New and Better Schools by Michael Q. McShane

Author:Michael Q. McShane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Supply-Side Opportunities and Obstacles

Nearly twenty-five years ago, John Chubb and Terry Moe articulated a rationale for subjecting education to market forces and encouraged reforms that have made significant gains in meeting the demands of parents for choice. Chubb and Moe also, however, predicted a major challenge that the supply side of choice—school operators—face today, namely, that “virtually all choice plans are entirely demand focused: they offer parents and students a measure of choice among schools. Period.”

The parental choice programs of the late 1980s made no effort to “free up the supply side” by “encouraging and promoting . . . the emergence of new and different types of schools.” Chubb and Moe warned that an exclusive focus on demand would result in a market where parents would never “really have an attractive and dynamically responsive set of alternatives from which to choose.”[1]

After twenty years of market-based reform efforts in education, school operators now confront the exact challenges that Chubb and Moe predicted. In the education marketplace, parents have more choices than ever; there just are not many products on the shelf for them to choose.

Through Rachel and Cristina’s efforts to improve access and Angelina’s work to strengthen academic achievement, the University of Notre Dame supports the three Catholic schools on the south side of Tucson to address these supply-side challenges. The program Bishop Kicanas invited Father Scully to pilot in Tucson represents a new model of comprehensive university-school partnership in which the university partners with dioceses and parishes to strengthen existing Catholic schools in urban communities.

The program employs a unique governance structure that delegates hiring and evaluating school leaders to a committee of Notre Dame faculty members, pastors, and diocesan leaders, while providing support in two primary areas—academic quality and the ability of low-income families to access the schools.

On the achievement side, Notre Dame experts like Angelina offer one-on-one coaching as well as professional formation to all teachers on-site. To increase access, Notre Dame team members like Cristina and Rachel provide school finance oversight and tax-credit scholarship fundraising and administration while also working with local madrinas to mobilize grassroots recruiting efforts.

These access efforts are critical because the Catholic school system as a whole must better demonstrate the potential of the parental choice programs that are being implemented in more states each year. Private schools serving low-income communities must make good use of newly available tax credit and voucher scholarships, and they must demonstrate the value these programs offer communities by providing high-quality educational opportunities to disadvantaged children.

If Catholic schools are to sustain their legacy of offering strong educational options in impoverished communities, they must demonstrate their capacity to use choice scholarships effectively and efficiently to educate a segment of the population that has not been well served in traditional public schools.

The school choice environment in Arizona has, on the demand side, flourished since Chubb and Moe first wrote about the education marketplace. Parents have more charter- and private-choice options than ever, but they also face a dizzying array of bureaucratic processes,

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