社区黑料

Most of us enjoy having choices in life. We also know that income often constrains the quality of choices available. 

Naturally, the relationship among choice, income and quality varies across domains 鈥� but the relationship is consistent: If one鈥檚 budget can stretch only to McDonald鈥檚, Burger King or Wendy鈥檚, dining choices are severely quality-constrained. 

In American education, the triangle of choice, income and quality is more complex. Higher income enables greater choice, both among public schools (some parents can afford housing in top-performing districts) and among private schools (where tuition isn鈥檛 an impediment). By contrast, lower-income parents in locations without extensive vouchers, tax credits or education savings accounts have little choice beyond their zoned public school. This basic inequity in quantity underpins the policy argument that expanding school choice per se is good.

But when it comes to educational quality, the story is less straightforward. First, parents can鈥檛 infer the performance of any particular school from a district鈥檚 overall results (especially in larger districts). Within districts, school performance often varies widely. Moreover, many larger districts are 鈥� de facto or de jure 鈥� internally zoned, giving wealthier parents disproportionate access to preferred schools.

But the quality of a child鈥檚 education is contingent not only on access to a supply of decent public schools. There are also questions of teacher capacity and academic content. According to , the spread of teacher effectiveness in this country is wide. More strikingly, variation in teacher quality is far more pronounced within America鈥檚 public schools than between them. Strong research from Harvard鈥檚 concludes that 鈥�85% of the variation in teacher VA [value added 鈥� the impact on learning] is within rather than between schools.鈥�

Using by Eric Hanushek and his colleagues, and by , it is possible to assess the learning impact of having a more or less effective teacher. A reasonable estimate is that a child in middle school who moves from a lowest-quartile teacher to a top-quartile teacher gains from 5.5  to seven additional months of learning in the year with the more effective teacher. This is a stunning difference that most Americans are unaware of. Most assume that school-level choice is overwhelmingly the most important determinant of their child鈥檚 education. But what if it鈥檚 truly a matter of teacher-level choice? 

Multiple factors drive the variation in teacher effectiveness, including a shrinking pool of candidates, poor preparation, low barriers to entry, inadequate professional learning and support, and a lack of a widely shared curriculum. But the bottom line is that, statistically speaking, almost every school in the country has teachers whose classroom effectiveness ranges from the top to the bottom quintile of instructional quality. What do most parents know about the quality of the educator assigned to their child? Little beyond what their child may report, which can be influenced by any number of idiosyncratic factors.

In public schools, parents have access to school- and child-level data on academic outcomes 鈥� assuming they can find and understand it. (In Texas, parents can log on to the state education department’s to find their child’s very detailed results, along with interventions to help them respond.) But what impact has a particular teacher had on those results? Even in Texas, how many parents can realistically research the effectiveness of the next grade鈥檚 teachers and influence their child鈥檚 teacher assignment? 

Parents may 鈥� at least in theory 鈥� be able to find out what the curriculum is. But in practice, most teachers substitute or add multiple self-chosen items to the school district鈥檚 selection (the average public school teacher regularly ). Once again, parents are often in the dark. 

In many private schools, the challenge takes a different form. Some don鈥檛 use nationally normed tests at all (each Catholic diocese, for example, makes its own decision). In others, the sheer variety of exams administered makes interpretation difficult. How, for example, should a parent judge Stanford 10 outcomes against Iowa Assessments results, or either against public schools鈥� scores on state tests? 

When it comes to instructional materials, the picture is mixed. As in many public schools, some private school teachers blend multiple materials, assembling them like DJs putting together a playlist. In other schools, teachers may use nationally published curricula or faith-based materials from sources such as Christian Light. Some Catholic schools use textbooks from major publishers, and some private 鈥�classical learning鈥� schools are embracing the 鈥済reat books鈥� in their instructional materials. While parents may choose a private school for the values it nurtures, judging the academic quality of a school鈥檚 curricular choices is much tougher. 

America鈥檚 wide span of teacher effectiveness would be less troubling if students’ baseline performance were strong. But recent data affirm that . In most advanced industrialized countries, ministries of education specify the national or provincial academic content students are expected to learn. Educators are trained to teach that content, both before and after they enter the classroom, and children are tested on it. School choice is built on this foundational structure. As my colleague Ashley Berner , in most of these countries, pluralistic systems fund a wide variety of schools, including religious schools, as long as they prepare and test students using content-specified common assessments. As a result of this virtuous cycle, the range of teacher quality within schools is usually narrower, and/or the overall quality is often higher. Information about student outcomes is transparent across all kinds of schools.

The United States urgently needs a far more equitable and academically coherent education system 鈥� one in which teacher preparation, instructional content and assessments are aligned. Louisiana briefly offered this essential triangulation through curriculum-integrated English Language Arts state assessments, and Texas may do so in the future. But in the meantime, the parental and societal benefits of greater educational choices will be realized only if two conditions are met: expanded choice must increase the supply of quality schooling options, and all schools must provide parents with greater access to the information they need to make informed judgments among schools.

What does this mean?

Expanding high-quality schooling options will require new state policies on multiple fronts: low-interest loan programs or credit enhancements for proven operators (charter networks and high-performing faith-based or community-based schools); expanded to finance private-school facilities serving voucher/ESA students; right of first refusal and discounted leases for proven nondistrict operators that want to rent, purchase or reuse unused or underused public school facilities; and streamlined regulations to create a single, clear, predictable and publicly accessible set of rules governing where schools can be built and how applications are evaluated.

Expansion grants for schools with proven track records, greater support for and stabilization funds for new schools (to date, given only in urgent situations such as COVID) would expand quality choices for a broader student demographic. Finally, we need to fund fellowships and in academics, operations, finance and community engagement, with a bias toward those who will open or serve in schools serving disadvantaged communities.

All schools receiving public funds should publish clear information on state- and/or nationally normed academic outcomes and retention data. Non-public schools should publish information about their financial condition (many are nonprofits that must file Form 990 tax returns). Ideally, all schools should identify on their websites the curricula or textbooks used in each grade for the four major subjects (math, ELA, science and social studies) or indicate that teachers have the autonomy to select their own materials. Schools should also be encouraged to list the total years of experience and years at the school for grade-level teachers, along with their areas of specialization.

Educators should have a place on the school website to describe their pedagogical approach and how they assess their own success. In math and ELA, if they choose to share growth data for their students from previous years, they should be able to do so once the principal has signed off on the data. Principals should share their vision for supporting effective teaching, outlining specific plans for providing professional learning and explaining how it will be distributed across the subjects and grades taught. Since repeated classroom observations using curriculum-integrated rubrics are the most effective form of professional development for raising teacher performance, parents should know the extent to which this is being offered (if at all).

Families can choose to ignore all information, of course. Only school performance 鈥� surely because, in the vast majority of cases, they have little or no practical alternative when selecting their children鈥檚 public school. However, the vast, unmet demand for places in top urban charter schools demonstrates that parents care about academic outcomes and want an education for their children that is more mentally nourishing than the dietary equivalent of fast food. 

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