CONTENTS Chester E. Finn, Jr., Assistant Secretary for Educational Research and Im- provement, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC, accompanied by Jack Klenk, Patricia Lines, and Jay Noell.. Joseph Nathan, research fellow, Public School Incentives, St. Paul, MN Hon. Wiley F. Mitchell, Jr., Virginia State Senate, Richmond, VA; and Rox- anne Bradshaw, secretary-treasurer, National Education Association, Wash- 100 107 137 "Politics, Markets, and the Organization of Schools", by John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe, August 28, 1985 The "Workplace School", statement of John A. Murphy, superintendent, Statement of Anne H. Hastings, senior partner, Scanlon & Hastings/A Management Services Group. Statement of Lewis W. Finch, superintendent, Anoka-Hennepin District No. 11, Coon Rapids, MN Letter to Senator Dave Durenberger, from Minnesota Federation of Citizens Statement of the Minnesota Congress of Parents, Teachers & Students... Statement of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Churches; American "Educating Students for the 21st Century", Minnesota Business Partnership, "Opinion Polls Analyzed", by Thomas R. Ascik, executive director, the Clearinghouse on Educational Choice...... "Educational Policies 1985-86", Minnesota Association of School Administrators.. Page 114 198 212 221 224 226 233 240 242 273 281 292 348 406 STATE AND LOCAL INNOVATIONS IN EDUCATIONS CHOICE TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1985 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met at 2 p.m., in room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Dave Durenberger (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Senator Durenberger. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURENBERGER Senator DURENBERGER. The hearing will come to order. The subject of today's hearing is expanding family choice in elementary and secondary education. Particularly, the focus will be on innovative State and local programs, which expand choice in education, and on what role the Federal Government should play in facilitating such initiatives. Before discussing specific programs and alternatives, though, it is useful to pause a moment and consider what brings us together today. And that is a basic concern about the quality of American education and the direction in which it is heading. Americans traditionally have placed enormous faith in education. Acquiring a good education has been a means of self-improvement; for some, even a passport out of poverty. In a democratic society, education has a civic role to play, and as Thomas Jefferson expressed it, "No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom than educating the people." Thus, it is disturbing to see the mounting signs that the public schools in this country are in trouble. In just the last 4 years, nine major research studies and commissions have documented serious problems in elementary and secondary education. In fact, just last Sunday, NEA President Mary Hatwood Futrell brought yet another important study to our attention in the Washington Post. Among other things, such research has found that: American students are falling behind their foreign counterparts in scholastic achievement; verbal SAT scores fell 50 points between 1963 and 1980, and math scores fell 40 points during the same period; 13 percent of all 17-year-olds are functionally illiterate; 40 percent of all 17-year-olds cannot draw inferences from written material, and 80 percent can't write a persuasive essay. (1) Spending on remedial training of high school graduates has increased dramatically in recent years; and, finally, insufficient numbers of academically able students are entering the teaching profession at the elementary and secondary levels. Not all the news is bad, however. Over the past few years, States and localities have launched a sweeping array of educational reforms. Since 1982, 40 States have enacted tougher graduation requirements, 36 have adopted additional student testing, and 25 have established new or revised programs of teacher testing. Such reforms enjoy considerable popular support and address an important goal. But imposing core curriculums or standardized requirements statewide is a clumsy means of addressing the varying needs of different students. A different approach for addressing the problems facing American education is to expand student and parental choice within our education system, to reward excellence by promoting competition. As Americans, we are increasingly aware of the competitive nature of the world in which we live. In order to retain our competitive edge in business, in science, and in every aspect of our lives, we must insist on maintaining an educational system which is responsive to the constantly changing demands which it must satisfy. We are all familiar with the role of competition and choice in the marketplace. But what do we mean by expanding choice in the public sector? I know what it means in health care. It means giving patients and doctors genuine options among different kinds of insurance, providers, and medical services: Preventive health care, HMO's, individual practice, group practice, and so on. It means giving poor people access to health care they have never had before. It means using competition to hold down spiraling medical costs, and it means giving doctors and other health care providers new choices, too. Change has come about only by working closely with health care professionals. That is an approach I would like to explore in education. Some people have always had choices in education. Those who could afford to choose where they live could choose the kind of education they wanted for their children. If they couldn't find what they wanted in the public schools, they could afford to go outside that system and send their kids to private schools, or they could pick up and move to another public school district. But many families never had, and do not have, that choice, unless they are fortunate enough to have access to a communitysupported parochial school. Today, the options available to most families are even more limited. With today's cost of housing, the middle class can't afford to vote with its feet, because it can't afford a home. In rural areas, the property tax base is declining rapidly, along with the prices that farmers get. And in inner cities, don't let anyone tell you that public schools are free. They are certainly not free in Chicago, where the dropout rate is 60 percent, and 46 percent of public schoolteachers send their kids to private school. Low-income families there are paying for their lack of choices with their children's futures. So, I think that in education one of our goals should be to help such families afford to make a choice of schools, if they can't afford a choice of where to live. Exactly how that might be done is what this hearing is all about. It is encouraging to find that State and local governments all across the country are introducing an array of programs designed to expand choice and competition within elementary and secondary education. Some of these programs are confined to public schools. Others include both public and private. Some reforms are systemwide. Others are targeted to specific groups or students with specific needs. But all give renewed meaning to Justice Brandeis' vision of States as "laboratories of experimentation." They give all of us a chance to hear how well they performed, where the pitfalls are, and what they promise for the future. Another purpose of this hearing is to put the spotlight on the role the Federal Government ought to play in promoting educational choices. The Federal role in education is a limited one, and, in fiscal terms, it has been declining. There are regulations, but the answer doesn't lie in more Federal mandates. If anything, we need to lighten the load so that teachers are free to teach. But there may be things the Federal Government can do in this important area. The Federal Government has been involved in educational research since the original Department of Education was created in 1867. We will be hearing this afternoon from Education Department officials about research findings relating to educational choice. We may also hear testimony about an administration proposal to let school districts issue vouchers to educationally disadvantaged students in lieu of supplementary compensatory education programs. Greater_competition is not a panacea for every governmental problem. For example, privatizing first-class mail delivery would leave rural residents out in the cold. Some areas outside of highvolume, profitable routes have suffered, too, in the move to deregulate airline and bus transportation. In education, special care may be needed to assure that handicapped and other special needs students are provided for, and that unique requirements or sparsely populated rural areas are addressed. We must also be sure that parents, teachers, and school administrators are all consulted and involved in devising workable solutions. Real change will not occur unless education professionals recognize the value of reform and put their individual talents to work accomplishing it. But we know it can be done. We already have an educational system in this country that promotes choice and competition among nearly 3,000 separate institutions serving millions of students. By allowing providers to compete and students to choose freely, we have developed the finest system of higher education in the world. That should be our goal in elementary and secondary education. And it is a goal, I am certain, we can achieve. We might have a small problem this afternoon in that we are supposed to have three votes that have been stacked up for the convenience of somebody, certainly not for the convenience of our witnesses at this hearing. So, I will be running in and out. In the meantime, we will begin with Dr. Chester Finn, who is assistant |