The parental choice fallacy in education reform debates.

• Author: Dwyer, James G.
• Position: Symposium: Educational Innovation and the Law

INTRODUCTION

Some tout parental school choice as a strategy for promoting, among other school-related goods, educational innovation. (1) This Article offers clarifying and skeptical thoughts about that position. It first explains what "educational innovation" and "parental choice" mean. It then considers what limitations on this strategy might arise from existing legal regulations, from market forces, or from ethical obligations to children. Finally, the Article explains why parental choice is also unlikely to improve education for the children most in need of a better academic environment and suggests an alternative approach to student reassignment that is much more likely to do so.

I focus on educational innovation because this Article appears in a symposium entitled "Educational Innovation and the Law." I suspect the organizers of the symposium did not really have educational innovation in mind, but rather one of the other concepts discussed below--in particular, improvement of educational quality. Nevertheless, it is interesting to talk about educational innovation and its connection or lack thereof with parental choice. I do not have a position on whether innovation is needed. Presumably one would take the position that it is needed after concluding that existing pedagogies are inadequate. Like most other participants in the school reform debate, I know very little about primary or secondary school curriculum and instructional techniques, so I would not presume to make such a judgment. My own ignorance is part of the reason I am skeptical about relying on parental choice to promote educational innovation, or even to improve schools' delivery of existing curricula and pedagogies. Being a parent has not transformed me into the omniscient being that defenders of parental entitlement sometimes seem to suppose all parents are. Rather than argue that innovation is needed, then, I simply accept that some people think it is and address what obstacles might exist to using expanded parental choice as a means to achieving this aim.

Part I clarifies what I understand educational innovation to be and distinguishes that from other concepts at play in the school choice debate. Part II considers various limitations on innovation in curriculum and instruction and gives reasons for skepticism about reliance on parental choice as a means to any aim other than gratifying parents. Part III offers an alternative, more child-centered approach to student reassignment.

1. WHAT IT MEANS TO PROMOTE EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION THROUGH PARENTAL CHOICE

   "Educational" means relating to instruction of students, providing knowledge and information, and fostering skills through a learning process. (2) "Innovation" is the act or process of inventing or introducing some new thing or way of performing a task. (3) Thus, "educational innovation" means creating a new pedagogy, a new way of instructing and training students. This is distinct from several similar concepts.

   First, educational innovation is distinct from educational quality, which means success at achieving educational aims, aims that could be as old as the hills and that might be achieved by long-established pedagogical methods. Presumably those who advocate parental choice as a strategy for promoting educational innovation hope that this will improve educational quality, but the two things are distinct. Innovation can actually lower quality, as arguably occurred when schools switched to factory-prepared meals for school cafeterias. (4) Conversely, one might improve educational quality without innovating, simply by making teachers work harder at applying their current approach. One might also improve quality by having teachers switch to a different, but already established, approach. Thus, innovation is also different from change; innovation is a change to something new.

   Because "educational" refers to what teachers do in the classroom, "educational innovation" is also not equivalent to innovation in school financing or administration. Parental choice has become almost synonymous with directing taxpayer money in different directions, rather than only to neighborhood-based public schools, but such funding decisions are far different from decisions about how best to teach children math, science, reading, etc. What success some charter schools appear to have had seems to be the result mostly of administering schools in a different way--for example, by firing bad teachers more readily, being more active in recruiting and more selective in hiring new teachers, and making everyone work longer hours (all of which, incidentally, are traditional rather than novel administrative practices). (5) One could do all these things while expecting teachers to apply only traditional pedagogies.

   "Parental choice" in the school reform discourse typically means empowering parents to choose, from at least two options, which school their children attend. The school options can range over a tremendous variety of public, private, and quasi-public offerings. The state and the private market together can make available: neighborhood-based public schools, attendance at any public school in the family's school district, choice among a subset of all public schools in a district, magnet schools, schools in a different school district, quasi-public charter schools, secular private schools, religious private schools, and home instruction.

   We can distinguish parental choice so understood from at least two other ways by which a child's academic course might be determined. First, there can be choice within a given school. Most public middle and high schools offer parents and students a variety of options internally for specific courses. There are typically core subjects that all must take, but parents and students might be able to choose from among different sections of those courses taught at different levels or with different approaches. And there are elective courses from which parents and students choose a subset. Some schools boast special programs that comprise a cluster of elective courses in a particular field, such as the fine arts or the physical sciences. Such intra-school freedom in course of study is not usually included within the meaning of "parental choice" in school reform debates, even though it too might generate the competitive dynamic that advocates for parental choice think will promote innovation and better quality education.

   A second alternative to parental choice from among private and public options is to have someone other than parents choose from among different schools or programs. For example, state legislatures could codify a rule that students in the bottom five percent of any public school must enter into a special program within that school or must move to another school that will better serve them. Another possibility is that state or local officials could delegate to a multi-disciplinary team--including, perhaps, teachers, guidance counselors, and social workers--the task of identifying the students in each public school who are most in need of a different educational program or school. There is curiously little attention given in education reform debates to the question of who is really in the best position to make school assignment decisions in such a way that maximizes overall student well-being. Correspondingly, advocates for parental choice have much to say about how choice spurs competition, but little to say about why it is best to make parents the choosers, given that choices by other decision makers might also spur competition, perhaps even better competition.

2. WHAT LIMITATIONS EXIST ON PARENTAL CHOICE AS A STRATEGY FOR EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION

   Most of what has been written about limitations on parental choice programs addresses potential constitutional obstacles. There is a large literature, in particular, debating whether the Establishment Clause precludes states from channeling funds to religious schools, along with other private schools. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (6) largely answered that question, in the negative. (7) I have taken the position that voucher programs that include religious and other private schools are not merely permissible constitutionally, but in fact mandatory--as a right not of parents but of the children in those schools--so long as the state attaches sufficient regulation and oversight to ensure that the money is used to provide secular education. (8) In this Article, I consider what obstacles to educational innovation might arise from other sources--namely, existing school regulations, market forces, and ethical obligations to children. I conclude that the first of these makes a private school choice policy more likely to produce educational innovation, but that the other two counsel in favor of public or quasi-public school choice as a means to innovative programming. In any event, I find much reason to doubt that parental choice promotes educational innovation or educational improvement.

   1. Regulatory Limitations

      States heavily regulate public schools, dictating in substantial detail both the education provided, including curriculum and assessment, and administrative policies such as hiring standards, disciplinary measures, and safety practices. (9) As critics of the No Child Left Behind Act (10) have complained, there is little freedom in public schools today for teachers to experiment with new approaches or even to use well-established teaching techniques that would require deviating from the prescribed curriculum or foregoing time for standardized test preparation. (11)

      In sharp contrast, states leave private schools virtually unregulated, giving them complete freedom as to what and how they teach. (12) States typically require only that private schools report their enrollment numbers, profess to teach certain core subjects, and comply with health and safety codes. (13) How they teach any subject...