Dr. Caroline Hoxby and the Last Decade for Education Reform
I’ve always enjoyed professors who could make their topic interesting and user friendly. They take a subject and discuss it in plain language that everyone can understand and they draw analogies so that students can better make sense of new information. In a good lecture, professors neatly summarize their ideas into a couple of talking points so that all the information that follows is organized logically. The best professors present their ideas in such a way that the listener has an epiphany and thinks, “Oh, now I see.”
Last evening at Chicago’s Heartland Institute, Dr. Caroline Hoxby proved herself a stellar professor as a key note speaker during the 21 st anniversary dinner. She provided me with an epiphany. There are two reform movements which are taking place today in education. One is school accountability and the other is school choice. Experts are concerned with measuring results and parents are more holistic, concerned with the total learning environment. In good charter schools both of these concerns intersect producing the best results. It wasn’t until yesterday that I understood the unique role charter schools play because they must accommodate both movements.
In Dr. Hoxby’s study, The Impact of Charter Schools on Student Achievement, she investigated the impact on students lotteried-in or lotteried-out of the Chicago International Charter School. After only two years in the charter schools, students were 5-6 percentage points ahead (1/2 grade equivalent) of those who didn’t get lotteried-in. There have been similar results with voucher studies.
The evidence indicates that when regular public schools are forced to compete for students they produce better results. In 1998 in Milwaukee, vouchers expanded so that in some areas up to 95% of students could receive a voucher and choose another school (public or private). Knowing their students could leave, schools improved. Within three years, student scores improved 10-13 percentage points in math and science.
Vouchers and charters are a catalyst to improve curriculum, get back to basics, counsel poor performing teachers out of the system, reward teachers through contracts, and get rid of bad programs. In choice schools teacher contracts are more flexible and pay is based on student performance. It is hard to believe that charter schools enroll less than half the amount of home schooled children.
Charters and private schools are big innovators because they face pressure to perform and prove to parents that they are worth their tuition dollars. Charter schools are getting better over time. If they fail to perform, there is usually intervention. Bad charters close and that is important. They have led the pack in using technology to interact with parents. New Zealand, Australia, and the UK are especially interested in what charter schools are doing in this country.
Accountability generates information and makes the education market more professional and competitive. We can now estimate a teacher’s effect on student performance. New education management organizations with replicable school models allow parents the freedom to choose which model is best for their child.
Dr. Hoxby writes in, How School Choice Affects the Achievement of Public School Students, “T here is obsessive interest in the question of “who wins” and “who loses” when choice is introduced. This obsession may turn out to be a mistaken application of energy. Choice need not make some students into losers and others into winners. It is at least possible that all students will be better off.”
Last evening Dr. Hoxby left her audience with the disturbing thought that this is the last decade to improve our education system and help our students to be able to compete with other students around the world for the best jobs. She presented evidence that suggests choice is the hybrid vehicle that will afford our students their last opportunity to compete on the world stage. And when the foremost expert on school choice makes a statement like that, the education community should all be sharing in this epiphany.
The Impact of Charter Schools on Student Achievement
http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/hoxbyrockoff.pdf
How School Choice Affects the Achievement of Public School Students
http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/choice_sep01.pdf
Nancy Salvato is the President of The Basics Project, (www.Basicsproject.org) a non-profit, non-partisan research and educational project whose mission is to promote the education of the American public on the basic elements of relevant political, legal and social issues important to our country.
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