Report - Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights

Choosing Better Schools: A Report on Student Transfers
May 1, 2005

Cynthia G. Brown 
Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights

On January 8, 2002 President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). This historic piece of education legislation reauthorized and significantly expanded the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, first enacted in 1965. Its most important title, Title I, has focused federal government attention and money on students in high poverty schools for almost 40 years. The new Act was the result of bipartisan leadership among five political leaders-- President Bush, Senators Kennedy and Gregg and Representatives Boehner and Miller-- and a large majority of the U.S. Congress which felt great urgency to address the inadequate learning among the groups of students that federal programs are supposed to help the most.

NCLB significantly strengthened and expanded accountability requirements that were first enacted in the 1994 reauthorization of Title I. The Act also provided new tools for improving low performing schools. Congress enhanced the chances for success by voting the largest increase in history of federal dollars for elementary and secondary education, a 33% increase in Title I alone, during the first two years of NCLB. Title I funding for grants to high-poverty schools now exceeds $12 billion per year.

Two new accountability provisions are prominent because they expand federal funding for public school parent choice. The first is the requirement that school districts offer students who attend low performing schools a choice to transfer, with free transportation, to another public school in the district that is not deemed low performing. The second is the provision of supplemental educational services, i.e. free tutoring, by state-approved providers for low-income students in low performing schools.

School choice as a concept has had a long and somewhat checkered history. Indeed the first appearance of "freedom of choice" on the national policy scene came in the 1960s when Southern school districts gave parents the option to transfer their children from racially segregated schools. In fact, "choice" was a disingenuous device to avoid desegregation because public officials correctly assumed that fears of economic or physical retaliation would keep black families from registering their children in desegregated schools.

Since then choice has appeared in a variety of guises, generally designed to serve more positive educational purposes. Beginning in the late 1970s, choice began to be used as a device that could assist the desegregation process (in contrast to freedom of choice which was used to defeat desegregation). Magnet schools became a component of desegregation plans, often displacing mandatory reassignment. The message to parents was that while desegregation was a requirement, they would be given the right to choose among specialty schools which offered different curricular focuses or different teaching methodologies. Similarly, some districts adopted controlled choice plans in which parents selected three schools and school officials sought to secure desegregation while giving parents one of their top choices.

During the same period, the private school voucher movement grew, fueled by conservative theory that competition would improve education. In response, in the late 1980s and 1990s a public school choice movement gained traction in a number of states, unconnected with the desegregation issue, and aided by the increasing mobility of society. The charter school movement allowed room for private administration of public schools and, at least in theory, offered decreased regulation in return for increased accountability. Today the vast majority of states provide not only for charter schools, but for public school choice between districts as well as within districts.

This report by the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights (CCCR) tells the story of early efforts to implement the new NCLB public school choice provision. Because data has been difficult to come by there are some holes in the narrative. But we have amassed sufficient information to reach some conclusions about the current efficacy of NCLB choice and about its potential.

A significant barrier to more extensive exercise of NCLB choice is that many education officials take a negative stance to giving parents a right to select the schools their children will attend. While there are exceptions to celebrate, few school officials see NCLB choice as an important opportunity for students. While most districts are complying to some degree with the law, in many cases compliance has been minimal. Moreover, many states have failed to cooperate by gathering and reporting in a timely manner complete data on implementation of the choice requirement even though the law requires them to do so. Most states also have been late in identifying low-performing schools from which students can transfer, leaving districts with time problems in implementing the choice and supplemental service options. Few states have provided guidance on implementation and most districts have done little affirmative outreach to parents.

When so many parents are left in the dark or ill-informed about choice, it is difficult to gauge their interest in moving their children to more successful schools. In fact what is striking is the amount of choice that apparently is taking place despite state and local deficiencies in the implementation of the program.

The Citizens' Commission is publishing this report now because it believes that both public school choice and supplemental services can be very useful tools in improving educational opportunities for disadvantaged children. Choice will provide an added incentive for school districts either to upgrade the offerings at schools that persistently perform poorly or to close them and allow better public schools to grow and flourish. If districts fail to act, choice will enable some disadvantaged children to transfer to better educational environments, often with less concentrated poverty.

Since many of the lowest performing schools are racially isolated as well as having high student poverty rates, choice will in some instances offer opportunities for desegregation as well, opportunities that will benefit all children. And the supplemental educational services provision, in providing tutoring services, will ensure more individual attention to students who most need assistance. 

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