“Please be assured we found nothing wrong with the Haverhill school system. The teachers my daughter had were most competent.” So begins a response from a Haverhill parent who had enrolled her child in a neighboring school system under the auspices of the Massachusetts school choice program. The Haverhill school system, serving a city of 52,000 residents 35 miles north of Boston, lost 65 of its 7,587 students through the school choice program. Although the 18 schools of the district continued in the first year largely unaffected by the withdrawals, the overall impact of the loss of revenue and the negative publicity have become a growing problem.
To determine why Haverhill students were enrolling in districts outside of the city, we surveyed the parents of each of the students who had left. The 41 responses yielded surprising results. Few students left because of the quality of education in Haverhill. A significant number left because of school location and, most disturbing of all, because of the racial composition of Haverhill's schools.
The School Choice Program
The Massachusetts legislature instituted school choice two years ago in what legislative leaders hailed as a program to improve education through competition among schools. The state transfers aid dollars out of the districts that students leave and into the districts that receive the students. The program has seen a significant flight of students and dollars from urban districts with already low per-pupil expenditures to wealthier suburban districts.
The Haverhill school system is no exception to this pattern, although we have lost fewer students than most other urban systems. Haverhill's reputation has been growing because of decentralized school governance structures, “cutting-edge” curriculum, a dedicated staff, a strong sense of community, volunteerism in the schools, and its selection by the state on two occasions for model leadership programs. We have increasingly been winning competitive grants and earning praise from the State Department of Education.
Haverhill, however, is also an overcrowded, rapidly growing school system with deteriorating facilities, an increasing minority population, and a steadily growing gap in expenditure levels—$1,200 less per pupil than the state average. State finance law—Proposition 2 1/2—has had a disastrous effect on city services and the school system because revenues cannot be raised sufficiently to keep pace with both inflation and growth.
Just as Proposition 2 1/2 penalizes most severely the school systems in growing communities, the new school choice program penalizes the children who remain in these school systems because of a disproportionate loss of state aid for every child who leaves. The amount of state aid deducted per pupil when a student leaves the district under the school choice program is more than the amount of state aid received per pupil. Because of this formula, the Carnegie Foundation stated that, “During the first year of operation, the Massachusetts plan was the most punitive in the nation.”
While state politicians claim that school systems like Haverhill will be motivated to improve the quality of education in order to regain lost students, punitive programs rarely, if ever, serve to motivate. In Haverhill, the financial losses have damaged our reputation and created additional financial handicaps. Furthermore, the politicians have ignored the fact that the reasons for leaving a school system are not necessarily connected to the quality of education.
The loss of 65 of 7,587 students, less than 1 percent of total enrollment, is hardly an indictment of the school system. The loss of $127,000 in state aid, however, is significant when the surviving budget is too limited to begin the year fully staffed. The school system has struggled to respond to the needs of the potential leavers, but our survey results have persuaded us that quality of education does not drive the choice of school. An effective response is, therefore, difficult if not impossible to achieve.
Why They Are Leaving
Most of the reasons Haverhill parents reported for the flight of students are based upon circumstances beyond the response capabilities of the Haverhill schools. Twenty of the 41 surveys reported school location as a primary reason for leaving, far surpassing all other explanations. In most cases, the school chosen was closer to the student's home than a Haverhill school.
School location was a special concern for parents of the youngest students. Overcrowding and lack of funding led to the placement of 750 kindergarten students into a wing of the high school. The parents of children who have attended the Early Childhood Center at the high school have high praise for the teachers and the program, but new parents fear the high school location and resent the long bus rides entailed in the centralized arrangement. (The Haverhill school system encompasses 35 square miles and has several long bus routes.) The resentment stems also from the scars formed when small neighborhood schools with kindergartens were closed 10 years ago at the time Proposition 2 1/2 passed.
Location was such an important factor that one parent said, “I have never visited the (Haverhill kindergarten) classes, so I really can't compare, but I am originally from (the neighboring community) and the school is closer.” And another parent stated, “(The choice school is) much closer; academically, I don't know the difference.” These statements indicate that school quality is not an issue for these families. It is frustrating for a school system to lose students due to location because the solutions to the dilemma are costly and usually impractical—move programs or build schools in new locations as the population shifts.
Another motivator cited for leaving was the size of schools and classes in the districts chosen. Eleven surveys yielded comments such as “same program but less crowded,” “smaller class sizes,” and “same type of programs but smaller school and smaller classes.” Haverhill High School has 1,450 students while the suburban high schools are half that size. In regular classrooms, Haverhill averages approximately 19 students at the kindergarten level, 23 at the primary grades, 28 at the middle schools, and 15 to 30 at the high school, depending on the course. The suburbs do better. The rapid growth in Haverhill coupled with budget cuts has led to a general increase in class sizes, and it is difficult to understand how the loss of students and subsequent state aid will do anything other than hurt our ability to become more competitive in the future.
Becoming more competitive is a matter of money when per-pupil expenditures reach the lowest levels. Haverhill has suffered severe financial difficulties that have resulted in cuts in librarians, psychologists, counselors, buses, equipment, and much more. Worse, visions of “what could be” have been curtailed.
The next factor cited in the choice of schools was additional services (10 responses). Parents cited advantages in the districts of choice such as “late buses,” “after school activities,” “piano in the classroom,” and having a “separate library, gym, and computer lab” in buildings that are not overcrowded. Haverhill's 11 primary schools are 100 years old with no accessibility for the handicapped. The schools have one computer per classroom, inadequate electrical circuitry, library shelving in hallways, and no gymnasiums or spaces for the arts. The suburbs provide more recent construction and full facilities and have not had to cut the “extras” to the extent typical in urban districts in Massachusetts.
Nine comments seemed to stem from concerns about quality, but did not fit a single pattern. Reasons for leaving included “better learning disabilities program (in choice school),” the “disinterest of (Haverhill) faculty,” a “progressive curriculum (in choice school),” or being unhappy with specific events in a Haverhill school or with a child's progress. The comments were as varied as the personal experiences that spurred them. However, these singular responses were frequently interspersed with other comments that did form a pattern suspected to be at the heart of many who flee urban systems.
A Disturbing Pattern
On nine occasions, parents cited characteristics of the student body in Haverhill, particularly its ethnic background, as a motivation to leave Haverhill schools. I suspect that this factor was not cited more often because most people realize that revealing one's prejudices is not socially acceptable.
The fact that this taboo is so widely understood makes the following comments even more disturbing: “poor crowd can be avoided at (suburban school);” “(choice school) is low-keyed, easier to adjust to, (with no) Puerto Ricans;” “(choice school) has a better element (although) am not too familiar with (choice school);” “teachers very good (in Haverhill) but concerned with tossing my 1st grader into an inner-city environment;” and finally, a blatant, “mother wanted child to change high schools because of Puerto Ricans;” and “learned more English in (choice school) because there are not many foreign students there. That's the way to learn English.”
Haverhill's minority population has increased from 8 to 18 percent over the last five years, causing some concern and discomfort among the members of the long-standing majority. These demographic changes have occurred in many Massachusetts cities over the past decade, and several superintendents have reported prejudice as a motivating force in school choice.
The school choice program is punitive to urban children and to school systems that experience growing, culturally diverse populations. An elected representative of a neighboring suburb was recently quoted in the news media as opposed to school choice because of “all the Spics” he feared would rush through their school doors. He did not need to fear—those who have fled urban schools have been primarily white and able to afford their own transportation to another community, a requirement in the Massachusetts program.
School Choice—A Political Hoax
The strength of our communities and schools is threatened by the false competition set up by the Massachusetts school choice program, a political hoax that has no basis in fact. Quality of education is not why schools are being left or chosen; location and racial biases seem to play significant roles in school choice. In fact, someone wishing to choose a school based on quality would find that difficult to do; Massachusetts has no means for making school-to-school comparisons. State basic skills tests have been discontinued due to state cutbacks, and state assessment tests are given only at three grade levels every other year. Although the state has begun to collect data for school profiles in an attempt to help parents make decisions on school choice, current choice decisions are unlikely to be changed by what is finally put in print.
The choice program diverts resources away from urban communities like Haverhill and attention away from the real problems that exist in urban education. Urban schools need support for educational reform, not abandonment. School choice is not a reform plan, but instead masks critical issues that need to be confronted for the sake of urban schools, urban communities, and our entire society.
The real issue is inequity in educational opportunity and funding. The parents and students of 10 urban communities won a landmark case this year in which the Massachusetts State Supreme Court ruled that the inequities that exist violate the state constitution. In response, the legislature passed a revolutionary funding formula that promises additional aid to poorer districts like Haverhill in order to achieve a minimum per-pupil expenditure over a seven-year period. The upcoming state budget will be the first test of whether the legislature and governor will allocate the new dollars required.
In the meantime, Haverhill has opened two new technologically advanced schools with significant state aid, and several kindergartens have been returned to the neighborhood schools. Nevertheless, the number of school choice students appears to be on the rise as the suburbs “profit” from school choice enrollees.
It is time the school choice program in Massachusetts be labeled for what it is—a political response to a lack of equity in statewide per-pupil expenditures and a callous disregard for urban minorities and the poor. It is time for Massachusetts to make a greater commitment to urban populations—to equal education for all, for the benefit of all, both in the cities and the suburbs.
