Kathryn McDermott et. al., MassINC
2003
This report from MassINC's new Center for Education Research and Policy (co-sponsored by the Boston Foundation and the UMass Center for Education Policy) reviews the current array of education choices available to Bay State students and finds them "unevenly and inequitably distributed," meaning that they keep many poor children stuck in bad schools. The good news is that "at least one in four Massachusetts students are [sic] in a setting over which their families exercised some form of choice." (Almost a dozen different forms of education choice were tallied here.) The bad news is that most students' "ability to exercise school choice remains an accident of birth and is determined by family income and zip code." This is not too surprising, given that about two-thirds of Massachusetts choice options involve private/parochial schools and the state (which has a highly restrictive Blaine amendment) has nothing like vouchers. The upshot, say the authors, is widespread unmet demand for school choice, especially among poor and minority families, and the likelihood that this problem will worsen as school systems seek to comply with the choice provisions of No Child Left Behind. (NCLB's choice provisions will boost demand without substantially affecting supply or access.) Unfortunately, after this sterling analysis of the problem, the authors (of both the 60-page version and the 12-page "policy brief") back away from any coherent solution, instead delineating a bunch of questions in need of further research. It's as if they couldn't bear to acknowledge the obvious implication of their own study: make more choices available in Massachusetts, especially for poor and minority students. See for yourself by surfing to http://www.massinc.org/handler.cfm?type=2&target=School_Choice/schoolchoice_policybrief.pdf for the short edition and http://www.massinc.org/handler.cfm?type=2&target=School_Choice/schoolchoice_fullreport.pdf for the longer one.
