Friday Freakout Mailbag: Tennessee Edition

Note: This table shows all empirical studies using random-assignment methods.

Source: A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on School Choice

As I explained in a previous Friday Freakout, school choice policies force district schools to be more responsive to the needs of students and their families:

“District schools often operate as monopolies, particularly those serving low-income populations that have no other financially viable options. And sadly, a monopoly has little incentive to be responsive to the needs of its captive audience. Thankfully, the evidence suggests that when those families are empowered to “vote with their feet,” the district schools become more responsive to their needs, and student performance improves.

School Voucher Program Accountability

The last two letters in today’s mailbag concern accountability. Feroza Freeland of Memphis writes:

In a similar vein, Andrew Seidel of the Freedom from Religion Foundation writes:

These comments are packed with faulty assumptions that have been addressed elsewhere. The purpose of state education policy should be to educate individual children not merely to prop up existing institutions.

Research shows that school choice policies do not drain district schools’ funding. School choice policies are intended to expand educational opportunities, especially for the most vulnerable students, not undermine district schools. And as noted above, school choice makes both choice students and district-school students better off.

But getting to the main issue: is it true the district schools are more accountable than private schools?

Those who are tempted to answer in the affirmative are confusing “accountability” with “government rules and regulations,” but they are not the same. As it happens, school choice programs often entail a number of government regulations, but that’s not what makes them so accountable. States impose a great deal more regulation on the district schools and yet, as the gold-standard research described above makes clear, voucher students attending less-regulated private schools outperform their peers. Why?

Dictionary.com defines “accountable” as being “subject to the obligation to report, explain, or justify something; responsible; answerable.” The most desirable form of accountability would be making schools accountable directly to parents. However, district schools are only indirectly accountable to parents at best. In addition to state and federal bureaucrats, district schools generally answer to elected school boards, that, in turn, are answerable to voters, particularly the voting blocs that get them elected. And even where the majority of parents prevail over any special interests in the school board elections, some parents inevitably find themselves in the minority.

By contrast, private schools are directly accountable to parents, who have the prerogative to take their children—and their money—and leave if the school isn’t meeting their needs. That is real accountability.

Unfortunately, only families wealthy enough to move districts or afford private school tuition can express their dissatisfaction by “voting with their feet,” leaving behind many more families who only wish they could do the same. And since

Mr. Freeland and Mr. Seidel are right to want accountability in our schools, but they’re going about it the wrong way. If we want schools to be more accountable, the solution is not imposing government regulations on private schools, but rather making district schools more directly accountable to parents. The way to do that is to empower parents with the ability to leave a school that isn’t working for their child, and having the money follow that child out the door.

*Opinions expressed by our guest bloggers are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of EdChoice.