Over the past 15 years or so, a pretty big shift has taken hold in America’s largest school districts. A growing number of students who attend what are still called “traditional” or “neighborhood” public schools are doing so by choice.
The above graph comes from a pair of posts by Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution, who notes the rapid rise of open-enrollment policies and other forms of public-school choice in the country’s largest districts.
[C]hanges over time in the availability of intra-district school choice have been dramatic.iv The graph is based on data my colleagues and I have compiled from a retrospective analysis of school choice in the 100+ largest U.S. school districts, which are the districts that are covered in our annual Education Choice and Competition Index.v Only 24 percent of districts in 2000-2001 afforded parents school choice (20 percent through easy transfers from default schools and four percent through a full-fledged open enrollment process). Today, that number has more than doubled to 55 percent of districts allowing choice. Put another way, in 2000-2001, 75 percent of the nation’s large school districts made it difficult or nearly impossible for a child to attend a public school other than the one assigned based on place of residence. Today that number has dropped to 45 percent.
Open enrollment is certainly widespread in Florida, and state lawmakers have recently debated legislation that would have made it ubiquitous.
Whitehurst suggests thinking a few steps beyond that.
Combining public school choice with a few other policies — greater autonomy for principals (coming soon?), education funding that truly follows students to the schools they attend, and information that clearly helps parents see how well schools perform — could create a system of “public-school vouchers.” Public schools would have to compete for students. Low-income families would have more freedom to choose schools in areas where they can’t afford to live.
These policies, Whitehurst argues, have the potential for bipartisan appeal. There’s reason to believe they’d be popular with voters. They might even help public schools compete with privately run alternatives.
