Yet another study shows school choice programs reduce crime

Schools are expected to prepare children to become good citizens. They can help achieve this goal by producing a well-educated populace and promoting strong character. But not all school systems equally contribute to the public good. Indeed, the evidence shows school choice does more to cut crime than residentially-assigned public schools. Here are the facts.

Yet another study just came out revealing the crime-reducing benefits of school choice. Researchers found that entering a charter school in North Carolina in 9th grade reduced the rate at which students were convicted of felonies by 36% and the rate at which they were convicted of misdemeanors as adults by 38%, compared to their peers in traditional public schools.

But this isn’t the first study to show that school choice reduces crime. There are now six rigorous studies on the subject, and all six studies find that school choice cuts crime.

For example, a study by researchers at Harvard and Princeton found that winning a lottery to attend a charter school in New York City reduced the likelihood of incarceration for male students by 100%. That’s right. Winning a lottery to attend a charter school in NYC all-but completely eliminated the chance of incarceration for male students in the sample. But that’s not all — the study also found that winning a charter school lottery reduced teen pregnancy by 59% for female students.

Another study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that winning a lottery to attend a public school of choice cut crime in half, a 50% reduction, for high-risk male students in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Two studies — conducted by Dr. Patrick J. Wolf and I — similarly found that students using the Milwaukee voucher program to attend private schools were significantly less likely to commit crimes than their carefully matched peers in traditional public schools by the time they reached 22 to 28 years of age. The 2016 version is forthcoming at Social Science Quarterly.

But why does school choice reduce crime?

Traditional public schools hold significant monopoly power because of residential assignment and funding through property taxes. Families upset with the quality of their public school only have three limited options: They can purchase an expensive new house that is assigned to a better public school, pay for a private school out of pocket while still paying for the public school through property taxes, or complain to the school leaders and hope things change.

Because these options are expensive and inefficient, there is not a lot of pressure for residentially-assigned public schools to provide the best character education possible. In contrast, private and charter schools must cater to the needs of families if they wish to remain open.

School choice puts power into the hands of families. And families usually know what’s best for their own kids.

But competition isn’t the only explanation. School choice could also reduce crime by matching students to schools that interest them, and by exposing students to peer groups and school cultures that discourage risky behaviors.

So, it’s about time we rethink the notion that residentially-assigned public schools contribute most to the public good. After all, every single study on the topic finds that school choice does more to benefit society by reducing crime.

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SCOTUS Set to Hear School Choice Case Next Term

Before hitting the road for their summer vacations, the justices of the Supreme Court announced last week that they would hear a major school choice case in the next term.

If the court rules in favor of the families that brought this case, it could pave the way for educational freedom and opportunity for millions of children across the country.

The case, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, deals with Montana’s tax credit of up to $150 per year for donations taxpayers make to a scholarship-granting organization.

The scholarship-granting organization then provides scholarships to income-eligible children to attend a private school of their choice.

Recipients may use the funds at qualified schools, which initially included religiously affiliated private schools. Then the Montana Department of Revenue enacted a rule excluding religious schools, citing the state constitution’s “no aid” provision (known as a Blaine Amendment) that prohibits public money from going to churches.

Families with children at religious schools challenged that rule, arguing that it violates their federal constitutional right to free exercise of religion.

Religiously affiliated schools make up 69 percent of private schools in Montana. If this rule were to be allowed to stand, it would shut out a large percentage of schools from the scholarship program, limiting the options of families that relied on this assistance to send their children to the school of their choice.

The good news is that the Supreme Court set the stage for the Espinoza case with its 2017 ruling in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer.

In that decision, the high court held that the state of Missouri violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause when it barred a church-run day care center from receiving a grant to resurface its playground.

The state of Missouri argued that it was trying to avoid running afoul of the Establishment Clause, which prohibits states from recognizing an official state church. In doing so, Missouri trampled on Trinity Lutheran’s free exercise rights.

To be sure, there is some “play in the joints” between what the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses require of states.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that by singling out the day care center for disfavored treatment and “denying a qualified religious entity a public benefit because of its religious character,” Missouri went “too far.”

Roberts wrote in a footnote that the decision was limited to “express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing” and stressed that the decision “do[es] not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch disagreed that the ruling was limited.

In a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, Gorsuch concluded that the “general principles” of this decision “do not permit discrimination against religious exercise—whether on the playground or anywhere else.”

Shortly after issuing this decision, the justices instructed courts in Colorado and New Mexico to square their rulings in cases dealing with a school voucher program and a textbook-lending program with the Trinity Lutheran decision.

Thus, the scope of the Trinity Lutheran ruling remains unclear, and now the high court has the opportunity in the Espinoza case to make clear that states may not require religious organizations to check their beliefs at the door before entering the secular world.

If allowing a church-run day care center to compete for state grant money does not violate the Establishment Clause, then surely there aren’t Establishment Clause concerns raised by allowing families to use scholarship money at religious schools, for which donors receive a modest tax credit.

Indeed, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), the court noted the “consistent distinction” it has drawn between “government programs that provide aid directly to religious schools … and programs of true private choice, in which government aid reaches religious schools only as a result of the genuine and independent choices of private individuals.”

On several occasions, the high court has rejected Establishment Clause challenges to “neutral government programs that provide aid directly to a broad class of individuals, who, in turn, direct the aid to religious schools … of their own choosing.”

The state’s Blaine Amendment also should not provide cover for preventing families from choosing to use these scholarship funds at religious schools.

More than three dozen states have Blaine Amendments, named for Sen. James G. Blaine, R-Maine, who in the late 1800s pushed for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting aid to “sectarian” schools.

As Thomas explained in the 2000 decision Mitchell v. Helms, “Consideration of the amendment arose at a time of pervasive hostility to the Catholic Church and to Catholics in general, and it was an open secret that sectarian was code for Catholic.”

Although Blaine failed in his bid to amend the Constitution, many states—some on condition of statehood—adopted their own Blaine Amendments.

Today, these ignoble 19th-century amendments often thwart modern-day school choice efforts as more and more states move toward systems that enable families to direct their child’s education funding to education options that work for them.

With any luck, the court will use the Espinoza case to heed Thomas’ advice that “this doctrine, born of bigotry, should be buried” and pave the way for school choice across the country.

The justices will hear oral argument in the Espinoza case during their next term, starting in October, and release a decision by the end of June 2020.

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Australian teacher education degrees should face scrutiny

People who have undergone teacher education degrees have been telling me for years that they are useless -- JR

Australian teachers are underprepared for the classroom compared to those in other countries, according to a recent global survey. The result indicates initial teacher education in Australia often isn’t up to scratch.

The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) asked teachers around the world how prepared they were after completing their teacher education degrees. And on almost every measure — including being prepared to teach specific subjects, teach mixed-ability classes, and manage the classroom — Australian teachers reported being less prepared than the OECD teacher average.

While we should not rely too much on international surveys (because teachers in different countries may answer questions differently due to varying expectations and backgrounds), the TALIS findings are consistent with existing research on Australian teacher education degrees. The evidence indicates new teachers aren’t adequately prepared to teach reading or manage student behaviour — aspects of teaching that could hardly be classified as optional extras.

This should certainly raise questions about the quality of content that taxpayer-funded universities are delivering to teacher education students. And it follows on from concerning news that almost 1 in 10 teacher education students fail a basic literacy and numeracy test, which has prompted calls to raise the standard of new teacher intakes.

The TALIS survey also asked teachers about what school spending priorities should be. Australian teachers were more likely than the OECD teacher average to prioritise reducing administrative burden by recruiting more support staff — suggesting red tape for teachers may have grown unreasonably, meaning less time can be spent on lesson preparation.

Interestingly, Australian teachers were less likely to think reducing class sizes or increasing teacher salaries should be prioritised than the OECD teacher average.

This goes to show there are many policies to improve the school system we should consider before we move to throwing even more taxpayer money at the problems. We should start by trying to improve teacher training.

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