Once again we learn that the public-school choice feature of NCLB isn’t working well. This 55-page GAO report appraises the first two years of its implementation and finds it sorely lacking. Though ten percent of Title I schools (about 5 percent of all public schools) “have been identified for school choice,” only one percent of eligible students actually transferred. The reasons are myriad and diverse, according to GAO’s close examination of eight districts.
The biggest are “tight timelines and insufficient classroom capacity.” The Education Department’s monitoring and guidance, though extensive, are not adequate, either. By and large, the Department concurs with the GAO recommendations, which include better data, better studies, yet more guidance, and various forms of public/parent information and technical assistance to states and districts.
In this report, however, nobody goes to what may be the heart of the problem, namely the law itself, with its cramped view of choice and severe limits on the options that must be afforded to children stuck in bad schools.
Download the PDF here.