After two presidential administrations pushed a failed “regulatory” approach to education reform for 14 years, one Harvard professor says school choice and competition are the country’s best hope for improving education.
“With districts beset by collective bargaining agreements, organized special interests, and state requirements, choice and competition are the main levers of reform that remain,” Paul Peterson, a Harvard professor and editor-in-chief of Education Next, writes in a new article in Education Next. “Introducing such competition is the best hope for American schools, because today’s public schools are showing little capacity to improve on their own.”
With disappointing progress in closing educational gaps between black and white students, stalled progress nationwide in math and reading, and scores that lag behind those in many developed countries, it’s not hard to argue that the United States education system could be better. But getting interest groups to agree on fixes is another thing.
Peterson says Presidents George W. Bush and Obama have taken a similar approach to education reform. “For all their differences … the two presidents shared a surprisingly common approach to school reform: both preferred the regulatory strategy.” Bush’s No Child Left Behind was a top-down, federally-focused approach to education. When it started to unravel, Obama doubled-down on top-down regulations with competitive grants in Race to the Top and waivers from No Child Left Behind’s penalties that were conditional on reforms.
But few thought the approach was working, and teachers’ unions and conservatives worked together to get the Every Student Succeeds Act passed in December 2015, the first major federal education reform since No Child Left Behind. The new law cut much of the federal regulations in K-12 education and put states in charge of keeping schools accountable.
Now that two presidential administrations have tried the top-down, regulatory approach to education, Peterson says it’s time for expanded school choice and competition. More charter schools, in particular, could be a solution. “As their numbers grow, charters are beginning to disrupt the status quo more than vouchers are. In places where these schools of choice are allowed, students are no longer limited to attending their neighborhood public school but can apply to a charter school elsewhere in the community. In other words, charter schools compete with district schools for students. The greater the number of charter schools, the more intense the competition.”
School vouchers are a less common form of school choice, and also less popular among the general public. But Peterson says research shows they boost college enrollment for minority students, which is why vouchers have more support from minority families. “48 percent of African Americans support universal vouchers that any family could access, and 65 percent favor a voucher plan limited to those of low income, a feature of most current voucher plans. Support among Hispanic adults is comparable,” Peterson says.
It’s not certain that choice and competition will advance in the coming years, but Peterson says top-down education regulation won’t grow because there’s little support for it. “If school reform is to move forward, it will occur via new forms of competition — whether they be vouchers, charters, home schooling, digital learning, or the transformation of district schools into decentralized, autonomous units,” Peterson concludes. “The Bush-Obama era of reform via federal regulation has come to an end.”
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
