- IN THIS REPORT
Readers will read about various local-level school choice developments, Blum Center acquisitions, David Kirkpatrick's observations on important activities, and how an abstract perfect can be used to kill a practical good.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
A coalition of seventeen education reform leaders has
sent a letter to U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, urging him to support
Representative Steve Gunderson's school choice proposal for D.C. schools.
For more information and a copy of the letter, please refer to this month's
insert by David Kirkpatrick.
According to an October 12 memorandum from Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice, after a period of "intense local efforts" Rep. Gunderson drafted a "constitutionally solid" scholarship proposal and turned it over to House Speaker Newt Gingrich. House Speaker Gingrich has indicated that he will support the proposal, but is currently negotiating with opponents in the House. Rep. Gunderson's proposal would offer scholarships worth $3,000 per pupil to families below the poverty level. The scholarships could be redeemed at any private schools, including religious schools.
In March of this year House Speaker Gingrich had asked Gunderson to spearhead reform efforts for D.C. schools among the members of Congress. House Speaker Gingrich stated at the time that "he would like to see parents in poor neighborhoods given vouchers of as much as $8,000 a child so they could send their children to private school." Mayor Marion Barry likewise stated that he would support a limited voucher program for poor neighborhoods. (Washington Post, 03/31/95)
MINNESOTA
In July Governor Arne Carlson announced his intention
to introduce next year a limited voucher plan for Minnesota. The announcement
represented a complete reversal in his views on educational choice since
he was elected in 1990, when he did not favor comprehensive vouchers. The
details are yet unavailable, but his plan is expected to resemble the Milwaukee
Parental Choice Program, recently expanded by the Wisconsin legislature.
The Choice in Education Foundation of Minnesota interviewed Gov. Carlson
shortly after the announcement regarding his change in position, and has
published the interview in their September newsletter.
In the interview Gov. Carlson states that what motivated him to start considering a voucher plan for Minnesota was the lack of improvement in education in his state despite significant increases in funding. Gov. Carlson now thinks that "a voucher program will provide part of the solution simply because vouchers will create more competition, and competition spawns excellence." Gov. Carlson believes that a voucher plan will draw the focus of education reform more toward children by providing parents with greater freedom. Gov. Carlson also discusses the U.S. and Minnesota Supreme Court legal rulings that support the constitutionality of vouchers. To request a copy of the newsletter, please refer to the details listed below under "Recent Acquisitions."
NEW JERSEY
More than two-thirds of the Catholic churches in New
Jersey participated in a voter registration drive whose purpose was to
focus and solidify the New Jersey Catholic citizenry on certain political
issues of particular concern to Catholics. One of those is school choice.
In reference to school choice, Sister Suzanne Bellenoit, head of the education committee in the diocese of Newark, said that "the bishops in New Jersey feel there's an inequity there," because "the system forces parents who choose to send their children to private schools to pay twice even though they're only exercising their right to choose the school they want." The New Jersey Catholic Conference will soon also publish and distribute at participating churches the results of a questionnaire they sent to candidates seeking election to the state Assembly next November. These questionnaires were designed to make apparent the moral convictions of each candidate on issues of special interest to New Jersey Catholics. (Philadelphia Inquirer, 09/26/95)
PENNSYLVANIA
Governor Tom Ridge is now ready to reintroduce a revised
version of his education reform bill, which includes among its provisions
a pilot tuition voucher program, focused only in certain urban areas that
have yet to be named. (Patriot-News, 10/14/95) Although Ridge's
voucher proposal failed to pass the legislature last June, Mark Holman,
Chief of Staff to the Governor, notes that much has been learned from the
previous attempt, and the Governor aims for nothing less than serious reform.
(The Patriot, 10/09/95, Patriot-News, 10/10/95. Please see
Freedom Report #19 for more details on the first proposal.) Ridge
has designed the latest reform package to attract broader bipartisan support.
House Majority Leader John Perzel (R-Philadelphia) has determined that
another vote will not be taken until the necessary votes are secured in
the House. (Patriot-News, 10/16/95) The new pilot program would
make available vouchers of up to $1,500 each and may make more low-income
parents eligible. (Please refer to this month's insert by David Kirkpatrick.)
Pennsylvania's fall legislative session opened on October 16, and we will
keep readers apprised as more legislative information becomes available.
WASHINGTON
Fawn and Jim Spady, co-founders of the Education Excellence
Coalition in Seattle, have drafted a ballot initiative for the state of
Washington, I-177, which would allow public school districts to revamp
themselves by enabling the creation of "independent public schools." Each
district, if it should vote to adopt the reforms, would be able to license
any nonprofit organization to establish an independent public school, free
from most regulation. Per-pupil spending would follow students to independent
schools. Under I-177 a government-run school could also be converted to
an independent school if either a simple majority of both parents and teachers
voted to do so, or if two-thirds of the parents alone signed a petition.
Schools that did not convert within the district would operate under regular
conditions.
Supporters of the Spady initiative need 182,000 petition signatures before December 29 of this year in order for the initiative to go to the Washington legislature. If the bill fails to pass the legislature, the initiative is then put on the November 1996 ballot. The Spadys are currently seeking the funding necessary to hire enough signature collectors, since they are not backed by a political organization.
According to the Spadys, their first ballot initiative, I-642, was inferior to their most recent effort for two reasons: first, because it placed too much pressure on districts to either reform entirely or to reject the initiative. Second, according to its design, it relied too heavily on the support and initiative of public school teachers to change the status quo from within the public school system. When local support for I-642 waned, the Spadys realized that their next ballot initiative would have to allow greater latitude for districts to implement reform and should also address the rights of parents rather than rely on public school teachers for reform. For more information on their efforts, contact the Education Excellence Coalition at 4427 Thackery Place NE, Seattle, WA 98105; (206) 789-8776.
WISCONSIN
In Report #25 there was an Editor's View discussing
last-minute educational finance monopoly (EFM) efforts to damage expansion
of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). Those efforts took the
form of a particularly shrill "siphon" allegation: "MPCP expansion could
mean the loss of $16,000,000 to the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS)." The
point of the View, of course, was that Wisconsin's politicians had developed
an immunity to such smoke screens that enabled them, the following day,
to pass MPCP expansion intact.
The wisdom of their deaf ear to EFM, obvious at the time, subsequently has been reaffirmed in detail in the public press. The State Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimates that, if all 15,000 school choice seats were filled, and those 15,000 students, accordingly, were not in the public schools, MPS would actually have $900.00 more tax money per student than it presently has. Confronted with this fact, the MPS Board Chair, a staunch opponent of parental freedom, said that, indeed, "'We'll get more but we'll get less of more.'" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 09/21/95 and 09/22/95). Might we suggest that educating 15% fewer children means that "less of more" is entirely appropriate?
EDUCATION LEADERS
COUNCIL FORMED
Eleven education officials from across the country, including
six state schools chiefs, met at the end of September to form the Education
Leaders Council—an alternative to existing national education groups. The
Education Leaders Council is founded on the principle that true reform
in education will not come from additional funding or from defending the
status quo, but from greater parental control in education and educational
choice. Lisa Graham, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction and one
of the founding members, said that most national education groups "ignore
the fact that parents want, deserve, and have the right to control their
children's education." Other founding members included state schools chiefs
from Florida, Virginia, New Jersey, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. (Wall
Street Journal, 10/03/95)
Announcements
¨ With this 28th issue
we observe the second anniversary of the Educational Freedom Report.
We thank all who have provided information for the Freedom Report,
and those who have used it in so many ways to help develop knowledge of
and interest in parental freedom. (Incidentally, for the many new readers
of the Freedom Report, we enclose a Blum Center order form.)
¨ The Cato Institute has recently published Educational Freedom in Eastern Europe, by Boston University's Charles Glenn. Glenn, author of many important studies on school choice, was asked by the U.S. Department of Education under President Bush to study the emergence of educational freedom in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The results of this were then withheld by the Department of Education and the Clinton Administration. (Wall Street Journal, 10/03/95) The report was recovered by the Cato Institute and is now available in book form for $29.95 (cloth) and $15.95 (paper). To order, please call 800-767-1241.
¨ Wisconsin Governor Tommy G. Thompson and IBM Chairman and Chief Executive Louis Gerstner, Jr., issued invitations at the end of September to the 50 governors of the United States, calling them to a national education summit conference next March 26 and 27 in New York. Each governor has been asked to invite one business executive. The purpose of the summit is to mobilize educational reform in each of the states and "to bring education back to the forefront," according to Gov. Thompson. (Education Week, 10/04/95)
¨ On September 15 the National Catholic Education Association (NCEA) launched the Catholic Education Network through Catholic Online on Compuserve. This electronic educational forum is available to anyone with access to Compuserve, and is dedicated to supporting Catholic education across the country and around the world. This network will allow "conversations" and "conferences" to be held over the Internet on particular aspects of Catholic education. For more information contact Michael Galloway at (805) 833-9061.
¨ The Christian Coalition at their annual "Road to Victory" conference this year offered a workshop called "School Choice—The Next Victory" at which speakers provided legal and political tips for the promotion of school choice in the various states. Speakers included U.S. Representative Frank Riggs and Allan Parker, President of the Texas Justice Foundation. (Education Week, 09/20/95)
¨ The Second Annual Education Conference, sponsored by Parents Raising Educational Standards in Schools (PRESS), will be held at the Country Inn Hotel in Waukesha, Wisconsin this year. To inquire about registration, please call (414) 297-9689.
Recent Acquisitions
¨ The Blum Center has
received a copy of the Education Excellence Initiative, I-177 of WASHINGTON
(see above) along with information sheets on I-177 and petition forms for
the initiative.
¨ For those interested in charter school legislation, Sandra Vergari and Michael Mintrom, through the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University, have just published their report on Charter School Laws Across the Nation. To obtain a copy of this report, please contact the Institute at 321 Berkey, East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1111, (517)-355-6672.
Reports and Studies
¨ New from the National
Catholic Education Association (NCEA) is a report called "Dollars and Sense:
Catholic High Schools and Their Finances 1994." Written by Executive Director
Michael J. Guerra, this study provides an excellent treatment of its subject.
¨ Available from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Cambridge are two working papers and two articles that pertain to educational choice. The working papers, both by Caroline Minter Hoxby, are titled "Do Private Schools Provide Competition for Public Schools?" (#4978) and "Does Competition Among Public Schools Benefit Students and Taxpayers?" (#4979) The articles can be found in the organization's newsletter, NBER Digest: "Competition from Private Schools is Good for Public Schools" (May, 1995) and "School Choice Improves Student Performance and Lowers Cost" (September, 1995). Contact NBER at 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138.
¨ The September, 1995, issue of School Choice News, produced by the Choice in Education Foundation, contains a personal interview with Governor Arne Carlson. Gov. Carlson, who favored only public school choice when elected, explains his reasons for becoming an ardent supporter of comprehensive parental freedom via vouchers. For copies, please contact The Choice in Education Foundation at 305-S, 1821 University Avenue West, St. Paul, MN 55104; (612) 484-1854.
¨ The Blum Center has received the latest update from Dr. William J. Tobin, executive director of the Early Childhood Development Center Legislative Council, on the progress of H.R. 4, The National Welfare-Childcare Reform Bill. The bill has now passed the U.S. Senate by an overwhelming margin of 87-12. The bill passed the House in March, and will now go to the House-Senate Conference Committee where differences will be reconciled. While the bill is not immediately related to state-level K-12 educational choice, it is politically and legally significant for choice supporters in that it seeks to secure parental choice in federal pre-K childcare programs through parent vouchers and certificates. Furthermore, those vouchers could be used by parents who seek childcare from religious providers.
- As I have often noted, the defenders of educational finance
monopoly (EFM) manipulate social inertia, and thereby protect themselves
and the status quo, by the use of a variety of smoke screens. Among
the more interesting of these pseudo-arguments are those by which EFM defenders,
in effect, hold citizens and parents hostage to EFM's own damaging traits.
In Freedom Report #27, for example, we looked at the use of "short
supply" of private school seats to try to block new supply of such
seats in the District of Columbia.
There are many other EFM smoke screens in the same category: finance monopoly creates a problem, and then its agents use the problem to keep the problem-creating status quo in place. The constant assertion that school choice will "break the bank" is a classic illustration. Obviously, there is nothing in school choice as such that says anything about how much tax money should be spent on education. The only thing intrinsic to school choice regarding tax money is this: because school choice would break the finance monopoly, by putting tax dollars in the hands of parents and guardians, it would bring rationality, comparison, and competition to the assignment of those dollars. Thus, school choice as such inevitably would introduce a principle of efficient use of taxes, as compared to the irrational and non-responsive monopoly now existing.
If this is true, then any "break the bank" allegation can mean only one thing: it rests on the unreal assumption that choice would mean a) keeping all current costs in place and b) adding school choice costs on top of them, thus c) threatening to break the bank by increasing taxes. Is it not time Americans recognize this for the self-serving absurdity it is, and recognize they are being held hostage by the very destructive system which they need to change?
Obviously, there is no reason to accept the premise that all current costs must be kept in place if, by expanding school choice without financial penalty, educational funding policy encourages a shift of students out of the higher-cost state sector and into the lower-cost independent schools. Over time, the government, freed of its hostage status, would decide how much to spend on education and how best to apportion it between state-owned public schools and parents choosing independent schools. When finally full reason in public policy and full freedom for parents has been achieved, parents would do all the apportioning in the act of choosing a school, public or independent, as they do now in more fortunate democracies around the world.
Thus, we see the "break the bank" allegation precisely for what it is: a manipulative scare tactic which will be exposed as a fraud once Americans are able to look at it without the smoke presently surrounding it. An especially repugnant variation on the "break the bank" smoke screen is the use of the "Abstract Perfect" to kill the "Practical Good." When a true school choice advocate objects to a particular choice proposal because it is judged inadequate, one can quarrel with the judgment but be confident that the intention is to make school choice better, not to kill it. But when an opponent of school choice says "we can only have it when it is perfect, when, for example, the poorest child is able to buy the most costly private education — but, of course, I doubt we can afford that" — then we can be reasonably certain that the intention is to bury school choice, not praise or improve it. The specific method for killing it in the illustration given: coupling the abstract perfect with "break the bank" to kill the practical good. And that is exactly the way some Congressional leadership has attacked the Riggs-Weldon pilot school choice proposal in the House of Representatives. This is a sad and severe example of how EFM can and does hold citizens and parents hostage to its own destructive results.
To see its severity, and its destructiveness of human welfare, ask yourself this question: if you are today a poor parent with no financial capacity to choose a school for your child; and tomorrow, because of a beginning, even if not perfect, school choice program, you have the capacity to choose among several or many school options; will you think tomorrow is better than today? Unless you believe a half loaf is no better than none you will. And, without imagining that the perfect human condition has been achieved, you will see that a practical good now exists which, hitherto, was denied you. You will then be a hostage no longer. And, with the principle of parental freedom established, you can set to the task of perfecting policy.n
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The Blum Center grants full permission for all of its documents to be copied, in part or in whole, to extend the reach of the Center's messages and information. We appreciate it when our readers keep us apprised of state and national developments in the area of school choice, particularly legislative developments. Any Blum Center documents not available on our web page may be obtained by contacting us by telephone, fax, or mail. Virgil C. Blum Center for Parental Freedom in Education |
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