Unusually, this particular debate has sprung up among supporters of school choice. In the present instance, the issue is whether private schools that take public funds—school vouchers—should have to report the results of state standardized tests. Experts like scholar Jay Greene, Education Week columnist and chief of the American Enterprise Institute’s education center Rick Hess, and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Chester Finn have all weighed in.
This is an important question. It gets to the incentives of private providers of public services. It also reflects the more fundamental debate over the role of government and the private sector. Opponents of testing/reporting requirements argue that the “market” for school services will provide enough of a check to ensure high quality. Proponents counter that government oversight of private school performance is a reasonable condition under which such schools decide to accept public funds.
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Here’s why: One of the major arguments for requiring voucher schools to report test results is not to cast doubt on the private sector as a whole, but to flag particularly ineffective private schools (just as public accountability systems flag failing schools). A couple of weeks ago, Zack Kopplin noted in Slate that some Texas charter schools were teaching creationism in science classes. This week, Slate released an interactive map showing creationist teaching not only in charter schools but also private schools receiving public vouchers. A handful of these were located in Milwaukee.
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The voucher program, like most others in the country, is directly targeted toward low-income families in urban settings—the vast majority of whom are African American or Hispanic. I happen to think there is a role for school choice to play in these settings, to the benefit of students who are desperate for high quality schools. But without public reporting, how will the parents of these students know which private schools are worth choosing and which should be avoided? If we ask them to trust that the market will work, why not let them verify? The choice may not, as I have, pit creationist schools against other voucher providers. Parents could weigh any criteria they wanted in their school selection. They might not want to make a comparison at all, but to simply see for themselves how one school is performing before they commit their child’s education to it.
School Choice: Tax-funded private schools should be accountable, test | New Republic
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