American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten committed an enormous mistake in insisting upon protracted school closures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. After more than a year of closures, she attempted to course correct by advocating for the end of all remote learning because it’s “not on par with in-person teaching and learning.” A new study suggests she was wrong about that, too.
The study published by economists Jesse Bruhn, Christopher Campos, and Eric Chyn features survey data from families in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The surveys reveal widespread frustration with emergency remote online learning during the 2021-22 school year, though some parents reported positive experiences and desire to utilize remote learning in the future. Critically, students whose families provided the most positive survey responses about virtual learning and expressed the greatest likelihood of using it in the future performed somewhat better than would be expected than had those students received in-person instruction.
The finding presumably qualifies as a surprise for Weingarten. But it might also shock some organizations within the education reform world. The influential National Alliance of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), for example, advocates for “high quality” charter schools. In their mind, virtual schools don’t fit the billing: A top NACSA deputy previously compared virtual learning to thalidomide, a drug once used to treat morning sickness that resulted in thousands of birth defects.
NACSA and like-minded organizations advocate for high regulatory guardrails and extensive technocratic control over school choice programs because they believe that the purpose of choice is to boost test scores. As a NACSA director frames the issue, “’School choice for school choice's sake’ is completely misguided...social justice and equity are the GOAL not some political tactic.” Consternation over parental empowerment arises from the unspoken belief— shared by Weingarten— that many families exercise bad judgement in their school selection.
As Fordham Institute Senior Fellow Chester Finn frames it, “Doing this [school choice] right is not quite as simple as empowering parents.”
The framing of school choice as a means toward higher test scores is at odds with an increasingly popular conception that recognizes parental empowerment as an intrinsic good. Lawmakers in several red states have adopted an expansive vision of educational freedom through the adoption of education savings accounts (ESAs). These highly flexible accounts allow public funds to follow all K-12 students and can be used for a host of educational expenses, including private school tuition, tutoring services, or educational materials (e.g., books or computers). ESAs embrace the wisdom that parents—not teachers unions or charter regulators— are the true experts in their child’s education.
The new study is the latest piece of evidence to highlight that parents truly are best-situated to make schooling decisions for their children, but it is not the first. A 2018 study published by the American Enterprise Institute observed that within school choice programs (i.e. charters, magnets, voucher programs) “achievement impact estimates appear to be almost entirely uncorrelated with attainment impacts.” For example, some charter schools which produced strong test scores did not see those gains translate into a higher likelihood of college enrollment. Limiting parental choices with the idea of maximizing student test scores is an ill-advised strategy for changing the trajectory of a child’s life.
Other studies show that test-centric charter policies disproportionately prevent black educational entrepreneurs from opening charter schools, and disproportionately culminate in the closure of charters that serve black students.
While the benefits of a test-centric choice regimes are elusive, the costs are well-documented. Among charter schools, test-centric regulatory policy suppresses innovation in favor of familiarity. When it comes to private school vouchers, regulations intended to protect families instead harm them by discouraging the participation of schools with higher enrollment and higher tuition, market signals that indicate greater demand and higher quality.
Doing school choice “right” really is as simple as empowering parents. It’s time for naysayers—whether teachers unions or charter groups—to get with the program.
Dr. Ian Kingsbury is an adjunct policy fellow at the Empire Center for Public Policy.
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