Schools of choice: expanding opportunity for urban minority students.
West, Martin R.
THE STUDY for which James S. Coleman is best known today makes no
mention of private education. The 1966 "Equality of Educational
Opportunity" (EEO) study--better known as the Coleman
Report--focused exclusively on the distribution of resources and student
achievement in America's public schools.
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But the report's ink was barely dry before Coleman injected
the issue of school choice into the discussion. "The public
educational system is a monopoly," he wrote in 1967, offering
choice only to "those who [can] afford to buy education outside the
public schools" and thereby amplifying the influence of family
background on student achievement. Later, he amended that observation,
noting that the opportunity to choose one's residence permits
school choice within the public sector as well. But in reality, only the
middle class and the affluent can fully exercise that choice, he pointed
out. "Public schools are no longer a 'common'
institution," Coleman wrote. "Residential mobility has brought
about a high degree of racial segregation in education, as well as
segregation by income... and it is the disadvantaged who are least able
to select a school... that continues to function reasonably well."
With such concerns in mind, Coleman jumped at the opportunity when
the U.S. Department of Education in 1979 asked him to lead another
national survey of American students, known as "High School and
Beyond," that would follow young people as they progressed from
10th to 12th grade and on into college. Unlike the EEO study, "High
School and Beyond" was to include both public and private schools.
The study team looked closely at Catholic schools, since Coleman deemed
the sample of non-Catholic private schools too unrepresentative to
warrant close analysis. They reported that students in Catholic high
schools both learned more and had higher graduation rates than their
public-school peers. Minority students in particular appeared to benefit
from the Catholic school experience.
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Both Coleman's methodological approach and his conclusions
about the superior effectiveness of Catholic schools sparked controversy
at the time and remain contentious today. Yet Coleman's work
triggered an avalanche of research comparing the success of public,
private, and (later) public charter schools in preparing students for
college and adulthood. The best of this work has taken advantage of the
lottery-based admissions processes used by many school-choice programs,
enabling researchers to draw far stronger conclusions about how schools
affect student outcomes than the methods Coleman employed, which relied
on simple regression techniques to adjust for differences in
students' family background. By comparing students who won the
opportunity to attend a school of choice to applicants who missed out,
scholars have provided experimental evidence roughly akin to that
generated by the randomized clinical trials used in medical research.
This research does not show that private or charter schools are
always more effective than district schools in raising student
performance on standardized tests--the indicator that is often put forth
as a measure of a school's success. In fact, there is little
evidence that using a voucher to enroll in a private school improves
student test scores, and any differences in the average performance of
charter and traditional public schools by this metric are modest
relative to the amount of variation in performance within the charter
sector.
The modern literature on school choice does, however, confirm two
promising patterns that Coleman was the first to document: First, the
benefits of attending a private school are greatest for outcomes other
than test scores--in particular, the likelihood that a student will
graduate from high school and enroll in college. Second, attending a
school of choice, whether private or charter, is especially beneficial
for minority students living in urban areas. These findings support the
case for continued expansion of school choice, especially in our major
cities. They also raise important questions about the government's
reliance on standardized test results as a guide for regulating the
options available to families.
Coleman's untimely death in 1995 kept him from witnessing the
developments that brought school choice out of the realm of academic
theorizing and to the forefront of efforts to equalize opportunity for
American students. His pioneering research, however, spurred the
development of an evidence base that has enlarged our understanding of
how school choice is changing American education.
A Catholic School Effect?
Even before Coleman embarked on "High School and Beyond,"
the role of private schools had become a salient topic in federal policy
debates. Enrollment in urban Catholic schools, originally designed for
an immigrant population, was falling, as Catholic families moved from
central cities to the suburbs (see Figure 1). This decline prompted
leading members of Congress to propose a federal tax credit for private
school tuition. Meanwhile, evangelical private schools in many southern
states were attracting more students, as white families fled
desegregated public systems. That trend invited a proposal by the
Internal Revenue Service in 1979 to require that private schools meet
strict racial-enrollment requirements in order to maintain their
tax-exempt status. Data from "High School and Beyond" were
expected to shed light on these and other hotly contested questions.
The study surveyed some 70,000 students in more than 1,000 public
and private high schools in the spring of 1980. Coleman and a team of
graduate students, including Sally Kilgore and Thomas Hoffer, issued
their initial findings the next year. Many non-Catholic private schools
had refused to participate in the study, so the researchers focused on
Catholic schools, which at the time still represented more than 60
percent of private school enrollment.
Their findings stunned education researchers and the public. The
Coleman team reported that sophomores and seniors at Catholic schools
outperformed their public-school peers by roughly a full grade level
after adjusting for differences in an extensive set of family background
measures. They also found that achievement gaps along lines of parental
education, race, and ethnicity were all smaller in Catholic schools than
in public schools. In other words, they ironically concluded,
"Catholic schools more nearly approximate the 'common
school' ideal of American education than do public schools."
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The findings came as no surprise to Coleman, but they sent shock
waves through the broader education-research community. As Paul E.
Peterson, Harvard professor of government, recounts, "It was about
as dramatic as the first proof of Einstein's theory of
relativity." The tacit assumption in the field was that most
families enrolled their children in Catholic schools out of religious
conviction, often at the expense of their academic success. Coleman and
his colleagues were subjected to blistering attacks in both academic
journals and the popular press, many of them questioning whether the
analysis had adequately controlled for the self-selection of students
from more-advantaged families into the tuition-charging Catholic sector.
The second round of data from "High School and Beyond"
enabled Coleman to provide a partial response to his critics. Rather
than merely studying the level at which sophomores were achieving, he
could now track the growth in their achievement between 10th and 12th
grade--effectively using initial performance levels to better capture
differences in family background between Catholic and public school
students.
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Results based on this second wave of data, published with Thomas
Hoffer in 1987, seemed to confirm Coleman's prior findings
aboutCatholic schools' success in boosting the achievement of
minority students. (Any test-score gains for white students were modest
at best.) More important, the results showed that students in Catholic
schools were far less likely to drop out of school before graduating,
and these positive effects were again more pronounced for black and
Hispanic students. Coleman and Hoffer showed that Catholic schools had
stronger disciplinary standards than public schools and that their
students were more likely to take advanced courses. But above all, they
attributed the success of Catholic schools to the high levels of
"social capital" available in the tight-knit communities that
many of these schools served.
How have Coleman's conclusions about Catholic high schools
held up over time? Dozens of studies have sought to confirm or refute
them, using either the original "High School and Beyond" data
or subsequent federal surveys tracking more-recent student cohorts. The
most widely cited among them is a 2005 paper by a trio of scholars who
employed advanced econometric techniques to analyze data from a national
survey of the graduating class of 1992. They concluded that Catholic
high schools "substantially increase the probability of graduating
from high school and, more tentatively, attending college" but
found "little evidence of an effect on test scores." Like
virtually all prior work, their results suggested that the effect on
educational attainment is largest for urban minority students.
Experimenting with Vouchers
Of all the critiques of Coleman's research on Catholic
schools, one was particularly cogent. Studying how Catholic schools
affect students who already attend is an imperfect way to learn about
what would happen if the government were to expand access to private
schools through vouchers or tuition tax credits. Students who are able
to enroll in private schools only with government support could well
differ from tuition-paying students in ways that make them less likely
to reap the same benefits. And nonreligious private schools might not be
able to draw on the community sources of social capital that Coleman
deemed vital to Catholic high schools' success. Only once
policymakers began experimenting with school vouchers in the 1990s did
it become possible to study the consequences of expanding access to
private schools to families who could not afford that option on their
own. As of 2014, 19 states operated one or more school-voucher programs,
enabling some 140,000 students to attend private schools with government
support.
In an authoritative 2015 review of the literature on school
vouchers, economist Dennis Epple and colleagues concluded that "the
evidence does not suggest that awarding students a voucher is a
systematically reliable way to improve their educational outcomes."
But the researchers tempered this negative conclusion, saying,
"There is also evidence that in some settings, or for some
subgroups or for specific outcomes, vouchers can have substantial
positive effects."
The federal government's official evaluation of the
Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program points to a common
pattern that has emerged amid these mixed results. Using an experimental
design, the study found no clear effects of using a voucher to enroll in
a private school on students' test scores four years later. Yet the
evaluation also found that using a voucher improved students'
chances of graduating by as much as 21 percentage points.
Other studies corroborate these positive effects on educational
attainment. For instance, a 2015 study of a privately funded voucher
program in New York City found that being offered a voucher to attend a
private school increased college enrollment rates among black and
Hispanic students by 4.4 percentage points, a 10 percent gain relative
to the control group, and also increased bachelor's degree
completion rates among black and Hispanic students by 2.4 percentage
points, a 27 percent gain. As in the case of the Washington, D.C.,
program, however, the students did not experience test-score gains as a
result of the program.
The latest research on the nation's longest-running
school-voucher initiative, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program,
although based on nonexperimental methods, shows a similar pattern of
results. A 2013 study found that students using vouchers to attend
private schools, 70 percent of whom were black, were 5 percent more
likely to enroll in a four-year college after graduating than were a
carefully matched sample of students in Milwaukee public schools. The
same program in recent years has generally not shown positive effects on
students' test scores.
What explains the positive impacts of private schools on the amount
of schooling students complete, even in the absence of test-score gains?
Many private schools do lay claim to a broader range of educational
goals than do their public-sector counterparts. Schools affiliated with
Notre Dame's Alliance for Catholic Education, for example, aim to
prepare students for "college and heaven." It has been
difficult to study the effects of private school attendance on
indicators of students' character development, such as their
behavior in school, owing to differences in disciplinary norms between
sectors. However, a study by economists David Figlio and Jens Ludwig
shows that students who attended a Catholic high school in the early
1990s were less likely to be arrested and to engage in risky behaviors,
including teen sexual activity and cocaine use. Thomas Dee has found
that students who attended Catholic high schools are more likely to vote
as adults. And in numerous experimental studies, voucher parents express
far more satisfaction with their child's education than do their
public-school counterparts--particularly in areas such as discipline and
safety.
Empirical research of the kind Coleman initiated will never be able
to offer a comprehensive assessment of how private school attendance,
with or without the assistance of a voucher, affects students'
development across all relevant dimensions. Indeed, the fact that
families differ in the weight they place on different educational goals
is a key rationale for policies that expand parental choice. What is
clear, however, is that both Catholic schools and voucher programs for
low-income families show stronger effects on students' educational
attainment than on their achievement as measured by standardized tests.
Research that focuses solely on the latter is likely to understate the
benefits conferred by schools of choice.
Lotteries for Charter Schools
In recent years, most of the growth in school choice has come
through the charter sector. Forty-three states have laws permitting
charter schools, which now enroll roughly 5 percent of American
students. Charter schools are privately managed and typically enjoy more
autonomy than their district-run counterparts. Unlike most private
schools, however, they are required to participate in state testing
systems and can be closed by their authorizers if they fail to meet
performance goals.
How does the performance of charter schools compare to that of the
traditional public schools their students would otherwise attend? Again,
the best evidence on charter school performance comes from studies
exploiting the lottery-based admissions processes of schools that are
oversubscribed. As in the case of private schools, the only short answer
is: it depends.
Consider a series of recent studies of Massachusetts charter
schools conducted by researchers at Harvard, the University of Michigan,
and MIT. They demonstrate that attending an oversubscribed charter
middle or high school has a clear positive effect on students' math
and reading achievement, but also find that this "on-average"
result obscures dramatic variation. In Boston and the state's other
urban centers, each year of attendance at an oversubscribed charter
middle school increases students' achievement by roughly 15 percent
of a standard deviation in reading and 32 percent of a standard
deviation in math. The latter result is large enough to close more than
two-thirds of the black-white achievement gap in the state while
students are in middle school. In contrast, attending a charter middle
school in a suburban or rural area lowers students' achievement in
both reading and math--despite the fact that these schools are popular
enough to hold admissions lotteries (see Figure 2).
This pattern of test-score effects--showing positive results in
urban areas with many low-income students, but neutral or even negative
effects elsewhere--also appears in a national study of oversubscribed
charter middle schools funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Why
the drastic differences? Urban charter schools are more likely to take a
"no excuses" approach that features high expectations, strict
student discipline, and longer school days and years--a formula that
seems to offer a reliable path to higher test scores. In non-urban
areas, where many students achieve at reasonably high levels even
without a charter school option, parents may not be looking for this
approach. Indeed, many non-urban charter schools have a distinctive
curricular emphasis, such as a focus on the arts, that may explain their
sustained popularity despite a lack of success in improving test scores.
Of course, the lottery-based approach to studying charter schools
has a significant drawback: it can only be used where schools are
oversubscribed, and focusing only on the most popular charter schools
may well provide too rosy a view of the sector's performance. But a
large body of evidence based on nonexperimental methods paints a
consistent picture of the effects of charter schools. A comprehensive
2013 study of charter schools in 27 states conducted by Stanford
University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO)
found that charter schools, on average, have no effect on students'
math achievement and only a small positive effect in reading. Yet this
same study showed more-substantial positive effects in both subjects for
low-income black and Hispanic students. And a separate CREDO study that
focused on charter schools in 41 urban areas with a large charter
presence found that, on average, charter schools in these cities have
strong positive effects on achievement that are again largest for
low-income black and Hispanic students (see Figure 3). In short, when it
comes to improvements in student test scores, the benefits of charter
school attendance are clearly greatest for low-income urban minority
students.
Nascent research on the effects of urban charter schools on other
outcomes also shows promising results. Students at the same Boston
charter high schools that have boosted test scores are also more likely
to take and pass Advanced Placement courses and to enroll in a four-year
rather than a two-year college. In a study of the Promise Academy middle
school in the Harlem Children's Zone, economists Will Dobbie and
Roland Fryer found that attending the oversubscribed school sharply
reduced the chances of teenage pregnancy (for girls) and incarceration
(for boys). Promise Academy students were also more likely to enroll in
college immediately after high school and to choose a four-year school.
These effects are all larger than what would have been predicted based
on the same students' test-score gains, leading the researchers to
conclude that "high achieving charter schools alter more than
cognitive ability." Finally, the only study to have estimated the
effect of charter school attendance on students' job prospects,
although based on nonexperimental methods, finds that attending a
Florida charter school increased students' earnings as adults
despite having no impact on their standardized test scores. Once again,
the broader lens offers the more favorable view of school choice.
Choice among Choice
As the evidence on school choice continues to grow, it is tempting
to compare the results achieved by school voucher programs to those of
charter schools--to ask whether one option or the other represents a
more promising avenue for expanding educational opportunity. School
reform advocates and policymakers need to decide where to invest their
energies, and the charter sector's growth does appear to have
played a role in the recent decline in private school enrollment. Most
obviously, some Catholic schools have elected to convert themselves into
charters, sacrificing their religious identity (at least during school
hours) to gain access to a stable funding stream.
In my view, the available research does not point to a clear
winner. Indeed, the findings show striking similarities between the
results of the two approaches. The chief beneficiaries of policies that
expand parental choice appear to be urban minority students--precisely
the group that Coleman argued has the least choice in a public school
system in which school assignment depends on where a family lives. And
the benefits of school choice for these students extend beyond what
tests can measure.
Policymakers continue to wrestle with the question of how best to
regulate systems of school choice. In recent years, charter school
authorizers in some cities have taken on a more active role in managing
the options available to families--closing some charter schools and
allowing others to expand, using student test results as the primary
yardstick of success. Meanwhile, some states have required private
schools accepting voucher students to participate in state testing
systems, blurring what had been a distinction between the two
approaches. These efforts aim to produce more consistent quality among
both charter and private schools and to equip parents with information
to make sound decisions regarding their child's schooling. Yet such
measures, when used to limit the options available to families, assume
that overall test score results at a particular school can accurately
indicate the long-term benefits for an individual child of attending
that school. Increasingly, researchers are casting doubt on that
assumption.
Test scores are strong predictors of a student's success in
college and the labor market, and ensuring transparency about how
students in schools of choice are faring academically is essential.
Schools that consistently fail to equip many of their students with
basic skills should not receive public funding. But policymakers should
keep in mind that parents may be the best judges of whether a specific
school is a good fit for their child--an environment that will keep the
student engaged through graduation and increase the likelihood that he
or she will attend college.
The question of how we can most effectively broaden school choice
for America's families lies at the heart of the movement to reform
K-12 education. Only continued experimentation with multiple approaches
will make it possible to inform this debate with evidence. Were he still
alive, James S. Coleman would surely be leading the effort to do just
that.
by MARTIN R. WEST
Martin R. West is associate professor of education at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education and executive editor of Education Next.
Charters More Effective in Urban Areas and with Minorities (Figure 2)
(2a) A Massachusetts study found that the st ate's urban charters
produce large learning gains, but in nonurban charters effects are
negative.
Urban charters Nonurban charters
Middle school High school Middle school High school
Math 0.32 (**) 0.34 (**) -0.12 (**) -0.02 (**)
English
language arts 0.15 (**) 0.26 (**) 0.14 (**) -0.05 (**)
(2b) The same study found that urban charter schools boost scores for
black and Hispanic students, but gains for white students are
considerably smaller.
Black/Hispanic White
Middle school High school Middle school High school
Math 0.42 (**) 0.38 (**) 0.13 (**) 0.17 (**)
English
language arts 0.21 (**) 0.33 (**) 0.03 (*) -0.06 (**)
(*) Significant at 95 percent confidence level
(**) Significant at 99 percent confidence level
Source: Angrist et al., "Explaining Charter School Effectiveness,"
American Economic journal: Appl ied Econo mics, 2013, 5(4)
Note: Table made from bar graph.
Nationwide, Charters Do Better in Urban Regions (Figure 3)
Across 41 urban regions in math and reading, 43 percent and 38 percent
of charters respectively outperformed their local district schools, but
only 24 percent and 16 percent respectively did worse. Nationally, less
than 30 percent of charters outperformed their local district schools,
on average.
(3a) Comparison of charters to local district schools, in urban areas
Worse Same Better
Math 24 33 43
Reading 16 46 38
(3b) Comparison of charters to local district schools, nationally
Worse Same Better
Math 31 40 29
Reading 19 56 25
SOURCE: Center for Research on Education Outcomes, "Urban Charter
School Study Report on 41 Regions," 2015
Note: Table made from bar graph.
