SCHOOL CHOICE IS WORKING IN MILWAUKEE
By Howard Fuller
Excerpt from an editorial in The Business Journal Serving Charlotte and the Metropolitan Area, December 22, 2000

        The Dec. 8 editorial featured a question-and-answer discussion between the newspaper's associate editor, Steve Cranford, and Howard Fuller, professor of education at Marquette University and the founder/director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning.

        Fuller, a former superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, was asked to come to North Carolina Nov. 28 to speak at a fund-raiser for the Children's Scholarship Fund-Charlotte.

        In the interview with the newspaper and at the fund-raising event, Fuller spoke about the issue of school choice and its impact in Milwaukee.

Q: How do you define choice and why is it the thrust of your efforts to reform education?

Fuller: Choice means all the various options out there -- charter schools, independent schools, home schooling, contract schools, innovative options within the existing public system, public-private partnerships. We support tuition tax credits and low-income vouchers, but we only support means-test vouchers.

Q: Is the idea to help get students from poor families out of bad public schools?

Fuller: The issue is where is the best place for my child. If you have money and your child is in a school that doesn't work for him, you can move to where there's a good school or put him in a private school. Poor parents don't have those options. The children of parents of color are generally in bad schools; schools that have consistently failed those students.

        In Florida, a government program gives students a voucher for schools that are determined to be failing. The programs in Cleveland and Milwaukee are income-based, not based on whether you're in a failing school.

Q: Are those programs working?

Fuller: There are dueling reports (in Milwaukee), but there's a lot of research that shows many of the children are succeeding where once they were not. All studies found very high parent satisfaction and improved attendance rates.

Q: Doesn't this approach abandon failing schools?

Fuller: If you care about kids, you want them to be in good schools no matter where they're located. The question is what are the incentives that could cause schools to improve? If parents have no options, there's nothing you can do.

        In Milwaukee, poor black students are beginning to have value -- people are talking about what do we have to do to keep these kids. They're beginning to go door-to-door to talk to parents about why their children should be sent to their school.

Q: How does a poor school in Milwaukee improve under choice?

Fuller: A school system must have flexibility in teacher assignment -- seniority no longer dictates teacher assignment. The reason is the pressure of choice. You don't get rid of the kids; you get rid of the adults, those that aren't working for those kids.

        There's not any one thing you can do to change schools. The system is dysfunctional: you can look at teacher testing, ending seniority, school choice -- it takes a mix of those things.

Q: Does choice make for greater parental involvement?

Fuller: No, but you can have achievement without parental involvement. Research shows that kids who make it come into contact with a caring, nurturing adult.

        Choice allows us to have black churches stepping forward in Milwaukee creating schools; faith-based institutions have tremendous impact on these kids because they get surrounded with an atmosphere of love that creates conditions that help them learn. You've got to get these children in places that care deeply about them. If you don't, it's hard to reach children with these issues.

Q: How does race play into choice?

Fuller: I'm not a person who believes that integration in and of itself creates the conditions you need to teach kids. That's not the same as arguing whether we should have integration in society. Those are two separate arguments.

        Integration in America doesn't take place on the playground; it happens in the marketplace. If you come to the marketplace unable to read and write and compute and analyze and think, you're not going to have integration.

        I don't think any child should be denied access to any place because of race. Parents ought to have an option to choose a school that will work best for their child.

        In Milwaukee, the NAACP made the charge that choice would lead to further segregation. In fact it's led to greater integration because you've got poor black kids accessing what were formerly all-white private schools.

Q: What can the business community do to advance choice if they support it?

Fuller: The primary reason business should be involved is not what you usually hear -- they need people to work. The primary reason is what is just -- to provide every child the opportunity to go to a good school. I also think you can't have a democracy without educated people -- you put democracy at risk.

        A lot of businesspeople engage in "fuzzy altruism" in dealing with schools -- giving old computers, having people tutor -- but if they had approached their business with the same strategy for change, they wouldn't have their businesses. A lot of them don't want to get involved with controversy, but fundamental change in education has to be controversial.

        The push for school choice in Milwaukee didn't come from the business community; it came from black parents and activists and people like me who wouldn't accept conditions. It's a question of whether the people affected accept the situation.