The down side of high-school choice

One of the provisions of Maine’s new school administration reorganization law is the preservation of high school choice. While not categorically against choice, I have issues with choice models not based on sound education policy and that offer advantages to private schools not offered to public schools.

Last year, the state studied which organizational models provide the best educational opportunities while being cost-efficient and determined that “because of the continuity of instruction, curriculum and professional development, students do better academically in districts where everyone knows which high school they will attend.” The group also found that school choice was more expensive.

You need not go any further than our local public high schools to see that this conclusion is accurate. All have capable administrators, excellent teachers, adequate facilities, strong community support and offer a comprehensive curriculum. Yet two, Hampden Academy and Bangor High School, consistently outperform the others in academic achievement. It is no coincidence that they are the schools least affected by school choice. Hampden has no school choice, yet they have been designated by the state as a “high performing school district.” Bangor has been recognized as a National School of Excellence. They would not be able to achieve these distinctions without a coherent kindergarten through grade 12 curriculum that tracks students year to year, making adjustments where needed.

This continuity of curriculum is not possible at public high schools affected by school choice. At Brewer High, students come to us from Brewer and up to six other districts. When students enter my classroom, I have no idea what their background knowledge is, which makes it nearly impossible to plan effective instruction. For some, I am reteaching concepts that they already know, for others I skip essential knowledge that I assume they have mastered. The sending districts have been reluctant to coordinate with us because they believe they cannot show favoritism to one school and they do not have time to do so with several schools. The bottom line is: It never gets done, and our kid’s education suffers.

The notion that the free market is a fair way to administer high school choice sounds good, but in reality is unfair. During this past school year, John Bapst Memorial High School received from the state and sending communities a tuition rate of $7,618 plus an additional $762 Insured Value Factor for a total of $8,380 per student. Brewer High School received $6,860 per student, $1,520 less than John Bapst.

While the insured value factor is allocated to private schools to fund building construction, there is no accounting system to ensure that money is used for this purpose. John Bapst uses these funds for programming, which gives them a competitive advantage in the marketplace. One look at their list of academic and extra-curricular offerings makes you wonder how they are paying for so many extras that public schools cannot afford.

With an enrollment of 450 students, they receive almost $343,000 per year of insured-value factor funds, which over a 10-year period would add up to more than $3.4 million. These funds should either be eliminated or placed in an escrow account to reimburse schools for their intended use.

John Bapst has an application process to filter students for admission. This results in a homogeneous population of motivated students with above-average academic skills. This leaves the public schools to educate a more needy and diverse population for $1,520 less per student! At Brewer High, we have 100 more boys than girls, and certain years we have had more than 200 special education students in our school, both situations brought about by school choice.

This creates an image that casts us in a negative light when parents and their children are choosing high schools. Brewer did institute an admissions policy and application this year. The policy has only been used to deny admission to transfer students expelled from other schools in an effort to make our school safer and allow us to focus on academics. No incoming ninth-grade students have been denied admission.

A new model of school choice is needed that moves away from allowing individuals choice based upon their own personal reasons, and lets communities choose where they are going to send all of their students, be it a public or private high school. This is the model used successfully at the other private high schools in the state. It would allow both public and private high schools to do the kind of collaborative work necessary to coordinate their curriculums, saving money at the same time. This would provide private schools with a choice as well – to continue as a publicly funded private school negotiating contracts with area towns, or to change to a prep-school model, educating students with private tuition money. This would have the advantage of creating equity for families in towns with their own high schools who must pay to send their children to private schools.

I urge educators at public high schools to speak out about how high school choice has affected your own schools so that corrective measures in the policy can be made. Using a more equitable model, choice could be good for everyone.

Glendon Rand is an Orrington resident and a science teacher at Brewer High School. His school choice blog can be found at http://schoolchoiceinmaine.blogspot.com