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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2005 > December > 20 > Entry
Will vouchers save private schools?
Ohio’s expanded voucher program gets underway after Jan. 1, when private schools can sign up to participate. There will be 14,000 vouchers available statewide. Students can begin to apply in March and those who win vouchers can use them to attend private schools next fall.
This timing of this seems great for Dayton’s private schools which have been absolutely battered by competition from charter schools over the past five years. Five Catholic schools just announced last month they are consolidating into two schools and the rest of the city’s private schools are facing similarly serious enrollment declines.
Vouchers offer an avenue for students to attend those private schools without the tuition burden that scares a lot of interested families away. And a stunning 80 percent of students who will be eligible for vouchers next fall come from three cities — Dayton, Columbus and Cincinnati.
So Dayton’s private schools could get a big enrollment jolt from the state’s new voucher program at just the time they need it, right? Let’s take a look.
The education department lists seven schools where students attending now will be eligible for vouchers next fall — five Dayton school district elementary schools (1,600 kids) and two district high schools (1,800 kids). These schools landed on the voucher list because they have been in academic emergency for three years. (For a list of the schools see my recent story on this in the Dayton Daily News here.)
The first thing to notice is this is who is missing — no charter schools are on the list.
At a meeting for private schools to explain the voucher program, the education department manager in charge of its implementation made it very clear charter school students are not eligible to receive vouchers, because she said the state’s view was that the parents in those schools already have options.
There are four Dayton charter schools that also have been rated in academic emergency for three years, plus one more that was rated in emergency twice and was not rated once. These five schools have a combined enrollment of about 900. Those are kids that could, and some would argue should, be able to get vouchers but won’t be allowed.
The next issue is high schools. Most incoming freshman will not be eligible at Dayton’s two voucher-ready high schools — Belmont and Dunbar. So subtracting (conservatively) one fourth of the 1,800 kids you get 1,350 eligible kids.
But at high school within the city, there are not many options. There are just the two Catholic high schools — Chaminade-Julienne and Carroll. My estimate is that those schools could absorb a maximum of 500 kids between them. So that will leave 850 or so voucher-eligible kids who, even if they sought to use the voucher, likely would not get one.
That brings us to elementary schools, with 1,600 eligible kids. But outgoing eighth graders from all but one of those schools, unless they happen to go to Dunbar or Belmont, will no longer be eligible as soon as they enroll in high school. And incoming kindergarten kids also will not be eligible, the state is saying. When you adjust enrollment for those changes, it leaves roughly 1,470 eligible kids.
There is a lot of capacity in private elementary schools, so for the sake of argument, let’s say there will be seats available for all 1,470 plus the 500 high school kids leaves just under 2,000 eligible kids.
It’s probably a fair guess to say that at most half of those eligible will actually seek to use a voucher. If so, in the end I predict you have about 1,000 Dayton kids who potentially will use vouchers next year.
That’s certainly enough to help private schools, especially the private elementary schools that are hurting the most. But it’s far less than what you might think if you just look at the numbers on the surface.
And the state is making it harder by exempting all kindergarten kids, most eighth graders and all charter school kids. Kindergarten and eighth grade are where many parents make hard choices about where to send their kids to school. Once they pick a school, they tend to stick with it, even if the school’s academic performance is bad. And charter parents, having already exercised choice once, might be more likely to try something new like a voucher.
So those decisions likely will depress the numbers, at least at first.
But one caution — Dayton is a city that likes choice. It’s had magnet schools and districtwide open enrollment for 15 years. It’s a charter school leader. And it has a successful private voucher program. So stay tuned. This should be interesting to watch.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice
Comments
By Matthew Brown
December 29, 2005 6:36 PM | Link to this
School choice is just adding another sorting mechanism to the sorting mechanism of American public schools. Also, it provides the chance for profit for individual entrepreneurs, always considered a virtue in the USA, even when it runs counter to long-term public interests.