A Critical Day
When it comes to school choice, examine the evidence.

By R. Ted Cruz, director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, and a former law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. His views are his own, and not necessarily those of the commission or any individual commissioner.
February 20, 2002 10:30 a.m.

n the past decade, an intense debate has raged over the issue of "school choice." Proponents say that it is a beacon of hope for low-income students trapped in under-performing public schools, whereas critics argue that it will accelerate the deterioration of those same public schools.

Today, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, and, for the first time, it will have the opportunity to rule on the constitutionality of the school-choice program in Cleveland that has allowed thousands of low-income children to attend the schools of their choice.

In the policy debate underlying school choice, many assertions are made about what will, and what will not, befall our communities if choice programs are allowed to continue. The most frequent claim is that school choice "will destroy the public schools" by skimming off needed funds and the very best students and leaving the rest behind. If true, that would be a damning, and likely fatal, indictment.

Oddly enough, few of those critics have marshaled any evidence or data in support of their claim. But it is precisely through a dispassionate examination of the data, and not through assertions in the heat of battle, that public-policy judgments should be made. And there is a great body of data to be examined.

This week, two economists, both experts in competition matters, released a detailed study that considers that very question. The paper, by Dr. Jerry Ellig and Dr. Kenneth Kelly, is forthcoming in the spring issue of the Texas Review of Law & Politics.

The study observes that the question whether school choice will help or harm the public schools is fundamentally a question about the economic effects of competition, namely whether the introduction of competition to a monopoly provider can be expected to increase or decrease quality (of education). More precisely, the inquiry is, What happens to quality for customers of an incumbent provider (the public schools) when competition is introduced?

This question is not a new one, or unique to education. Indeed, it is the sort of question economists routinely address. Therefore, the authors proceeded in two parts: First, they examined the effects on quality in other industries, previously regulated and monopolized, when competition had been introduced, and second, they examined the data in education to see if it was consistent with other demonopolized industries.

The three industries that Drs. Ellig and Kelly examined were surface freight transportation, telecommunications, and airlines, all of which were heavily regulated industries that were deregulated to allow competition. And, for all three, careful empirical studies have assessed the impact of competition on quality for customers of the incumbents.

The results were remarkably consistent. Unsurprisingly, competition is a good thing. In all three industries, the bulk of the data show no significant harms to incumbent quality as a result of competition. Indeed, much of the evidence demonstrates that quality by the incumbent providers improved significantly as a result of competition.

But, we need not simply accept the analogy to other demonopolized industries. School choice is not simply a hypothetical idea, to be debated with postulate and counter-postulate. Rather, more and more communities have implemented school-choice programs in an effort to expand the promise of education and opportunity to every child. Therefore, a growing body of data exits about school choice in the real world, and the charges of the critics can be tested and evaluated.

The data concerning education are exactly consistent with these observed effects of competition in other industries. Drs. Ellig and Kelly examined every major study concerning school-choice programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Florida, and private choice scholarship programs in San Antonio, Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, and Dayton.

Again, the results are remarkably consistent. First, almost all the data demonstrate that school-choice programs have significant benefits for the children who receive vouchers. Study after study has shown consistent test-score improvements for these largely low-income and minority children who are offered the option of school choice. In D.C. alone, one Harvard study found improvements of 8 percentile points in reading and 10 percentile points in math for black students who received vouchers.

Second, there is not a shred of evidence that school-choice programs harm public schools. Even the most skeptical of the scholars to have looked at the data conclude that, at worst, school choice has no effect on the public schools. Given that the assertion of the critics is that school choice will "destroy" the public schools, the fact that no one can point to any data whatsoever demonstrating harm of any sort to the public schools is quite revealing.

Indeed, the majority of the data demonstrates that school choice improves the public schools. That is, that the children who remain in public schools receive a better education because the public schools are forced to improve in the face of competition.

Most public schools perform wonderfully educating our children. But millions of low-income, largely minority children have no access to those wonderful public schools. In assessing the wisdom of school-choice programs designed to give those children hope and opportunity, we should be driven by the facts and the evidence, and not simply by well-intentioned assertions. We should ask what the data show.

And that, the Court must do. For the past half-century, the Supreme Court has been at the vanguard of ensuring that educational opportunity in America is a reality for rich and poor, black and white, alike. That history, and the real public-policy consequences of school choice as shown by an impartial examination of the data, is no doubt on the Court's mind, as scores of black parents march outside the steps in support of school choice.