For Families, School Choice Doesn’t Mean Easy Decisions

In late January, the White House instructed the Department of Defense to craft a plan that would make funds available for military families to pay for public charters and private religious schools. It’s part of the administration’s push to decentralize education, which comes along with a burst of energy for school choice options around the country.

The administration argues that unlocking funding will give families options and lead to better outcomes. But how easy is it for families on the ground to feel like they’ve exercised meaningful choice?

Choice varies by place.

One school choice researcher identified Milwaukee as having “the most evolved legislation” for making private school options accountable to families. In Wisconsin, school choice has existed for decades, with expansive options that include vouchers for private schools, public charter schools and traditional public schools. And public support for school choice rests above satisfaction with the state’s public school system in some polling data.

But navigating the system can be overwhelming, says La Toyah Woods, a parent engagement coordinator for the Milwaukee-based nonprofit City Forward Collective.

It’s hard for families to determine which schools are a good fit.

One hurdle is that academic performance metrics aren’t uniform across districts and aren’t clearly organized. For instance, the state’s “report cards” grade every publicly funded school and district in the state according to categories such as graduation rates. But the cards use stars rather than an A-F scale, and the way information is presented makes it hard for families to discern which schools will suit their child or to compare school performance year-over-year, researchers say. It might not be obvious, for example, that schools across the state aren’t graded in the same way. But for schools with a high percentage of low-income students, how much their performance grew — rather than metrics about how proficient their students are — is weighted more heavily than for other schools.

Instead, families tend to rely on recommendations from friends and neighbors, researchers say. Schools with a reputation for good academics are often swamped with applicants, and popular schools tend to cost too much for families in the inner city, says Woods of City Forward Collective.

It’s one reason some contend that choice hasn’t been transformative for families, even if they think it has been good overall. It’s so complicated that most families default to enrolling their kids in public school, unless they have specific concerns about public schools or experience navigating the school-choice system, Woods says.

Under the Hood

Do these alternatives really lead to better outcomes? It’s hard to tell.

The universal choice programs emerging across the country are largely understudied, because there’s little data available about these new options, one researcher told EdSurge.

Some are skeptical of past research on the politically charged topic of voucher programs. But nationally, some studies show smaller-scale voucher programs can have a negative effect on student outcomes. For instance, a research note from the Brookings Institution showed that reports on voucher programs in the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Indiana and Ohio revealed that vouchers diminish student performance; though in Louisiana and Indiana, those negative impacts declined over time, and some researchers in Milwaukee claim that choice has improved outcomes there.

Charter schools, which have been around longer and studied more, offer some insight to the dilemma of choice.

For instance, a series of studies through 2023 from CREDO, a research center at Stanford, showed reading and math gains for charter school students compared to those in public schools. But though the latest of those studies was proclaimed unequivocally favorable to charter schools by some, others describe the findings of the collection of studies as “more ambiguous.” One such person, Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings, interprets the studies as showing that students perform similarly on math and reading tests in public and private schools, except in urban charter schools where students performed slightly better. What’s more, charter schools have stricter regulations to follow than voucher-supported schools, including the need to show evidence of student learning to avoid being shut down, Valant adds.

The lesson, as Valant sees it, is to be vigilant about monitoring progress. Advocates of universal voucher programs often push back against regulations, citing negative results from over-regulated programs like Louisiana. But accountability and regulation are crucial for making sure universal voucher programs help families and protect taxpayers, especially as they involve significant public money, Valant says.

Reflecting On Change

Within Wisconsin, at least one advocate doesn’t mind the state of the research.

It doesn’t make any difference what kind of report you come up with, there’s going to be another report that contradicts it, says Howard Fuller, a longtime choice advocate in Milwaukee and a former superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools. It’s a political battle about who controls the money set aside to educate children, he says.

Fuller entered the choice fray in the late 1980s, because he says the public schools were failing to educate Black children. Fuller advocated for the creation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which aimed to boost opportunities for low-income and working-class families. The program has steadily grown since the early 2000s. Though Fuller chafes at the name “school choice,” preferring “parent choice,” that program is credited as the country’s first school choice voucher program. Today, there are 136 schools and nearly 30,000 students enrolled in the program, according to School Choice Wisconsin, a nonprofit that advocates for choice programs in the state. Schools that get vouchers through this program have to accept all eligible low-income students, according to Fuller. So it’s not the school’s choosing, but families, he adds.

Fuller argues that choice policies have improved options for low-income families. But he acknowledges that it also enabled “terrible,” low-quality schools.

It’s also a tough path for families to walk down at the moment. State data is too sparse or arcane for families to compare schools easily or for officials to evaluate whether public money is being spent wisely and effectively.

But right now, for Fuller, the fight worth having is around funding.

According to Fuller, Milwaukee Public Schools receive thousand of dollars more per student than private voucher schools in the state. Fuller believes that additional funding would help those schools attract teachers with higher salaries and benefits, which would improve outcomes for families looking to choose those options.

Some in the state insist that the figures behind those claims are misleading, and that both private and public schools are struggling to fill positions.

But Fuller says that he just wants to expand options for disadvantaged families. The fact that Wisconsin now requires financial audits of private schools has helped to winnow out “bad actors,” Fuller says. But he supports both increasing funding for choice options and greater public scrutiny of private schools. Not all families use data to determine where to enroll their children, Fuller says, but more of it would give parents a greater chance to make informed decisions.

There’s also a need for greater academic accountability.

“Although I understand the value of choice in and of itself, as someone who cares about kids, I can’t stop there. I have to fight for quality, and to do that, I think we should have the ability to close schools that are not serving kids well,” Fuller says.