|
|
|
|
- Contents:
- IN THIS REPORT
Readers will find several state-level developments of interest, comments on truth-telling and teleology, a roundup of new material, the Editor's View on the "Bedrock of Democracy" smoke screen, David Kirkpatrick's revealing discussion of the troubled history of school choice in America, and a Cleveland commemorative supplement.
VERMONT
Since 1869, Vermont has had a system of educational choice
implemented for students whose towns do not maintain their own public schools
or belong to union school districts. Under the original program, families
were able to choose religious schools until 1961, when the Vermont Supreme
Court ruled that inclusion of religious schools in the program violated
the Vermont Constitution. However, in 1994, the Vermont Supreme Court allowed
a town to reimburse parents who sent their child to a parochial school.
(Washington Times, 08/31/96)
On August 29, the town of Chittenden filed a lawsuit, seeking a preliminary injunction to ensure that state funds will continue to flow into the town's school budget. Chittenden hopes to send 93 high school students to schools outside their town, including 15 students who wish to attend a religious school. The State of Vermont has refused to allocate any general funds to Chittenden for education, even though the tuition of those who have chosen religious schools represents only 2% of the town's education funding pool. The State contends that payment of tuition for religious schools violates the First Amendment. The Vermont Department of Education has argued that the 1961 ruling applies, and the State of Vermont also claims that despite the 1994 ruling, districts may not reimburse parents for tuition paid at religious schools. Attorney Richard Komer of the Institute for Justice is representing the Chittenden school district in this case. Since the State does not have an intermediate court of appeals, the Institute hopes for a prompt resolution in the Vermont Supreme Court. (Institute for Justice memorandum, 08/28/96)
WISCONSIN
Wisconsin Partners Advancing Values in Education (PAVE)
has received over $3.8 million to assist low-income families in making
genuine educational choice a reality for the 1996-'97 academic year. For
the second year in a row, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation has shown
its support for Milwaukee's poorest families by making a large contribution
of $2 million to advance the efforts of PAVE. (Wisconsin State Journal,
08/28/96; Washington Times, 08/27/96) The money pledges have come
in the wake of Dane County Circuit Judge Paul Higginbotham's decision on
August 15 to disallow the participation of religious schools in the legislatively-expanded
Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), while allowing the enrollment
cap to rise from 1,500 to 15,000 at private non-sectarian schools. (See
Freedom Report #38, 08/23/96)
While private sources are raising money for the interim, the battle for genuine school choice in Milwaukee continues in the courts. Briefing is scheduled on the remaining state constitutional issues on September 16 (opening briefs), October 16 (opposition briefs), and November 4 (reply briefs). The court is likely to set a date for oral argument. One complicating factor is an NAACP lawsuit which claims that expanding MPCP to include religious schools encourages further segregation. The Institute opposes consolidating the NAACP lawsuit with the existing suits, and awaits a decision on this issue. (Institute for Justice memo, 08/28/96) Even as we expect and hope for the eventual positive outcome of the expanded MPCP, we note for our readers that MPCP expansion efforts have effectively stalled all other state-wide efforts for several years, and that concentrated efforts in one portion of Wisconsin should not be confused with "getting the job done" completely.
SAN DIEGO & CHICAGO
& THE TRUTH
Does truthfulness count for much among those claiming
to represent teachers' interests? It appears not, after the performance
of such people at the Democratic convention.
In advocating parental freedom in his acceptance speech, Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole spoke very clearly: his criticism of the educational status quo was a criticism of monopoly finance manipulated by unions and bureaucracies benefiting from the monopoly. He went out of his way to note that his criticism was not directed at teachers, the teaching profession, or education. One need not be a Dole supporter, nor a Republican, nor even an advocate of parental freedom, to recognize that he made that distinction plainly.
But at the Democratic convention, where monopoly-supporting teachers' unions played such a dominant role, over and over Dole and the Republican party were portrayed as attacking teachers and teaching. That is to be untruthful, in the name of that very teaching profession that has only truth-telling as its reason for being.
One can surmise that such sad paths are chosen because to state the truth of things — Dole, et al., must be stopped from disturbing the monopolistic status quo, so let us say he is attacking teachers even though he is not — is seen to be a losing argument. And to defenders of the monopolistic funding spigot, losing control over that spigot must be avoided at all costs, even if it means sacrificing the truth. So much for truth-telling from those who are representing those meant to be truth-tellers.
- On August 27, Phi Delta Kappa (PDK) educational society
released to the press its latest commissioned poll results re the
"popularity" of educational vouchers. To the misguided glee of the supporters
of educational finance monopoly (EFM), the poll allegedly showed majority
opposition to, and growing but still minority support for, voucher systems.
As was made clear by contacts to the Blum Center, many supporters of parental
freedom and school choice were taken aback by these polling results, and
were fearful that such "news" would hurt the cause of liberating America's
parents. The facts are different: the PDK poll put the question in a way
which prejudices the issue, and inevitably produces weak results; when
America's citizens and, more importantly, the citizens of various states,
are asked about parental freedom in an objective manner, they regularly
and overwhelmingly support it (not surprisingly, since parental freedom
simply means that parents, rather than a self-serving monopoly bureaucracy,
will be able to decide their child's educational environment); there is,
accordingly, no insuperable public opposition to school choice and
parental freedom, but only entrenched EFM tied to state legislative and
judicial power and able up to now to use that power to thwart the good
public policy that school choice will be.
There is insufficient space in this Freedom Report issue to give this topic the treatment it deserves. I will put such a treatment in Freedom Report #40, due out October 25. Anyone who wants to have it prior to then can call or fax the Blum Center, and we will be pleased to mail or fax a copy. Late Note: And see September poll by the Center for Education Reform (202-822-9000) showing overwhelming support for parental freedom in education.
- U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley, in an essentially
perfect example of knee-jerk defense of the EFM status quo, was
quoted as saying this about the PDK poll's results: "Vouchers offer only
empty promises and false hopes to students and families. We need to focus
on what really works — making schools safer, getting parents more involved,
and improving teaching." (Washington Post 8/28/96)
So anxious is he to protect EFM and educational unions' support for his party that he misses the very nature of things: the good ends he identifies are the natural product of parental freedom and the "moral contracts of school choice." Chosen schools, the struggling private schools of even our most desperate neighborhoods, naturally tend to exhibit the very traits he espouses. (See, e.g., Joe Klein's illuminating commentary on a visit to a poor, New York City parochial school in Newsweek, 09/02/96.) Self-serving monopolistic bureaucracies, and the schools they create and exploit, naturally do not tend to exhibit such positive characteristics. Policies and structures have tendencies, or natural inclinations, and it is misleading for people such as Riley to deny it. Teleology, anyone?
Recent Acquisition
¨ The Blum Center has
recently acquired a copy of Janet R. Beales' "Meeting the Challenge: How
the Private Sector Serves Difficult to Educate Students," Policy Study
No. 212, August, 1996, published by the Reason Foundation. This is an excellent
rebuttal to the claim that private schools do not educate the most difficult
students - those with disabilities, at-risk students, adjudicated youth.
The Blum Center highly recommends this study to our readers, to assist
in dispelling the myth that private schools "cream," or only take the best
students from the available student pool, and that public schools educate
everyone. To obtain a copy of this study, please call the Reason Foundation
at 310-391-2245. The cost of each copy is $15, plus $1.50 shipping and
handling.
Organization Information
¨ The Cascade Policy Institute
has brought to our attention an excellent op-ed piece done by a sixteen
year-old intern at the Institute who makes a strong case for school choice
from his unique perspective. We highly recommend this piece by Jerome Cole
called "Students Not All Cut From the Same Mold," which was published in
The Oregonian, 08/27/96. Contact the Institute at 503-242-0900 for
additional information regarding the work being done in Oregon on behalf
of genuine educational choice.
A Final Note
Mr. Sol Stern wrote "Why the Catholic School Model is
Taboo" for the July 17 Wall Street Journal. In that excellent essay,
and in an earlier version in City Journal, Mr. Stern did a splendid
job of noting how successfully New York inner city Catholic schools manage
to educate youngsters, while essentially identical children are being poorly
educated in the public monopoly's schools. In describing these things,
Mr. Stern notes many of the favorable Catholic school features, features
that in fact derive from what we call "the natural moral contracts of school
choice." (See how this 'natural moral contract' works so well and so easily
in the Blum Center's videotape adaptation of 'Miracle in the Inner City,'
for example.) And Mr. Stern wonders why the fruitful example of these Catholic
schools is never mentioned by various "liberal" groups who claim to be
interested in children's welfare. He speculates, no doubt correctly, that
the reason probably is that the groups in question are typically allied
with teacher unions, NEA and AFT, and that those defenders of the status
quo do not want successful, efficient alternative solutions to education's
travails talked about. Hence, the silence, the "taboo."
The only problem in the piece is that the author ends up arming the very forces he criticizes when he says the solution could be "aid to Catholic schools." In the American arena of church-state complications and constant use of courts to obstruct rational policy, the author would much more accurately and effectively call for "aid to parents to choose whatever school they judge best for their children." Despite this problem, both forms of this insightful essay are well worth reading.
- As Jeanne Allen, President of the Center for Educational
Reform, noted in her Monthly Letter to Friends of the Center for Education
Reform (No. 18, July, 1996), defenders of educational finance monopoly
(EFM) increasingly and stridently assert that democracy itself depends
on continuing the monopoly. That is what I call the "Bedrock of Democracy"
smoke screen, and it deserves a careful assessment.
Such groups as the leadership of educational unions, not surprisingly, routinely generate "bedrock of democracy" smoke, and, unfortunately, innocent bystanders such as school board members often succumb to it and repeat it. It is bad enough to equate state-monopoly schools with education, so that a means is treated as if it were an end, as defenders of the status quo often do. When they equate those schools with democracy, or call them a prerequisite for democracy, it is even worse. Democracies all around the world function perfectly well without state school monopolies. Indeed, American democracy was launched, took root, and thrived without such a monopoly. Today, given the natural pluralism of American society, monopolistic one-size-fits-all state schools are more a repudiation of democracy than its foundation.
The "bedrock of democracy" theme is one form of the wider illusion that holding society together is a primary function of the public schools. That is essentially a self-serving fabrication. Of course, holding society together is a perfectly good objective, a completely rational objective for anyone who understands that the only alternative to organized society is one or another form of anarchism, and that anarchism in any form is the jungle, as Thomas Hobbes pointed out so powerfully. But, while many social institutions, including schools, can make useful contributions to the good end of social integrity, holding society together is finally the central task of the state itself, not of the schools or of any other particular component of society. That is the state's role. Many groups and persons can contribute to that entirely noble purpose but to suggest that any one of them, apart from the state itself, is essential for that purpose is, in fact, to lay on that thing a burden far too heavy for it to carry.
As both the theory and practice of democratic politics make clear, the actual bedrock of democracy consists in this: that in order to sustain the relatively free politics which we call "democratic" it is necessary to have developed a sufficient agreement on unifying and restraining values — the "pre-political" agreements among society's members — to permit a relatively consensual political operation. As the old saying has it, we agree to "count heads rather than break them." This has to do with very basic political values, for example, a presumption in favor of the rule of law, meaning that all those who are within the jurisdiction of the state are governed by the same laws. The central meaning of the rule of law has always been (despite today's nefarious efforts to make 'the rule of law' mean 'the rule of courts') simply that the governors are also governed by the laws they create. "Constitutionalism" is a related consensual prerequisite for democratic politics. In the spirit of constitutionalism we agree to the processes by which decisions are made, and certify a political action as "legitimate" even if we disagree with its content. The particular decision-making processes, especially in the age of democracy, require legitimacy, that is, they require a willingness on the part of the great preponderance of citizens to recognize that a policy taken through a legitimate process is thereby a legitimate policy, which is to say they will live by it even if they do not like it, and even as they try to change it.
The rule of law and the spirit of constitutionalism contribute to civility and predictability in the life of society, and are among the more profound aspects and attributes of the genuine "bedrock of democracy." It is not the primary function of public schools any more than it is the primary function of a business or churches or anyone else to constitute the very foundation for that kind of life. It is the business of the state and of democratic politics itself. Many organizations, persons, and groups can and should contribute to the democratic consensus, but it is not their central business in a true sense. Schools and schooling can incidentally play a part to achieve the end of social integrity by helping youngsters to accept the social context and by offering them pertinent civic virtues, for example, a general appreciation of democratic attainment, the importance of voting and civic participation, need for systemic defense and police power, and so on. But what do we note about the schools in this regard, as contributors to this unifying spirit? The first thing we note is that it is incidental to their essential purposes. It is not what they are designed to do. What they are designed to do is to empower individuals by providing the best possible educational development that those individuals can absorb. Any school can contribute to the civic virtue purposes that schools may provide. That is done in every rationally-created educational framework, and God knows that if one looks at the "uncommon" schools of the United States, for example, the religiously-sponsored schools such as the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish and Baptist, the fact of the matter is that by any measure of good citizenship and civic-mindedness, those schools graduate alumni who perform as citizens certainly as well as any group does, perhaps better than most do. That is to say those uncommon schools have been able, incidentally and along the way, to discharge without any difficulty whatsoever the tasks that society asks of the schools in terms of the development of civic virtues. Uncommon schools have produced good citizens at least as clearly as any public, or "common," school system in the history of this country. So much for the myth that "common schools" are essential to "hold society together."
Equally important it is vital to realize that in educationally more enlightened democracies, not burdened by educational finance monopoly, the instinctive understanding of the meaning of pluralism is such that they realize that social peace — that is to say, the cohering of society, rather than the tearing apart of society — will be encouraged by educational choice because, unlike educational finance monopoly in each of America's states, educational choice permits parents to maintain and strengthen their relationship with their children by helping to select an educational environment they take to be most beneficial and useful to those youngsters. Thus, parental freedom promotes family integrity and removes the enormous burr under the saddle created when "one size fits all" monolithic schools are forced upon youngsters as they are in America's states. It is important for people to realize that much of the disruption in the contemporary American educational environment is understandably coming from parents who are unhappy with the prospect of their children being forced into assigned schools, not of their own choosing.
Thus, as to the "bedrock of democracy" smoke screen, we need to realize first of all that the objective of schools contributing to the integrity of the social fabric in no way requires monolithic, EFM-created and enforced common schools. That is simply fiction. History tells us plainly, as any kind of rational theory would, that any intelligently constructed school representing parents' interests can take onto itself such incidental tasks of encouraging social integrity as the parents and society wish those schools to take on, and can discharge those tasks perfectly well. One-size-fits-all "common schools" misrepresent and distort the natural pluralism which evolves in a modern democracy, and threaten rather than encourage social peace. Unlike other democracies, we are suffering the radical contrast between the natural pluralism which comes from living in a free democratic social order, on the one hand, while at the same time having a monolithic school system imposed upon the families reflective of that pluralism, on the other. That is a formula for discontent and disruption, and if one wishes to understand why we are experiencing such things as a drive for a school prayer amendment, ballooning home school numbers, and things of that sort, we need look no further than the severe dissatisfactions invited when educational finance monopoly is imposed upon a naturally pluralistic society.
One sure way to harm the public schools is to convert them into state surrogates. This distracts them from the central purposes of educational empowerment for each student. Far from being "the bedrock of democracy," monopoly-financed and sheltered public schools are at best just one alternative method to provide education and make some contribution to socialization. At worst, as in many large cities, they are obstructions to democracy because they are not empowering youngsters, doom many of them to failure, and are, accordingly, scorned by parents. Those parents need only to have EFM broken, and the financial penalty of school choice to be removed. That would be a powerful stimulus to renewed dedication to democratic values.n
|
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 |
 |