Participation in private school choice programs has seen steady growth in the last 15 years. At the turn of the last century, only about 30,000 students used vouchers to attend private schools, and they were almost all clustered in Milwaukee and Cleveland. In the 2013-14 school year, over 308,000 students participated in one of the 39 private school choice programs offered in 18 different states and the District of Columbia.
Last week, a report from Indiana University’s Center for Evaluation and Education Policy found that demand for school vouchers in Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Louisiana has begun to ‘level off’ at,crunching the numbers myself here, around 2 to 3 percent of students in those states. The lead researcher, Katherine Cierniak, is quoted as saying, “While the numbers of available vouchers are increasing, we are also seeing a leveling off in demand in the states with no enrollment caps. The number of vouchers may continue to grow, but we do not necessarily expect to see equal growth in enrollments.”
Is this is a sign that parental interest in vouchers has hit its peak? Are only 2 percent of low income families interested in a private education?
I wouldn’t be so sure.
The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice surveyed private schools in Indiana and found that there were seats for approximately 41,000 choice students in the state. Given that almost 30,000 are currently enrolled in the program, there is simply no space to sustain the rate of growth the program has seen since its inception in 2011. (The program grew from 3,911 in its first year to 9,139 in its second to 19,809 in its third to 29,148 in its fourth.)
What does this tell us? If the number of students enrolled in the program is leveling off, it’s not because demand has reached its high point but rather because it is reaching the limit of supply.
As I have written before, private school choice programs have three levers that they can pull to get students seats in high quality schools. They can:
(1) Fill excess capacity in existing high quality schools
(2) Encourage high quality schools to scale up and serve more students
(3) Spark the creation of new high quality schools
In Ohio, the value of the voucher is $4,250 for students in grades K-12 and $5,000 in grades 9-12. In Indiana, the value of the voucher is capped at $4,800 in grades K-8 and $6,000 in grades nine through 12.
When vouchers are funded at those rates, they will be able to accomplish number one. But, $5,000 is simply insufficient to drive the creation of a substantial number of new seats. You can’t build a new building and pay teachers at only $5,000 per student, at least in the way that schools are currently arranged. Thus, we see in Indiana a few seats being added, but not nearly enough to keep pace with potential growth in enrollment.
So what can be done to help spur the creation of new school seats? Well, in a recently released volume I had the pleasure of editing, ” New and Better Schools: The Supply Side of School Choice,” a group of experts offered numerous recommendations.
First, schools need to be able to access financial capital to build new buildings, invest in technology and update their aging physical plants. If voucher funding only covers the day-to-day costs of educating a student, schools cannot invest and grow. Allowing private schools to access bond financing (through organizations such as Colorado’s Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority), facilities funds that are made available to public and public charter schools, or philanthropic dollars geared toward encouraging scaling and growth, could go a long way to solving the problem.
Schools need teachers and leaders as well. Running a private school that participates in a school choice program is different from running a traditional public school or even a private school that does not see any public dollars flow in. Navigating bureaucracy, ensuring compliance with new state regulations, marketing the school to potential students, informing families about the new funds that are available to them – none of these skills are taught in traditional teacher- and leader-preparation programs. New partnerships, particularly between religiously affiliated colleges and universities and the K-12 schools their denominations support, could help remove the blockages in the talent pipeline. Loyola Marymount University has set up several such programs, including the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocesan School Teachers program, which helps prepare and place teachers in the Los Angeles area.
Finally, families need better information. Many low income families don’t know what schools are open to them or what those schools offer. Nonprofit organizations and state governments need to work to improve both the quantity and quality of information available to parents. Helping get data to organizations like GreatSchools, or sponsoring competitions for designing user-friendly school reports cards like the Foundation for Excellence in Education did last year could go a long way in empowering parents with the information they need to know about their options.
There are serious, substantial constraints on the supply side of the school choice marketplace. Only when we remove those will be able to truly gauge just how many families would want to participate.
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