States across the country have enacted new private-school choice programs in recent years, inevitably raising questions about accountability for participating institutions.
Though it is true—as our friends in the school choice movement argue—that choice itself is a form of accountability because of the agency it provides to parents and the power of the marketplace, we don’t think that “customer satisfaction” is enough. When tax dollars are in play, the public has a right to know that participating students are gaining essential skills. After all, we pitch in to pay for public education because everyone benefits when all children can access the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in life, ultimately ensuring the prosperity of the larger society and a healthy democracy. Education, particularly in the K–12 years, is both a private benefit and a public good.
Still, we recognize that getting accountability right requires a balancing act. If accountability provisions are too heavy-handed, private schools may choose not to participate—limiting choices for families. Or perhaps only those most desperate for students will sign up, driving down quality. Under pressure to raise test scores, private schools might also lose their distinctive character and shift toward uniformity with public schools, undermining the diversity of options that private-school choice seeks to provide.
On the other hand, we see no reason that private schools receiving significant financial support from the public, whether directly from the government or via student-driven mechanisms, should be exempt from transparency and accountability with respect to student learning and fiscal probity. That’s been good for charter schools and their students and will be good for those attending private schools, as well.
In this commentary, we describe the current state of play when it comes to accountability in private-school choice programs, including accountability for improving student outcomes. We discuss four tiers of escalating accountability, from minimal safeguards that protect against waste, fraud, and abuse, to comprehensive systems that mirror what we see in traditional public schools. At the end, we discuss where we think state policy should land—depending in part on the amount of taxpayer dollars provided to individual schools.
Note that this analysis is focused on accountability in the context of public support for private-school tuition scholarships. See here for our thoughts on the “accountability conundrum” when it comes to à la carte education services, such as those that parents may purchase through education savings accounts and that are delivered apart from full-time “schools.”
Tier I: Basic anti-fraud safeguards
Every state has some policies in place to prevent a blatant abuse of public funds and protect the safety and well-being of students. Most voucher and ESA programs, in particular, require that private schools meet health and safety codes and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin. They also mandate that institutions adhere to certain financial transparency requirements, whether proactive (i.e., schools must demonstrate fiscal viability before joining the program) or retrospective (i.e., schools must submit to regular audits).
These basic provisions help to ensure that students have a safe, stable, and fair place to learn—but they do not make any guarantees about educational quality.
Tier II: Information for parents
Many states also ensure that parents have access to information about participating private schools and how well they serve students. This approach goes beyond the measures in Tier I by facilitating active engagement with families and requiring more transparency from participating schools.
In some states, schools must regularly update parents on their children’s academic progress. (Of course, most private schools do this regardless of state requirements, via report cards if not test scores.) Per EdChoice’s School Choice In America Dashboard, North Carolina, for example, mandates that schools give parents a written explanation of their children’s performance every year. Other states, including Georgia and Utah, require that participating schools provide parents with teachers’ credentials—and, as part of Ohio’s Special Needs Scholarship Program, schools must share with parents a profile of their special-education program.
These policies are worthwhile because they compel schools to be forthcoming with families about whether their children are mastering important skills. But parental oversight alone can’t always prevent schools from wasting or abusing public money, and these requirements don’t offer information to prospective parents about the quality of participating schools. That’s why many states have decided that transparency for the public is also necessary, prompting them to implement measures outlined in Tier III.
Tier III: Information for the public
These policies require private schools to make key performance information available to the public.
For example, voucher program participants must take annual standardized tests in at least thirteen states. In states like North Carolina, the results are reported to the state Department of Education, where they are analyzed as part of a program evaluation. Meanwhile, in Ohio and Wisconsin, school-level test-score data are released to the public. Some locales (like Washington, D.C.) require private schools to use the state’s regular assessments, while others (like Ohio and Maryland) allow them to choose from among a set of nationally-normed assessments.
Importantly, in Tier III, the focus is on transparency, not accountability per se. That’s because Tier III policies don’t empower state officials to withdraw a private school’s ability to accept scholarship students based on their results. For that, we turn to Tier IV.
Tier IV: Consequential accountability
Some states take accountability even further. In Louisiana and Indiana, participating private schools are all but fully integrated into the state’s accountability system. Louisiana administers the same state assessments to them as it does to public schools and assigns them letter grades based on students’ performance. Schools that consistently receive low grades can face sanctions, including being barred from accepting new scholarship students. In Indiana, schools also receive letter grades, in this case based on test scores and graduation rates—and schools with a grade of D or F for two consecutive years may be disqualified from the program until they demonstrate significant improvement.
Another noteworthy model is found in Florida, where the non-profit organization Step Up for Students plays a behind-the-scenes role in monitoring school quality and nudging bad institutions out of the state’s program, somewhat akin to what authorizers do in the charter school sector. The authorizing approach can take hard data, especially test scores, and combine them with human judgment gleaned from school visits and the like to make informed decisions. Granted, there’s less transparency to the public around results with this line of attack.
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What can be made of all of this? Which is the “right” tier for private-school choice programs? Is more accountability always better?
Of course, opinions differ. In our view, Tier I and II policies alone are necessary but not sufficient. While they may protect against waste, fraud, and abuse—and provide helpful information for participating parents—they ignore the other half of the equation: the public. Taxpayers pour billions into private-school choice programs, and they have a right to know that this money is doing what it should: helping children learn.
Importantly, we have seen that Tier III and Tier IV policies can help private-school choice programs do just that. One study found that, when Milwaukee began requiring private schools to test their voucher students and publicly report the results, those students saw a significant achievement boost—even though the policy change included no sanctions for low-performing schools.
As for whether Tier III or Tier IV policies make sense for a given program, Fordham has long argued that the more public funding a participating private school receives, the greater the public accountability it should face—a “sliding scale,” so to speak. If a school only serves a handful of participating students, or if scholarship amounts are meager, schools should be allowed to use a nationally normed test and report results to the state Department of Education (and to parents), rather than to the public writ large. However, if a school’s entire student body (or close to it) receives public support via generously funded scholarships, participating private schools should be included in the state’s accountability system (or something quite similar), just like public charter or districts schools are, and eligibility should be withdrawn in the case of low performance.
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There are countless benefits to the growth of parental options in education and the increasing pluralism of our schools. At the same time, when school choice is deployed to advance a public purpose, and funded with public dollars, the impact on students should not be invisible to the public. That goes for all sectors—traditional public schools, charter schools, and, yes, private schools, too.
