvantaged students, notably native Maoris, qualify for additional aid. The high-ranked schools are oversubscribed, and as a result need not compete for students. The lower-ranked schools do compete. With what consequences?

Education researchers Helen Ladd and Edward Fiske, who studied New Zealand schools in 2000, found that the most able students benefited, including upwardly-mobile students from poor backgrounds. However the competition for students seriously hurt teacher morale in lower ranked schools. Essentially, the top schools drain the rest of the system of the best students, the best teachers, the most energetic principals, and the most motivated parents. Moreover, the very fact that students can easily switch schools (except for getting into the top schools), makes the parents less committed to any particular school. Ladd and Fiske conclude that the New Zealand school system is polarizing and undemocratic.

I still, hesitantly, support choice within public schools. How can I say that my son's poor but ambitious classmates shouldn't have had the opportunity to attend a good school? Or that parents shouldn't have some choice of schools to fit their children's needs and interests? But it's a "fallacy of composition" to claim that because choice can improve a few schools it can save a whole system. Choice doesn't create a free lunch, removing the need for more resources and higher pay for teachers. Absent strong countervailing policies, choice simply makes public schools better reflect an unequal society. If we want the undeniable benefits of choice, we must fight all that much harder against the tax and other polices that rig the economy to benefit a wealthy elite.

The Ladd_Fiske article on New Zealand is available at http://www.pubpol.duke.edu/people/faculty/ladd/SAN01-16.pdf

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9/06/2006 10:40:00 AM