Opponents argue that we don’t really need school choice because we know how to improve schools without choice. After all, public schools are public institutions governed by our democracy, by the school boards, state legislatures, governors, congresses and presidents we all vote for, and all too often by the judges they select. If we can just unite business, labor, our local school board, the state legislature, the governor, Congress, and the President, and spend lots of money to do what we all know works—whatever that is—and the courts don’t intervene (much), then surely we can all improve our public schools for all our children. We really don’t need to allow parents to make their own choices. Indeed that would be bad, for it would not improve all our schools in the same way that we all know they need to be improved.

And if it takes a long time for the schools to improve, well democracy was not meant to move capriciously. So what if maybe your grandchildren rather than your children get a good education? At least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that the improvements took place for everyone in a democratic process.

Give me a break!

One of the more insightful and readable, but still off-base examples of this line of thought is a series published by the University Press of Kansas, one of the top public policy scholarly presses. The numerous authors conducted an NSF funded, multi-year study of school reform in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. Skilled political scientists, the authors interviewed 516 elites in their 11 cities, and almost in spite of an anti-choice bias they offer real wisdom about inner city education reform. Black Social Capital is a lively (and equally depressing) case study of failed school reform in Baltimore. City Schools and City Politics offers fairly interesting and insightful case studies of three cities. Finally, the dry but perceptive Building Civic Capacity summarizes the lessons from all 11 cities.

The authors’ basic thesis is what political scientists refer to as “regime theory,” an approach pioneered by University of Maryland professor Clarence Stone. Where key economic and political bigwigs develop close relationships, forming a “regime” of elites, and work together to improve education, then real improvements might occur. Of course, this leaves little room for those of us who are not powerful. The underlying assumption of regime theory is that you can’t fight city hall, but maybe if you are lucky city hall will fight for you.

As the authors amply document, fighting is needed. Big city schools do not perform very well, largely since their clientele is poor and uneducated. Spending the same, and often less than nearby suburbs, inner-city schools have a tough job educating the children of underclass and blue-collar parents. Big city schools struggle with crime, family breakdown, racial conflict, and teachers unions and entrenched bureaucracies that more often hinder than help learning.

Further, there is something to regime theory. In some cities the city hall and chamber of commerce types are more united and more idealistic than in other cities. Where elites from different sectors unite, stay united for long periods of time, focus on education, make good choices about what policies to pursue, and most important, choose a talented and long serving school superintendent, school improvement is possible. Possible, but not bloody likely. In only one of the 11 cities studied, Pittsburgh, did elites come together for a long period of time with a united and well-led school board, a cooperative teachers union, and a wise superintendent. As chronicled in City Schools and City Politics, in the 1980s Pittsburgh Superintendent Richard Wallace developed a regimen of constant student testing and constant teacher training that drove test scores to national norms. (Of course, most cities were and perhaps still are too “progressive” to embrace standards and testing.) Unfortunately, by the 1990s personal jealousies, racial divisions, budget cuts, and community annoyance at elite leadership (domination?) led to a gradual unraveling of the Pittsburgh miracle. What the political system giveth, the political system also taketh away. And that was the best case.

More typical is the Baltimore case ably chronicled in Black Social Capital. Here, Marion Orr shows that persistent mistrust stemming from past racial injustice kept black leaders and white businesspeople from uniting behind privatization, or any other reform agenda. Opponents to school reform had merely to play the race card and wait for white contractors to make mistakes to see reform abandoned.

And anyway, as the authors find, even elites rarely agree on how to improve schools—there is no such a thing as “what we all know will work.” Policy disagreement and policy-making involving numerous institutions leads to what the authors of Building Civic Capacity admit is “disjointed and unfocused change as the system rushes from one magic bullet to the next” (p. 141). Ultimately, the authors do a good job diagnosing the failures of the political governance of education, but for ideological reasons cannot get over their disdain for parental choice. Parents must patiently wait for the whole political system to get its act together, rather having the choices to take matters into their own hands.

Yet some political scientists are more open to change. Reviewing the literature and presenting very engaging (and often funny) case studies of four Connecticut school systems struggling under desegregation court orders and attendant legislative mandates, Kathryn McDermott’s Controlling Public Education: Localism versus Equity diagnoses the problems of public education and offers an insightful (if politically unlikely) set of solutions. This book is a masterpiece. Read it.

McDermott explains how and why school systems freeze out serious parent involvement, why school boards are so seldom effective, and how and why white suburban parents block integration even when it’s the law. But she doesn’t stop there. She also offers solutions. For integrationist liberals, McDermott wants to abolish traditional local school districts, to equalize funding, and to enshrine racial and class integration as one of the key goals of public education. For pro-marketeers, McDermott proposes to make schools autonomous, incentive-driven, and (within restrictions to ensure integration), choice-based. She also wants to measure results, in order to bring a regime of both rising standards and social equity. Indeed, she sees standards and choice as key to making socioeconomic integration safe for middle class white parents.

Of course politically, this won’t sell. The school board is the first step for many an aspiring state legislator. State legislatures will not abolish school boards, however ineffective they are. Nor will school district offices and superintendents go gently into that good night. The education establishment does not wish parental choice, and well-off suburbs scarcely want financial equity, or integration. And yet McDermott’s case is compelling…if only all of us would get together and…well we won’t. But maybe, with a few charter schools here and a few vouchers there and a few inter-district choices elsewhere, we can help at least some city kids escape bad places, until someday when we do all come together and the revolution comes about.

-- Dr. Robert Maranto
Robert.Maranto@villanova.edu teaches political science at Villanova University, and with others has produced numerous scholarly works including School Choice in the Real World: Lessons from Arizona charter schools (Westview, 2001).