Like canaries in a poisoned mineshaft, the flight of LAUSD’s teachers warns of the dire straits Los Angeles’ children face in education.  The Harvard Civil Rights Program found that only 45% of students even graduate.  On California’s English exam, 25% of 11^th graders score “far below basic,” the equivalent of purely guessing at the questions.

But unlike teachers, who seem well aware of their educational choices, parents and students in LAUSD and nearby Compton are not being informed of theirs as mandated under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.  Any school failing to make adequate yearly progress for two or more years must make transfer options and transportation available so that students may attend better performing schools.  Lack of capacity is not a justification for failing to provide transfer options.  If no better performing school is available, the district is required to create additional capacity or arrange with neighboring districts to provide transfers.  School districts must notify all parents of school choice options not later than the first day of the school year. 

For LAUSD, the letter to parents was scant in details and dated October 24, 2004, nearly two months late.  The Compton Unified School District did not even attempt to comply with parental notification.  Not surprisingly, in LAUSD, only 527 students actually transferred in the 2003-04 school year, two-tenths of one percent of eligible students.  The notion that only two out of every thousand families with children in failing schools would seek better options is ludicrous and at complete variance with parental demand in genuine choice programs in Milwaukee and Washington, D.C.  According to Compton, only two students sought transfers in 2004-05, but both decided not to exercise them.

To redress these egregious legal violations, on March 23 disadvantaged minority families supported by the national Alliance for School Choice filed legal complaints against both districts, demanding immediate relief from failing schools.  Simultaneously, they asked Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to impose sanctions for noncompliance.  Just as President Eisenhower called in troops to end racial segregation in Little Rock, federal power is now essential to move the educrats to school choice.

Ultimately, however, the multitudes of children trapped in failing schools so far outnumbers the available openings in high-performing public schools that simply allowing transfers will never solve the problem.  We immediately need a combination of transfers to high-performing public schools outside these districts; conversions of existing failing schools to charter schools, which are directly responsive to parents and have been successful; and the provision of student scholarships to attend private schools.

Such scholarships have precedent in federal law under the Individuals with Disabilities Act, which sends children with disabilities who cannot be adequately served in public schools to a private special education school.  The Hurricane Katrina education relief bill, passed in December 2005, also offers displaced families scholarships to private schools. Schools of choice have often been shown to produce higher test scores with the same or even lower per student spending rates and competition improves the existing traditional public schools. 

Furthermore, giving families a choice of schools of science or performing arts or Montessori instruction, will more likely keep their kids in school. With scholarships at even half the per student funding of LAUSD or Compton, community members, including ministers, would open schools and go to the mat to save their youth from violence, drugs, and prison, and instead instilling in them self-respect, pride, and the ambition for college.

Aside from improved test scores, decreased violence and dropout rates, and greater racial integration, school choice will help rebuild our neighborhoods. The right to choose carries with it a dignity, a shared purpose. The very act of choosing creates a commitment that will bring families together and keep our kids in school.

Peter H. Hanley is executive director of California Parents for Educational Choice and an elected school board member in California’s San Mateo Union High School District.