University of Delaware
Office of Public Relations
UpDate - Vol. 16, No. 20, Feb. 20, 1997
Study planned
Effort to analyze national trends on school choice
Amajor three-year study by faculty in the College of
Education will analyze an untapped national database to
answer some key questions in the school choice debate-a hot
topic in education today.
Doug Archbald, David Kaplan and Yas Nakib, with graduate
student Jeanine Molock, Delaware '02M, will conduct the
research, funded by a $420,000 grant from the Office of
Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department
of Education.
According to Archbald, the study will improve the
public's understanding of policies and outcomes of school
choice, as well as inform education leaders and improve
policy analysis on a national level.
Their study will merge for the first time demographic
data from the U.S. Census Bureau, achievement data based on
national tests, school district student enrollment and
resource-use data, plus survey information on school choice
and other types of student assignment policies from a
national sample of school districts.
The data will answer such important questions as:
* How does school choice affect which students end up in
which schools?
* Are there different impacts depending upon whether
students come from affluent neighborhoods or poor areas?
whether they come from segregated or integrated
neighborhoods? whether they are high or low achievers?
* What are the demographic characteristics of the cities
and school districts that allow school choice as compared
with those that don't?
* Do school choice policies tend to occur in wealthier
districts? bigger districts?
* Do demographic characteristics make a difference at
all?
* Are there differences in achievement in districts with
school choice policies as compared to those that rely on
other student assignment policies, like neighborhood
attendance area policies or busing-for-desegregation
policies?
* How does school choice affect funding and allocation of
resources? Are funds distributed to or used in schools
differently in districts with and without school choice
policies?
* Does school choice measurably affect aspects of school
climate, like teachers' job satisfaction or their level of
professional control over their work?
Archbald initiated the grant and is the project's school
choice expert. He says school choice policy has grown
dramatically over the past 15 years, although its roots go
back much farther.
He began his research on school choice policy 12 years
ago when he was a researcher in a large project in
Milwaukee. He studied magnet schools there (schools that
offer special programs to attract students from diverse
backgrounds interested in a particular subject matter).
Magnet schools were one of the first large forms of school
choice, and Milwaukee one of the places leading the way.
The Milwaukee study led not only to Archbald's
dissertation but also to his participation in a national
study funded by the U.S. Department of Education to evaluate
the growth of magnet schools and programs and their use of
federal funds.
Interestingly, that study and others have shown that
school choice programs are commonly implemented after the
rescinding of desegregation orders. This has happened in New
Castle County.
Now, Delaware has enacted several forms of school choice
policy, including charter schools and interdistrict student
transfer options.
"School choice brings about new enrollment patterns, that
is, how kids are allocated among schools. Years ago, there
were basically just neighborhood schools; then, especially
in the '60s and '70s, many districts started desegregation
programs-redrawing school boundaries, reassigning students,
and using busing to achieve racial balance. School choice is
another principle of allocation," Archbald said.
"With magnet schools and school choice, neighborhood
boundaries become less important," he explained, "but it
can't just be a free-for-all, especially in larger school
systems often with 80,000 or 100,000 kids and 100-200
schools." All choice programs, he says, have to have
guidelines.
School choice is a big change in student assignment
policies, and there is no national study of what works and
what doesn't.
Equity issues, geography and racial balance all play a
role in implementing school choice. How school systems have
managed these concerns will be part of the study. Archbald
said he believes individual school systems have chosen to
solve problems one by one in many different ways.
"School choice policies can mean a dozen different
things," he said. "You no longer have the notion that all
schools should be the same. You may have a math/science
school, a school of the arts, a charter school. Parents and
students can be faced with many choices. You may have
choices among the regular schools within the district, as
well as a charter school or two and inter-district options."
Nakib, an education finance specialist who recently
joined the UD faculty, will focus on issues related to the
costs of implementing school choice policies and potential
resource inequalities developing among "chosen" and
"unchosen" schools.
"It is not enough to know how the allocation and use of
resources in schools with and without choice differ, but
also whether resource allocation practices lead to better
outcomes," Nakib said.
Kaplan brings expertise in measurement and statistics.
The main analytical strategy will by multilevel linear
modeling.
According to Kaplan, "Effects of district choice policies
on the achievement and opportunity of students cannot be
accurately assessed by either aggregating data to the
district level or disaggregating data to the student level;
our multilevel models will allow examining effects of
district policies as they are manifested throughout the
levels of the school structure and ultimately to student
level outcomes of interest."
The researchers estimate it will take a year just to
develop the data set.
-Beth Thomas