Why All Schools Should Compete, and Not Just in Sports

January 23, 2004
Jim Pumarlo

The very mention of “school choice” often prompts a cry of foul from many in the public school establishment. It happened again last month. It’s enlightening however, to scrutinize the players in this round.

Superintendents of public districts complained about an aggressive marketing campaign for students launched by a neighbor. The renegade was the Mounds View Public School District. Both the strategy and philosophy of Mounds View officials are instructive in the broader school choice debate.

“We compete in athletics,” Mounds View Superintendent Jan Witthuhn responded to critics, in a December 19th report in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “Now we compete academically.”

And from Colin Sokolowski, the district’s public relations director, “We have to treat our students like customers.”

Nearly 90,000 students attend nonpublic schools statewide, according to March 2003 data compiled by the Minnesota Department of Education. For comparison, public school enrollment totaled nearly 847,000.

But, as districts adjacent to Mounds View discovered, educational choice is not limited to private schools. More than 30,000 students leave one public school to attend another outside their districts through open enrollment. Another 12,000 attend charter schools, and 16,000 are home-schooled.

One voluntary program has been significant in expanding choice in Minneapolis. “The Choice is Yours” is a desegregation program created as the result of a 1995 lawsuit filed by the Minneapolis NAACP against the state. Eight suburban school districts each reserve 500 seats annually for eligible low-income families.

Mounds View is not among those districts. Still it’s refreshing to see public schools that are unafraid to advance their strengths and compete for students.

Minnesota Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke announced this month that the department will continue to offer poor children in Minneapolis better access and free busing to suburban and city schools outside their neighborhoods. Her decision followed an outside evaluation of “The Choice is Yours” that said parents liked the increased options. The report also showed that students who selected suburban schools typically fared better on tests than their Minneapolis counterparts.

It’s too early to assess the impact of the program on reducing the achievement gap among whites and low-income/minority kids. But the report did say families cited academics for selecting a particular school. And 99 percent of the parents who enrolled children in suburban schools said they would recommend the program to others.

The parents’ responses emphasize what should be the state’s mission in education: to focus on individual student needs.

Many poor kids in Minneapolis are fortunate to have an option to attend schools that meet their expectations. The Minneapolis student population is about 48,500. Of those, 4,300 are enrolled in charter schools or other open-enrollment options, including 1,100 in The Choice is Yours.

Still, those alternatives are limited to public schools.

True choice means providing the opportunities for parents to send their children to schools that best satisfy their needs. It’s unfortunate, but private schools are too expensive for many families. Yet national statistics show that, overall, private schools are doing better at narrowing the academic achievement gap between whites and minorities.

Minnesota must continue to be a national leader in school choice. One needs only look at the dreadful statistic that nearly 50 percent of blacks in Minneapolis public schools fail to graduate. Or the dismal attempt in the 2003 Legislature to place a moratorium on charter schools, which are particularly popular with low-income and minority families.

Little headway on school choice is expected to be made in this legislative session. But there is opportunity to lay groundwork for 2005 through Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s Education Finance Reform Task Force. Its report is due in February.

The task force, among its charges, is instructed to ensure that resources are distributed equitably among students, including additional dollars for “at risk” students. That seems to necessarily demand a process for letting the money follow students to public or private schools of their choice.

Pilot projects for alternate finance models will be featured at the task force’s Feb. 9 meeting. Members ought to embrace this timely opportunity to commit to bold innovations that encourage more schools to emulate Mounds View’s aggressive spirit.

-Jim Pumarlo is Senior Fellow for Education Policy at Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis.