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America’s America’s Best (And Worst) Cities for School Choice PRISCILLA WOHLSTETTER & DARA ZEEHANDELAAR WITH DAVID GRIFFITH

Foreword by Amber M. Northern and Michael J. Petrilli

2015 December

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is the nation’s leader in advancing

educational excellence for every child through quality research, analysis,

and commentary, as well as on-the-ground action and advocacy in Ohio.

It is affiliated with the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation,

and this publication is a joint project of the Foundation and the Institute.

For further information, please visit our website at www.edexcellence.net

or write to the Institute at 1016 16th St. NW, 8th Floor, Washington, D.C. 20036.

The Institute is neither connected with nor sponsored by Fordham University.

foreword i

executive summary iv

SECTION ONE | INTRODUCTION

Choice in America Today 1

SECTION TWO

What Makes a City Choice-Friendly? 5

SECTION THREE

Methods & Data Sources 8 Area I: Political Support 10

Area II: Policy Environment 11

Area III: Quantity & Quality 12

SECTION FOUR

City-Level Results 14 The Top Ten 16

The Middle of the Pack 19

The Bottom Ten 22

SECTION FIVE

Taking a Closer Look 25

SECTION SIX | CONCLUSION

Making America’s Cities More Choice-Friendly 29

endnotes 32

SECTION SEVEN

City Profiles by Rank 34 01 New Orleans 35

02 Washington, D.C. 39

03 Denver 43

04 Indianapolis 47

05 Columbus, OH 51

06 Milwaukee 55

07 Newark 59

08 Oakland 63

09 Atlanta 67

10 Detroit 71

11 Chicago 75

12 Boston 79

12 New York City 83

14 Philadelphia 87

15 Los Angeles 91

16 Minneapolis 95

17 Baltimore 99

18 Kansas City, MO 103

19 Houston 107

20 San Francisco 111

21 Nashville 115

22 Jacksonville 119

23 San Diego 123

24 Tulsa 127

25 Dallas 131

26 Seattle 135

27 Charlotte 139

28 Pittsburgh 143

29 Austin 147

30 Albany 151

APPENDIX A

Detailed Methods 155

APPENDIX B

City Scores by Area 166

Contents

foreword AUTHORS: Amber M. Northern and Michael J. Petrilli

executive summary, sections one - six

AUTHORS: Priscilla Wohlstetter and Dara Zeehandelaar

CONTRIBUTORS: Julie Casper, Eric Chan, Solana Chehtman, Jane Griesinger, David Houston, and Christopher Lim

section seven AUTHOR: David Griffith

i

Amber M. Northern and Michael J. Petrilli

This report focuses once again on one of Fordham’s core issues—school choice.

And it’s one that we’ve learned quite a bit about over the last decades.

Key among those lessons? Quantity does not equal quality. Plus: The

conditions must be right for choice to flourish. Good intentions only take

you so far; sturdy plants grow when seeds are planted in fertile ground.

Foreword

Foreword

The best teacher of that last lesson has been our friend Rick Hess.

Five years ago, we teamed up with him on a study that explored

the ideal conditions for school reform at the city level. What

factors in America’s major metropolises fostered the spirit and

reality of innovation and enterprise such that reform might take root and thrive? That effort, America’s Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform, found that too few of our big cities possess

the talent, leadership, infrastructure, culture, and resources to

beckon enterprising reformers and then help them succeed.

But we also found some innovators on that list of cities, many

of which served as “proof points” and role models for stodgier

places. (Especially notable were New Orleans, Washington, D.C.,

and New York City). And the report led to many fruitful conver-

sations with school, city, business, and philanthropic leaders all

over the place about how to fan the flames of “edupreneurship.”

Now we’re back with a targeted follow up. America’s Best (and Worst) Cities for School Choice is not a replica—it focuses

on school choice rather than innovation writ large and considers

some additional questions. But it again demonstrates vividly

the spectrum of receptivity to fundamental education reform

when one looks across cities.

To lead the work this time, we approached Priscilla (Penny)

Wohlstetter, Distinguished Research Professor at Columbia Uni-

versity’s Teachers College. Penny is well known for her scholar-

ship on the politics of education, and on school choice, including

research on charter schools, charter management

organizations, and parental involvement in schools of choice.

Penny and a talented troop of graduate students joined forces

with Fordham National Research Director Dara Zeehandelaar

and Research and Policy Associate David Griffith to define what

it means to be “choice-friendly,” gather and analyze copious

amounts of data, and write up the results of this ambitious

investigation.

They settled on three “buckets” of indicators that, taken

together, provide a robust and multi-faceted picture of school

choice in a given city:

1. Political support, which gauges the stance of key players

relative to school choice, including the mayor, city council,

school board, superintendent, parent groups, and the media.

2. Policy environment, which includes the strength of

state charter laws; funding and facilities access for charter

starters; non-profit, business, and philanthropic support;

vital consumer tools, such as school report cards and pupil

transportation; and quality control mechanisms, such as

policies for closing weak and fading schools.

3. Quantity and quality, which addresses the types

of choice options that are presently available in a city and

the mechanisms for helping people to access them (such as

voucher and open enrollment programs); the portion of

market share occupied by charters and other specialized

schools; and the quality of the choice sector in that city.

The first bucket incorporates the informed opinions of several

“insiders” in each community. Gaining a nuanced perspective

about a city’s choice climate is impossible without asking close

observers and participants. This small but carefully chosen group

of respondents included a leader of the city’s largest school

district (superintendent or other central office official); a

representative of a local organization that supports choice;

and a member of the business community. We do not claim that

their views are representative of others in the city, but they do

represent the informed judgment of a small group with deep

knowledge of respective locales.

ii

The use of this insider questionnaire, coupled with inclusion of

a broader definition of school choice and varied data sources,

means that our study’s metrics differ in non-trivial ways from

those used in the Brookings Institution’s respected Education Choice and Competition Index.1 (See page 24 for more.)

After combining more than one hundred data points into

nearly fifty indicators of choice friendliness, here’s what our

ace analysts found: New Orleans and Washington, D.C. continue

to earn top spots, just like last time. But Denver has come away

with the bronze medal, while New York City has fallen into the

mediocre middle. (Blame the “de Blasio effect.”) Unsurprisingly,

Albany and Pittsburgh are near the bottom. But there were

also curveballs like Atlanta, which is notorious for its recent

cheating scandal but turns out to attain a respectable ninth

rank for choice friendliness.

Observe that all three cities with “honors grades” (New Orleans,

Washington, D.C., and Denver) are thriving, growing, and gentri-

fying places. Is that coincidence? If there’s a causal relationship,

which direction does it go? Do choice-friendly conditions boost

a city’s vitality or vice versa? Or both? It sure seems harder to

enact big-time education reform of any sort in cities that are

struggling economically (like Albany and Baltimore).2

Meanwhile, the South is showing newfound strength. This

includes New Orleans, of course, but also Atlanta. And keep an

eye on Nashville, with its small but high-quality (and growing)

charter sector. The history of segregation has always complicated

school choice below the Mason-Dixon Line, but perhaps not for

much longer.

Foreword

Our hope is that cities across the country will look at these rankings and work

to catch up with New Orleans, Washington, and Denver. (Although reformers

love to bicker over which of this trio may be the “best” model for school reform,

all three tower over the rest.) But we’re keenly aware that progress is not

necessarily a permanent condition. New York City, in particular, r