Dive Brief:
- Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, at a conference last week sparked a debate among education advocates, when she said Betsy DeVos' school choice plans and federal school voucher proposals were "only slightly more polite cousins of segregation," reports Education Week.
- The Center for Education Reform called for Weingarten's resignation, calling the comments "deeply offensive" and inconsiderate of the diverse groups of people "who have worked to bring options, opportunities, and reforms to an education system." DeVos also responded on Twitter, writing, "This isn’t about school 'systems.' This is about ind. students & families. Schools are at the service of students, not the other way around."
- Peter Cunningham, former assistant secretary for communication at the Department of Education under Obama, wrote in a response piece that Weingarten is "projecting" flaws in the traditional public school system onto DeVos' school choice proposals — when the entire education pipeline, both with faculty and students, is systemically unequal.
Dive Insight:
There isn't much of a consensus on whether school choice policies, specifically voucher programs, are effective or not. And by the same token, Cunningham's comments highlight that analysis on whether school choice means segregation is not that clear either — as American school systems are more segregated now than in the 70s. Studies demonstrate that more than 30% of the nation’s black and Latino population attend schools that are 90% non-white; and over 30% of white students attend schools that are 90% or more white.
A study from The Century Foundation, entitled “A New Wave of School Integration,” shows that moves like district-wide choice policies could be used to encourage parents to send their kids to more diverse schools, rather than keeping in place a system in which low-income minority students from less affluent neighborhoods only interact with students from the same backgrounds. But Weingarten's comments also show that the policies could potentially enforce segregation, as white parents may choose to keep their kids away from more diverse schools and send them to the wealthiest neighborhoods. So as to whether the policies could be more detrimental for integration – the reality is that it's still a bit of a toss up.
Recent analysis in a study of the D.C. program, the only federally-funded voucher program in the country, showed that students using the voucher scholarship experienced negative impacts in mathematics achievements. However, the vouchers didn't have statistically significant impacts in other ways. The voucher program was recently implemented in Indiana, but it's still too early to definitively determine impact. Some opponents say that the program doesn't reach students who need it most, as it makes it easier for families with students already enrolled to pay tuition. And, five years out, more than half of the state’s voucher recipients haven't attended public schools there, meaning that taxpayer money is going toward parents that probably could have already footed the bill.
Still, more data is needed in order to understand the full impact of school choice policies, and what types of environmental factors affect their efficacy. Debates among education advocate highlight some of the core issues the Department of Education should be considering as it starts to roll these proposals out.