[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 42 (Monday, April 18, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 18, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               HOW SCHOOL CHOICE IMPROVES PUBLIC SCHOOLS

                                 ______


                         HON. ROBERT K. DORNAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, April 18, 1994

  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I commend the attention of my colleagues an 
editorial about school choice and how it would improve the disastrous 
state of our public school system.
  The article follows:

               How School Choice Improves Public Schools

                          (By Robert J. Barro)

       School-choice programs that include private schools are a 
     promising way to deliver improved education, especially for 
     children from poor families. Experiments such as Milwaukee's 
     have shown some success, but systems that include any funding 
     for private schools are rare. Not coincidentally, in 1990 
     only 12% of elementary and secondary students attended 
     private schools, with only 12% of the private enrollment in 
     nonsectarian institutions (8% at the primary level and 14% at 
     the secondary level). Catholic schools were the dominant 
     private provider, with about 70% of overall private 
     enrollment.
       The overwhelming choice of public over private education 
     does not, of course, mean that most people view public 
     schooling as superior. Various studies, notably those by 
     sociologist James Coleman and his associates, have found that 
     students with a given level of native ability do better when 
     they attend private institutions, especially Catholic schools 
     in inner cities.
       What sustains the dominance of public schools is that 
     individual consumers regard the public option as free and the 
     private one as expensive. Catholic schools are able to thrive 
     in spite of this obstacle because church subsidies maintain 
     low levels of tuition.
       Nonsectarian schools--including elite places such as 
     Andover and St. Paul's--typically have to rely on high levels 
     to tuition and limited amount of financial aid and therefore 
     can serve only a small, privileged market.
       The central element of school-choice plans is the use of 
     vouchers or tax credits to level the playing field between 
     public and private schools. Vouchers would increase the 
     demand for private education and, hence, improve the average 
     performance of graduate. The most dramatic change would be 
     predicted for poor families, who now typically lack access to 
     private schools or high-quality public schools.
       A substantial part of the opposition to school-choice plans 
     comes from two groups: well-off suburbanites and public-
     school employees. Suburbanites are usually at least somewhat 
     satisfied with their local public schools and do not wish to 
     pay higher taxes to give money to people who already use 
     private schools. Public-school employees do not want to lose 
     an entrenched position that ensures a reasonable income even 
     when their performance is bad. For these opposition groups, a 
     key concern is how a school-choice plan and the consequent 
     expansion of private alternatives would affect the public 
     schools. Would the quality and levels of funding diminish, or 
     would the increased competition force the public schools to 
     do better?
       Recent research by Caroline Minter-Hoxby in her doctoral 
     dissertation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
     (``Do Private Schools Provide Competition for Public 
     Schools?'') offers evidence on this issue. The main 
     information in her study comes from the interaction between 
     an area's use of private schools--especially Catholic 
     schools--and the quality of public education. The information 
     in these data is better than that provided by existing 
     school-choice programs because in the latter case it is hard 
     to discern long-run responses to experiments (such as the one 
     in Milwaukee) that are relatively new and perceived as 
     temporary. Moreover, existing school-choice plans tend to 
     contain serious restrictions on the options of schools and 
     students.
       The key challenge is to isolate the effect of greater 
     availability of private schools on the performance of the 
     public schools. This work is a challenge because the simple 
     relation between an area's private-school use and the quality 
     of the public schools could, in theory, be positive or 
     negative.
       First, if an area's public schools are performing badly, 
     then more families would be motivated to use private schools. 
     This response tends to generate a negative relation between 
     public-school quality and private-school use. Second, if an 
     area's families are wealthier and better educated, then 
     private-school use and public-school quality are both likely 
     to be higher. This interaction tends to generate a positive 
     relation between public-school quality and private-school 
     use. Finally, if an increased availability of private schools 
     provides competition that motivates the public schools to 
     perform more efficiently, this creates a positive 
     relationship. It is this relation that we would like to 
     measure if it exists.
       The Minter-Hoxby study shows how cross-county differences 
     in the costs of providing private education affect the 
     quality of public schools. In practice, the U.S. experience 
     dictates a reliance on information about sectarian private 
     schooling. The cost difference for operating these sectarian 
     schools come from variations across counties, in the 
     population density of Catholics or of other religious 
     denominations that run significant numbers of private 
     schools.
       The key conclusion is that greater use of private schools, 
     driven by differences in costs, leads to improved performance 
     by public-school students and to greater per-pupil spending 
     in the public schools. These results remain true after 
     adjusting for an array of individual and county differences, 
     including levels of income and parental education and a 
     person's religion and race.
       One finding is that an increase of 10 percentage points in 
     the share of a county's enrollment in private secondary 
     schools adds 0.3 years to the highest grade completed by the 
     average public-school student by age 24. This increase in the 
     share of private enrollment is also estimated to raise a 
     public-school student's probability of receiving a high-
     school diploma by age 19 by 2% and to increase the wage 
     earned by the average public-school student at age 24 by 5% 
     partly because the student is more likely to move to a more 
     prosperous area and partly because the student's position in 
     the earnings distribution improves). Thus the presence of 
     private alternatives means that the students who remain in 
     the public schools achieve at higher levels.
       The data also show that governments respond to greater 
     competition from private schools by raising teachers' 
     salaries and overall spending per student in the public 
     schools. An increase by 10 percentage points in the share of 
     a county's enrollment in private secondary schools is 
     estimated to raise the starting salary for a teacher with a 
     B.A. by $160 in public secondary schools and to raise per 
     pupil spending in these schools by $340 (all measured in 1980 
     dollars). Hence, at least the public-school teachers who 
     retain their positions--presumably the most qualified ought 
     to be happy when private schools become more available.
       If we combine the Minter-Hoxby evidence with previous 
     results on the performance of private schools, then the 
     inference is that full school choice programs would improve 
     student achievement whether the students shift to private 
     schools or stay in the public system. In other words, school 
     choice is a good idea.

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