Leaving Children Behind: School Culture and Inter-District School Choice

One requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act is that schools identified as “needing improvement” must grant their students the opportunity to attend higherperforming schools in the same district. Recently, some policymakers have suggested that the choice program be expanded to include schools in other districts. In Massachusetts, inter-district school choice has been an option for all students, regardless of the achievement status of their schools, since 1991. The prevailing assumption of such policies is that allowing students in underperforming schools to leave will help those students to achieve better results elsewhere. But what impact does school choice have on students that are left behind, particularly in relation to student motivation? The aim of this thesis is to examine the relationship between inter-district school choice and college aspirations. Massachusetts is used as a case study to examine the effects of increased inter-district school choice on the motivation of those students that are left behind in struggling districts. The results of the correlational data analyses suggest a feedback mechanism wherein students flee failing districts, adversely affecting school culture in the districts they abandon, in turn prompting more students to transfer out and failing districts to struggle more. Whereas most of the research on school choice to date has focused on the impact upon “receiving” districts, this study suggests that further research examining the effects on “sending” districts is warranted, before any of the proposed policy changes regarding inter-district school choice are enacted. LEAVING CHILDREN BEHIND 4 Leaving Children Behind: School Culture and Inter-District School Choice Thirty years ago, the primary impetus for educating our children was to ensure that future generations would cement the United States’ position as an intellectual superpower in the international arena. A 1983 report to the Secretary of Education by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, titled “A Nation at Risk,” affirmed the Secretary’s feeling that nation-wide there was “the widespread public perception that something [was] seriously remiss in our educational system” (Gardner et al., 1983, p. 1). The report noted that this public opinion had arisen due to the United States’ “once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation” being overtaken by international competitors (Gardner et al., 1983, p. 5). Failures in education were seen as the most affective causes of this problem, and these failures undergirded “American prosperity, security, and civility” (Gardner et al., 1983, p. 5). The American government, reacting to these grievances about the condition of public education, enacted corrective reforms aimed at bolstering the intellectual competitiveness of American students as compared to children from other countries. The Goals 2000: Educate America Act, signed into law on March 31, 1994, more clearly links weak performances in the international arena to inequities in the American educational system. The Act mandates that public education provide students with literacy skills and the knowledge to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. More particularly, United States public education should strive to make American students first in mathematics and science achievement (Goals 2000: Educate America Act, 1994). The Act posited that LEAVING CHILDREN BEHIND 5 unless every student was given the opportunity to reach his or her full potential, the United States would continue to see its international standing fall. Disadvantaged students were viewed as an untapped resource in striving to obtain unsurpassed prosperity and security. Since 1994, public perceptions about the overarching purpose of public schooling have shifted slightly. We no longer solely view children as vehicles through which we may achieve nationally hegemonic goals. Rather, we educate children largely for their own sake, so that they may enjoy the opportunities afforded them by knowledge within United States borders (“A Nation Accountable,” 2008). We endeavor to impart to all children information about events that have occurred in history, scientific phenomena, different modes of communication, and critical thinking. We hope that they will use this familiarity with the world to seek higher education and attain better-paying jobs, eventually achieving social mobility. This shift in theory behind the purpose of education is subtly reflected in more recently enacted legislation. Rather than primarily striving to produce a few intelligent individuals to help advance the United States’ international standing, policymakers are trying to close achievement gaps and equalize access to high-quality schooling. An example of how this sentiment has manifested itself in legislation is seen in the phrasing of the “statement of purpose” of Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. The authors state succinctly that they seek to “ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education” (No Child Left Behind Act, 2008). NCLB as a whole focuses primarily on LEAVING CHILDREN BEHIND 6 discrepancies in education across demographic groupings and state lines, rather than across international borders. As evidenced, recent education policies have a more domestic focus. It is posited that “standards-based reform” – making sure that every child reaches prescribed levels of achievement – is the key to promoting social mobility in American society. However, NCLB, the most influential legislation on the books today with regard to education, includes some controversial policies on accountability and school improvement. For instance, it mandates that every disadvantaged, underperforming school offer intra-district school choice to its students. Students in a failing school that is recognized as serving an at-risk population must be allowed to transfer to a higher-performing school in the same district, if one exists, with the local educational agency (school district) covering the costs of tuition and transporting choice students to their new schools (No Child Left Behind Act, 2008). This practice further depletes the resources of the struggling districts, and further disadvantages those students that are left behind. “Resources” here are not only measured financially; this thesis argues that seeing an academically motivated student flee a failing school has an adverse effect on his peers that extends far beyond the money he takes with him. Left with lower aggregate test scores and fewer academic role models, the students deserted in failing schools face bleak prospects. Intra-district school choice is regarded as an underutilized and ineffective provision of NCLB, largely because most districts containing one failing school do not also contain higher-achieving, more appealing options for students looking to transfer (Bathon & Spradlin, 2007). Because of this, some call for an additional LEAVING CHILDREN BEHIND 7 provision to be added to NCLB’s list of sanctions for disadvantaged, failing schools: mandatory inter-district school choice. That is, students would be allowed to select higher-performing schools in different districts to which to transfer (Kozol, 2007). This thesis examines the potential implications of the proposed amendment to NCLB that would expand the school choice program from an intra-district to an interdistrict program. First, literature related to the history of NCLB and its school choice provision is reviewed. Then, Massachusetts – a state that has had a voluntary interdistrict school choice program in place since 1991 – is used as a case study to examine the effects of increased inter-district school choice on those students who are left in underperforming districts. Literature Review Reasons for hypothesizing that mandatory inter-district choice would have an adverse effect on students who do not transfer are explored in this section. Relevant literature on NCLB and its high-stakes testing mandates is presented first, in support of the assertion that the accountability movement has led students in underperforming schools to seek ways out. Concretely labeling some schools as “failing” has prompted increasing numbers of students to participate in existing choice programs, even as debates over the arbitrariness of the “failing” label, differences across states in how “failure” is defined, and the liberalness with which the label is applied rage on. Students may escape “failing” schools via intra-district choice, mandated by NCLB for disadvantaged students in underperforming schools. Existing choice programs in some states also include voluntary inter-district choice, but there are practical LEAVING CHILDREN BEHIND 8 limitations on these programs as well as on the NCLB provision. These limitations have prompted reform advocates to call for an expansion of the choice provisions in NCLB to include inter-district choice, which has potentially adverse ramifications in terms of school culture for districts that lose students to other districts. “College aspiration” as a predictor of student motivation, and therefore of “school culture,” is discussed, along with relevant research pertaining to the influence that school culture can have on students immersed in it. Finally, the feasibility of using Massachusetts as a case study to examine the effects that increased rates of inter-district school choice can have on “sending” districts is explored. Accountability and Standards-Based Reform NCLB, President George W. Bush’s signature education policy, includes several controversial provisions on accountability. On its surface, proponents claim that NCLB was meant to equitably improve public education in the United States, as well as close the achievement gap between white and minority students (S. Dillon, 2010).