Few Exercise New Right to Leave Failing Schools
The number of applicants is small, superintendents say, because parents seem to want their children close to home, in schools they already know. But also, parents have been given only a brief window in which to apply before classes begin, and because good schools draw the most applicants, they have the least slots available.

Paul Houston, director of the American Association of School Administrators, said that districts have had insufficient time to carry out the new "No Child Left Behind" law, including adjusting budgets that would allow for increased enrollment in better schools. Aside from finding space, superintendents must arrange transportation for students to new schools, hire extra teachers and buy supplies on short notice. In many Southern states, administrators are struggling to comply with the new law without violating desegregation court orders, which assign students to schools on the basis of race.

Educators on both ends of the political spectrum complain that while the law demands that they find slots in better schools, it gives them no means to create them. It also does not spell out penalties, though states could conceivably lose their share of the federal $10.4 billion Title I allotment if they did not comply.

Education advocates like Madeline Talbot, of the Chicago chapter of the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now, echoes the criticism from last year's debate.

"This whole choice busing provision was a huge sham for cities like Chicago that have huge numbers of failing schools, and not enough places in good schools for kids to go," said Ms. Talbot, who opposes privatizing public schools and vouchers to pay for private schools.

Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, a Washington group that supports vouchers, was similarly disaffected. But she blamed the sluggish local responses, not the law itself.

Federal officials do not have a full count of how many children have been given the option to transfer, and how many have succeeded in doing so, Mr. Hickok said. Education officials contend that the only valid reason for not letting children transfer out of a failing school is lack of space, which they define as levels that violate safety regulations.

The problem of finding slots in coveted schools was raised in Congress last year. Some education advocates proposed busing children to better schools beyond their districts, an idea lawmakers rejected.

The "choice" requirement is the opening salvo in the government's stepped-up battle to improve academic achievement by establishing the threat of dwindling student enrollment and eventual closure. But federal and local education officials acknowledge that the law's real strength comes from its power to expose poor performance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/28/education/28CHOI.html?pagewanted=all&position=top