[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 128 (Tuesday, September 23, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1819-E1820]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  THE POSITIVE IMPACT OF SCHOOL CHOICE

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. NEWT GINGRICH

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 23, 1997

  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to submit into the 
Congressional Record two articles highlighting the positive impact of 
giving parents the ability to choose their children's school.

               [From the New York Times, Sept. 18, 1997]

                School Voucher Study Finds Satisfaction

                            (By Tamar Lewin)

       In the first independent evaluation of Cleveland's 
     groundbreaking school voucher program, a Harvard University 
     study has found that the program was very popular with 
     parents and raised the scores of those students tested at the 
     end of the first year.
       ``We found that parents who have a choice of school are 
     much happier, and these private schools seem to be able to 
     create an educational environment that parents see as safer, 
     more focused on academics and giving more individual 
     attention to the child'' said Paul E. Peterson, director of 
     the Education Policy and Governance at Harvard's John F. 
     Kennedy School of Government, which issued the report. ``This 
     happens despite the fact that these are very low-income 
     students.''
       The Cleveland experiment has been closely watched as school 
     vouchers emerge as a potent political issue across the 
     country.
       The report found that two-thirds of the parents whose 
     children received vouchers to attend a private or parochial 
     school were ``very satisfied'' with the academic quality of 
     the school, compared to fewer than 30 percent of the parents 
     of students who applied for vouchers but remained in public 
     schools.
       In addition, the parents using vouchers were also more than 
     twice as likely to be happy with the school's discipline, 
     class size, condition and teaching of moral values than those 
     remaining in public school.
       During the last school year, the Ohio Department of 
     Education gave 1,996 Cleveland students from low-income 
     families vouchers covering up to 90 percent of private or 
     parochial school tuition, to a maximum of $2,250. The amount 
     is slightly more than a third of what the public school 
     system spends annually per pupil.
       Most students used the vouchers at Catholic schools. But 
     about a quarter of those who received vouchers--mostly those 
     who could not find another suitable placement--attended two 
     new independent schools set up by advocates of the voucher 
     program, known as Hope schools.
       The study found that those students, tested at the 
     beginning and end of the school year, made significant 
     academic strides, gaining 15 percentage points in math and 5 
     percentage points on reading tests, relative to the national 
     norms. However, language scores declined 5 percentage points 
     overall, and 19 points among first graders.
       The Cleveland schools have been troubled for years; in 
     1955, the system was put under state control when it ran out 
     of money halfway through the year. Rick Ellis, a spokesman 
     for the Cleveland schools, said that because the school 
     system was now operated by the state, and the state also runs 
     the voucher program, the Cleveland schools had taken no 
     position on the program, which has been expanded to cover 
     3,000 students this year.
       But Cleveland's voucher program--like the nation's only 
     other large scale voucher program, in Milwaukee--remains 
     under the cloud of a continuing court challenge. In May, an 
     Ohio appeals court ruled that because the vouchers could be 
     used at religious schools, the program was an 
     unconstitutional mingling of church and state. The State 
     Supreme Court, however, ruled that the program could continue 
     this year, pending its review. With the Milwaukee voucher 
     program pending in State Supreme Court, it is likely that one 
     or both of the cases will ultimately wend their way to the 
     United States Supreme Court.
       Despite the legal uncertainties, vouchers remain a powerful 
     political issue across the country:
       In New Jersey in April, the Education Commission barred 
     Lincoln Park, a suburban school board, from using tax money 
     for vouchers.
       In Vermont last year, the education office took away 
     education funds of the Chittenden Town School District when 
     it tried to include parochial schools in a voucher program 
     for high schools.
       In New York City and several other cities, small programs, 
     privately financed by philanthropists, provide scholarships 
     allowing some public school students to attend parochial 
     schools.
       In Washington, House and Senate Republicans have proposed a 
     Cleveland-style program for the District of Columbia schools.
       The evaluation of the Cleveland program is based on a 
     survey of 2,020 parents who applied for vouchers, including 
     1,014 parents of voucher recipients, and 1,006 parents who 
     applied but did not use the vouchers.
       Those who applied, but ultimately remained in public 
     school, cited transportation financial consideration and 
     admission to a desired public school or failure to be 
     admitted to the desired private school.
       The average income of families using vouchers was lower 
     than those whose children remained in public schools, but the 
     two groups did not differ significantly with respect to 
     ethnicity, family size, religion, or mother's education or 
     employment. But those staying in public schools were more 
     likely to be in special education classes or classes for the 
     gifted.
       The vast majority of participants, 85 percent, said their 
     main reason for applying to the voucher program was to 
     improve education for their children. Other commonly cited 
     reasons were greater safety, location, religion and friends.
       ``I like to emphasize that parents said what was really 
     important to them was academic quality of the school,'' said 
     Professor Peterson, whose co-authors were Jay P. Greene of 
     the University of Texas and William G. Howell of Stanford 
     University. ``A lot of people say low-income families don't 
     care about quality, that they choose schools based on other 
     factors, but that's not what the parents say.''


     
                                  ____
             [From the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 18, 1997]

              Cleveland Shatters Myths About School Choice

      (By Jay P. Greene, William G. Howell, and Paul E. Peterson)

       As delays in repairs keep the doors to Washington D.C.'s 
     public schools closed, Congress is debating whether to 
     approve the District of Columbia Student Opportunity 
     Scholarship Act, which could help restructure this dreary, 
     patronage-ridden system and give at least a couple of 
     thousand poor students a chance to attend the private school 
     of their choice. True to his teacher-union allies, President 
     Clinton remains adamantly opposed to giving poor children the 
     same chance at a private education that his daughter, 
     Chelesa, had.
       In deciding whether to challenge the president, Congress 
     would do well to consider what's been happening in Cleveland, 
     site of the first state-funded program to give low-income 
     students a choice of both religious and secular schools. Of 
     more than 6,200 applicants, pupils entering grades K-3 last 
     year, nearly 2,000 received scholarships to attend one of 55 
     schools. The scholarships cover up to 90% of a school's 
     tuition, to a maximum of $2,250, little more than a third of 
     the per-pupil cost of Cleveland public schools.
       This past summer we surveyed more than 2,000 parents, both 
     scholarship recipients and those who applied but did not 
     participate in the program. We found that parents of 
     scholarship recipients new to choice schools were much more 
     satisfied with every aspect of their school than parents of 
     children still in public school. Sixty-three percent of 
     choice parents report being ``very satsified'' with the 
     ``academic quality'' of their school, as compared with less 
     than 30% of public-school parents. Nearly 60% were ``very 
     satisfied'' with school safety, as compared with just over a 
     quarter of those in public school. With respect to school 
     discipline, 55% of new choice parents, but only 23% of 
     public-school parents, were ``very satisfied.''
       The differences in satisfication rates were equally large 
     when parents were asked about the school's individual 
     attention to their child, parental involvement, class size 
     and school facilities. The most extreme differences in 
     satisfaction pertained to teaching moral values: 71% of the 
     choice parents were ``very satisfied.'' but only 25% of those 
     in public schools were.
       Our other findings provide powerful answers to many of the 
     arguments raised by voucher opponents:
       Parents, especially poor parents, are not competent to 
     evaluate their child's educational experience. But test 
     scores from two of the newly established choice schools 
     justly parental enthusiasm. Choice students attending these 
     schools, approximately 25% of the total coming from public 
     schools, gained, on average, five percentile points in 
     reading and 15 points in mathematics during the course of the 
     school year.
       Choice schools don't retain their students. In fact, even 
     though low-income, inner-city families are a highly mobile 
     population, only 7% of all scholarship recipients reported 
     that they did not attend the same school for the entire year. 
     Among recipients new to choice schools the percentage was 
     10%. The comparable percentages for central-city public 
     schools is twice as large.

[[Page E1820]]

       Private schools expel students who cannot keep up. But only 
     0.4% of the parents of scholarship students new to school 
     choice report this as a reason they changed schools this 
     fall.
       Poor families pick their children's schools on the basis of 
     sports, friends, religion or location, not academic quality. 
     Yet 85% of scholarship recipients from public schools listed 
     ``academic quality'' as a ``very important reason'' for their 
     application to the program. Second in importance was the 
     ``greater safety'' to be found at a choice school, a reason 
     given by 79% of the recipients. ``Location'' was ranked 
     third. ``Religion'' was ranked fourth, said to be very 
     important by 37%. Friends were said to be very important by 
     less than 20%.
       Private schools engage in ``creaming,'' admitting only the 
     best, easiest-to-educate students. But most applicants found 
     schools willing to accept them, even though a lawsuit filed 
     by the American Federation of Teachers prevented the program 
     from operating until two weeks before school started. When 
     those who were offered but did not accept a scholarship were 
     asked why, inability to secure admission to their desired 
     private school was only the fourth most frequently given 
     reason, mentioned by just 21% of the parents remaining in 
     public schools. Transportation problems, financial 
     considerations and admissions to a desired public school were 
     all mentioned more frequently. (Cleveland has magnet schools 
     that may have opened their doors to some scholarship 
     applicants.)
       The data from Cleveland have some limitations, because the 
     program was not set up as a randomized experiment. Yet the 
     comparisons between scholarship recipients new to choice 
     schools and those remaining in public schools are meaningful. 
     That's because, with respect to most of their demographic 
     characteristics--such as mother's education, mother's 
     employment, and family size--the families of scholarship 
     recipients did not differ from those remaining in public 
     schools. In fact, the voucher recipients actually had lower 
     incomes than the group to which they were compared.
       Cleveland's success at school choice should not remain an 
     exception to public schools' monopoly on education. If 
     members of Congress care at all about the education of poor 
     children living in the innercity, they should approve the 
     voucher legislation for Washington now before them.

     

                          ____________________