School Choice and the Educational Opportunities of African American Children

Abstract

Interest in educational reform has grown in recent years as it has become apparent that improvements in public education have not been achieved at a sufficient rate. Yet, as Finn (1987) concludes, mandated reforms seldom produce results (p. 65). Moreover, public education increasingly is viewed as bureaucratic, monopolistic, and unresponsive; thus it has been declared that the quality of public education in this country can only be enhanced through competition, i.e., choice (Cole, 1989; Finn, 1987; Kalderie, 1987). Letting people vote with their children's feet has come to be considered an acceptable method of encouraging schools to offer more effective instruction (Hechinger, 1989). Through school choice, it has been proffered, successful schools would be allowed to flourish and poor schools would be forced to improve or go out of business. The purposes of this article are: (1) to provide an overview of school choice strategies, (2) to examine the possible impact of choice on African American and poor children, and (3) to review recently passed legislation in the state of Wisconsin which allows for state-funded private school choice for a selected number of poor and minority children.