Dive Brief:
- Obstacles to school choice programs, including lack of options and complicated admissions procedures, are stifling access to public school alternatives for a greater number and diversity of students, according to a Center on Reinventing Public Education report released this month.
- These opportunity gaps are impacting families from all socioeconomic, geographic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, researchers found, researchers found.
- CRPE, a nonprofit that studies school improvement and innovation, recommends several actions to boost the school choice marketplace. One would include pinpointing challenges by collecting and analyzing data about the movement in and out of private, charter and public schools by students using public funds.
Dive Insight:
According to national data, the number of families with children enrolled in a school of choice — whether that be a public or private school or homeschooling — was nearly unchanged between 2007 and 2019. About 3 in 10 students in grades K-12 participated in school choice in that time frame.
The national data studied by CRPE did not include the school years affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, when some state-level reports indicate modest increases in homeschooling and private school enrollment. The national trends also don't reflect some substantial local and regional growth in school choice. In San Francisco, for example, a district-sponsored lottery allows families to rank public school preferences.
In aiming to answer whether increasing access to school choice helps families obtain school experiences that best fit their child's needs, researchers looked at the literature on components such as admissions practices and transportation. They also reviewed studies from academic journals, governments, think tanks and nonacademic education research centers.
Researchers found several barriers to school choice access:
- Options are more limited for rural students, students with disabilities, and those whose ethnic, racial or religious identities are less prominent in a community.
- There's a shortage of desirable schools, including both public and private options. The report states plainly: "There aren’t enough good educational opportunities to go around."
- Families sometimes struggle to find reliable information about whether a school would be the right fit for their child. This barrier increases the risk that families could make "high-cost mistakes."
- Schools can have burdensome application requirements, opaque admissions criteria and early application deadlines.
"Existing evidence makes clear that while education choice can be life-changing for families who find success with it, this outcome is far from guaranteed," the report said.
In addition to collecting data on the challenges to school choice, CRPE recommends expanding high-quality school choice options through grants, technical assistance, professional development and other means.
The report also encourages better support for families as they explore choice options. This could include targeting assistance to underserved students and providing accessible information about private school options, including data about student outcomes.
