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(One of the more common challenges voiced by opponents of school choice is, “Show me a situation where a school choice program has been successful.” Chuck Johnston, Executive Director of the Children’s Education Foundation in Atlanta, readily accepts this challenge as he relates some of the personal achievements of low-income students who have participated in this privately-financed program.)
The Children’s Education Foundation (CEF) was started in August of 1992 with a gift of $1 million from a successful Atlanta businessman who wanted to provide a choice of educational opportunities to low-income families. Because of limited finances, these families had no choice in where their children went to school.
The program was designed to provide participating families with a 50 percent financial scholarship (in the form of a voucher) toward the tuition cost at a school of the parents’ choice, either public or private. The other half of the tuition would have to be paid by the family.
Despite the availability of a “free” education at their assigned public school, many times more low-income families applied to participate in the program than could be accommodated. Within the first week of the program’s announcement, CEF received more than 500 applications for the 200 slots, and was forced to cut off applications when the number reached nearly 1,000.
Two hundred boys and girls were initially selected to receive the scholarships on a first come, first serve basis, and 34 other children have subsequently been selected from the waiting list. Would the program result in long-term benefits to the participants? Today, some four years later, the evidence clearly shows that CEF has been a success.
Program Assessment
Georgia State University’s Policy Research Center conducted a survey of the parents
of 95 CEF scholarship students. The Research team was led by Professor David L.
Sjoquist and Assistant Professor Mary Beth Walker.
When a low-income family is required to come up with half of the cost of tuition, as is the case with the CEF program, that family must be extraordinarily convinced that a different school will greatly benefit the child. Parents of those participating in the CEF program, despite the personal sacrifice involved, feel good about their investment. Fully 89 percent described themselves as being very pleased with their children’s education at their new schools, with an additional 9 percent being pleased.
Also, since changing to a school of their own choice, parents frequently pointed to an increase in the academic performance of their children at the new school, as well as an increase in time spent reading for pleasure.
The survey also found that with incomes only slightly above the poverty level, these families were willing to do whatever was necessary to pay their half of the tuition. For example:
• 26% cut other expenses
• 21% added work hours or took second jobs
• 13% received some financial help from relatives or friends
• 8% became employed at their children’s schools
Anecdotal Evidence
Proponents and opponents of allowing parents to choose the schools their children attend
often do battle over statistics and data. It is perhaps more interesting to put a
human face on the stakes involved:
• “Being chosen to participate in this program has meant that my oldest daughter has been given the opportunity to attend the Catholic elementary school that my parents had wished to send me, if they had had the money.” So says Mrs. Gina Daunt, speaking of her eight-year-old daughter, Cassidy.
• Christen Abbott and Carla Hines are now free to dream big dreams about their futures as they attend a new rigorous prep school on the old Tift College campus in Forsyth, Georgia, EBON International Preparatory Academy.
• CEF is helping John Michael, Barbara, and Christopher overcome mild learning disabilities at three different schools that specialize in teaching students with learning disabilities.
• Being able to remain at the public school system of her early school years (City of Decatur) gave Tiffany much needed stability in the seventh grade when her family was falling apart and she was faced with having to move to an inferior and unfamiliar middle school. (Tiffany’s residence was moved out of Decatur, so she was faced with a $2,250 out-of-district tuition to remain in her excellent public school, Renfroe Middle School.)
The Amish people in the Pennsylvania Dutch country are free to attend their own schools and to follow the way of life that they as a community have chosen. As with the Amish people, children in inner-city Atlanta, and many others throughout the entire metropolitan area, also want to fulfill their hopes and dreams by getting the best education available. Therefore, those hopes and dreams may not be fulfilled by attending the public school to which they are assigned. For example, Murjan Ali’s dreams include attending a Black Muslim school. For Micha and Rina Ghertner, it is attending Yeshiva, a Hebrew school.
For these children and many more, the privately-funded voucher program of the Children’s Education Foundation is their only hope — their ticket out. Being financially disadvantaged, these children would have no alternative to the schools assigned to them, except for CEF.
Frances Ruth took early retirement from the City of Atlanta School System where she had served for 33 years. She left the relatively comfortable and secure position of Chapter One reading/writing model teacher to take up the cause of excellence in teaching reading and writing to African-American grammar school children at the Mount Vernon Baptist Academy. “If you want to learn to write, you’ve got to write, write, write,” says Frances. And her students, who understand and welcome the demands that are placed upon them, write essays, research papers, fiction, and poetry — something every day.
Frances is director of the Mount Vernon Baptist Academy, a school with 50 students that has been in three different facilities in four years. Her students are now learning in a bright and cheerful facility on Cascade Road. Jannick Cutler, 7th grade, Gregory Ford, 6th grade, and Lashun Favors, 5th grade are among her prize students, thanks to CEF. Scholarship recipients Coleman and Diana Watley, siblings who reside in the Carver Homes, graduated from this fine school as valedictorians in the last two eighth-grade graduation classes, and have gone on to bigger and better things.
Saint John The Evangelist is a remarkable Catholic school. Its student diversity is more like that of the United Nations than any other school in Atlanta: 29 percent African/American; 42 percent Caucasians; 4 percent Hispanic; 1 percent Native American; and 6 percent Vietnamese. The school was one of only seven schools in Georgia designated in the spring of 1995 as a National School of Excellence. Its 275 students span four-year-old kindergarten to grade eight, and the school is located across from the Ford Motor Assembly Plant in Hapeville. Ten CEF scholars attend this school.
These are the kinds of environments CEF is making available to children of families with little income. Unlike families that have enough money to pay full tuition at private schools, or even families who can afford to relocate to another school district with better schools, these families would have no choice except for CEF.
Success . . . One Child At A Time
A scholarship for an ambitious low-income child can enliven the entire family and bring
hope to the entire neighborhood. This is especially true where the educational needs
of so many children from low income families are not being adequately addressed in their
neighborhood public schools. Yet, in these same neighborhoods, there are often
private and parochial schools that could better serve some of these children. There
are also situations, like Tiffany’s, in which transferring to an out-of-district
public school is best for a particular child.
Privately-funded initiatives will not reform education in the inner city, but they will bring substantial new hope to a few eager children and to their families. As the father of one scholarship child has so aptly noted, “How can we go wrong if we can keep our dreams alive?”
So, are school choice programs successful? The clear and convincing answer for several hundred Atlanta children and their families is an unequivocal, “Yes!”
Kelly McCutchen is Executive Director of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent, non-partisan organization dedicated to keeping all Georgians informed about their government and to providing practical ideas on key public policy issues. The Foundation believes in and actively supports private enterprise, limited government and personal responsibility.
Nothing written here is to be construed as an attempt to aid or hinder
the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.
© Georgia Public Policy Foundation (July 22, 1996) Permission is hereby
given to reprint this article, with appropriate credit given.