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- Contents:
- IN THIS REPORT
Readers will find important state-level information, a look at parental freedom in public opinion polls, the first part of a three-part examination of the church-state smoke screen, David Kirkpatrick's discussion of school choice in the campaign, and an order form for Blum Center materials.
ARIZONA
Lisa Graham Keegan, former legislator and current Arizona
Superintendent of Public Instruction, would like to make educational choice
one of her priorities next year. "There will be a new set of legislators
and new leadership, so we'll be giving them a shot at it," said Keegan.
(Arizona Republic, 09/09/96) While a State Representative and Chairwoman
of the House Education Committee in 1994, Keegan strongly supported parental
choice in education and introduced several legislative efforts aimed at
giving parents greater opportunities to choose their children's educational
environment. Although her legislative efforts ultimately failed, Keegan
went on to become Superintendent with the clear intention to make parental
choice in education a priority. This year, she hopes that some key lawmakers
will join her in her struggle.
Senator Brenda Burns (R-Glendale), who is expected to be named Senate President this term, is a strong supporter of educational choice via parental vouchers, and may be one of Keegan's best allies. Burns said she and some other legislators have received letters asking her and the others to support school choice should it become a major issue. Understandably, those who oppose parental choice in education are lining up to protest any such potential legislative efforts, calling them "dishonest" and an attempt to siphon funds away from public schools. B. Kay Lybeck, President of the Arizona Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union, claimed, "What it would do is take money away from neighborhood public schools that really need assistance." But school choice advocates like Keegan and Burns disagree. Burns shifts the discussion from "what is best for public schools" to "what is best for educating kids" (and thus puts ends above means). She said it is still too early to support any one plan in the legislature, since there are many possible configurations under consideration. Still, one thing remains clear in the minds of supporters: "Parents should have the ability to send their children to the school of their choice, whether it is public or private," said Keegan. (Arizona Republic, 09/09/96)
CALIFORNIA
Many of our readers will recall the failure of Proposition
174, the 1993 school choice ballot initiative which called for comprehensive
educational choice for California students. The California Teachers Association
(CTA) contributed millions of dollars to ensure the defeat of that proposition,
but recently, in a case pitting the CTA against roughly seven hundred nonunion
teachers who pay bargaining and service fees, an arbitrator decided that
the CTA spent millions of dollars of fee money improperly to lobby for
the defeat of Proposition 174. According to the binding arbitration, over
$4 million must be refunded to fee payers. The decision cannot be appealed.
(Los Angeles Times, 09/05/96)
Also in the news is the recent resignation of State Education Secretary Maureen DiMarco, a charter member of Governor Pete Wilson's cabinet. DiMarco and Wilson had become divided on issues such as providing education and health care to illegal immigrants, public education, and school vouchers. Gov. Wilson, and DiMarco's replacement, Marian Bergeson, both support school vouchers. (New York Times, 10/06/96)
NEW JERSEY
The Lincoln Park Board of Education is considering a
proposal to reimburse parents with a voucher worth $5,000 for tuition spent
at any school other than Boonton High School. The current amount spent
to educate one Boonton High student is $9,200, but the high school ranks
near the bottom in Morris County in standardized test scores. Lincoln Park
has been searching for another district to take its 300-plus high school
students, and now is considering giving about half the amount to parents
to allow them to find a better school than Boonton for their children.
The Board's President, Patrick English, refused to allow the proposal to
be construed primarily as "an ideological or a religious issue." In his
opinion, the board should decide whether the plan to give parents educational
vouchers makes sense "educationally and fiscally." (Record, 09/18/96)
Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, a longtime advocate of school choice on behalf of his beleaguered city school parents, spoke in favor of the proposal before a Lincoln Park forum on school vouchers on September 19. "The government is here to serve us, rather than to dictate to us," he said. "Let parents have the power to choose what is better for their child." (Record, 09/20/96)
Opponents of the proposal are calling it a "dream," and warning proponents that they have no legal authority, and no backing by the New Jersey Constitution, to offer vouchers to parents. Trustee Robert Hosley relied on oft-stated objections by opponents of school choice, including charges of "dismantling the public education system" (and thus puts means above ends). But English said the Board would continue investigating the proposal and make a decision by the end of January. (Record, 10/04/96) English reported that a recent letter regarding the proposal from Education Commissioner Leo Klagholz revealed that the question of school vouchers has not been ruled out of bounds. Earlier in the year, Klagholz said the idea "may be worth pursuing independently," and encouraged supporters to work closely with legal counsel to ensure that the plan would comply with school laws of the State of New Jersey. (Record, 10/08/96)
NEW YORK
Former Regents Chancellor R. Carlos Carballada said at
the end of September that even though the Board of Regents voted 8-5 to
table his voucher proposal, he intends to reintroduce it next month. Under
Carballada's plan, students from substandard public schools would receive
$2,500 vouchers to attend private or parochial schools. (Education Week,
10/02/96)
Toward the beginning of September New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani accepted Cardinal John O'Connor's long-standing offer to take 1,000 of those New York City public school students who test in the lowest five percent and educate them in parochial schools. Mayor Giuliani accepted the offer as a partial solution to the public school system's acute overcrowding problem in New York. Very soon after the Mayor accepted the offer, he amended his decision by stating that the plan would be funded privately. Despite the Mayor's speedy clarification, the United Federation of Teachers launched a $100,000 campaign against the plan. While Mayor Giuliani's immediate goal is solving the problem of overcrowding, this plan also creates a chance for those 1,000 students to move from a system where only 25% graduate to a system where 95% graduate. Mayor Giuliani believes that Catholic schools do "a better job of teaching children." Moreover, New York spends nearly $8,000 educating each secondary student; in 1994 the average tuition for a student entering a Catholic high school was $3,100. (Washington Times, 09/24/96; Wall Street Journal, 09/18/96)
UNITED STATES: SMOKE ON THE CAMPAIGN
TRAIL
During a recent interview the reporter opined that Mr.
Dole seemed to show genuine conviction, not just campaign superficiality,
when he spoke of school choice. I told him that I had the same impression
and explained that, after all, school choice really just means a) expanding
parental freedom while b) eliminating educational finance monopoly (EFM).
Given that, if one thinks of it, it is easy and natural to defend school
choice. By contrast, it is difficult to defend the status quo honestly,
for that amounts to defending monopoly at the expense of parents. Rather
than do that, defenders of the status quo, understandably but inexcusably,
tend to make smoke screens.
A few days later, during the first Dole-Clinton "debate," Mr. Clinton said he, too, supports "school choice," to the consternation of his educational union allies and monopoly defenders. Within hours, the Clinton Education Secretary was "clarifying": well, not real school choice, just public school choice, i.e., maintaining EFM. But why the Presidential smoke, then? Perhaps for the reason noted above: it is not easy to confess that you are truly against parents' freedom, and for monopoly protectionism.
Recent Acquisitions
¨ The Alexis de Tocqueville
Institution (AdTI) has made available to the Blum Center its Education
Reform Project materials. AdTI's three-pronged approach to education reform
includes critiquing the teacher unions, promoting choice and scholarships,
and advocating a reduction in federal bureaucracy and regulations. For
additional information, contact Mr. Paul Steidler, Senior Fellow and Director
of the Education Reform Project at the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution,
1611 N. Kent Street, Arlington, VA 22209, 703-351-4969, FAX 703-351-0090.
¨ The Fourth Year Report of the Partners Advancing Values in Education (P.A.V.E.) Scholarship Program by Sammis B. White, Peter Maier, and Christine Cramer is now available for interested parties. Among other topics, the report addresses the role P.A.V.E. plays in residential stability, why some seemingly eligible students did not take full advantage of the program, and the condition of discipline in the schools P.A.V.E. students attend. For further information, or to request a copy, please contact Mr. Daniel M. McKinley, Executive Director, P.A.V.E., 1434 W. State Street, Milwaukee, WI 53233, 414-342-1505, FAX 414-342-1513.
- On August 27, 1996, Phi Delta Kappan released
the results of its commissioned poll on various educational issues, including
public attitudes on "vouchers." The mass media paid little attention to
the bulk of the poll and concentrated on one of its features: PDK claimed
that the poll showed majority opposition to "vouchers," and growing but
still minority support for them. This claim resulted in various copycat
headlines, and that of the August 28, 1996, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
is entirely typical: "Poll Finds Most Oppose Voucher Plans." Enemies of
parental freedom in education, the defenders of educational finance monopoly
(EFM), such as U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley and educational labor
union representatives, attempted to use such headlines to invalidate parental
freedom, as one would expect. Many advocates of parental freedom via school
choice without financial penalty, on the other hand, were disturbed by
those same stories. In the circumstances, it seems appropriate to lay before
the Freedom Report's readers the essential facts regarding parental
freedom and public opinion.
Fact #One: The PDK poll of August 27 put to its sample a question which invariably produces negative results. It asked: "Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense?" Response: 61% oppose, 36% favor, 3% don't know. The PDK question, and variations of it, produce negative results in contrast with less prejudicial questions, as we will shortly see. To the unsuspecting, the PDK-type question and its variants appear to create an impression that includes such off-putting ingredients as this: "public expense" for "private" schools somehow seems wrong, as if I asked "public" subsidy for my "private" tastes. It also seems to suggest added "public expense," over and above other tax expenditures. The truth: tax money is already provided or obligated for each child; the child's education is what the dollars are provided for, not this or that school system; under school choice, any tax dollars go to parents for the purchase of education wherever they think best for the child. Thus, choice need involve no new "public expense" and whatever expense it does involve, new or reallocated, is not for "private schools" but for parent empowerment. It empowers parents by removing the financial penalty of choosing any school other than the finance monopoly's schools. And, by doing that, it ends the monopoly and its inevitably destructive repercussions.
Thus, the PDK poll prejudices its sample and produces results more negative than a truly objective inquiry produces. (Despite this, by the way, PDK's poll, repeated in 1993, 1995, and 1996, shows greatly growing support for parental freedom.) The impact of prejudicial questions cannot be displayed more graphically than by contrasting them with the typical results of unbiased polling questions, as follows.
Fact #Two: The popularity of parental freedom in education via school choice has been definitively and repeatedly established by poll after poll, done with national samples and, even more important, many state-based samples, as well. In each case, the polls in question were properly constructed, that is, in various ways they all asked in effect "should educational funding policy enable parents to choose schools by lessening the financial penalty of choice," and the results are uniformly positive. A couple of representative examples will make the point. An August, 1992, Gallup Poll asked a nationwide random sample: "Do you want a voucher system to allow parents to send children to any school they want?" Response: 70% "yes," 27% "no," 3% "don't' know." A Gordon S. Black Corporation Wisconsin Poll of August, 1994, asked in Question #17: "Would you like to see such a choice plan made available to all parents in Wisconsin if it included local parochial as well as local public and private schools?" Response: 71.6% "yes," 23.4% "no," 5% "don't know/refused." And just last month, in Michigan, one of the nation's most unionized states where EFM is deeply and powerfully entrenched, a statewide poll asked what I think is the truest form of the school choice question: "In some countries, the government allots a certain amount of money for each child's education and lets parents choose which school, public or private, including parochial schools, they want to send their child to. . . . If such a plan was placed on the ballot in Michigan, . . . would you vote YES or NO?" By more than two to one, the Michigan sample said "YES." (62% 'yes,' 27% 'no,' and 11% 'undecided.' Poll conducted September 17-19, 1996, by EPIC/MRA, sponsored by TEACH Michigan Education Fund, Bryan Taylor, Executive Director, (517) 394-4870.) These are perfectly typical poll results when the question is put truly: not "do you think people should be able to pilfer state funds for private purposes," but "do you think parents should be free to choose schools without financial penalty?" (The Blum Center will be pleased to provide these and a sample of related poll results, or indicate how they can be obtained, to any interested readers.)
Fact #Three: General support for parental freedom in education should surprise no one. When seen without smoke screens, the meaning of such freedom is simply this: we will enable parents to fulfill their educational responsibilities, rather than cripple them in this regard; and we will do that by ending an indefensible finance monopoly, long after the humanly destructive tendencies of monopolies have been generally understood.
Fact #Four: American government, federal and state, is representative government, not direct democracy via public opinion polls. As to school choice, the key polls are state-level, rather than national, because educational funding policy is primarily a state-level function. The only question state-level polls can usefully answer is this: Is there fundamental, insuperable public opposition to parental freedom in education, such that no representatives can expect to overcome it? The answer is clear and it is definitive: there is no such preponderant public opposition. Poll after state-level poll shows exactly the opposite: there is preponderant public support for parental freedom in education, despite decades of EFM smoke screens and the heavy weight of social inertia. And that means simply this: executive and legislative representatives are not blocked by the citizenry as they contemplate school choice. They are blocked only by the defenders of the EFM status quo, intimately intertwined with state government power points. It is time to unravel these connections and insist that state legislatures liberate parents in all states.
- Enemies of parental freedom via school choice
without financial penalty rely heavily, early and late, on repeated assertions
that genuine school choice inevitably violates American guarantees against
unacceptable intermingling of church and state. This is, I am inclined
to think, the most common smoke screen used to obstruct the liberating
truth about school choice. It is, indeed, the smoke screen of first and
last resort. Advocates of parental freedom often limit their rebuttal of
this red herring to pointing out that prevailing legal precedents indicate
that properly framed school choice legislation will pass legal scrutiny.
That is an important point, of course. Indeed, it is a necessary one. But,
to blow the church-state smoke screen away completely requires a somewhat
more multi-faceted discussion than it usually gets. Such a discussion follows
in three parts.
Much or most of the effort to use church-state fears to block parental freedom in education is cast in so-called "constitutional" categories and language. Reason: the "only in America" historical accident of judicial review which permits and even encourages courts to act as policy-makers under the guise of "applying the constitution"; and which permits and even encourages those who cannot mount a serious, open political argument to look for a court willing to use constitutional excuses to defend a policy position.
Thus, for example, the defenders of the educational funding status quo (educational finance monopoly, or EFM, under which all tax dollars for education are assigned by state bureaucracies and only to the state's own schools) lost substantial influence and control in various state legislatures in the elections of November 8, 1994. They soon saw the legislative results in new parent- and child-serving educational funding policies in Wisconsin and Ohio, and similar though incomplete developments in other jurisdictions. And, predictably, these defenders of the EFM status quo sought to block these responsibly and meticulously developed policies by raising the church-state flag before various courts, inviting those courts to nullify the properly formed political expression of the peoples' true representatives.
Anyone who listens carefully and critically to the legal arguments before these courts will realize instantly that the whole framework of discussion is illusory and serves only the interests of the legal profession, both courts and attorneys (what Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia called 'the counter-majoritarian preferences of the society's law-trained elite,' in dissenting in U.S. vs Commonwealth of Virginia. We may note that the only thing truly 'elite' about them is their privileged power, not any notable native talent.) These electorally non-responsible courts are actually functioning as mini-legislatures, making policy even though they are non-responsible minority-rule bodies. They do this even while talking of state and federal constitutions as if those constitutions actually settled such particular questions as whether poor Milwaukee or Cleveland parents should be permitted to assign some of the tax dollars already dedicated to their children's schooling. Unless saddled with a Blaine amendment-type impediment, state constitutions do not settle such a question, and certainly the federal constitution does not. To pretend that they do is the necessary premise for permitting courts to take unto themselves what is properly legislative authority. It is a form of aristocratic, elitist nonsense which, though nonsense, greatly inflates the power of the judiciary and the legal "class" generally.
The foolishness of it all can be seen, for example, in the March 29, 1996, 3-3 tie on the Wisconsin Supreme Court when it considered the expansion of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program to include religiously-sponsored schools. The vote itself — three judges "finding" an impediment, three saying there obviously was none — and the legalistic efforts by attorneys and judges to define the terms of the argument as "constitutional," while at the same time actually acting on the essentially political motives each possessed, make plain the truth of things: all such efforts are in effect legal subterfuges behind which non-responsible forces attempt, often successfully, to frustrate the political judgment of responsible elected officials.
In truth, all the federal Constitution says re church and state is this: do not establish a specific religion or church (for to do so may violate the freedom of conscience out of which religious choice should proceed, and could expose the state to churchly manipulation); and do not enact governmental policies which will entangle the churches in the government's web (and thereby threaten to pervert church purposes). These two cautions, naturally evident to the Founders given their experiences, are just prudent counsels, well worth reflecting on and being guided by at any time by both politicians and church leaders.
To attempt to stretch such prudential principles so far as to use them to block parental assignment of already-extant tax dollars dedicated to education can happen "only in America" — for only in America has the tradition of judicial review given courts and the legal class the kind of non-responsible license which permits settling political issues behind legalistic smoke screens. EFM's defenders and certain allies who do not want religiously-motivated citizens to have the full rights enjoyed by other citizens, and always ready to use the church-state smoke screen, today find it indeed the "smoke screen of last resort," their last bastion for defending monopoly and obstructing parental rights. Because we are in the United States, and judicial review is still with us, parental freedom champions must play that game, and play it successfully, of course. The alternative is to submit voluntarily to enslavement via legal manipulations. But even as we play the game we must recognize its artificiality, and remind ourselves and all others that behind the game's artifices there is political reality. In the hands of defenders of the monopolistic educational status quo, church-state fabrications are used to prevent the justice of parental freedom in education. This is a policy choice, not a legal interpretation.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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