And the positive effects seem to be filtering up to the city's one public high school, Cambridge Rindge and Latin, said Albert H. Giroux, the spokesperson for the school department.

"We're looking at students who entered the system in 1981 and are now in high school as indicators of how it's working," Giroux said. "We're finding that success of those students is determined a lot by the strength of their elementary school programs."

The program does have its flaws--each year about 10 percent of the students within the system are shut out from all three of their top choices and are forced to attend another school.

Still, Giroux said he credits the controlled choice program with playing a significant role in raising Cambridge SAT averages from 770 in 1980 to 841 in 1990.

Dropout rates have improved as well, from 9 per cent of the student population in 1980 to about 5 per cent last year, Giroux said.

But whether the idea of letting parents choose one school over another can translate to success on a statewide level may prove a different story.

The Big Picture

The state program, which was passed in July and went into effect on September 1, is designed to improve the quality of Massachusetts public education by forcing schools to compete for students.

As of September 24, only 25 school districts have opted to participate in the plan, but state legislators hope that eventually more towns and cities will join.

So far about 600 students across the state have changed schools through the new program.

Cambridge received between 10 and 15 phone calls per day during the summer from parents in neighboring cities who were interested in switching their children to the Cambridge school system, Giroux said.

And from a purely financial standpoint, the city might be wise to join in, Peterkin said.

"Cambridge would definitely find the program attractive," he said. "It could draw some revenue from other districts because of the quality of its program."

But right now Cambridge is more concerned with giving its own students a top-notch education than with profiting financially from the statewide program, Giroux said.

Cambridge's school budget is about $70 million for this fiscal year, which boils down to about $9000 per student for each of the system's 7700 students--a figure which Giroux calls "extremely fortunate."