Introduction

With its June 27 ruling that tuition vouchers for private and religious schools do not violate the First Amendment's establishment clause, the Supreme Court has put the school choice debate back where it belongs: in the political arena.¹ This is a welcome development because the basic problems with vouchers have little to do with church-state issues; rather, they raise organizational questions about American public education that should be decided through a political rather than legal process.

PPI has long advocated enhanced public school choice, public charter schools, and other public choice options, but at the same time has opposed using public monies to fund vouchers for schools that operate without public accountability and admissions.² Consistent with that history, this policy brief describes the principles that policymakers must incorporate into any choice proposal in the wake of the Zelman v. Simmons-Harris decision to formulate a Third Way that expands choice only while guaranteeing access, quality, and standards in public education. Under this "accountable choice" model, public accountability, as well as funding, follows students into new or existing schools of choice -- whether operated by government, private, or parochial authorities. But, these schools remain public in the most critical sense -- public results and accountability in exchange for public funding.

Although the term became politicized during the school choice wars of the 1980s and 1990s, a school "voucher" is merely a way of funding schools not a "stand-alone" education reform strategy. As a general rule, public schools and school districts are now funded as institutions based on their enrollment and other factors including poverty and students with special needs. In a voucher system, funding is instead allocated to individuals who then choose where to spend it. The amount of the voucher and the range of choices (private or sectarian schools) vary depending on the rules and laws governing the particular voucher plan.

The assumption that underlies much of the support for vouchers is that increasing freedom of choice by parents will introduce competitive forces and drive improvements in all schools. The evidence is preliminary and mixed with regard to system-wide change in the three public voucher experiments in Wisconsin, Florida, and Ohio, and also with regard to public charter schools. However, there is reason to believe that competition is one factor than can help improve schooling.³

Nevertheless, because vouchers are only a funding mechanism rather than an instructional change, it is important to consider two important principles when thinking about school choice:

• Vouchers have no direct connection with teaching, curriculum, or other in-school factors that influence student learning; and
• Parents, and the general public, have a compelling interest in at least basic student learning.

The constitutional issues that the Supreme Court weighed, while important legal issues with regard to church-state considerations, have little to do with these principles. Vouchers impact student learning only to the extent that parents make good or bad choices about where to use them; in and of themselves, vouchers have no direct cause and effect relationship with learning.⁴

Unfortunately, in their zeal to defeat choice proposals, anti-voucher advocates attached such great significance to constitutionality that education policy considerations are largely obscured in the public debate about the court's ruling. The court ruled that the Cleveland, Ohio voucher system, and by extension similar programs, do not run afoul of the establishment clause.⁵ Despite much of the rhetoric, the ruling was not a proxy on whether or not vouchers are an efficacious policy option and the Zelman decision does not point to policy solutions by itself. Questions about how to design a workable choice system, regardless of the range of schools involved, are largely legislative rather than judicial issues.

In the wake of Zelman and the ensuing attention to choice, three scenarios are likely, none of which will bring about significant improvements in American education.

First, there is an obvious enticement to increase the number of small public and private pilot voucher programs around the country. While these programs might help a small number of parents and students, they distract from larger reform issues and are, at best, short-term fixes for a small number of students. There is a cynical quality to these initiatives because they carry an implicit assumption that not every child can be helped, are frequently divorced from other school improvement efforts, and do not alter the fundamental educational arrangements in low-income communities.

Second, some policymakers and voucher advocates will seek to cobble together plans to dramatically increase education spending while simultaneously piloting voucher programs. Such an approach, to increase education spending with no apparent purpose other than to make vouchers more attractive and with no linkage to improved student performance other than wishful thinking, misses the point. It marries two ideas -- vouchers and generic increases in education spending -- that would likely be rejected independent of one another and creates a public policy Frankenstein unlikely to drive fundamental change.⁶

Third, it is possible that the Supreme Court's ruling will not alter the political landscape with regard to choice enough to bring about any resolution and pro- and anti-voucher combatants will simply continue their phony war over school choice. This would perpetuate the distracting debate in which voucher opponents and proponents alike dodge tough issues like improving fiscal equity, addressing teacher quality, improving pre-kindergarten education, and refining standards and accountability systems. Instead, powerful interests on both sides continue to fight over vouchers with no resolution and little attention to other pressing problems.⁷

There is a better option. The focus on choice resulting from the Zelman decision gives policymakers the chance to move past this tired debate and fundamentally rethink the funding and accountability arrangements for schools, and take real steps to improve and modernize the organization of public education around a new model of public schools based on the concept PPI calls "accountable choice." In this paradigm, a public school is not defined by who runs it, but rather by two features: universal access and accountability to the public for results. It doesn't matter whether a local school board, a group of parents, a teachers' union, a Fortune 500 company, or a church runs a public school. What matters are results in student learning and ensuring that schools receiving public monies abide by performance contracts and non-discrimination laws in exchange for this public money.⁸

This concept of equal access for students and accountability for learning should be the crux of any effort to expand choice in the post-Zelman environment. Policymakers should reject the pseudo-centrism of "spending in exchange for vouchers" initiatives and the cynicism of voucher pilot programs. Instead, reform-oriented policymakers should embrace a bold strategy to make chartering, contracting, and real public school choice the norm while ensuring that all publicly funded schools are held to high standards of accountability. Choice for its own sake is a hollow education reform because it is not tied to student learning. Choice coupled with accountability, essentially a radical universal choice model, is a strategy with the potential to unleash a renaissance in American education because it is a model applicable in all communities for all types of schools based on parental demand and public accountability.

In fact, more universal choice with accountability would obviate the need for small means-tested programs by providing richer conditions for various educational options to flourish. However, and fortuitously for those students most in need, if early experience with charter schools is any indication, it is likely that the market for new schools and options will mostly be in communities currently underserved by their public schools.

An accountable choice system would guarantee:

• Full per-pupil funding augmented for poverty and disability that would follow students so parents are empowered with real choices and the conditions for new schools to open and operate are created;
• Equal access protections so schools accepting publicly funded students must accept all students, space permitting, and conduct a blind admissions process if over-subscribed; and
• Accountability for common student learning and performance goals applying to all schools serving students with public funding regardless of governance.

Many voucher proponents will decry access and accountability provisions as "strings" or unwarranted intrusion into the operations of private schools. Likewise, many voucher opponents will resist this model because they fundamentally object to the idea of greater choice, even public school choice and charter schools. In fact, these principles move the debate past a frequently meaningless delineation of public- and private-based ownership to a new definition of "publicness" predicated on operating principles and performance rather than ownership or governance.⁹ This shifts the focus of the school choice debate to the avowed goal of both sides: improving education for the neediest students. There are tremendous disparities in school quality within the public and private sectors particularly in low-income communities. Thus, the challenge for policymakers is to increase good educational options in distressed communities, not simply to move students into "private" schools.

As this paper argues, however, these accountability measures should be modest. As they resist demands from voucher proponents to eliminate regulation, policymakers must also resist pressure from choice opponents to make accountability requirements so cumbersome that they thwart the creation of new schools or expansion of existing choice options. But, even with minimal requirements about open admissions and student performance, some schools will understandably elect not to accept publicly funded students under such a system. In fact, it is the very marketplace forces that choice proponents seek that will determine whether schools elect to compete for publicly funded students. "Private" schooling options should remain open to parents who seek them. Rather than forcibly compel schools to change their admissions and operating procedures, the policy goal should be to lay out a set of minimal ground rules to link the demand for greater choice with society's interest in equitable and high-quality education.