Vouchers and charters: Education debate in America now includes more choices

By Heather MacLeod McClain
CNN Interactive

ATLANTA (CNN) -- Education may be the most democratic institution of all in the United States. Since the end of the Civil War when most states began publicly funding schooling for their citizens, education has become a vehicle guaranteed to every citizen that can improve their life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It's also a source of much malcontent. In a new Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll, only 20 percent of those questioned gave public schools nationwide a grade of A or B. Although that number jumps to 47 percent when respondents are asked about their own community schools, the debate over how to improve those numbers has become a political goldmine to men and women seeking political office.

Two buzzwords in this political season are "vouchers" and "charter schools," entirely different concepts that both distill into an explosive idea: Who's better able to decide how a child should be educated -- the public educational system, or that child's parents?

And most importantly, are the children making (quantifiable) academic progress?

Vouchers and charters

Vouchers are documents or chits, usually issued by the state, that can be used by parents to pay tuition at an out-of-district public school, a private school and in some cases a religious school. The term is also used more broadly to describe school-choice proposals in which states would help pay tuition for children attending private or religious schools.

Charter schools are basically experiments, schools authorized (and funded or partially funded) by local school districts with permission and autonomy to color outside the lines, free from many of the regulations that apply to traditional public schools but with the onus of knowing its charter can be revoked if its performance contract isn't fulfilled.

By far, the more controversial of the two is the concept of vouchers, largely because critics decry the loss of public money to the public school system, and fear the blurring of the separation of church and state when tax money is used to buy tuition at parochial schools. At present, vouchers are used in five states, but more states have them in the legislative or referendum pipeline, including California and Michigan this fall.

It's anybody's guess how the public will vote on the subject of vouchers. In the most recent PDK/Gallup poll, participants were asked, "Which of these two plans would you prefer -- improving and strengthening the existing public schools or providing vouchers for parents to use in selecting and paying for private and/or church-related schools?"

In response, 75 percent of the poll-takers said they would choose improving existing public schools while 22 percent supported providing vouchers. Also, 59 percent said they would prefer the existing system be reformed, as opposed to 34 percent who wanted an alternative system found.

"This poll clearly shows, once again, the faith of the American people, particularly parents, in the public schools," said Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers, in a statement. "Given a choice between strengthening public schools or providing vouchers, Americans see it as a no-brainer -- they support the public schools."

Introducing competition

What links the ideas of vouchers and charter schools is the concept of free-market capitalist competition, in which a variety of types of schools compete to attract students. Competition, the thinking goes, will compel even the public schools to prove worthy.

"Our elementary and secondary educational system needs to be radically restructured," said Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman in an interview with The Washington Post in 1995. "Such a reconstruction can be achieved only by privatizing a major segment of the educational system -- i.e., by enabling a private, for-profit industry to develop that will provide a wide variety of learning opportunities and offer effective competition to public schools.

"The most feasible way to bring about such a transfer from government to private enterprise is to enact in each state a voucher system that enables parents to choose freely the schools their children attend. The voucher must be universal, available to all parents, and large enough to cover the costs of a high-quality education. No conditions should be attached to vouchers that interfere with the freedom of private enterprises to experiment, to explore and to innovate," said Friedman. He and his wife have been proponents of educational choice since the 1950s through the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, a non-profit organization promoting public understanding of the need for major reform in K-12 education and of the role that competition through educational choice can play in achieving that reform.

But how are the kids doing? Critics of vouchers say results, as measured by achievement tests, are mixed at best, while proponents can point to measurable improvements in certain districts in certain subjects.

Making gains

In a study of the Cleveland scholarship program, where students from low-income families have received vouchers to attend private schools since 1995, researchers Paul E. Peterson, Jay P. Greene and William G. Howell found that test score results in mathematics and reading showed gains of 15 and five percentile points, respectively, for scholarship students (relative to the national norm). Students in all grades experienced improvements in these test scores, according to this 1998 study.

When Greene, Peterson and Jiangtao Du studied the Milwaukee voucher program, they found that by the end of the fourth year of the program, students were performing six percentile points better in reading and 11 percentile points better in math on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills when compared to their peers. This 1997 study further found that this gain narrowed the gap between the test scores of whites and minorities between 33 and 50 percent.

In a different review of the same statistics, Princeton economist Cecilia Rouse found low-income minority students in Milwaukee choice programs increased their math achievement scores by 1.5 to 2.3 percentile points per year when tested on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. At the same time, Rouse's study found no positive outcomes for the Milwaukee voucher students in reading.

An evaluation of the Cleveland program led by Indiana University professor Kim Metcalf found that third-graders participating in the voucher program in 1996-97 did not achieve at a higher level (on reading, language, mathematics, science or social studies tests) than students who remained in public schools. The next year, Metcalf found that fourth-grade students in the voucher program scored significantly better than their public school counterparts in science and language. But when classroom variables (e.g., class size, teacher experience and teacher level of education) were accounted for, the voucher students achieved significantly higher scores only in language.

Jay P. Greene, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute on Policy Research, a nonpartisan, independent research and educational organization, said that several studies have found academic benefits to voucher programs, enough to warrant expanding the scope of the programs and the studies needed to evaluate them.

"I think the evidence at this point is consistent enough that we need to know what happens on a systemic basis, more than just the students who choose. We know that choice helps choosers. That evidence is clear. There are some areas of legitimate debate for there to be more programs and more studies. The uncertainty now is does choice improve educational systems as a whole. But I don't know we can know until we try it larger," said Greene.

Charters bloom locally

Currently, 2,069 charter schools operate in 33 states, although 36 have passed charter school laws. Each state's charter school law is "truly unique," in the words of the Center for Education Reform, a pro-educational choice lobbying group based in Washington, D.C. Some states have laws that encourage the development of numerous and innovative charter schools, while others have charter school laws in name only, with strong oversight that limits true independence. During the 1998-1999 school year, charter schools opened for the first time in Ohio, Idaho, Mississippi and Nevada. Arizona has more charter schools (350) than any other state, leading second-place California (234), Michigan (more than 175), Texas (more than 150) and Florida (112).

In an Education Week roundup of seven recent studies on charter school students' academic performance, results appeared mixed.

Students in 51 Michigan charter schools tested lower on state standardized tests than students in public schools; in Colorado, students in 51 charter schools performed stronger than state averages on state standardized tests. Los Angeles charter school students maintained or slightly improved their performance on standardized tests over time, when compared with a group of non-charter school students in the same district.

Also, in Arizona, the test scores of charter school students increased about the same amount as scores of students in regular public schools. By middle school, however, charter school students began to lag behind their public school equals, a gulf which is widened even more dramatically in high school.