- IN THIS REPORT
Readers will find updates on important state-level and Congressional activities; a field report on a certain Colorado goose; a summary of vital documents recently acquired by the Blum Center; wise counsel from David Kirkpatrick regarding the burdens of changing deeply-rooted policies; and the first of three related Editor's Views on the two "ghastly specters" confronting America's parents.
CALIFORNIA
A voucher bill (AB 3180), sponsored by Assembly Speaker
Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) and strongly backed by Governor Pete Wilson,
was approved on May 31 by the Assembly with a vote of 41 to 35. The bill
was part of a Republican-sponsored package of education measures, and was
designed to allow students to qualify for "opportunity scholarships," provided
that they are students at schools whose test results are in the lowest
5% of state scores. The scholarships would be worth 90% of the state aid
allotted to each pupil, or about $4,500, or the amount equal to the private
school tuition at the private school of the parents' choice, whichever
is less. Wilson called the education measures "vital . . . meaningful reforms
that our education system needs so badly." (Los Angeles Times, San Francisco
Chronicle, 06/01/96) The bill is not expected to do well in the state
Senate, which is controlled by Democrats opposed to school choice. According
to Gov. Wilson's office, the bill is scheduled to be heard in the Senate
on June 26.
FLORIDA
The Florida Times-Union recently published an
editorial (06/02/96) which called the defeat of a motion to expunge school
choice from Representative Steve Wise's school choice bill, P.E.E.P (HB
2415 - see Freedom Reports #34 and 35), "one of the most significant,
and little noted, votes in the 1996 Florida Legislature." The paper states
that, "Wise has a carefully crafted proposal for a pilot program on school
vouchers that he says will increase the per-pupil funding for public schools,
give an edge to disadvantaged students, reduce classroom size, get business
more involved in school improvement, avoid government intrusion into private
schools, and reduce the cost of remedial education in colleges and universities.
Little wonder that legislators were reluctant to kill the bill." Although
only a section of the bill, a part dealing with public school open enrollment,
was included in the charter school bill which ultimately passed into law,
Rep. Wise sees support for genuine school choice on the rise, and plans
to reintroduce the proposal during the next legislative session.
MARYLAND
Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke's support of school choice
for his city's families has not waned in recent months. Maintaining that
"far too many students in Baltimore City public schools receive inadequate
education," the Mayor has appointed a 10-member task force called Choice
to study alternatives to the current structural educational finance monopoly,
including the possibility of offering vouchers to parents to enable them
to send their children to the public or private school of their choice.
According to the Mayor, "if parents of students have the right to choose
so many other basics in their lives - such as where they live, where they
go to church, where they work - then they also ought have the right to
choose where their children go to school." The task force plans to hold
six public forums to discuss school choice during the month of June. (Baltimore
Morning Sun, 05/24/96, 05/31/96)
OHIO
The Institute for Justice reports the following litigation
schedule for the Cleveland school voucher program lawsuit: plaintiffs'
(state affiliates of AFT, NEA, et al.) reply briefs due - June 14;
defendants' reply briefs due - June 20; rally in Columbus sponsored by
Hope for Cleveland's Children - June 21, 2:00 p.m.; oral argument in Columbus
(Judge Lisa Sadler) - June 24, 9:00 a.m.; probable appeal this summer by
losing parties. The limited Ohio choice program being challenged would
permit approximately 1,500 low-income Cleveland students to attend the
private school of their choice. A ruling is expected by Judge Sadler in
July, before the beginning of the new academic year. (Liberty &
Law Newsletter from the Institute for Justice, May, 1996; Columbus
Dispatch, 05/27/96; Plain Dealer, 05/20/96; also see Freedom
Report #34 for additional information on the voucher program)
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Part of a Republican anti-poverty bill in the House would
provide a tuition scholarship or voucher for children whose parents wish
to enroll them in a participating private or religious school of their
choice. The bill would require the Department of Housing and Urban Development
to name 100 poor neighborhoods in the country as "renewal communities,"
10% of which would have to be rural. A community would then provide a percentage
of its families with educational vouchers. To qualify, a family's income
could not exceed 185% of the poverty line. Each voucher would be worth
at least 60% of the per-pupil cost for public education in the renewal
community, or at least the normal tuition charged by a private school,
whichever would be less. Voucher amounts could not exceed the local per-pupil
cost of public education. Allocation of funding to 80% of the communities
for vouchers would be based on the population of children from low-income
families both in the community itself and nation-wide. 20% of communities
would receive funding based on matching contributions from local governments
and private charities.
The bill's original sponsors are Representatives James Talent (R-Missouri) and J.C. Watts (R-Oklahoma), but more than 40 House Republicans have signed onto the bill, and several Democrats support the effort as well. According to Rep. Talent, House Speaker Newt Gingrich has promised a vote on the bill in July, calling the school voucher component non-negotiable. "If they want to kill it for that, fine; we'll come back next year. I'm going to have a better reason to drop it than because a bunch of unions don't like it," said Gingrich. (Washington Times, 05/15/96)
WISCONSIN
As we reported in the April issue of the Freedom Report,
Dane County Circuit Court Judge Paul Higginbotham will next hear State
of Wisconsin ex rel. Thompson, et al., v. Jackson, et al. — the lawsuit
challenging the Wisconsin legislature's decision to expand the Milwaukee
Parental Choice Program (MPCP) to include religious schools. In the middle
of April, Governor Tommy Thompson asked the Supreme Court to reconsider
its March 29 stalemate decision after the beginning of August, at which
time the Court's composition will change. On May 22, the Supreme Court
rejected that request. On May 28, Gov. Thompson was also denied his request
to have Judge Higginbotham removed from the case. Gov. Thomspon stated
in April that Judge Higginbotham is prejudiced on the issue. Also, on May
30, Attorney Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice filed a motion urging
Judge Higginbotham to either lift or modify the injunction, imposed last
August 25 by the Supreme Court, which temporarily bars the expansion of
MPCP. So far, these tactics have affected neither the status of the injunction
nor Higginbotham's plans to hear the case. Opening briefs for the case
are due on June 24; plaintiffs' briefs are due on July 15; the defense's
reply briefs are due on July 25. An evidentiary hearing has been set for
August 15 at 9:00 A.M. in Madison. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 05/23/96,
05/31/96; hearing dates provided by Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice.)
- Recently television news reported on, and showed splendid
film of, a great Canadian goose at a Denver golf course. The goose in question
was shown in all her splendor, nesting, working assiduously to hatch the
brood beneath her. There was just one problem: the five objects she was
tending so carefully and so protectively were golf balls and not
goose eggs.
Her efforts, heroic but doomed to be in vain, reminded me of many of the efforts to coax serious, child- and parent-centered reform from the forces of the educational status quo: educational finance monopoly, or EFM. My Denver heroine could not, despite her best efforts, induce the golf balls to act like goose eggs — not because they were bad or ill-willed but because they were golf balls naturally impervious to her charms.
The defenders of EFM, too, are not bad or ill-willed. But neither are they essentially ordained to parent and child welfare. They are, rather, first and foremost defenders of the monopolistic spigot on which their material welfare is thought to depend. When they act to defend that spigot, and to block policies which would make funding serve the end of parent and child welfare rather than their own interests, they are acting according to the nature of monopolies. They are not to be personally condemned for that — but they should not be mistaken for servers of parents and children, either, as the aspirant Mother Goose mistook the golf balls.
It is very important to depersonalize, and avoid demonizing, the issues and the personnel in conflict over school funding policies. EFM, a funding policy, creates vested interests, and they naturally protect their funding sources as priority number one. Parents and guardians, with few aberrant exceptions, naturally want and seek after the child's welfare, and that is why parental freedom should be the rule in school funding. Parents and guardians, of all social agents, are naturally most inclined to seek the child's good.
Recent Acquisitions
¨ The CATO Institute has
recently released "What Would A School Voucher Buy? The Real Cost of Private
Schools," briefing paper #25, by David Boaz and R. Morris Barrett. Among
other things, the paper gives contrary evidence to the claim that a $3,000
educational voucher could not possibly cover tuition at a private school.
Rather, "Education Department figures show that the average private elementary
school tuition in America is less than $2,500. The average tuition for
all private schools, elementary and secondary, is $3,116, or less than
half of the cost per pupil in the average public school, $6,857. A survey
of private schools in Indianapolis, Jersey City, San Francisco, and Atlanta
shows that there are many options available to families with $3,000 to
spend on a child's education. Even more options would no doubt appear if
all parents were armed with $3,000 vouchers." To obtain copies of the paper,
contact the CATO Institute at 1000 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington,
D.C. 20001, 202-842-0200, FAX 202-842-3490.
¨ A copy of Kansas Representative Kay O'Connor's school choice bill, HB 2861, is now available from the Blum Center. (See Freedom Report #34 for further information.)
¨ The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has recently released (May, 1996) its Report Card on American Education 1995, A State-by-State Analysis, which provides helpful statistics and information related to educational funding in the states. To obtain copies of the publication for $20.00 (non-members), contact ALEC's Office of Public Affairs at 202-466-3800.
¨ The Blum Center has recently received a copy of Jerome J. Hanus and Peter W. Cookson, Jr.'s Choosing Schools, Vouchers and American Education, a pro-con presentation of parental freedom and school choice, with Professor Hanus presenting a compelling case for school choice. The opening line of his argument reflects his profound understanding of the most crucial issues: "No single policy holds as much promise for reducing social conflict in the United States as universal school choice." This is a point often made in Blum Center documents: when natural variety prevails in society, it is a prescription for unending conflict to insist on squeezing all children into monolithic, one-size-fits-all state schools.
¨ The Gordon S. Black Corporation has recently released (May 22, 1996) a survey entitled, USA TODAY, Survey on the Quality of Education in Public Schools, prepared by Dr. Gordon S. Black and Ms. Karen McAvoy. USA Today, which routinely editorializes against parental freedom, should have learned something from the poll results. After describing themselves as basically satisfied with their public schools, half of those "satisfied" parents said they would "place their children in private and parochial schools if they could afford it." Once again we see the sad truth: America's parents are held captive by educational finance monopoly (EFM). EFM prevents those parents from assigning their education-dedicated tax dollars to the schools they think best for their children.
Announcements
¨ Recently, the National
Education Association (NEA) announced it would create some charter schools
to run under its own auspices, contrary to traditional opposition to such
activities. The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 04/22/96, noted the fact
and asked a musical question: "Should one interpret that news to mean schools
free of NEA control are (a) proving to be successful thereby (b) creating
serious competition for union-run schools, or (c) threatening the NEA's
monopoly over public education? The correct answer, friends, is (d): All
of the above."
¨ Mike Phillips, Editor of The Sun in Bremerton, Washington, published an editorial on June 2, in support of school choice called, "Taking Vouchers Seriously." Phillips clearly states that genuine school choice is the best salve for what ails K-12 education in Washington. According to Phillips, "the charter school idea is a surgical instrument. The voucher proposal is a stout hickory stick. ...Educators warn that vouchers could be the death of public education as we know it. I agree. The difference is, I'm not alarmed."
¨ Daniel McGroarty's Break These Chains: The Battle for School Choice, foreword by William Kristol, Prima, $23.95 (288 pp.), ISBN 0-7615-0507-5, offers high praise for the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, citing the popularity of the program among African American and Hispanic families as a response to the charge that vouchers further harm the disadvantaged, and encourage racial segregation.
New Organization
¨ Recently brought to
our attention is a new organization called the Professional Educators Network
of Florida, Inc. (PEN), which identifies itself as a group of concerned
educators, parents and community leaders from around the state interested
in pursuing "educational practices in the best interest of Florida's students,"
and addresses "only educational issues, not social issues unrelated to
education." For further information, please contact Cathy DeMoisey, Administrative
Director, at the Executive Office, P.O. Box 7277, Jacksonville, FL 32238,
904-778-7405, 800-311-7770, FAX 904-771-0307.
A Final Note
¨ Many of our readers
are familiar with the unswerving efforts on behalf of school choice by
Florida Representative Steve Wise (see FLORIDA above). Rep. Wise is recovering
from a mild heart attack which occurred at the beginning of June, and we
at the Blum Center wish him a very speedy and full recovery.
- David Kirkpatrick's "With Friends Like These..." which
accompanied Freedom Report #33 examined some positions of people
who oppose parental freedom via school choice for fear of governmental
intrusion in independent schools. I want to elaborate a bit on the same
theme: such people overestimate the problem of governmental interference,
and seriously underestimate another more pressing and ominous problem besetting
parental freedom and educational independence.
In the early 1960s there was a famous pacifist economist who advocated unilateral American nuclear disarmament. His theme: there was a "Ghastly Specter" confronting us, the vision of a world possibly devastated by nuclear conflict. That horrific vision, so he said, could be and should be eliminated by unilateral U.S. renunciation of nuclear weapons. Those of us who sought successfully to negate the impact of this particular person and others like him did so by pointing out a compelling fact: there was afoot in the world not just one ghastly specter. There were at least two. For unilateral nuclear disarmament, had it been chosen, automatically would have made the United States and the rest of the world susceptible first to Soviet nuclear blackmail and then to the tender, loving care of Soviet communist totalitarianism. That, too, was a ghastly specter, and one extremely likely to occur if unilateral disarmament were adopted. Prudent people resolved to control and contain both, rather than concede to either. Prudent people resolved to do "this" and "that," not just "this." The results? Today, Soviet communism is dead and nuclear devastation has been avoided. And the pertinence to parental freedom and independent education of this old Cold Warrior's look back to the 1960s? In today's educational arena, as in yesterday's cold war struggle, America confronts two ghastly specters, not one. Both need to be confronted and overcome.
There is a standard critique of school choice which, more than most others, attracts very strange bedfellows. Varied forms of "he who pays the piper calls the tune" are used to block parental freedom because, it is said, "tax dollars will inevitably corrupt the independence of private schools. For 'he who pays. . ..'" This is asserted with equal seriousness by those we may call statist-types who believe without distress that taxes should inevitably bring control; and by others we may call libertarian-types who believe with distress that taxes will inevitably bring control. The former will use any available weapon to prevent parental freedom. The latter presumably cherish parental rights, but are guilty of treating a tendency as if it were a law and become at best marginalized, and at worst obstructions in parental freedom's path.
In "Must Tax Dollars Kill School Independence?" (Blum Center, and Network News & Views, December 1994) I discussed this fact: while tax dollars can corrupt and even kill, they do not have to do so. Indeed, such destructive outcomes can be readily avoided if we use intelligence and caution. Both common sense and vast experience show this truth. The G.I. Bill, for example, did not carry debilitating entanglements for those veterans and institutions that benefited from it, any more than do Social Security checks, veterans pensions, state tuition grants, pre-school vouchers, or food stamps. One may oppose such programs on other grounds, no doubt, but not because the government calls the tune on how the funds are used. The users call the tune. Such payment systems, by passing tax dollars through the discretionary hands of the user, in effect immunize that user and the larger society from any dominating potential of the source. Intelligently designed proposals for parental freedom via school choice without financial penalty essentially assert exactly that: if society through its government decides to collect and spend taxes to provide educational benefits, then there are non-entangling ways to assign those dollars.
The best school choice systems, proposed ones in the U.S. and real ones in democracies around the world, are made to operate that way. Tax dollars, instead of going into the hands of self-interested defenders of finance monopoly, go into the discretionary hands of parents and guardians. An intelligent society, in other words, recognizing that careless use of tax dollars could compromise the independence of independent schools, insists that such not occur, and its legislators see to it. Can corrupt? Yes. Must? No. Likely to? Not if we exercise reasonable prudence and remain vigilant.
There is another problem with the position taken by many of those fearful that school choice would threaten the independent schools. Many of them talk of this threat, remote as it is in fact, as if it were the major, perhaps even the only, threat to the private sector's schools. For such people, even the slightest possibility of governmental intrusion is the one serious danger to be avoided at all costs. There is, however, another ghastly specter, far more immediate, threatening, and real. I refer to the fact that those independent schools are at this moment dwindling and dying at the hands of the educational finance monopoly (EFM). The ugly process is slow and gradual, not dramatic and immediate, and sometimes I think that is why it has been permitted to unfold with so little protest. In this slow but sure way EFM forces parents into a financial vise if they want to consider independent schools for their children. The jaws of the vise: rising taxes to pay for the monopoly's public schools, and rising tuition to pay for the independent option. As the vise squeezes harder and harder, fewer parents judge themselves financially able to exercise the independent option; the independent schools are relieved of normal enrollment and income; and the monopoly's schools, artificially deprived of comparison and competition, take on the unhealthy characteristics of monopolies in any environment. Subsequent essays will look at some results of this killing process.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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