Search

This paper examines thirty major American cities to determine how "choice-friendly" they are today. Selected for their size and geographic diversity, the cities reveal both the best and worst conditions for school choice to take root and grow. "School choice" is defined broadly to incorporate a wide range of public and private options, including charter, magnet, and private schools, as well as mechanisms for accessing these options, including open enrollment, vouchers, and tax credit scholarships. Data on these options were collected from public databases and other sources, including district and state websites, newspaper articles, and education insiders in each city. The authors used these data to construct nearly fifty indicators of choice friendliness, then assessed the relative merits and drawbacks of each city's choice atmosphere relative to three areas: (1) "Political Support": measures the views of various individuals and groups as they pertain to school choice; (2) "Policy Environment": addresses topics such as the strength of state charter laws; funding and facilities access; non-profit, business, and philanthropic support; consumer supports, including report cards and transportation; and quality control mechanisms, such as policies for closing schools; and (3) "Quantity and Quality": addresses the types of school choice options that are available; the mechanisms for accessing those options, such as voucher and open enrollment programs; the portion of market share occupied by charters and other specialized schools; and the quality of the choice sector. Based on how they measured up, cities were awarded scores and ranks, overall and for each of these three areas. Notable patterns across the cities are identified that in turn informed the authors' recommendations for cities seeking to become more choice-friendly. City profiles by rank, patterns, and recommendations are detailed in this report. [Foreword by Amber M. Northern and Michael J. Petrilli. Contributors to the executive summary and sections one - six include: Julie Casper, Eric Chan, Solana Chehtman, Jane Griesinger, David Houston, and Christopher Lim. Section seven, "City Profiles by Rank," was written by David Griffith.]

This groundbreaking study finds that nearly all parents seek schools with a solid core curriculum in reading and math, an emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, and the development in students of good study habits, strong critical thinking skills, and excellent verbal and written communication skills. But some parents also prefer specializations and emphases that are only possible in a system of school choice. "Pragmatists" (36 percent of K-12 parents) assign high value to schools that, "offer vocational classes or job-related programs." Compared to the total parent population, Pragmatists have lower household incomes, are less likely themselves to have graduated from college, and are more likely to be parents of boys. "Jeffersonians" (24 percent) prefer a school that "emphasizes instruction in citizenship, democracy, and leadership," although they are no more likely than other parents to be active in their communities or schools. "Test-Score Hawks" (23 percent) look for a school that "has high test scores." Such parents are more likely to have academically gifted children who put more effort into school. They are also more likely to set high expectations for their children, push them to excel, and expect them to earn graduate degrees. Test-Score Hawks are also more apt to report that their child has changed schools because, as parents, they were dissatisfied with the school or its teachers. "Multiculturalists" (22 percent) laud the student goal: "learns how to work with people from diverse backgrounds." They are more likely to be African American, to self-identify as liberal, and to live in an urban area. Expressionists (15 percent) want a school that "emphasizes arts and music instruction." They are more likely to be parents of girls and to identify as liberal; they are less likely to be Christian. (In fact, they are three times more likely to self-identify as atheists.) "Strivers" (12 percent) assign importance to their child being "accepted at a top-tier college." Strivers are far more likely to be African American and Hispanic. They are also more apt to be Catholic. But they do not differ from the total population in terms of their own educational attainment. "What Parents Want: Education Preferences and Trade-Offs" uses market-research techniques to determine what school characteristics and student goals are most important to parents. [Foreword and summary by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Michael J. Petrilli.]

The reason teacher retirement benefits have been much in the news in recent years, and a topic of close attention by lawmakers and budget-watchers, is not because their existence is in dispute but because their financial underpinnings are often shaky and sometimes truly precarious. If a state or district doesn't set aside enough money now to cover what it will owe beneficiaries in the future, it creates a gap between assets and liabilities. Recent estimates put the total unfunded liability of U.S. teacher pensions anywhere from $390 billion to an almost unimaginable trillion dollars--about twice the total annual budget of all American public education. Many factors are to blame for pension costs, including financial mismanagement, shortsighted decision making, artificially rosy investment projections, and declining asset values due to market downturns. Skyrocketing costs and more-generous benefits, along with relatively meager contributions from employees, have also placed a monumental financial burden on many retiree health care systems. States are now scrambling to address this burden by rethinking the ways they will structure and fund their retirement systems going forward. But in many places the fiscal challenge exceeds the capacity--or political will--of state leaders to make substantive changes. In the meantime, much of the cost is passed on to school districts and to local taxpayers. This summary report analyzes and projects how big an impact the pension and retiree health care obligations will have on the budgets of three school districts: Milwaukee Public Schools, Cleveland Metropolitan School District, and the School District of Philadelphia. [Foreword by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Michael J. Petrilli. For the technical reports: "Milwaukee: Saved by Act 10…For Now," see ED598727; "Ohio Pension Reform in Cleveland: New Teachers Beware," see ED598728; and "Paying the Pension Price in Philadelphia," see ED598729.]

In recent years, debates over school reform have increasingly focused on the role of teacher unions in the changing landscape of American K-12 education. On one hand, critics argue that these unions, using their powerful grip on education politics and policy to great effect, bear primary responsibility for blocking states' efforts to put into place overdue reforms that will drive major-league gains in the educational system. Such critics contend that the unions generally succeed at preserving teacher job security and other interests, and do so at the expense of improved opportunities for kids. On the other side, the authors find union defenders who stoutly maintain that these organizations are bulwarks of professionalism in education, that their power is greatly exaggerated, that their opposition to misguided reforms is warranted, and that they couldn't possibly account for achievement woes--considering that highly unionized states perform at least as well as any others (and better than many) on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and other indicators. This debate has taken on an international aspect, too, as critics of U.S. reform initiatives (and defenders of unions) point out that teachers are unionized all over the world, including nearly all the countries that surpass the U.S. on comparative achievement measures such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Both sides agree that, for better or worse, teacher unions look out for teacher interests. This study sheds light on how they use politics to do this, by measuring teacher union strength, state by state, more comprehensively than any other study to date. It sought answers to three questions: (1) What elements are potential sources of a union's strength (i.e., inputs)?; (2) How might unions wield power in terms of behavior and conduct (i.e., processes and activities)?; and (3) What are signs that they have gotten their way (i.e., outcomes)? To gauge union strength at the state level, the authors gathered and synthesized data for thirty-seven different variables across five broad areas: (1) Resources and Membership; (2) Involvement in Politics; (3) Scope of Bargaining; (4) State Policies; and (5) Perceived Influence. Appended are: (1) Detailed Methodology and Rationale; and (2) State-Level NEA and AFT Affiliates. Individual state reports contain tables, footnotes and endnotes. [Foreword by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Michael J. Petrilli. Additional funding for this paper was provided by Education Reform Now.]