Many of these programs, however, have been constrained by the refusal of local school districts to allow their students to escape to other districts. Public school choice is not a complete stranger to Illinois. It was part of Chicago's 1988 School Reform legislation, but the original language was ignored and then removed from the bill a few years later without any choice programs being started. Chicago's magnet school program is a kind of choice program that involves a significant fraction of the CPS's total enrollment, and informal arrangements among suburbs and downstate communities reportedly also constitute de facto , albeit small, choice programs. The authors of the current report believe that public school choice is a very modest step in the direction of creating new incentive structures.
Parents are free to choose only from a set of schools that have similar strengths and weaknesses.
Dropout programs, charter schools, etc. Like its endorsement of public school choice, the Commission's endorsement of special programs for dropouts, charter schools, magnet schools, and school-site management offer only tiny steps where giant strides are needed. Minnesota and other states have operated successful alternative programs for dropouts for years, so there is little risk in suggesting that Illinois finally try them. Charter schools and more magnet schools are token gestures, once again, of that fall short of the institutional changes needed to genuinely improve student academic achievement. And Chicago's experience with school-site management demonstrates that at best this is a slow and uncertain route to improving school quality.