Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Thursday, April 6, 2006
Dayton gets noticed in education
Sorry for the sparse postings this week. I’ve been a little under the weather.
A friend alerted me to a mention of Dayton as a school choice leader in a New York Times story today about vouchers. The Times seems to have gotten new figures on school choice in major cities.
They correctly note that Dayton is up to about 28 percent of all schoolchildren using choice options, which in our case means attending charter schools. That’s still No. 1 in the country, and with the new availability of vouchers here this fall that figure could go even higher.
The story says Washington, D.C., is close behind with 25 percent of kids using choice options. Then the numbers fall off dramatically. Houston, at 12 percent, is the only other city cited in the story that is in double figures. (The Times may have overlooked Detroit. I don’t know the percentage there off hand, but I know it is growing quickly.)
I’m not intimately familiar with D.C.’s program, but my impression is that the funding is different and the city school system there is more insulated from market forces than cities like Dayton and Detroit. But as the percentage of kids that try choice grows, especially in big cities, there will be more national media stories about how markets affect students and schools. And other cities would do well to learn the lessons Dayton can offer.
The choice movement here has brought good and bad. And certainly it puts Dayton in the spotlight.
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