A new report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found both Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metro Nashville Public Schools are facing more competition for students than most other large school districts.
The study ranked both districts 21 out of the top 125 school districts for the percentage of students in grades 1 through 8 that attend public charter, private, or home schools instead of district run schools.
“We were curious: Which education markets in America are the most competitive? And which markets have education reformers and choice-encouragers neglected or failed to penetrate?” wrote researchers David Griffith and Jeanette Luna. “Research suggests that schools perform better when students aren’t obliged to enroll in them. For example, at least twelve studies that rely on student-level data have found that competition from charter schools has positive or neutral-to-positive effects on traditional public-school achievement, while just three studies have found negative effects.”
According to the report, 34 percent of students in Metro Nashville and Memphis Shelby-County attend schools other than those run by the district. Nationally, researchers found most large school districts only face “modest competition,” but the numbers have been increasing.
The proportion of students in grades 1–8 who were not enrolled in a district-run school increased by about three percentage points nationwide between 2010 and 2020, from roughly 15 percent to approximately 18 percent. Metro Nashville Public Schools saw a 12-percentage point increase in students enrolling in non-district schools during that same period while Memphis-Shelby County Schools saw an 18-point increase. Knox County Schools saw a decrease in non-district enrollment.
“In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is little to cheer when it comes to public education. Yet for advocates of equal opportunity and better schooling, the decade just before the pandemic was a time of real progress, at least when it came to the expansion of choice and competition in the communities served by our country’s largest school systems. Let’s get back to that,” wrote Griffith and Luna.
The study found that Black and Hispanic students are playing a big role in that increase in competition since 2010. Of the 125 school districts studied, 116 saw an increase in non-white students’ access to schools that aren’t run by school districts.
“In short, districts that don’t have to compete for traditionally disadvantaged students can afford to take them for granted, which increases the odds that they will be poorly served. Hence the decades-long quest to create truly independent alternatives to America’s largest school districts—to encourage them to improve and to provide students with viable alternatives should they fail to do so—and the need to periodically assess that endeavor’s success,” wrote Griffith and Luna.
Hamilton County Schools was on the opposite end of the trend for more competition for non-white students.
The district ranked 19th lowest in the study for the percentage of non-white students who are enrolled in a non-district run school with just 14 percent.
