The Idea That May Eat Neighborhood Schools : Education: Without reform that distinguishes individual schools, parents will choose not what their children study, but with whom they study.

SANGER, CALIF. — Even as a 5-year-old, I sensed that my school was somehow better than other schools in my hometown. PTA meetings brimmed with proud parents convinced that the school was giving their children the best (pub lic) education possible. Students were considered to be more motivated and less disruptive than the boys and girls who attended other elementary schools. Fresh young teachers hired by the district crossed their fingers and wished for assignment to Madison Elementary, the tamest species in the public-school jungle.

Madison had a more tangible characteristic. It was the school with the highest concentration of white students and the lowest percentage of Latinos. The first, most enduring, lesson taught a young boy by the American educational system was that better meant whiter.

These memories frequently come to mind when the issue of choice is discussed. School districts are studying it. State legislatures are debating it. Both presidential candidates support it in one form or another. Sooner or later, school choice promises to swallow what remains of the ideal of the neighborhood school.

In the ‘90s, with white, upper-class children safe in their suburban refuges, the stabbings and shootings in the cafeteria line are now black on black, brown on brown. Drugs, graffiti, violence and intimidation of teachers define the new jungle. In teachers’ lounges in Detroit, Dallas and Los Angeles, educators drag on cigarettes and declare how they would “never send (their) own kids to this place.” The school bell rings and they run home to the suburbs, picking up their children at better--whiter--schools. Now, amid this madness, there is choice.

Consider a parent’s dilemma: Believing that the school across town is better, safer, whiter than the neighborhood school your children now attends, you want in. Yet, you lack the economic means to either buy a house in that more expensive neighborhood or forsake public school altogether by paying private-school tuition. Along come vouchers redeemable at that school. Your kid can pack his crayons. Problem solved.

The Fresno Unified School District is one of the first in California to dip its toe into the choice waters. Its board of trustees is considering an intradistrict choice program that would remove the “real-estate restriction” and allow parents to send their children to any school site in the district, as early as the next school year. Fresno parents would, for instance, be able to choose which of the seven high schools in the city they want their children to attend.

There are lingering questions. What about overcrowding at the most-preferred school site? If the state budget allotment per student follows them to the chosen school, will the district address the legality of foreseeable inequity between rich and poor schools? Will there be an admissions process at each site, similar to that of private schools? If so, what will regulate who is included or excluded? Is the district prepared for legal action over a denial of admission because of racial discrimination? And, what of those who remain at schools deserted by others--what of their future?

Peter Mehas, superintendent of Fresno County schools and a member of President George Bush’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, argues that choice may have a number of positive effects, including increased competition between public and private schools. Like a business or a soft drink, if schools want to keep up with the demands of the market, they will have to improve. Under the current system, Mehas points out, parents are taken for granted as consumers while their taxes support the system. Under a choice system that shifts power to parents, he suggests, those consumers will gain more control over the educational product.

Is Mehas concerned that a school might try to remain better--whiter--by denying admission to African-American and Latino students? He unequivocably advocates affirmative action for special-education and minority students.

To be sure, it is exciting to see public-school administrators finally questioning a defunct status quo to which they have clung so defensively for so long. The goal of unity, the dissolution of arbitrary boundaries between school sites, is admirable. Yet, I fear that choice will have the opposite effect of further dividing students, teachers and parents. The existing, harmful lines between good, better and best schools will become clearer.

What concerns me most is not that parents be allowed to choose but what they will choose and why they will choose it. Without reform that distinguishes individual schools, the choice is largely a geographic one. Ultimately, parents will choose not what their children study, but with whom they study.

Consider two Fresno high schools. In the last school year, Bullard was 67% white, 16% Latino and 10% African-American. Roosevelt was 16% white, 55% Latino, 8% African-American, with a large percentage of Southeast Asian refugees. Ten years ago, Bullard prided itself on being the best high school in Fresno. Bullard parents owned expensive homes. Bullard students drove expensive cars. Bullard had nice band costumes, and four sections of calculus. Bullard had money, and was almost all white. Still is.

Roosevelt has changed. It became a teen-age United Nations; a school of immigrants. Multiple languages are spoken in the hallway, multiple cultures interact in classrooms, and multiple ethnic gangs are responsible for multiple shootings in the parking lot. It is harder and more dangerous to teach, and learn, at Roosevelt.

In Fresno, the choice plan will function as a one-way street. Educationally well-fed Bullard students will not leave. The choice option will be used most heavily by the 16% of Roosevelt students, white students, whose parents are tired of flying bullets, burned-out teachers, low expectation and the Princeton recruiter always going somewhere else. Expect the whitening of one school, the coloring of another. Expect a richer school, and a poorer one. Expect a Bullard Backlash from parents who thought that expensive homes would protect them not only from race but from class.

How will school-choice programs be received by Latino parents--the children of whom currently represent the plurality, 36.5%, of enrolled students in the Fresno school district? A sampling of African-American parents found over 80% in favor of school choice. My hunch is that such a poll among Latino parents would yield an even higher percentage.

Latino parents are tired of incompetence and neglect, tired of hearing the President talk about a “crisis in Hispanic education” and do absolutely nothing about it. They are tired of teachers tracking their children away from college-prep and into vocational studies. They are tired of guidance counselors with low expectations. They are tired of 50%-60% dropout rates and failing test scores. And they are tired of conservatives, including former Secretary of Education Lauro Cavazos, passing the buck to them with accusations that they are to blame for it all. They work long hours, often for low wages; they buy books and computers they cannot afford; they thought that educating their children was what teachers were being paid to do.

When I’m a father, maybe my outlook will change. Perhaps my wife and I will ultimately send our children to public school, perhaps to private. Given the gradual decay of American education, I only hope that, by then, I and other parents have that choice.