Market-style incentives to increase school choice have opposite effect

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://news.illinois.edu/news/09/0715schools.html

Market-style incentives to increase school choice have opposite effect

7/15/09 | Phil Ciciora, Education Editor | 217-333-2177; [e-mail]

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – A market-based approach to increasing school choice actually leads to fewer educational opportunities, particularly for disadvantaged students in urban areas, according to a University of Illinois expert in education.

As schools compete for students to improve their market position, the demands of the market often trump specific educational policy goals such as increased equality and access to better-performing schools, according to Christopher Lubienski, a professor of educational organization and leadership at the U. of I. College of Education and primary author of the study published in the August issue of the American Journal of Education. The study examined school options in three major metropolitan areas.

“When there’s competitive incentives for schools to recruit students, new market hierarchies form,” Lubienski said. “Some schools consciously avoid riskier students because they see themselves as up-market, and therefore serve a more up-market clientele. That leaves riskier students marginalized and excluded from the better schools.”

Lubienski said free-marketers have been touting school choice and markets in education for years as a way to level the socio-economic playing field. School choice was seen as a way of cutting across boundaries, of opening up private schools to students who ordinarily couldn’t afford tuition or didn’t live in wealthy districts. Competition for students was expected to generate greater educational opportunities, leading to more equitable access for students across varied, and often segregated, urban areas.

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[imdjh]

1. I don't get the "school of the arts" and "school of science" stuff.

These specialized schools seem to be similar in mindset if not effect to the British system of testing student in 8th grade to see if they will go to academic high school or trade school.

The real problem is that all of these schools tend to be a workaround to justify not having neighborhood schools. Go back to proximity zoning, fund the schools equally per student. Oh, and give all high school students the choice of attending an academic or vocational degree program.

[noamnety]

2. funding the schools equally per student

at this point in our history reinforces existing institutional racism and inequities.

[imdjh]

3. Equal funding within a school system.

I'm not proposing that schools should have equal funding per student nationally. The school systems don't have equal costs nationally, moreover the coastal zones would be subsidizing the interior zones where lots of things cost less.

[noamnety]

4. Do you think there's any realistic chance at all

That people in power will agree that the students in Detroit should get double the tax-payer funding of students in Bloomfield Hills until achievement and facilities are leveled out?

[imdjh]

5. I can't imagine why they would.

What is the present funding of each? And how does that directly relate to achievement?

BTW, equal funding referring to instructional funding. Building costs are always going to be moved around. In the 1970's new schools were being built in new suburbs, now new buildings are replacing the old ones in urban areas, in a couple of years the suburbs will need to be rebuilt and the cycle continues.

[noamnety]

7. The present funding now

is that bloomfield hills gets far more per student than the detroit kids and it has been that way for decades, so there is a legacy of building maintenance problems, underfunded technology, underfunded basic supplies, in addition to the legacy of overcrowded classrooms. That becomes generational, students achieve less in school, they learn to hate reading, they are less likely to read to their own children, their children begin school behind the achievement level of students in blooomfield hills.

The cycle you talk about is a myth, this cycle where money is shifted to the suburbs until they start to outperform urban schools, then money is shifted back to urban areas, until they start to outperform the suburbs. That cycle has always only gone in the one direction, and the detroit school district has never had better facilities than bloomfield hills.

The funding discrepancies have historically been even worse in some areas. (Texas comes to mind, where students in affluent areas have received as much funding in one year as the kids in minority areas received during their ENTIRE K-12 experience.)

That's why I have trouble buying into any argument based on a nonexistent hypothetical that we will fix the problem by funding the schools in an equitable way. I think we all know that's not going to happen because it would require the people who hold the most power to voluntarily give up some of what they have. A more honest answer is to say "we will continue inequitable funding of urban minority schools and we oppose offering other alternatives, we expect people living in neighborhoods with substandard schools to deal with it. And we will continue to give lip service to the vague idea that we support equitable funding, as if our empty rhetoric should be of some consolation."

[imdjh]

8. counties

is that bloomfield hills gets far more per student than the detroit kids and it has been that way for decades, so there is a legacy of building maintenance problems, underfunded technology, underfunded basic supplies, in addition to the legacy of overcrowded classrooms. That becomes generational, students achieve less in school, they learn to hate reading, they are less likely to read to their own children, their children begin school behind the achievement level of students in blooomfield hills.

In the East, you have a quite different situation in which urban schools are considerably higher in EPP than suburban schools.

In the Detroit v Bloomfield scenario that you are talking about it would appear that these systems are in different counties. So it isn't a matter of the county funding one school system over another, it's a matter of Detroit not having the tax base to fund its schools at the same level as another municipality. That's quite different from what I was originally talking about, which is equal funding within a county.

[noamnety]

9. For the kids who are impacted by underfunding

it's no matter to them whether the inequalities in the system are at the city level, the county level, or the state level.

They are dealing with the realities on the ground, which is that people are saying "yes, you are in an inadequate school, there are no plans to switch to equitable funding, and we expect you to be as satisfied staying in that school as the bloomfield hills kids are in their neighborhood schools. Trust us, it's equitable for you all to stay in a substandard school ... because it's the neighborhood you were born into, just like they are in the neighborhood school they were born into." There's no real equity in that situation, but people will argue all day long that it's "hypothetically" fair.

It's the same argument used to say that immigrants coming to the US to work and being kicked out is equivalent to US workers being kicked out of Mexico. It's fundamentally not the same because the situations on the ground are worlds apart. It's only equal if you ignore the realities of the legacies of oppression.

[imdjh]

11. start fixing the parents

is that bloomfield hills gets far more per student than the detroit kids and it has been that way for decades, so there is a legacy of building maintenance problems, underfunded technology, underfunded basic supplies, in addition to the legacy of overcrowded classrooms. That becomes generational, students achieve less in school, they learn to hate reading, they are less likely to read to their own children, their children begin school behind the achievement level of students in blooomfield hills.

How come the government can force the workers of Bloomfield Hills to educate the children of Detroit, but the government cannot force the parents of the children of Detroit to educate their own children? Why are you letting the people who are most involved off the hook? It seems kind of elitist to assume that since their parents don't contribute then the solution must lie elsewhere. How about a program to get the parents involved? There is something worth paying for.

The cycle you talk about is a myth, this cycle where money is shifted to the suburbs until they start to outperform urban schools

Actually it isn't a myth in a county school system where the city and suburbs are in the same county. Bloomfield Hills is in a different county from Detroit, is it not? If it is, then Detroit has no right to tax Bloomfield Hills. Even so, school building funds come from state and federal sources as well, and so there would be a shift of funds back and forth. School building has nothing to do with performance.

I have allowed the Detroit is a somewhat special set-up as far as school districts go, and that I know very little about Detroit. I am much more familiar with the East Coast cities, most of whom have an EPP that is much more than that of the counties surrounding them. The performance of their students is still poor, so the idea that doubling some arbitrary figure is going to fix that is without basis.

[noamnety]

12. I don't understand your basic premise.

Unless it's one of those people living in poverty only have themselves to blame posts.

There is a legacy of poor education in Detroit. That affects students while they are in school, and obviously affects their skills once they have graduated. That legacy isn't the fault of "parents not contributing" - as if they are bad parents. It's the result of decades on decades of racist policies.

I'm not asking that the people of bloomfield education the children of detroit, like they have an obligation to drive out there and tutor the kids. I'm saying that everyone's school taxes should go to one pot, and then be divided up in a way that is equitable for all the children.

I don't see the people limiting poor minority kids to their neighborhood schools fighting for equitable funding for those kids. I don't see you supporting that notion in your post. I see you saying that if their neighborhood schools are bad, they have only themselves to blame. The unspoken message is that the rich kids "deserve" to enjoy the benefits of privilege, while the poor kids don't.

That doesn't demonstrate an understanding of race relations in this country, nor of generational poverty. It's a policy that reinforces existing power structures and institutional racism.

[imdjh]

13. That's because you are framing this on some kind of resentment.

There is a legacy of poor education in Detroit. That affects students while they are in school, and obviously affects their skills once they have graduated. That legacy isn't the fault of "parents not contributing" - as if they are bad parents. It's the result of decades on decades of racist policies.

Then you need to explain why people in the same circumstance who set standards for their children and themselves, produce a different result under the same circumstances. Everyone who attended Detroit public schools is not a failure.

I'm not asking that the people of bloomfield education the children of detroit, like they have an obligation to drive out there and tutor the kids. I'm saying that everyone's school taxes should go to one pot, and then be divided up in a way that is equitable for all the children.

Stop looking at taxes like they are extra money laying around. Those taxes are the wages of the people who pay them. It is not just for the people of Bloomfield Hills to pay three times the cost of educating one child, so that you can dole out "double the expenditure" to the Detroit schools and half the expenditure to the Bloomfield schools and somehow imagine that that is "equitable". Equitable is a weasel word that people use to avoid empirical terms like "equal".

I don't see the people limiting poor minority kids to their neighborhood schools fighting for equitable funding for those kids. I don't see you supporting that notion in your post. I see you saying that if their neighborhood schools are bad, they have only themselves to blame. The unspoken message is that the rich kids "deserve" to enjoy the benefits of privilege, while the poor kids don't.

Actually, the people in Pinellas County demanding neighborhood schools are some of the poorest in the county and almost universally black. They actually want to run their own schools in their own neighborhood, they are tired of bussing their kids all over the county to schools that parents often have no physical access to due to transportation issues. A great deal of money has been spent to build new state of the art schools in the black sections of the county, but kids here are bussed all over the place, so you might actually end up going to an old school 15 miles away when there is a brand new school down the street. Some of these kids spend an hour on the bus to school and an hour on the bus on the way home. The activities bus runs after dark it takes so long to deliver everyone, and the transportation costs are immense and taken from the classroom.

Of course the county can't agree to a separate black schools run by black citizens just as they could not agree to a white school system within the system. But, if we had a voucher program, then black churches and social organizations would have a shot at building a private school system whcih they could design and manage. Now that would be some catch-up, the Catholic Church has had 2000 years to accumulate wealth and build schools, vouchers would give a leg up to black churches who wish to do the same, but at present are spending most of their nonworship budget on food, clothing, and shelter.

Yes, rank has its privileges. The kids of well off people get to live in nicer houses and as a rule safer neighborhoods. This happens regardless of the race of those people, and regardless of whether they are first generation middle/upper class or tenth generation wealthy. Those people in Bloomfield Hills are not by and large the children of robber barons, many or most are second or third generation middle class. Half of the homes on the market in Bloomfield are priced less than $300,000 (as low as $56,000), we're not talking Palm Beach here. And while we're on the subject, the expenditure per pupil in Bloomfield Hills is less than most major cities and about the same as Florida which is constantly criticized for not spending enough on education.

[noamnety]

14. It's not built on resentment

my position is built on a recognition that people are not all getting equitable educations, and I am frustrated that people are just fine with that, while arguing that those in the worst schools shouldn't get other options. Suck it up isn't a solution to inequitable educational opportunities.

You say things like this: "rank has its privileges" as if that is a good enough answer for why some children should have to remain in substandard schools.

As for the public education system, tax dollars are supposed to be paying for public education for the public good. School tax dollars aren't supposed to be "for my kid" - they are for public education. That's why people who have no children at all pay taxes to support the system. They aren't allowed to say "Those taxes are my wages. It is not just for the people with no kids to pay to pay taxes, so that you can dole out "the expenditure" to the public schools to support people who decided to have kids."

To me, and this is the difference between us, I guess, "equal" is a weasel word to ignore what's fair, like flat rate taxes. It's EQUAL for a person living on 10k a year and a person living on 100k a year to each pay a thousand dollars a year in taxes. But it's not equitable, not by a long shot.

[imdjh]

6. What a freaky school system the Detroit area has.

If the map from Wayne University is correct, then the schools appear to be dozens of small township type systems rather than a county system. Someplace called South Lyons appears to have the lowest funding, while Bloomfield Hills, Southfield, and Birmingham have the highest. Then you have two spots inside the Detroit school system, Hamtramk and Highland Park which have lower and higher , respectively, than Detroit.

BTW, Detroit is higher than Florida.

[noamnety]

10. We have school districts, and ISDs above them

ISDs = Intermediate School Districts, shared resources at the county level for training, payroll, stuff like that.

[unblock]

15. free markets are all about cutting out services to uneconomical customers

it's the old 80-20 rule. the first 80% of the market is profitable, the last 20% is not. so why bother servicing it.

this is why you can't find banks in very poor zip codes and the people there are stuck with check cashing services which charge loan sharking rates.


if you want service for EVERYONE, you need a government to make it so. this goes for education, health care, whatever.