Last week, I wrote that two Florida school choice programs, the McKay Scholarship for Students with Disabilities and the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students, help increase student achievement by providing competition. To support my assertion, I cited research by Northwestern University researchers David Figlio and Cassandra M.D. Hart, who reviewed seven years of Florida test data and found competition created by tax credit scholarships had a positive impact on the achievement of low-income students in nearby public schools.

Many educators are hostile to competition because they fear it undermines collaboration, but unlike sports where the competitive goal is to defeat the opponent, the purpose of competition in public education is to increase student achievement by empowering teachers and parents.

Florida’s tax credit scholarship program empowers educators to create more schooling options for low-income families and empowers these families to match their children with the learning options that best meet their needs. No one claims that schools accepting these scholarship students are superior to virtual schools, magnet schools, dual enrollment courses, homeschooling or neighborhood public schools. They are not better, they’re just different. A Montessori school may work well for one student, but it may fail miserably with her sister.

In the tax credit program, competition means families are the primary customer, government protects the public good through regulation, and public and private educators collaborate to help every low-income child succeed. In Hillsborough County, Fla., for instance, the school district and local teachers union partner with the scholarship program to provide online professional development for teachers in district and scholarship schools. District superintendent MaryEllen Elia and union president Jean Clements explain this collaboration this way: "Bottom line is these are our children, and they often return to our public schools. I want them to get the best possible education, wherever they get it." 

Families help improve all schools through the choices they make, whether their choice is a district school, a charter school, or a private learning option. By voting with their feet, they tell educators what’s working and what’s not. And that's information all schools can use to innovate and improve.

People are public education’s greatest asset. The empowerment, collaboration and information sharing that come from public education’s version of competition are the best ways to maximize these assets.

I’ve spent the previous two days discussing accomplishments in Jeb Bush’s tenure as Florida’s governor while highlighting that, despite Bush’s forceful leadership and insistence that high-poverty, minority children would succeed, the state has failed to implement all the systemic improvements the governor envisioned.

But one significant change that did occur during Bush’s first term was the creation of three publicly funded private school choice programs.

The Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) and the McKay Scholarship for Students with Disabilities both were established in 1999, while the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students passed in 2001. The Florida Supreme Court ruled the OSP’s private school option unconstitutional in 2006, but the McKay and tax credit programs today currently help a combined 53,000 students attend more than 1,300 qualified private schools.

The McKay and tax credit programs positively impacted the achievement of low-income students during Bush’s first term by creating more competition, which research suggests benefitted the students who remained in their public schools, and by reducing the concentration of low-income and disabled students in inner-city public schools.

The competition benefit generated by the tax credit program was documented recently by David Figlio and Cassandra M.D. Hart, two Northwestern University researchers. They reviewed seven years worth of Florida test data and found the competition created by the tax credit scholarships had a positive impact on public school students’ achievement. No matter what measure the researchers used – the proximity of private schools to public schools, for instance, or the density of private schools within five miles of a public school – the effect generally was the same. (more…)