Fordham study exploring accountability for voucher schools also highlights different accountability standards for private and public schools, new review concludes
Contact:
Ernie House; (720) 938-1826 (61-409705653: Australia); Ernie.House@colorado.edu (Visiting Professor, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology until April 30)
Kevin Welner, (303) 492-8370; kevin.welner@gmail.com
TEMPE, Ariz. and BOULDER, Colo. (April 15, 2009) -- A recent report examines the opinions of school choice supporters about accountability issues concerning voucher schools. A new review praises the report, finding that it offers some useful insights. In addition, the review points to differing standards in the attitudes of some voucher advocates when it comes to private versus public school accountability.
The report, When Private Schools Take Public Dollars: What's the Place of Accountability in School Voucher Programs?, was written by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Christina Hentges, Michael J. Petrilli, and Amber M. Winkler, and published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
It was reviewed for the Think Tank Review Project by Ernest House, Emeritus Professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an expert in program evaluation and education policy.
The Fordham report is based on a survey of people the report describes as "experts in the school choice world," and who are all supporters of school choice and vouchers. The respondents answered questions about how private schools accepting public vouchers might be held accountable. Survey respondents generally agreed that the government should not regulate private schools' day-to-day operations, regardless of their public subsidies; that parents should receive information about their own children's performance in school; and that voucher programs should be subject to rigorous evaluation by third-party researchers.
Where the respondents differed was on how much information about private school performance should be made public. Some viewed the market alone as adequate, with no requirement for public reporting or oversight, while others thought private schools receiving public monies should be subject to government intervention if they are not performing adequately. The report concludes with a recommendation from the Fordham authors that favors increased requirements for transparency and accountability as public voucher revenues increase to any given private school--a sliding scale approach.
House notes in his review that the report comes as the financial collapse has undermined faith in markets as self-regulating. Similarly, he observes, political and legal pressures have been mounting against voucher programs, including ones in Washington, D.C., Milwaukee and Arizona. The Fordham report acknowledges that public opinion polls show a majority of Americans believe private schools that accept public funding should be subject to the same accountability requirements as public schools--"a position not favored by the private educators," House notes.
A key point made by Professor House is that "The researchers do not claim these views represent the views of all private education experts. The study is more an issue-clarifying exercise." Accordingly, the survey should not be generalized to estimate the opinions of any particular segment of the population, and the Fordham authors were careful not to do so.
House reasons that the study is likely to be useful given both the influence of the survey respondents and the likely continued interest by the administration of President Obama in broader school choice practices (although, apparently, not vouchers) and accountability testing. That is, given the apparent decision of the Obama administration to continue some Republican education policies, the respondents are likely to continue exercising considerable influence.
Without directly addressing the reasons, the report also reveals that some experts hold different accountability standards for private and public schools--relatively laissez faire policies toward voucher schools while insisting on tougher accountability measures for public schools.
House points to the opinion of the survey respondents that "top down accountability arrangements might exact too high a price when it comes to a principal's autonomy to run the best possible school, particularly if these arrangements push schools to adopt a mediocre curriculum, pledge allegiance to dubious academic standards or teach to a test-particularly a bad one."
Such experts, House writes, "seem to hold an implicit view that private school students and teachers are of a different kind than public students and teachers and that only the latter need be disciplined with burdensome top-down testing requirements." He concludes: "I see no reason to believe this negative pressure does not currently affect public schools the same way that these experts foresee for private schools."
The next agenda, House suggests, might be to follow through on such insights: "I hope these private education experts address in the near future how to hold schools--both public and private--accountable ‘without strangling them.'"
Find Ernest House's review on the web at:
http://epicpolicy.org/thinktank/review-when-private-schools-take-public…
CONTACT:
Ernest House, Professor Emeritus of Education
University of Colorado at Boulder
Visiting Professor, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology until April 30
(720) 938-1826 (U.S.)
61-409705653 (Australia)
Ernie.House@colorado.edu
Kevin Welner, Professor and Director
Education and the Public Interest Center
University of Colorado at Boulder
(303) 492-8370
kevin.welner@gmail.com
About the Think Tank Review Project
The Think Tank Review Project (http://thinktankreview.org), a collaborative project of the ASU Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) and CU-Boulder's Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC), provides the public, policy makers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank publications. The project is made possible by funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.
Kevin Welner, the project co-director, explains that the project is needed because, "despite their garnering of media attention and their influence with many policy makers, reports released by private think tanks vary tremendously in their quality. Many think tank reports are little more than ideological argumentation dressed up as research. Many others include flaws that would likely have been identified and addressed through the peer review process. We believe that the media, policy makers, and the public will greatly benefit from having qualified social scientists provide reviews of these documents in a timely fashion." He adds, "we don't consider our reviews to be the final word, nor is our goal to stop think tanks' contributions to a public dialogue. That dialogue is, in fact, what we value the most. The best ideas come about through rigorous critique and debate."
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The Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at Arizona State University collaborate to produce policy briefs and think tank reviews. Our goal is to promote well-informed democratic deliberation about education policy by providing academic as well as non-academic audiences with useful information and high quality analyses.
Visit EPIC and EPRU at http://www.educationanalysis.org/
EPIC and EPRU are members of the Education Policy Alliance
(http://educationpolicyalliance.org).
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