School Choice or Best Systems_ What Improves Education_ - Margaret C. Wang [50]
The apparent slackness of many practicing educators may derive from views prevalent in the schools of education they attended. A 1997 Public Agenda survey of education professors34 showed that 64 percent thought schools should avoid competition. More favored giving grades for team efforts than favored grading individual accomplishments. Only 12 percent thought it essential for teachers to expect students to be neat, on time, and polite, compared to 88 percent of the public. Only about a fifth of the professors agreed with the public that they should insist on correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation from their students. Only 37 percent thought it essential for teachers to learn how to maintain an orderly classroom.
The difference in views between educators and their customers helps explain why the 2001 federal No Child Left Behind Act, strongly supported by both Democrats and Republicans, has nevertheless faced massive resistance from educators and is at risk of failure or outright repeal. One of NCLB’s objects was to pressure repeatedly failing public schools to reform or make choice available to families.
The NCLB sets out a series of remedies that must be implemented when schools’ performance is deemed unsatisfactory. At various stages, districts must notify parents that their children’s school is failing; provide money and opportunities for parents to have competitive private tutoring; and, in the end, “restructure” the school by closing it, replacing its staff, or commissioning private groups to manage it. Three years after the passage of NCLB, more than 1 in 10 public schools already faced sanctions for failing to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in achievement for at least two continuous years, and some risked immediate sanctions since failing to make AYP even once.35
As William Howell pointed out,36 however, public school districts severely limit choice. They block parents of students in failing schools from choosing private tutoring or sending their children to successful public or private schools. Educators lack any incentive to let parents know their rights. For example, few Massachusetts parents eligible to transfer their children to successful schools were actually informed that their children’s current schools were failing.
According to Paul Peterson: “Although 69 percent of parents attending schools in ten urban districts in Massachusetts say they have heard of NCLB, and 52 percent said they know about its choice provisions, only 24 percent said they had obtained their information from the school district.37 The news media, not the school district as required by law, were the most important source of information.”38 As other surveys discussed above have shown, many of these parents would have been likely to enroll their children in private schools, especially had they been clearly informed of the failure of their children’s present school.
Conclusion
Parental satisfaction is an important measure of the success of schools. Parents have the right and duty to guide and oversee their children’s education, have the strongest incentives to do it well, and have shown the ability to choose wisely. Largely aligned with parents’ views, students say they prefer greater academic challenges and accountability from their schools. The public increasingly wants parents to be able to choose the schools their children attend, whether public or private. And when allowed to choose charter, voucher, or independent or sectarian private schools, parents are more satisfied. Also indicative of discontent with schools is the estimated one million U.S. children being homeschooled.
On these points, public educators’ views differ generally