Panelists Debate the Economics of School Choice

Beverly Parks Greenberg '62 of the Connecticut State Board of Education was among the speakers at a panel discussion on the economics of school choice.

Should the school voucher system be supported unequivocally? Should corporatized private schools be given more attention? Or should America have more faith in its public schools?

Four speakers with very different perspectives gathered March 25 to debate these issues. The event was part of the Weissman Center for Leadership's spring-semester focus on public education.

Moderator Cecilia Rouse, associate professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton, introduced the issues, emphasizing key arenas of contention. These include increased competitiveness among public schools and the effect of vouchers on student diversity, flexibility, mobility, and choice. Rousse pointed out that although vouchers are available to poor families as well as rich, the option of residential school choice currently works only for affluent families.

Panelists considered the state of public schools and of the current alternative independent systems like charter, magnet, and for-profit corporatized schools. Beverly Parks Greenberg '62 of the Connecticut State Board of Education believes that saying America's public schools are in crisis is "painting public education with too broad a brush." There is no move to support vouchers in her state, where the prevailing view is that "public education was intended to provide common education for all, while recognizing that not all our schools are commonly good." She focused on the positive results in Connecticut, where she has been a policymaker for the past eighteen years. "We are very proud of student achievement in our state," she said. "Of course, we recognize that there are districts where students perform far below acceptable levels. But the ubiquitous use of the term 'crisis' only serves to camouflage the great effort and many successes occurring in even our worst performing schools. Our challenge in public education is to set high standards, maintain high expectations, and provide the resources and technical assistance necessary to meet them. Greenberg said that there is little accountability to the general public in the private educational sector.For this and many other reasons, she is not in favor of using public funds to support private institutions. She sees the voucher system as bad public policy that would "Balkanize and fragment diverse schools."

For Martin Carnoy, professor of economics and education at Stanford, the issue of vouchers fails on economic terms. "If you have a choice system, then schools will appeal to the best student body by preselecting students from other highly competitive schools." He explained that this often means excluding promising students from low-income families who may not have had opportunities to prove themselves competitively.

But John Chubb, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and cofounder of the Edison Project, the country's leading private manager of public schools, asserted that "those who choose charter and choice schools are the disadvantaged populations." Edison schools choose their teachers, and "have accountability measures to deal with schools that fail. Parents do not have to wait until the system fixes itself; they have the choice to withdraw the child at any point."

Annette Polly Williams, Wisconsin state representative from Milwaukee, one of the first cities with a publicly funded voucher program, said, "if education is a right, then every child should have the best education. The state has to allow parents to choose any school they wish for their child." The system must work for those who need it most--low-income families--a prerogative they could lose to the affluent without proper regulation of the voucher system, she explained.