Tucson Arizona versus Columbus Ohio

February 15, 2018

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Large urban districts in Arizona are surrounded by suburban districts accepting transfers through open enrollment. I fear that Arizona is an outlier in this regard, and that the rest of the country is more like Ohio than Arizona. Fordham produced this deeply revealing open enrollment map of Ohio, showing every major urban center to be surrounded by districts who do not participate in open enrollment. Non-participating districts shaded in dark blue:

Now you will recall a similar map of Arizona, with districts not participating in open enrollment again marked in deep blue:

arizona-state-usa-solid-black-outline-map-of-vector-24335079

I believe that open enrollment is a big reason that Arizona has been leading the nation in NAEP gains, and that charter and private choice programs deserve some credit the eagerness with which districts participate. Take a look at Columbus on the above map- a large urban district literally surrounded by districts choosing not to allow open enrollment transfers. Now take a look at the school district map of Pima County. The Tucson Unified School District is surrounded by districts that do participate in open-enrollment- actively.

Tucson is a part of the nation’s second fastest growing state, but Tucson Unified has experienced a steady decline in enrollment. This is in part due to the rise of charter schools- as documented by the Center for Student Achievement:

Open enrollment

Several of the districts in the chart above gained enrollment despite the increase in charter school enrollment-Queen Creek, Higley, Chandler and Phoenix Elementary. Notice also that these districts, which run a gamut between suburban and urban Arizona, all have growing charter school sectors.

Urban students in Arizona have the opportunity to attend suburban district schools, while their peers in Ohio (and much of the rest of the country) do not. We sadly do not as yet have district by district data on open-enrollment, but research by a Yale student put the figure at almost a third of district K-8 enrollment in Phoenix area districts had utilized open enrollment. We know for instance that Scottsdale Unified has 4,000 students attending through open enrollment. Anecdotally we know that several of the Tucson area school districts are also very active in open enrollment.

Arizona’s urban students have the opportunity to attend suburban schools, and Ohio’s urban students do not. This is primarily in my view because Arizona charter schools have helped open suburban seats, while Ohio’s choice programs have been overwhelmingly focused on urban students. So let’s check NAEP trends for large city students for all six exams for the entire period with state level data:

I’m confident I know what is going right for Arizona’s students in large cities: opportunity. They have the opportunity to attend their home district, suburban districts, charter schools (lots of them) and private schools. Tucson did not participate in TUDA, but does show positive trends in the state’s AZMerit data. Tucson’s enrollment is declining, but scores are improving and that is without factoring in the scores of kids attending suburban district schools, charter schools or private schools with scholarship assistance.

I’m not nearly as confident that I understand what is going wrong for urban students in Ohio, but this:

…is not working for them at all.

Leave a Comment » | NAEP, Open Enrollment | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Deep down in places they don’t talk about at parties, suburbanites want that wall, but broad choice can take walls down

June 12, 2017

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Important new study from the Fordham Institute on open enrollment in Ohio. The map above shows dark blue show districts not participating in open enrollment, and they just happen to be leafy suburban districts who are both higher income with student bodies that tend to be pale complected that also happen to be near large urban districts with many students who are neither of these things. Feel free to reference this map the next time someone claims that public schools “take everyone.”

Many moons ago I wrote a study for the Mackinac Center about the interaction between charter schools and open enrollment in Michigan. I found a very clear pattern among some of the suburban districts whereby charter schools provided the incentive for early open enrollment participants to opt-in. After one district began taking open enrollment transfers, and some additional charters opened, it created an incentive for additional nearby districts to opt in- they were now losing students to both charters and the opted in district. Through this mechanism, the highly economically and racially segregated walled-off district system began to:

Not every domino fell however. I interviewed a superintendent of a fancy inner ring suburb who related that they saw their competitors as elite private schools, not charter schools. When I asked him why his district chose not to participate in open enrollment, he told me something very close to “I think historically the feeling around here is that we have a good thing going, so they want to keep the unwashed masses out.”

Contrast this as well with Scottsdale Unified in Arizona, which is built for 38,000 students, educates 25,000 students, 4,000 of whom transferred into a Scottsdale Unified school through open enrollment. 4,000 transfer students would rank Scottsdale Unified as the 9th largest CMO in Arizona, and they are far from the only district participating in open enrollment in a big way. Why is Scottsdale willing to participate unlike those fancy Ohio districts? They have 9,000 kids living within their boundaries attending charter and private schools.

Why haven’t choice programs torn down the Berlin walls around suburban districts? Sadly because they have been overly focused on urban areas. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Dashboard shows that 72.6% of Ohio charter schools operated in urban areas. The voucher programs likewise started in Cleveland, and then expanded out to include failing schools (and children with disabilities statewide). More recently a broader voucher program has begun the process of phasing in slowly on a means-tested basis, but the combination of adding a single grade per year and means testing promises to unlock a very modest number of walled off suburban seats.

These programs have benefits, but they will not provide an incentive for fancy suburban districts to participate in open enrollment any time soon. Informal conversations I have had with Ohio folks related to me that Ohio suburban and rural dwellers- aka the people who elect the legislative majorities-tend to look at charter schools as a bit of a “Brand Ech” thing for inner city kids. Rest assured that the thousands of Scottsdale moms sitting on BASIS and Great Hearts charter school wait lists do not view charters as “Brand Ech.” Likewise these folks probably see themselves as paying most of the state of Ohio’s bills through their taxes and just might come to wonder why the state’s voucher programs seem so determined to do so little for their kids and communities.

A serious strategic error of the opening act of the parental choice movement was to look out to places like Lakewood Ohio or Scottsdale Arizona and say “those people already have choice.” This point of view is both seriously self-defeating in terms of developing sustaining coalitions, it also fails to appreciate the dynamic interactions between choice programs. Arizona’s choice policies include everyone and have created a virtuous cycle whereby fancy districts compete with charter and private school options for enrollment. This leads to a brutal crucible for new charter schools in Arizona whereby parents quickly shut many down because they have plenty of other options. Educators open lots of schools and parents close lots of schools-leading to world-class Arizona charter scores. Arizona’s charter NAEP score triumph was more or less mathematically inevitable once this process got rolling. Did I mention the part about Arizona leading the nation in statewide cohort NAEP gains since 2009? That too but Ohio not so much.

I’m open to challenge in the comment section from any of my Ohio friends or anyone else, but by contrast to these eyes Ohio’s choice programs look to be mired in an urban quagmire and they need the leafy suburbs to play in order to win. Current policies not only have not unlocked Ohio’s Scottsdale Unified equivalents, they likely never will. NACSA put Ohio’s revised charter school law in their top ten, but allow me to pull up a couch and heat up some popcorn for the next few years as charters lawyer up and parents resist arbitrary bureaucratic closures, and the rate of new schools opening goes glacial.

Competition is by far the best method of quality control and bringing the leafy suburban districts into the melee is crucial if you are in the urban fight to win. The districts currently largely untouched by charters and private choice overlap with those not participating in open enrollment. Regulating urban charters is not going to make your suburban districts into defacto CMOs. This.isn’t.hard.to.figure.out. While counter-intuitive to many if you want to secure improved education options for the poor, you need to include everyone.

 

14 Comments | charter schools, research reports, residential school choice, vouchers | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

%d bloggers like this: