Candace Williams

Does school choice lessen the achievement gap?

Tutorial Date: October 15, 2007

Problem

An achievement gap persists between black, Hispanic, and white students. An analysis of the 2002 National
Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) found that black and Hispanic 12th graders perform worse than white
8th graders on core skills (Thernstrom). Writing is the only subject where the percentage of students who achieve
“below-basic” (the lowest level of achievement on the test) is less than 40% - blacks test at the lowest levels in 5
out of 7 subjects tested, including 70% at the lowest level of math and 75% at the lowest level of science
(Thernstrom). Thernstrom goes as far to say that “The employer hiring the typical black high school graduate (or
the college that admits the average black student), is, in effect, choosing a youngster who has made it only
through the 8th grade. He or she will have a high school diploma, but not the skills that should come with it”.
There is evidence that suggests that the achievement gap has been increasing since the late 1980s (Perie, Moran,
& Lutkus, 2005).

School Choice

School choice is a major issue in debates about the achievement gap because of the de facto segregation of
schools created by the recent growth of non-white student populations and the choice of some parents to place
their children in segregated schools. Clotfelter found that in 2000, more than 70% of black students attended
majority non-white schools.

Proponents of school choice believe that putting less restriction on school markets will reduce segregation and
achievement gaps because market competition will push underperforming schools to improve. Expanded options
would also allowed for less-advantaged populations to choose less-segregated and higher-quality schools. They
cite evidence that disadvantaged students who take advantage of new schooling options are likely to attain
higher test scores and other benefits (Hoxby, 1994; Neal, 1997; Howell & Peterson, 2002).

Most opponents of school choice believe that school segregation is a cause of the achievement gap. They say
that students will sort themselves into high-quality schools based on race, motivation, and socioeconomic
advantage, leaving less-advantaged students concentrated in lower-quality education environments. They cite
evidence that the racial profile of a school influences parental choice (Levin, 1998; Witte, 2000; Lankford &
Wckyoff, 2005; Bifulco & Ladd, 2006).

There are many proposals to increase school choice. Most of these proposals include a combination of vouchers
and charter schools. A charter school is an autonomous public school that is exempt from many regulations but
has to produce certain results promised in a charter (example: higher test scores). Nonprofit organizations,
universities, or government entities usually establish charter schools. Right now, 39 states have charter school
provisions. There are about 2,700 schools that serve 700,000 students nationwide. New Zealand is an
international example of wide use of charter schools: all regional school boards have been abolished and each
public school is independent. A voucher grants parents a sum of money to pay for the education of their child at
a school different than the one they were assigned. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) makes children eligible for
vouchers if the Title I school that they attend does not make adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years.
Under NCLB, public charter schools are a school-choice option.

Charter Schools: The Case of Wisconsin and North Carolina

Studies of charter schools have shown mixed results. The Wisconsin Charter Program is an important model for
charter school systems because Wisconsin was one of the first states to create charter school legislation. The
program was established in 1993 with 20 schools. Now, there are 188 schools that serve 30,000 students. A
2007 by Witte, Weimer, Shober, and Schlomer found that charter school students outperformed traditional
school students. A 2007 Great Lakes Center study used the same datasets but compared demographically similar
Candace Williams
Does school choice lessen the achievement gap?
Tutorial Date: October 15, 2007
charter schools to each other. The center found that charter schools are performing at similar levels to
demographically similar traditional schools.

A study of North Carolina by Bifulco and Ladd (2006), found that charter schools increase racial segregation
and the achievement gap. In North Carolina, charter schools are large, serve diverse populations, and have
permissive policies (schools are exempt from many regulations, receive operating funding equal to traditional
public schools, and do not need district support to file for a charter agreement). Currently, there are 93 schools
that serve over 18,000 students. Although there are not legislated race quotas in place, each school must have a
transportation plan that makes sure that transportation is not an issue for families. Bifulco and Ladd found that
charter schools in North Carolina enrolled a larger percentage of black students (14% more than traditional
schools) and were racially unbalanced (had a different racial composition by 20 percentage points when
compared to traditional schools). Districts with the largest number of charters had students that were three times
as likely to be in racially unbalanced schools. The average black student attended a charter school that is more
than 70% black (instead of 50% black in traditional schools) and switched into a school with peers who had less
educated parents (blacks switched into schools where 30% of parents had 4 year degrees and whites switched
into schools where 60% of parents had 4 year degrees). Test-score gaps increased in charter school populations.
Charter school students experienced annual math gains .16 standard deviations smaller than traditional students
and experienced gains .27 standard deviations lower in two years than if they had enrolled in a traditional
school. The negative effects were 40% larger than blacks and even larger for blacks from less-educated
households. The study found that black children of less-educated parents were adversely affected by charter
schools. The study found that black families preferred schools where 40 – 60% of the students were black, but
were likely to choose schools that were heavily segregated since they did not have access to charter schools with
racially-balanced student profiles.

Legislated Racial Quotas in Charter Schools

It seems like charter schools will only be beneficial to African-American students if they have access to schools
with racially balanced profiles. Any school that has a concentration of poverty-issues (malnutrition, parents that
are not well-educated, social development issues, etc) is going to have too many problems to address with the
limited resources that schools have. Balancing the racial profile of schools may create better outcomes for
marginalized groups because the quality of the education environment increases. Data to support this idea comes
from school outcomes for African-Americans while the courts were legislating racial quotas (from the mid
1960s until the late 1980s) and outcomes after courts began to relax race regulations (the early 1990s). The
achievement gap narrowed considerably between the late 1960s and late 1980s and began to widen in the late
1980s. Analysis of private partial voucher programs in New York City, Datyon, Ohio, and Washington, D.C.,
found that African-American students had large gains (an average of 6.6 percentile ranking points over 3 years
(with a standard deviation of .3) on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills) when they switched from public schools to
private schools (Peterson, Wolf, Howell, and Campbell 2002). Since the scope of these programs were small and
did not change the socioeconomic or racial make-up of the private schools involved, at-risk students were able
to reap the benefits of the stable education environment. Maybe courts should increase school choice but
establish racial quotas for schools.