On the evening of January 13, 1993, the New York City Board of Education unanimously voted to allow parents to choose which school their children would attend. By formally removing from school superintendents the power to prevent transfers into or out of their districts, the Board has committed the nation's largest school system to an educational concept that is mired in uncertainty. The choice plan will take effect this upcoming September for all elementary and junior high schools in the city; the Board began notifying parents about their new powers this past April.

School choice plans exist in 13 states across the nation, and many experimental programs have been conducted throughout the country. As described in the previous issue of The Liberal Agenda, these experiments have had mixed results. Certain lessons can be learned from both successful and unsuccessful attempts, yet many dimensions of choice still require future investigation. What is distressing about the Board of Education's system is that it seems to ignore many of these lessons.

The key lesson that has been drawn from the results of both surviving and failed choice plans is that the quality of preparation and planning prior to implementation is crucial.

Under a choice system, if pressure is to be applied to school administrators and school boards to improve physical conditions, academic achievement, and/or discipline, then parents have to actively apply that pressure by switching their children to other schools.

However, other school systems' experience with choice have demonstrated that parents (particularly low-income parents) must be well-educated about the options available to them, otherwise most parents will continue to send their children to the local school, regardless of actual conditions. It is also necessary to educate parents about the criteria that makes a school "acceptable"; whether or not a school is cleaner, or the teachers more friendly than another school are merely two of many factors affecting overall value of a school.

Therefore it is distressing to find that the Board haphazardly began bringing parents into the plan as late as April. To address parents and their feelings towards choice only after deciding to pursue it is regrettable. And to rush to implement the program in time for this next school year, without a significant process of interaction with the parents, seems to foretell a preoccupation with headlines and not with achievement. After all, if school choice is supposed to empower parents, why not start including them from the beginning? Why force a choice plan upon the parents?

Raymond Domanico and Colman Genn of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Educational Innovation have pointed out that, "effective educational teams have to be built by the schools themselves—not created from above¹." Indeed, there have been numerous attempts over the past two-and-a-half decades to decentralize the New York school system. All of these efforts ended in failure because they thrust new institutional arrangements and innovations upon parents and local schools. In every case, the resulting product was not built up piece-by-piece, like clay, from the center out, but poured like plaster into a rigid mold. Rather than allow the daily participants of the struggle in the schools to build up a new system from small gains and discoveries of what worked, the earlier reforms forced these individuals to seek success within the boundaries of the latest educational theory.

The decision to proceed with school choice recalls these earlier failures. Parents have called the plan's process of formally choosing a school "a hassle." It has been left to the press to explain the ramifications of school choice to the parents. By enacting a choice plan in this fashion, the Board of Education seems to be more concerned with the symbolism of parents having options available to them, and less with whether choice is actually utilized to put pressure on school administrators to change conditions.

Another of the flaws in this new plan is that the power of choice is city-wide, yet not intra-district. A family living in Queens Village would be able to switch their children to an elementary school on Manhattan's Lower East Side, yet be unable to send them to a different local school. Only a handful of districts offer intra-district transfers.

One rationale put forth for this quirk is that this would enable commuting parents to have children travel with them and attend schools close to their workplace. However, the advantage of such an arrangement is minor at best. Most New Yorkers find their commutes crowded, uncomfortable, and frustrating; what an inappropriate experience to subject an elementary school student to each day. Moreover, the school day ends at 3PM; the workday for most people ends at least two hours later. Will afterschool programs be established as a part of this plan to keep these children safe and comfortable in a strange and possibly hostile neighborhood?

Presumably, some parents would want to send their children to top schools that are neither close to their home nor near their workplace. Because there is no provision in the plan for transportation of students choosing to attend a school outside their local district, exercising this choice would entail a long and costly trip for the student: Governor Cuomo has promised to search for new money to pay for transportation, but the plan will proceed even if he fails to provide funds. The sheer magnitude of the New York City school system indicates that any transportation program would be extraordinarily costly.

Finally, the structure of this plan raises a question of equity, both economic and racial. Pre-pupil funding follows students from school to school. Under the Board's plan, an "inferior" school suffering from deteriorating classrooms, lack of basic supplies, or a bad neighborhood has the potential to snowball into a disaster. A flurry of transfers from the school would simply bleed money away, possibly exacerbating the problem., leaving the district administration with an even larger challenge.

Beyond this, de facto segregation could very well intensify as a result of this plan. As mentioned earlier, low-income parents utilize the power of choice to a far lower degree than middleclass parents. There is also a risk of white families transferring out of well-integrated schools, concentrating minority students. While the Board's plan officially prohibits parents from utilizing choice to avoid "legitimate zoning or integration policies," it lies silent on the issue of enforcing this safeguard.

The Liberal Party feels that the Board of Education has made a very serious mistake by pursuing such an obviously flawed path to school reform. The Board's excessive concern with symbolism over substance and its haste to implement school choice without adequate preparation suggests an atmosphere of urgency. Why?

Recent calls to abolish the Board of Education have seemingly driven its members to make politically expedient decisions regarding school choice. By voting to accept a choice plan that preserves the Board of Education while it ignores the unique nature and needs of education in New York City, the Board members have done our children a disservice.