The Market Approach to Education: An Analysis of America's First Voucher Program

By John F. Witte

Milwaukee, one of the nation's most segregated metropolitan areas, implemented in 1990 a school choice program aimed at improving the education of inner-city children by enabling them to attend a selection of private schools. The results of this experiment, however, have been overshadowed by the explosion of emotional debate it provoked nationwide. In this book, John Witte provides a broad yet detailed framework for understanding the Milwaukee experiment and its implications for the market approach to American education. In a society supposedly devoted to equality of opportunity, the concept of school choice or voucher programs raises deep issues about liberty versus equality, government versus market, and about our commitment to free and universal education. Witte brings a balanced perspective to the picture by demonstrating why it is wrongheaded to be pro- or anti-school choice in the abstract. He explains why the voucher program seems to be working in the specific case of Milwaukee, but warns that such programs would not necessarily promote equal education--and most likely harm the poor--if applied universally, across the socioeconomic spectrum.


The book begins with a theoretical discussion of the provision of education in America. It goes on to situate the issue of school choice historically and politically, to describe the program and private schools in Milwaukee, and to provide statistical analyses of the outcomes for children and their parents in the experiment. Witte concludes with some persuasive arguments about the importance of specifying the structural details of any choice program and with a call supporting vouchers for poor inner-city children, but not a universal program for all private schools.


Voucher programs continue to be the most controversial approach to educational reform. The Market Approach to Education provides a thorough review of where the choice debate stands through 1998. It not only includes the "Milwaukee story" but also provides an analysis of the role, history, and politics of court decisions in this most important First Amendment area.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Release date: Jul 2, 2001
• ISBN: 9781400823314

Book preview

1

Introduction

I am seated in the basement of a sixty-year-old school in the spring of 1991. The room is painted grayish green and it is clean, but clearly the space has been improvised for the music class I have been watching for twenty minutes. Twenty-three first-grade students sit on folding chairs. All are African American; there are nine boys and fourteen girls. The girls wear clean, white blouses and blue plaid, pleated skirts. The boys wear white dress shirts and blue pants. The teacher is a black woman who I have heard has had problems showing up for work. She is not having any problems today. The class is quiet as they listen to her sing and talk. They love this class.

She begins talking about a verse they have just sung. She says the song is a black spiritual: Lord Help Me Lay My Burdens Down. She asks the class if they know what burdens are.

An overly eager boy shoots up his hand as his mouth opens: Burdens are heavy things!

Well, yes, they are sort of, but in the song they refer to worries, responds the teacher. Can anyone tell me about worries they want the Lord to help with?

A compatriot of the first boy: Like when I go home with my report card. [Laughter]

A tiny girl in the second row, hair in pigtails, with a voice so small it is hard to hear from ten feet away: To make the shooting over my house stop.

Another girl, sitting next to her: So the fighting will stop at home.

The first boy [laughter gone]: To keep the gangs and the druggers away.

The teacher looks at me, shakes her head, and says: Let’s try the second verse.

The exercise was not for my benefit. I had been following the class all day and I was only a modest curiosity by early afternoon. And our research team had been around the school for three days. The school was one of the seven schools that had been certified in the summer of 1990 to participate in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program—the nation’s first voucher program. This book is the story of the first five years of that program.

At the time, this school had been in existence for twenty-three years as a nonsectarian school. Formerly it was a Catholic school, and the uniforms, students silently walking in halls in pairs, and the willingness to discuss spirituality were reminiscent of that Catholic past. But the replies of those tiny people were not reminiscent of that past—a past of white, working-, and middle-class Catholics.

As I observed this school in the spring of 1991, the nation was engaged in intense and confusing debates over the crisis and need for reform of American education. The most recent call for reforms, in a nation that goes through waves of education reforms, began in 1993 with the White House release of a strongly worded report entitled A Nation At Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). That was followed in subsequent years by reports from the National Governors’ Association, Time for Results (National Governors’ Association, 1986) and the National Commission on Children, Beyond Rhetoric: A New American Agenda for Children and Families (National Commission on Children, 1991). Added to the crisis mentality, which promoted numerous and diverse calls for reform, were a string of studies indicating that American children were considerably behind the children of many other countries, particularly in math and science education (OECD, 1989, 1990, 1992). While there has since been a revisionist metanalysis of this crisis (Berliner and Biddle, 1995), few would argue that education in our inner cities was satisfactory. Indeed, in Milwaukee a series of reports was published in 1985 that highlighted the dismal results in terms of achievement scores and dropout rates (Witte and Walsh, 1985; Witte, 1985). The study also emphasized that the gap between the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and surrounding suburbs was enormous—characterized as two worlds separated by a few miles (Governor’s Study Commission, 1985).

In 1991, however, the private school I was visiting was touted as a school that worked, at least by inner-city standards. It was considered among the best of the private schools in the choice program. By that time the Milwaukee voucher program had already attracted an avalanche of national political and media attention. Various political officials, including numerous governors, U.S. senators, cabinet secretaries, and the vice president of the United States, had visited the school. It was also featured on several network news shows, including a segment on 60 Minutes. The school boasted that students in its eighth-grade graduating classes almost all graduated from high schools—and some of the best high schools in the area (most prominently, the two Catholic ones). In citing these numbers, they of course did not acknowledge that their eighth-grade class was about one-third of their kindergarten or firstgrade classes, thus begging the question of what happened to those who slipped away. But again, by most standards, to those familiar with inner-city schools, this school was a success. It was orderly, clean, and disciplined. Parents were constantly around the school, and classrooms were, for the most part, competently staffed. Yet when both the teacher and I heard the voices of those small children, we were once again reminded of the constant intrusion of the outside world into this and other inner-city schools. And it is an outside world that is rough, especially rough for young and fragile children.

I bring this emphasis on reality to the surface early on because much of the debate over educational choice is couched in rhetorical flourishes that simply do not face the reality of education in our inner cities. Supporters of choice are quick to praise competition. Make schools compete with each other and the schools from which all families can choose will be better. But where else has competition worked in our inner-city neighborhoods? Has it worked in housing? In grocery stores? In health care? In retail clothing? Most Americans take many things for granted in their communities that cannot be taken for granted in most inner cities in America. For example, you probably cannot buy a new car and maybe not even a used one in most inner cities. You probably cannot buy a bicycle or even get a hinge for a door. You cannot see a non–X-rated movie. You cannot shop in a large, well-stocked, reasonably priced grocery store. You can buy liquor, but the prices will be high. Why does the market fail to provide these things? Does the government have a monopoly on movies? On car sales? On grocery stores?

Why then do so many business and political proponents of educational choice have such blind faith in competition as the salvation of education in our cities? There are a number of possible answers. Proponents may be simply naïve. Many, after all, have very limited experience with life in the inner city. They may not really think about what they are saying—having relied on slogans so long that the slogans become self-fulfilling prophecies. And, of course, they may not be supporting choice with the education of inner-city youth in mind at all. They may see choice as a way to retaliate against educational bureaucracies and teachers’ unions that they loathe. Or they may simply support private schools in general.

On the other side of the debate, the rhetoric is equally strident, and the motives may be equally suspicious. Opponents argue that if choice prevails, it will spell the death of public education, the common school tradition, integrated education, and the general commitment of the nation to education for all Americans. Those conclusions seem equally as bewildering to me. We have a hundred-year tradition of limited private schooling in the United States. Approximately 12 percent of our population, with very little variance, has been enrolled in private schools since 1940. And the vast majority (approximately 85 percent) is enrolled in relatively low-cost religiously affiliated schools (see chapter 3). Most students remain in the public schools, and most are not in failing inner-city school districts. There is also considerable evidence that parents of those children are quite happy with their children’s public schools (Phi Delta Kappan, 1996).

Given that most children attend private schools for religious reasons, and most public school families are satisfied with the schools their children attend, will vouchers radically change this pattern of demand? It seems unlikely. The one available study, a simulation in New York State, concluded that a voucher equivalent to what is spent on public school students would at best double the private school population (Lankford and Wykoff, 1992; Lankford et al., 1995). For other states without the private school tradition of New York, this estimate would undoubtedly be lower. I argue in the final chapter that if limited voucher programs such as Milwaukee’s are expanded to offer vouchers to everyone, a possible result may be that public school districts simply absorb private schools. Thus fears that vouchers will destroy public education seem unfounded.

Although some of the schools I describe in this book are indeed racially segregated, they are usually not more segregated than some neighboring public schools. In fact, some of the schools have used the choice program explicitly to diversify their student body. Moreover, the issue itself may be something of a red herring. In systems like New York, Detroit, Washington, D.C., or Los Angeles (where the nonwhite percentage of students is close to 90 percent), we need to ask if it is realistic to focus on integration as a priority goal and to judge choice—pro or con—based on its marginal effect on integration. In short, the current damage to our inner-city schools in terms of learning environments, educational outcomes, and segregation has been done without choice.

The messages of this book reflect reality. The first message is that choice can be a useful tool to aid families and educators in inner city and poor communities where education has been a struggle for several generations. If programs are devised correctly, they can provide meaningful educational choices to families that now do not have such choices. And it is not trivial that most people in America, and surely most reading this book, already have those choices. But choice is not a tool that can be expected, by itself, to change dramatically the educational outcomes of the majority of inner-city students—even in the long term. Just as private entrepreneurs have not invested in car dealerships, movie theaters, and grocery stores in the inner city, without massive subsidies it is unrealistic to expect new schools to be generated which in turn will perform some sort of magic to offset the gunfire, drugs, and difficulties of family life found there.

Can choice provide alternatives for some students who would not otherwise have them? Yes. Can choice support existing private schools with long traditions, but no further source of financial support? Yes. Can it provide different educational alternatives that may be the answer for some children? Yes. Will it, or could it, transform the overall status of inner-city education in the next generation? Probably not.

Second, if choice is extended beyond the inner city, as has been proposed many times, and as some suspect is the ultimate motive of many promoting targeted choice programs, the results are unlikely to be favorable to the poor. I will use the term universal voucher programs to indicate unrestricted use of educational vouchers within a state or the nation at large. Policy makers may want to support universal vouchers on different grounds than aiding failing students in poor districts, as is done in some other countries. However, that support must take into account the expectation that those currently attending or expected to attend private schools are most likely to choose and be admitted to private schools. Thus, in the absence of governmental constraints, Catholics will be more likely to choose Catholic schools, and their baptismal records will be relevant data for admission. The same will be true for other denominations. Most of those schools will not be in the inner city, and most will be attended by middle-class white students. The policy transition this represents, from a need-based, targeted program to a more universal, redistributive program, indicates a sharp and radical transformation.

If these points are correct, the policy debate over education choice can never be general. For the debate to have any meaning, the specific context and conditions of the choice arrangements must always be defined. This book tells the story of the first private school voucher program in the United States. My intent is to describe and analyze that program for what it was, not for something its supporters or detractors often tried to make it into.

The chapters that follow begin with a discussion of the theoretical and political issues surrounding choice. The enduring and intense controversy surrounding choice is traced to four phenomena. The first is that education involves statutory arrangements designating both the institutional structure and the arrangement of family choices concerning schools. Increasingly in the last decade, a market model of education has been promoted as an alternative to the nineteenth-century model of publicly defined, regulated, and assigned schools. That model significantly challenges the traditional institutional arrangements and is thus vigorously opposed by those dependent on the status quo. The second phenomenon is the growing belief among those in our worst educational environments that the choices they have are not equal to the choices most middle-class Americans have for their children. That normative position not only keeps the issue alive, but also provides the most compelling rationale for choice. Third, a considerable amount of money may be at stake, especially if the policy being promoted is full-cost vouchers for all children. Finally, the voucher issue is very likely to be decisive in federal court cases challenging the general First Amendment interpretation of the separation of church and state.

The third chapter provides background on education in Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (hereafter referred to alternately as the MPCP, the Choice program, or the voucher program). It describes (1) the range of educational choice programs prior to the MPCP; (2) the historical conditions of education in Milwaukee; (3) the politics of education leading up to the creation of the MPCP; (4) the 1990 Choice program, with subsequent court challenges; and (5) the research issues and design.

The fourth chapter analyzes the question of who chooses to participate in the MPCP and other choice programs throughout the country. The ideal research design for a choice program involves both a random assignment experiment to determine outcomes and a natural selection experiment to determine what types of families are naturally inclined to enroll in private schools under the constraints of the Choice program. The results of the latter provide a very consistent and interesting picture of MPCP families. The interpretation of those results is not completely parsimonious, however. Moreover, other choice programs without the constraints of the MPCP attract quite different sets of students.

The fifth chapter is devoted to describing the private schools in the Choice program—against the historical context of private school education in America. Much of the material in this chapter is drawn from extensive case studies of the schools in the program through the first four years. These studies included school histories; classroom observations; in-depth teacher and administrator interviews; student interviews; descriptions of curriculums and pedagogy; and statistical analyses of teacher qualifications, turnover, and demographic characteristics. Finally, the failure and bankruptcy of a number of choice schools are noted, again reinforcing the importance of not letting rhetoric obscure reality when it comes to educational choice.

Chapter 6 presents the outcomes of the MPCP. The more positive findings on parental attitudes and involvement and the effects of the program on the private schools are first addressed. The less positive findings, including attrition from the program and achievement test scores, are then described and, with the help of appendices for technically minded readers, quite rigorously analyzed. For the most controversial findings on achievement test scores, a series of econometric estimates are reported. However, the results—that private schools at best do as well as public schools—are consistent using a number of procedures. The limitations of both reliance on achievement tests and the estimation procedures are discussed. I also critically examine a common assumption that, without the benefit of selection, inner-city private schools will produce dramatically more positive educational outcomes than public schools. That was clearly not the result of the MPCP, and, I will argue, does not make sense given the family environments shared by public and private schools and the modest resources of the private schools.

The final chapters assess the politics of educational vouchers and the likely results of expanded voucher programs. I begin in chapter 7 by describing the continuing politics of the MPCP and the voucher movement in general. This discussion is set against a theoretical background attempting to explain the transition of a program from a substantive program targeted for a needy population to a more universal program with clearly redistributive effects. I examine what appears to be the most likely path for Milwaukee and other voucher programs in following this transition—that a program originally intended to target choice on poor inner-city families is manipulated over time to produce the opposite results—subsidies for middle-class, non–inner-city families to make choices they would have made on their own.

I then analyze why educational choice seems to have such a riveting effect on the media and on the politics of education. I refer to this political/media obsession as choice theater. I suggest that the metaphor of a play best describes the media presentations of educational choice. I also portray how the politics of vouchers fit well with mediaconstructed plays. Finally, the chapter examines the role of the courts and how both the politics of vouchers and choice theater are directed toward court decisions. With particular reference to the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution, I note the potential importance of the normative and political beliefs of the justices in deciding religious freedom cases. The vagueness of key concepts in First Amendment law and the flexibility to pick and choose between precedent cases make the issue of vouchers highly political, so that the justices become an important audience for choice theater.

The final chapter draws together the various strands of the study. It examines what we can learn from voucher policy and politics that is relevant to theories of policymaking and the experimental approach to policy design. I carefully examine the differences between targeted and universal voucher systems, supporting the former but not the latter. Last, based on the assumption that educational choice and vouchers represent a crossroad in American education, I examine what type of education pure market-based approaches to education would produce. They are not ones of which I approve.

In the end, this book is primarily about a single, five-year educational experiment involving only a few thousand children. Its importance lies partly in its uniqueness. But as I present it—and others may disagree—its importance is also a symbol of the frustration of trying to improve inner-city education and the confusion over how that should be accomplished. I hope this study adds a note of realism in terms of the limitations of schools, be they public or private. That schools have serious limitations may be a terrible reality that we need to face. When faced with conditions of abject poverty, with families that have great difficulty focusing resources on education, and with students who are immersed in a culture that often undervalues education, schools fight an uphill battle to provide top-quality, equal education for the majority of children.

2

The Enduring Controversy over Educational Choice

Considerably more verbiage has been expended than action taken concerning private school choice in American. Modern discussions of education vouchers date to 1955 when Milton Friedman first suggested them as a way to reduce the inefficiencies and monopolistic character of public schools (Friedman, 1955). Until 1996, however, the MPCP was the only example of a voucher program or any other kind of program that provided substantial public monies to private primary and secondary schools. One other program in Cleveland began in 1996. So why does the issue remain so controversial and on the political agenda in so many states? What is its appeal, and why is it so fiercely opposed? This chapter suggests four explanations: (1) educational choice offers a radical institutional change over current public school practice; (2) it invokes powerful normative arguments and images involving freedom and equality; (3) it potentially involves a considerable amount of money; and (4) it is at the heart of a legal and constitutional struggle over First Amendment religious rights and protections. These explanations imply a number of theoretical and research issues that guided this study and which serve as the organizational focus of this book.

Why Educational Choice Remains So Controversial

Choice and Institutional Theories of Education

Most debates over educational choice, be they theoretical or policy oriented, occur at a confusingly abstract level. Arguments in support of choice often focus on the failings of the public system, which they characterize either as a monopoly with attendant externalities (Friedman, 1955), or as politically controlled bureaucracies that feed political constituencies (Chubb and Moe, 1990). The latter produce shirking and bureaucratic surpluses, which are not applied to education achievement (Manski, 1992).

Less attention is often paid to the underlying market model that would replace the public school system. The new market system is often not spelled out in any detail, nor are the assumptions concerning individual and institutional behavior that would be required to produce the anticipated efficiency gains. In addition, few if any theorists factor in the current private school system, which, as we will see in chapter 3, has been dominated by religious institutions and presumably a religious motivation on the part of consumers and providers.

Policy debates are often as abstract, simply invoking images of competition, innovation, and vague references to accountability. We shall return to some of the more extreme examples of this in the final chapter. Several scholars, however, especially John Coons and Stephen Sugarman, a number of years ago provided very detailed policy alternatives for voucher programs (Coons and Sugarman, 1978). They have subsequently refined these proposals into a single alternative written as if it were a state ballot initiative for California (Coons and Sugarman, 1992, 1993). John Chubb and Terry Moe also provided a quite detailed model of a voucher program in their widely cited and debated 1990 book. A number of authors have highlighted the fact that the exact programmatic definition of choice and voucher plans is critical (Murnane, 1986, 1990; Levin, 1990, 1991; Witte and Rigdon, 1993).

Opposing arguments are also often stated in grand generalities invoking images of choice as the destruction of the public schools or at least the resegregation of schools by race, class, and ability. Equality is to be sacrificed on the altar of free choice and opportunity. Both the academic and policy positions often ignore how far along those roads the mostly public education system has already taken us in many of our inner-city school districts. This battle of words is highly repetitive but intense.

Given the intensity of the debate, remarkably little has been produced in terms of policy changes—at least policies that include subsidies for private schools. Yet choice seems to endure and remains a highly charged and controversial issue. One explanation lies in the clash of institutional models implied by a voucher system. Each model has its appeal and rationale, but the models differ both in terms of institutional structure and organization and in terms of the structure of choice for families and schools. The first of these variables is crucial to the design of our basic institutional arrangements concerning the delivery of education; the second describes how citizens interact with those institutions, and on what basis in terms of choices and rights.

As depicted in table 2.1, all of the important dimensions that define an educational institution exhibit major differences in the theories behind public and private education in America. The differences begin with fundamental differences in the institutional purposes of public and private schools. Public schools were created in this country to provide a free, universal education for all children. Most state constitutional provisions defining public education include the words equal or uniform. As such, states are obligated to provide a suitable education for all students regardless of ability or disability status. Private schools, on the other hand, were primarily developed by the Catholic church to provide a suitable education that included religious training. Independent private schools often have a mission or image that distinguishes their methods, curriculum, or clientele from public schools. They may follow theories of Maria Montessori or Rudolph Steiner, provide boarding schools, or simply offer a place apart for the sons and daughters of the rich. In any event, their purpose is internal, providing a choice that their clients desire.

Table 2.1

Critical Distinctions between Public and Market-Based Schools

A unique aspect of American education is that the laws governing public and private schools are primarily state statutes and state constitutional provisions. Although they may differ somewhat from state to state, the main outlines are uniform. Because most private schools are religiously affiliated, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prevents states from providing anything other than minimal regulation of private schools. Similarly, state constitutions also almost always have some form