School Choice
Choice
The American dream consists of the freedom and choices that are opened up by a quality education in our free market society. Wealthy and middle class parents have educational options; they can send their children to private schools or move to neighborhoods with better public schools.
The poor have no such option. Their only consistent choices have been to 1) attend a neighborhood public school, which if you live in Denver is all too often a failing school, or 2). Drop out.
This is exactly why the Alliance for Choice in Education was founded in 2000; to provide low-income, inner-city parents with the freedom of genuine educational options and the power of financial scholarships to insure that their kids get the chance to grow into successful and productive citizens.
Choice Works
95% of the ACE senior class of 2005 graduated from high school and 86% of these students are now in college!
Consider that ACE Scholarships provide inner-city children who live below the federal poverty level the chance to attend a high performing private school. What’s more is that each family is required to come up with half of their child’s tuition: these parents are motivated.
To date, ACE has been successful in awarding 1,626 scholarships and:
43% of ACE scholarship recipient’s families earn less than $17,244 annually
78% of ACE scholarship recipient’s families earn less than $28,890 annually
The average family size for our recipient families is 5 members
School Choice Examples
Cleveland
The Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program began operation in the 1996-97 school year. The average income of families receiving scholarships was about $16,000 a year, with 5,675 students taking advantage of the vouchers. In 2002, the U.S. ruled that this program did not violate the U.S. Constitution.
- Between the fall of 1996 and the spring of 1998, children using vouchers to attend the two ‘Hope Schools’ experienced a 7 percentile point increase in reading and 15 percentile point increase in math.
Source: The ABC’s of School Choice,
The Friedman
Foundation
Milwaukee
The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program began in the 1990-91 school year. In June, 1998, The Wisconsin Supreme Court held up the constitutionality of the Voucher Program. In 2004-05, 15,035 students used vouchers which are worth up to $5,943 at 118 private schools.
- Harvard researchers found that students achieve a 6 percentile point gain in reading and 11 percentile point gain in math after four years in the program.
- In the 2004-05 Edition, it was noted that Public Schools spend over $9,500 per child, yet a voucher cannot exceed the average per-pupil spending by the state, which is only $5,783. That’s a savings of more than $3,700.
- MPS enrollment increased 8.8% between 1990 and 2004.
- The annual high school dropout rate declined from 16.2% to 10.2% between 1991 and 2003.
- The number of MPS schools on the list of Wisconsin Schools Identified for Improvement decreased from 55 to 43 between 2003 and 2004.
- Real spending per pupil increased ($8,660 to $11,708), as did state support for MPS ($402 million to $668 million), between 1990 and 2004.
- Budget reforms have made MPS more accountable.
- “Fourth Graders in MPS that ‘faced the most competition scored 8.1, 13.8, and 8.0 NPR points better on Wisconsin-based math, science, and language tests, respectively, from 1996 to 2002.” Caroline M. Hoxby, Ph.D.
Source: The ABC’s of School Choice,
The Friedman Foundation