School choice often eludes poor and minorities, study finds
The Boston Globe
Anand Vaishnav
May 21, 2003
Massachusetts' sizable web of school-choice options is ''unevenly and inequitably'' distributed, leaving fewer chances for low-income or minority families to leave low-achieving schools, a report to be released today asserts.
At least 25 percent of Massachusetts' 1 million K-12 students attend school through some sort of choice, including private schools, charter schools, vocational schools, or Metco, a voluntary desegregation program primarily sending minority children from Boston to the suburbs.
But many options remain out of reach because of people's incomes, where they live, the availability of the information, or other barriers, according to the report, sponsored by The Boston Foundation. The report will be released at a panel discussion on school choice hosted by the foundation and the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, a Boston think tank.
''If choice is a good thing for some of our citizens, we ought to use public policy to make it available more broadly,'' said Paul Reville, executive director of Mass-INC's Center for Education Research and Policy, which authored the report.
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The study does not explore any links between expansion of school choice and better student performance. But Reville and Paul S. Grogan, president of The Boston Foundation, maintain that long waiting lists for charter schools and the Metco program suggest discontent with traditional public schools. The report also found that low-income or minority children are underrepresented in existing choice options, from interdistrict choice to private schools.
''For many students, their ability to exercise school choice remains an accident of birth and is determined by family income and zip code,'' the report states. ''As a result, not all students are benefiting equally from the substantial availability of school choice. . . . There are no systems in place to ensure that choice is evenly distributed.''
The study also does not cover vouchers, the most volatile school-choice option. A Supreme Court case last year cleared the way for vouchers nationwide, but some states, including Massachusetts, forbid giving taxpayer money to private schools. Voucher proponents here are watching a case that could be accepted by the Supreme Court that challenges such so-called ''anti-aid'' laws.
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Among the findings of the research, conducted for the authors by the Center for Education Policy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst: There is ''some reason for concern'' about ''creaming,'' or the siphoning off, of middle-class, regular-education students from traditional public schools into charter schools.
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