School Choice Leads Some New Orleans Schools to Improve Academics, Though Most Focus on Marketing
New study describes school leaders' strategies for attracting and retaining students, offers national lessons
NEW ORLEANS, March 26, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- A new study examining how school leaders react to competition in a school-choice environment shows that the primary response is not always to improve the quality of education. According to "How Do School Leaders Respond to Competition? Evidence From New Orleans," by Huriya Jabbar, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, schools most often responded to competition with attempts to market programs already offered. The study was published by the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans (Era-New Orleans), where Jabbar is also a research associate.
Unlike other studies about school choice, the Era-New Orleans report does not focus on changes in student achievement in a competitive environment; instead, it looks at the choices that school leaders make. The data for the study were from 72 interviews with district leaders, charter-school board members, charter network leaders and principals of 30 randomly selected schools in New Orleans.
Referring to the city after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Douglas Harris, director of Era-New Orleans, said, "When New Orleans reinvented its education system with open enrollment charter schools, it became the most competitive school district in the United States, making it the perfect city for this kind of study. Though the city and circumstances are unique, we can learn how strong competition works, which is relevant for a growing number of cities."
The strategies school leaders used to address the competition varied:
- Most schools (25 of 30) promoted existing school offerings by advertising or by attending recruiting fairs.
- More than half of the schools (17 of 30) developed academic, extracurricular or geographic niches.
- Only 10 of 30 schools sought to improve academics or instruction — and the few schools that used this strategy were more likely to have a rating of C or higher (schools with a D or F were less likely).
- One-third (10 of 30) of schools selected or excluded students by suggesting transferring, holding invitation-only promotional events and not reporting open seats.
School leaders defined competition as a focus on government funding associated with higher enrollments. The study also examined how these leaders' perceptions about competition were related to the strategies they chose. For example, school leaders who felt the most pressure — those who perceived the largest number of competitors — implemented numerous strategies, including marketing, academic improvement, information gathering, and differentiation through extracurricular activities. Schools that felt the least amount of pressure created more niche programs and operational changes, and selected or excluded students.
"The combined pressure to enroll a greater number of students and raise test scores to meet state targets also seems to have created a perverse incentive, encouraging the practice of screening and selecting students," Jabbar wrote in the report.
This study is the second in Era-New Orleans' Urban Education Future series, which examines changes in the New Orleans school system in the 10 years since Hurricane Katrina. These studies will be discussed further at the organization's national conference in June.
"Jabbar's study describes both the desirable effects of competition and the unintended consequences of the pressure on schools to attract and retain students," Harris said. "It should encourage school districts and charter school authorizers to look more closely as they oversee their schools in competitive environments."
To review the full study, visit http://educationresearchalliancenola.org/publications/how-do-school-leaders-respond-to-competition.
About Era-New Orleans: The Education Research Alliance for New Orleans is based at Tulane University. Its mission is to produce objective, rigorous and useful research to understand the post-Katrina school reforms.
About the Author: Huriya Jabbar is an assistant professor of educational policy at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a research associate at Era-New Orleans. She holds a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in education policy, organization, measurement and evaluation.
SOURCE Education Research Alliance for New Orleans
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