Supplementary Materials

Building New Schools:

In some communities, interdistrict choice can provide a large percentage of students with the option to transfer to a new school. The community of East Palo Alto, Calif., for instance, neighbors Palo Alto—one of the wealthiest, highest-performing school districts in California—and 35 percent of students in low-performing East Palo Alto elementary schools could find a seat in a nearby, higher-performing school.

But in the large, sprawling urban district of Los Angeles, only 9 percent of students would have the option to transfer schools even if they could cross district boundaries and if higher-performing schools offered 10 percent of their seats to transferring students. In school districts like Los Angeles, investing in improving existing schools and building new, better schools is likely the best strategy for providing students with better school choices.

Some large, urban districts are pursuing that option. In 2004, Chicago's mayor launched the Renaissance 2010 initiative, which promises to create 100 new schools in Chicago by the year 2010. Under the initiative, Chicago Public Schools is building new, more autonomous district public schools; turning around existing low-performing schools; and replicating existing, successful charter schools—autonomous public schools operated by private, nonprofit providers. The goal with initiatives like Renaissance 2010 is to invest in developing high-quality, neighborhood schools, as opposed to transporting students to higher-performing schools in other communities.

Avoiding "Cheap Choice":

In order to achieve the intended goals of interdistrict choice policy—increased economic and racial integration and improved student achievement—there are key features that need to be a part of the policy design, including a way to inform parents of their choices, transportation to higher-performing schools, incentives to higher-performing schools to participate, academic supports for students who transfer schools, and targeting participation to those students who can benefit most from attending a higher-performing school. As research shows, without these features, interdistrict choice policies can exacerbate existing disparities.

Transportation: Transportation can be the great equalizer—or un-equalizer—in an interdistrict choice program. Programs that see the greatest problems with increased social stratification and increased segregation, such as San Diego's statewide open-enrollment policy, generally do not provide transportation to transferring students, thereby leaving those with the time and money to cross district lines with the most options.

Limiting transportation to targeted groups of students can both keep costs manageable and also encourage choice among low-income and low-performing students. States can also cluster schools by student performance, pairing low-performing with high-performing schools, similar to San Diego's VEEP program. Clustering schools limits the distance students have to travel and also ensures that students choose higher-performing schools.

But even if transportation is targeted, it is expensive. The state of Massachusetts, for example, provides an average transportation allotment of $1,828 per pupil for the METCO program, in which students often spend an hour or more riding a bus from Boston to 32 participating suburban school districts. Under Minnesota's The Choice Is Yours program, in which students are transported to one of eight suburban communities, the state reimburses a median amount of $2,700 per student for transportation costs. And Connecticut sets a maximum reimbursement of $3,250 per student for transportation expenses associated with its Open Choice interdistrict choice program.

Equal Access to Choice: Another common problem among interdistrict choice programs is unequal access to information about school options. Many parents hear about and make decisions on school choice based on their social networks, which works well if they have a well-informed network. But parents without those networks, or parents who do not speak English, for instance, are left without the information they need to make the best choice. As a result, those with the most resources have the most opportunity to choose schools, replicating the very problem interdistrict choice programs are trying to resolve.

There are multiple ways states can give parents information about their options. They can utilize media outlets, such as radio and television or newspaper inserts; distribute materials at schools or sponsor school fairs to allow parents to meet with representatives from area districts and schools. Minnesota, for example, informs parents about school choice through media campaigns, community outreach events, and partnerships with community organizations. And Minneapolis' Parent Information Centers provide parents with information on their choice options. States should also ensure that all materials are available in the different languages represented in the community.

Centralizing the application process to allow parents to apply in one place for all school options, including within-district schools, schools in other districts, and any available charter or magnet schools, can also ensure a more equal playing field for parents. Some communities, most notably Cambridge, Mass., have extended the centralized application process into mandated choice. Under these plans, all parents must choose a school for their child—either the neighborhood school or any one of the other schooling options available. Parents rank their selections, and a centralized lottery system assigns students to area schools, ensuring that no one school has too great a concentration of low-income students. This “controlled choice” system also avoids the difficulties of moving students out of higher-performing schools in an effort to make room for transferring students. If everyone must choose, then all students have equal access to space in the most popular schools.

Funding/Incentives: It is critical that schools not be penalized for enrolling out-of-district students, particularly if those students need remediation or special services that add to a school's expenses. Interdistrict choice policies should compensate schools according to the cost of educating each student. Students who need special services should bring with them the additional resources for those services, removing the disincentive many schools face in enrolling high-needs students.

High-performing districts can also be encouraged to admit students by receiving incentive funds for admitting a certain percentage of low-performing students. This additional funding could be targeted toward providing additional services to these students, and it would also encourage districts to open their boundaries and make space available to low-performing students. The state of Massachusetts provides an instructional allotment of $4,000 per pupil to suburban districts participating in the METCO program.45 Similarly, Missouri provides a per-pupil tuition payment capped at $7,000 to suburban districts participating in the voluntary interdistrict choice program that transports St. Louis students to surrounding suburban schools.46 Connecticut provides a $2,500 per-pupil grant as an incentive for suburban schools to enroll out-of-district students. It also provides a $1,000 per student bonus grant to districts that enroll 10 or more transferring students.47 But these payments may still not cover the actual costs of educating transferring students.

States should also be prepared to cover any funding differences between districts for transferring students. Often, students transfer into a district with a higher per-pupil spending amount. And asking either the sending or receiving district to lose money for a transferring student only encourages those districts to stop participating or otherwise discourage interdistrict transfers. While compensating districts at the higher spending level increases the cost of the program, it ensures that all students have equal access to choice.

Targeting Participation: Even if all higher-performing schools opened 10 percent of their seats to students in low-performing schools, at most 20 percent of these students would be able to transfer schools. Without mechanisms to target open-enrollment policies, research indicates that the highest-income, best-performing students will move into this limited number of seats. And as our research shows, these students will likely be in the best geographic location to benefit from choice. States should target interdistrict choice to ensure those students considered most in need of better options have the first choice to transfer to higher-performing schools. States can do this by limiting participation only to the lowest-performing or lowest-income students, or by giving preference to those students and allowing other students to transfer through an open lottery.

Supporting Students: The disappointing student achievement results from existing open-enrollment programs indicate that it will take more than just moving students into new schools to improve academic performance. States that are looking to use open enrollment to improve student achievement should include sustained academic supports, like those used in Minnesota's The Choice Is Yours program. Officials should not only provide students with the supports they need, but they should also work to equip higher-performing schools with the knowledge and resources to help all lower-performing students boost their academic achievement.

Our research has primarily focused on the approximately 10 percent to 20 percent of students who could potentially benefit from open-enrollment programs, but the majority of students—80 percent to 90 percent—will remain in the same low-performing schools. Public school choice does these students no good unless states and districts work to improve overall student achievement.