By Del Stover
01/04/05 -- Relatively few students are taking advantage of a provision of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) that allows them to transfer out of Title I schools that consistently fail to meet annual yearly progress goals.
It’s unclear how many students nationwide are eligible to take advantage of the law’s school choice provision. But several studies, which report only partial data for the nation, put the number at a minimum of 1.2 million.
One of those, published last May by the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, could only confirm that 70,000 students had requested a transfer application. Far fewer actually switched schools.
A report issued by the U.S. General Accounting Office in December estimates that 1 percent of eligible children -- 31,000 students -- transferred in the 2003-04 school year.
Most striking, reports from several major urban school systems reveal that the provision is having very little impact:
• In Los Angeles, 215 students transferred to new schools last year, although 204,000 students were eligible to move under the law.
• In Chicago, nearly 6,000 students asked to change schools out of 175,000 who were eligible. The district said it only had 438 open seats, however, and in the end, only 200 students switched schools.
• In New York City, 6,800 students changed schools last year out of 280,000 who were eligible under the law. At least 3,400 transfer applications have been received this year so far.
• In Washington, D.C., only 106 students applied for transfers last fall, and 68 of them accepted new school postings. More than 25,000 were eligible.
U.S. Department of Education officials say the number of students who take advantage of the law’s transfer provision isn’t as important as the fact that parents are given more control over their children’s education. The Administration sees school choice as a strategy to use competitive marketplace forces to encourage schools to reform.
“If parents have real options and decide to keep their children in their home school, we applaud their decision,” says Nina Rees, assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Innovation and Improvement.
What concerns federal officials, however, is whether students and parents are getting enough information about school choice options -- and whether local officials are fulfilling their responsibilities to make choice available.
“We have seen examples of districts that have not complied with the law to inform parents why their children’s school is in need of improvement and what their transfer options are,” Rees says. “Even when districts do send out such a letter, the notice is often unclear, confusing, and filled with jargon.”
Getting out good information about student transfer rights has been an issue in New York City, where students and parents weren’t notified of their right to transfer schools until after the school year had started. The timing discouraged transfers, critics say, because it is more disruptive to switch schools during the school year.
In Illinois, Rockford Public Schools Superintendent Dennis Thompson refused to notify parents about their transfer options until December, when the state provided an official list of schools that must offer choice.
The state had released preliminary data before the start of the school year, but Rockford officials say there were concerns about accuracy. They say students could have unknowingly transferred from a school meeting annual goals and might have found themselves in a school identified as needing improvement.
“We have enough turmoil in our school system without jerking kids around,” Thompson told the Rockford Register Star in October. “It comes down to data. I do not have the official word.”
Use of the school choice provision also has been hampered by a lack of classroom space in higher-performing schools. Although federal officials say school districts cannot use lack of capacity as an excuse not to offer choice, local school officials can consider space limitations in making available choice options.
Officials in Los Angeles frequently point to overcrowding as a major obstacle to allowing more students to transfer out of lower-performing schools. Chicago school officials also say they cannot crowd too many students into a school to meet the requirements of NCLB.
“I’m not going to put 40 kids in a classroom,” Arne Duncan, the Chicago school system’s chief executive officer, told the Los Angeles Times. “I’m not going to change the fundamental nature of what has made a school successful.”
Yet, a lack of capacity is not an excuse to ignore NCLB’s provision on school choice, Rees says. “We hope that districts will use the choice provision to think about ways to expand capacity in the district, including through the creation and replication of high-quality charter and magnet schools.”
Despite such obstacles, a report by the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights found that, once given the chance, some parents will take advantage of the school-choice provision.
Choosing Better Schools: A Report on Student Transfers Under the No Child Left Behind Act is based on data collected from a variety of states and individual school districts. It estimates that the percentage of eligible students who chose to switch schools rose to 6.2 percent in the 2003-04 school year. Of those, only 1.7 percent actually transferred.
Yet, even if local school officials provide better and more timely information to parents and more classroom space becomes available, the use of NCLB’s school choice provision eventually rests with parents.
Many parents are reluctant to move their children out of a neighborhood school, and students often are reluctant to leave the friends they’ve made at school.
“We have a large number of parents who don’t like the idea of putting their kids on a bus and sending them across town to a school with more space,” says one Los Angeles official. In New York City, officials say Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s highly public effort to improve the school system has reassured parents and convinced many to give their schools time to improve.
Many parents also are savvy enough to understand that, when a school fails to meet NCLB goals, it might have little to do with the quality of education their children are receiving, says NSBA Associate Executive Director Michael A. Resnick.
A school of 700 students, for example, might fail to meet NCLB goals because a single subgroup of students -- perhaps special education or non-English-speaking students -- do poorly on tests, he says. The entire student population will be eligible to change schools. But if parents believe their own children are doing well, there’s little incentive to exercise their choice option.
“Parents want to send their children to neighborhood schools,” Resnick says. “They don’t want to send them somewhere else unless they feel compelled to.”