In September, as hurricanes Harvey and Irma poured rain down on Houston and then Southern Florida, the elderly, infirm, and people with nowhere else to go streamed into public shelters. They received blankets, food, water, cots, medical care and access to television. The accommodations weren’t luxurious but they were free and open to everyone, and they protected vulnerable individuals when they needed it most. Most shelters were public schools.

But it doesn’t take devastating storms for schools to play an outsized role in promoting and sustaining our communities. By their nature, public schools bring together students from diverse backgrounds, and teach them American history, values and culture. Public schools give students a common experience, prepare them for life beyond high school, and provide services and facilities to the entire community — literacy and parenting courses for adults, meeting rooms, libraries, laundry machines, playgrounds and swimming pools that are open to the public and more.

Most importantly, public schools are free and open to all students regardless of ability, religion, sexual orientation or any other factor. They teach to a common set of high standards and provide clear and comparable information about their performance.

Private school vouchers provide a clear contrast on all of these dimensions.

While we don’t have space for a detailed discussion of all the risks associated with private school vouchers, here is a short summary of some of them.

The most significant risk of private school vouchers is that they will result in learning loss among the students who participate. While research on some targeted, small voucher programs have shown small positive effects on high school graduation, college-going rates and parent satisfaction, major recent evaluations of large-scale voucher programs in Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Washington, D.C. have shown that students lost three months of learning or more compared with students who applied for a voucher but didn’t receive one. ⁱ As these programs grow, they do worse by the students participating in them. For policymakers who have a responsibility to invest taxpayer money wisely, these are risky investments.

Part of the reason the results of these initiatives are so poor is that the “good private schools” that most people imagine when thinking about private school vouchers are not available to voucher recipients, and most private schools aren’t measurably better than public ones. The best private schools in the country cost as much as $50,000 a yearⁱⁱ and run extremely competitive, selective admissions processes.ⁱⁱⁱ These schools offer scholarship aide to some portion of admitted students with demonstrated financial need. But they aren’t lacking for applicants, nor are they interested in ceding control over their admissions, testing or discipline procedures. They can turn away a student based on academic ability or religious background. Even after a student is enrolled, a school can require a child to leave mid-year, leaving the parent searching for an open slot in a new school on short notice. In addition, numerous voucher programs allow participating private schools to tack on additional fees, making it nearly impossible for low-income families to afford the tuition.^iv As a result, they aren’t a real option for the vast majority of students who might qualify for a voucher.

“To avoid all of these risks and to truly create school systems that meet the needs of all families, policymakers would do better to make the system more user-friendly.”

Busy parents, especially those from low-income communities, need school systems that make it easy for them to find and enroll their child in a good school that meets their needs. A recent study reported that 37 percent of parents were confused by the process and the school choices available to them. Parents of color, parents with lower levels of education, and parents of special education students have more difficultly navigating a choice system.^xi So, what does a parent-friendly school system look like?

Uniform enrollment.

Some districts have created a centralized, common application and enrollment system so parents can easily research and apply to numerous public schools that are suited to their family’s needs. Uniform enrollment systems break down barriers and make applying for multiple schools – traditional public and charter – as easy as completing one application. Participating private schools are not included in uniform enrollment systems, so parents must seek out and apply separately to various private schools. This is a time-consuming process, fraught with potential rejection.

Comparable information to measure school performance.

Parents cannot identify a school that best meets their child’s need without uniform performance data. All schools must administer the uniform assessments and publicly report the results in a way that is accessible to both parents and policymakers. Many districts have their own report cards for individual schools,^xii but there are nonprofits – great schools chief among them – that collect and meaningfully report school data.^xiii

Accessible transportation systems.

Some high-performing school options may be simply out of reach if a student has to commute for an hour or more a day on the family’s dime. For example, in D.C., 80 percent of parents prioritized location of school options.^xiv To make more options more accessible, some districts, including D.C., offer transportation assistance.^xv

Meaningful oversight.

Systems of choice must go hand-in-hand with systems of accountability that have a high bar for entry and ensure schools of all types are accountable to student achievement. Otherwise, the quality of the choice options will suffer significantly. Compare Michigan’s charter sector with that of Massachusetts. Michigan lifted its charter cap and paved the way for massive charter expansion without any infrastructure for quality authorizing.^xvi Massachusetts, on the other hand, carefully developed a set of performance standards that charters must adhere to in order to remain open and continue to serve students. Today, and as a result, 90 percent of Boston charter schools are showing greater math learning gains than the local traditional district while half of Michigan’s charter schools ranked in the bottom quarter of all public schools in the state for academic performance.

The bottom line is that the goal of policy must be to build a high-quality school system that is parent-friendly, easy to navigate, and serves students, families and the community alike. Urban districts across the country are demonstrating that these models are possible – in the public sphere. The policy debate about whether or not to invest in private school vouchers is too narrow and unresponsive to the real needs of low-income parents, and misses the intrinsic purpose of public schools.