Enabling Mandatory Public School Choice

New Education Sector Idea at Work highlights mandatory school choice programs in New York City and Boston.

School choice requires that students and their parents have meaningful choices. In a new Education Sector Idea at Work, Matchmaking: Enabling Mandatory Public School Choice in New York and Boston takes a close look at the choice systems in New York and Boston.

Too often, school choice programs offer students limited options, or are not able to match students with the schools they choose to attend. The report commends the two school systems for implementing fair matching systems that now accommodate the wishes of virtually every student.

Consider New York City, where each year, middle-school students and their parents determine which of the city's 693 high school programs will suit them best. They choose 12 and rank them accordingly. The school system has adopted new computer software that allows it to place students in the schools on their lists "far more efficiently and fairly than most public school choice programs," according to Toch and Aldeman. As a result, this year 99 percent of students will attend a school they selected.

In addition, the authors note, the two districts offer a diverse array of schooling options. Although choice is mandatory, students in New York, for instance, can choose from among schools focused on animal science, architecture, communications, computer science and technology, cosmetology, culinary arts, engineering, environmental science, film and video, health, hospitality and tourism, humanities, law and government, performing arts, science and math, teaching, and visual art and design.

The results have been impressive—stimulating a new entrepreneurialism among many public educators, improving the perception of public education among middle-class families, and serving as a catalyst for school reform. The model, say authors Toch and Aldeman, could serve "as a model strategy for harnessing the power of the marketplace to better serve students' diverse educational interests and needs and to stimulate improvement through competition for students." It could also "improve both the quality and equity of court-ordered school choice programs."