A Few Schools Will Fail and Close
--from The Cleveland Plain Dealer
by:  Howard Fuller
January 26, 2000 

Renewed debate about Cleveland's four-year old school choice program has been spurred by news of fraud at one of the program's 57 private schools.  This controversy requires some perspective.  In Milwaukee, we are concluding a decade of experience with school choice for low-income parents.  A program that once served 341 students at seven schools has grown to more than 8,000 pupils at 91 schools.

There is no guarantee that any school, public or private, will be exemplary.  Test scores at Milwaukee's public schools are near the bottom, compared with students statewide.  It seems that this is all-too-familiar for Cleveland parents, where I am told that public schools fail to meet any of 27 performance standards established by the State of Ohio.

Of course, private schools face problems, too.  In the early years of Milwaukee's program, three private schools were discovered to have serious educational and fiscal problems and were closed.  Other choice schools more recently were found to be operating with building code violations.  But problems are to be expected in any educational arena, public or private.  The test for success between these two models is which system is able to hold people and institutions accountable.  Failing public schools remain open and continue to receive public funds.  Failing private schools participating in choice programs are closed. 

The many students who benefit from Cleveland's scholarship program shouldn't be make to suffer because of the Islamic Academy of Arts and Science's isolated incident, especially when the total school choice experience demonstrates so many strengths.  Milwaukee's positive experience provides additional evidence about the benefits of choice, benefits that also have been seen in Cleveland.

• Although some claim that choice will increase racial segregation, in Cleveland and Milwaukee, the opposite has occurred.  Milwaukee's program has put more students in integrated classrooms.  Milwaukee's private schools have become more racially balanced--some even more balanced than public schools.  Harvard researcher Jay Greene has issued similar findings about Cleveland.

• Milwaukee has not lost its best public school students to private schools, contrary to opponents' fears.  The students from low-income families who participate had considerably lower test scores compared to other public school students.  A similar situation exists in Cleveland.

• Parent involvement and satisfaction have soared under Milwaukee's program.  Education Week, an independent publication, said: "The Milwaukee choice plan has deeply involved long-alienated parents in their children's schooling.  If choice parents were largely invisible in their old public schools, they are visible everywhere in the new schools.

Independent studies of the Cleveland program also have found high parent satisfaction.  In summary, a decade of evidence from Milwaukee shows that school choice empowers urban parents to make major decisions about their children's education.  It increases the involvement and satisfaction of these parents in their children's schooling.

Consider this from John Witte, Wisconsin's official choice evaluator from 1990 to 1995: "Choice provides a truly radical departure from education as usual.  It focuses attention on parents as critical actors in a system where they are often neglected or relegated to quite subservient support roles.  If packaged properly, it invokes deep value structures revolving around the twin poles of freedom of choice and unjust denial of equal opportunity."