More than 1 million students in the nation's largest urban school districts have remained at poor-performing campuses despite a federal law that allows them a chance to escape to better schools.
The offer extended by the No Child Left Behind education law is intended to expand school choices for children in low-income communities.
But in Los Angeles, only 215 students switched to better campuses last year out of nearly 204,000 who were eligible.
In Chicago, 1,097 students out of 270,000 transferred.
And in New York, 6,828 out of 230,000 students moved to other campuses.
A lack of interest on the part of parents and a shortage of available seats in good schools have combined to weaken the impact of the law. Still, the Bush administration argues that its signature domestic policy strengthens local campuses by introducing competitive marketplace forces into public school districts.
Administration officials also say they judge the success of the law by whether schools improve, not by the numbers of transfers.
"This is a real culture shift," said Eugene Hickok, deputy secretary in the U.S. Department of Education. "For years, the system did what was best for the system. Now we are arguing that [schools] have to find ways to respond to the needs of their customers. That's what choice is about."
The Bush administration is expected to expand the reforms of No Child Left Behind as the president enters his second term, possibly extending the law's testing requirements from elementary and middle schools into high schools.
That could increase the number of failing campuses -- and thus the pool of students eligible for transfers -- as more schools struggle to meet the measure's demanding expectations.
Critics say the low numbers of students taking advantage of the offer, however, reveal a significant flaw in the law: Policymakers misunderstand the importance of neighborhood schools to parents.
"The law does give real power to parents. It's just not a power they are willing to use very often," said Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "The choice provision of the law is not ... going to revolutionize schools."
Even if children leave their local campuses, some district leaders say they cannot accommodate more transfers because their best campuses already are strapped for space.
