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- Contents:
- IN THIS REPORT
Readers will find several important state-level developments; a collection of recent pertinent information items; the Editor's View on speaking plainly about parental freedom and an excellent Iowa case thereof; and David Kirkpatrick's "Money As An Excuse, Not An Answer."
IOWA
Governor Terry Branstad has stated that he will recommend
to the Iowa legislature that it double the amount of money (from $100 to
$200) available through the state's tuition tax credit law to parents with
children in accredited private schools. Although Iowa advocates of parental
freedom in education have requested that the credit amount be raised even
more (see Freedom Report #42), they recognize the Governor's recommendation
as another step toward genuine parental freedom in Iowa. For more on Iowa's
current situation, please see part two of this month's two-part Editor's
View below.
LOUISIANA
A December 5-10 survey of 600 Louisiana registered voters
says that 52% of the state's voting population believes that Louisiana
public schools are either "not-so-good or poor." Only 44% believe the opposite
— that the public schools are doing good or excellent work. Moreover, 68%
gave favorable ratings to the state's Catholic schools, and 76% gave favorable
ratings to private schools. When asked if they support "educational choice
through charter schools or a voucher system," 48% of respondents answered
favorably, 19% answered negatively, and 33% were undecided. Southern Media
& Opinion Research of Baton Rouge conducted the survey for a group
of television stations. (New Orleans Times Picayune, 12-18-96)
NEW MEXICO
The New Mexico Federation of Catholic School Families
has recently published several new pamphlets and policy summaries which
they will be distributing to legislators and parents to forward the promotion
of genuine school choice in the state. The Federation exists to facilitate
grassroots political involvement by informing parents about politcal issues
that are relevant to Catholic schools, by mobilizing those parents so that
they can communicate with legislators, and by establishing a network of
support in New Mexico. One of the Federation's latest pamphlets, "Challenging
the Education Funding Monopoly," states in plain terms: "Parents are responsible
for their children, and they — not the state — should be making the fundamental
decisions about where and how their children will learn." The Federation
proposes as a solution genuine parental freedom in education through a
system of educational certificates which would dismantle the education
funding monopoly of New Mexico. For more information on the New Mexico
Federation of Catholic School Parents, please contact the Catholic Schools
office at (505) 831-8173.
OHIO
Governor George Voinovich announced in his State of the
State Address on January 14 that "education improvement is our state's
number one priority." Among other things, Gov. Voinovich called specific
attention to both the present success and the future of the Cleveland Scholarship
Program: "The Cleveland Scholarship Program has gotten off to a solid start
— more than 1,800 low-income students are taking advantage of this program.
And I am proposing that we expand the program to include a new kindergarten
class each year." Gov. Voinovich's recommendation provides evidence of
his continued dedication to the achievement parental freedom in Ohio education.
For additional information on the Cleveland Scholarship Program, please
refer to the "Blum Center Special Report on Cleveland" insert in Freedom
Report # 39. (State of the State Address, 01-14-97; Plain Dealer,
01-07-97)
WISCONSIN
Dane County Judge Paul Higginbotham on January 15 issued
his ruling on the expansion of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP)
to include religious schools. As expected, he alleged that the state constitution
prohibits such an expansion. The Governor and legislature that passed the
legislation can read the state constitution, also, and they know it does
not prohibit parental freedom in education, including choosers of religious-based
schools. (For a better understanding of how church-state concerns can mislead
jurists, see the enclosed 'Attacking Religious Influence; The Case of School
Choice.') Judge Higginbotham's ruling will result in appeal to higher state
courts. Advocates of parental freedom hope for and expect justice and success
in those venues. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 01-16-97)
Announcements
¨ The American Education
Reform Foundation (AERF), previously of California, has now relocated to
Indiana, and Mr. Kevin Teasley has been appointed as its new president.
(Mr. Teasley is formerly of the Center for Popular Culture in California.)
AERF and Mr. Teasley can now be reached at 3802 Springfield Overlook, Indianapolis,
Indiana, 46234. Telephone: (317) 328-4711. Fax: (317) 328-4712.
¨ The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI) will be hosting on February 4 in Washington, D.C., a conference on "Education Reforms — Despite the NEA and AFT." This conference will examine the recent roll of grassroots individuals and organizations as they confront teachers' unions in the world of educational reform. To reserve a place at the conference or to obtain more information, please contact Paul Steidler of AdTI at (703) 527-5021.
¨ The Center for Education Reform (CER) released at the end of 1996 the third edition of the National Charter Schools Directory, the nation's only comprehensive listing of America's charter schools. Besides identifying all 481 charter schools in the nation, the Directory also contains significant statistics on American charter schools. The Directory is available for $9.95 plus shipping and handling from CER at this address and telephone number: 1001 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C., 20036, (202) 822-9000.
Recent Acquisitions
¨ The Blum Center would
like to call special attention to the premiere issue of School Reform
News, a "Monthly Review of School Reform Efforts" published by the
Heartland Institute of Illinois. School Reform News is a top-notch,
professionally designed newspaper which reports on American educational
reform from a grassroots perspective. Some of the headlines in this month's
issue include: "Choice Students Score Better," "Failing Schools Get New
Leadership for Turnaround," "Whole Language Reading Instruction Faulted,"
"National Test Scores Fall Again," and "Opinion Polls Show Support for
School Choice." School Reform News is available on the internet
at http://www.heartland.org, or it can be ordered at no cost from
the Heartland Institute at the following address or telephone number: 800
East Northwest Highway, Suite 1080, Palatine, IL, 60067, (847) 202-3060.
Their fax number is (847) 202-9799.
¨ The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI) has just released its Inventory of Groups that are Current or Potential Advocates of School Choice, written by Paul Steidler. It provides snapshots of 115 organizations from across the country, most of which have voiced strong support for genuine school choice. Contact information is provided for each organization. The inventory is available from AdTI for $12.95. To order a copy, please contact the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution at (703) 527-5021.
Noteworthy Items
¨ On December 12 the Daily
Oklahaman ran an article by J. E. McReynolds entitled "Vouchers Gaining
Acceptance Abroad." The article cites an "unscientific but broad" survey,
conducted by Robert Kasten and Gregory Fossedal of the Alexis de Tocqueville
Institution, of almost 50 teacher unions in more than a dozen nations from
around the world. Only eleven (23%) of the unions oppose school choice
strongly, while seventeen (35%) are strongly in favor of genuine school
choice, and twenty (42%) are either not strongly opposed, neutral, or mildly
in favor. The article states: "Teacher union support for vouchers is not
universal; even where vouchers are supported, there are concerns. But the
teachers working in countries with school choice have found their initial
fears ungrounded." For more information on the survey, please contact the
Alexis de Tocqueville Institution at (703) 527-5021.
¨ The Blum Center takes note of two recent articles in conjunction with each other. On the one hand, Education Week published an article on December 11 entitled "U.S. Is Big Education Spender in Global Study," which exlpains that the "United States spends more per pupil on K-12 education than does virtually any other nation participating in a new international study." The report was released by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and it furthermore found that "the United States spends a greater portion of its education dollars on budgetary items other than teacher pay than does any other participating country except the Czech Republic."
On the other hand, School Reform News published an article in its January issue entitled "Failing Schools Get New Leadership for Turnaround." Failing public schools in some of America's most prominent cities — District of Columbia, Chicago, Hartford, Baltimore, New York, Cleveland — are requiring local authorities to declare states of educational emergency and, in some cases, administer direct control over the schools. Especially side by side, these two articles do not speak well for defenders of the educational finance monopoly (EFM) when they insist that increased funding is the answer to our educational problems. (See this month's insert by David Kirkpatrick on this topic.)
- Achieving parental freedom through school choice without
financial penalty is so difficult in America's states primarily because
of the smoke screen obstructions which obscure the truth of things. That
truth is layered over by history and social inertia, and hidden by a vested
interest class that, for reasons of financial self-interest, wants to maintain
the status quo. These defenders of the status quo are fighting
a war of attrition against America's parents. Every time parents stir,
and ask for the educational justice they so richly deserve, they are confronted
by deeply-entrenched, well-funded, professional defenders of today's finance
monopoly. Those who realize this must continuously pierce through to the
basic realities, remind people of good will what those realities are, and
help them see clearly the plain truth of things. And in each state they
must push the political regime to break the monopolistic stranglehold and
reinstate parental authority.
Let us recite the simple facts, beginning with this one: American states all agree in policy, in law, in habit, and in history, that parents and guardians are primarily responsible for the welfare of the children under their care. A second fact: all American states agree that there is a legitimate state objective to encourage and help the educational preparation of their youth. For the welfare of the youth themselves it is appropriate to help them develop their intellectual and educational capacities to whatever extent is possible. And, society's general welfare will be advanced by a better educated youth. Again, all states agree on that statement of principle.
There is yet another point on which all states agree: it is appropriate to provide tax dollars to assist the process of providing education for the youth and to offer schools that help in this process. I am not saying that is the only way or even the best way to achieve the objective. I am not even saying you must have across-the-board tax policy to support education. Rather, I am just saying that at the end of the twentieth century there is uniform agreement among the states on this point, as well as the points which preceded it. So, tax dollars are actually being spent to provide education, and parents and guardians are actually held responsible for seeing to the education of the youth under their care.
One final plain truth: with important but as yet minor exceptions in Cleveland, Milwaukee, Vermont, Minnesota, and Iowa, educational finance monopoly (EFM) exists in all states. What that means is that all tax dollars are assigned by state bureaucracies, the monopoly's own structures, and only to the monopoly's own schools. This prevalence of educational finance monopoly as the vehicle for assigning tax dollars has absolutely no objective defense at this time. It simply developed in history; in a pre-bureaucratic, local control age that had the effect of stunting its destructive tendencies; and it lasted in history long enough to plant deep roots and develop inertia — an assumption of propriety — to keep it there. And it developed around itself, as finance policies and structures do, intensely self-interested organizations that manipulate the history and social inertia to keep EFM in place.
What we discover by this recitation of very simple and indisputable facts is this: that the school choice-parental freedom struggle against the status quo is truly a struggle over "who should assign" already-raised and already-dedicated tax dollars. This is not an argument about the priorly agreed-to foundation stones. The argument has nothing to do with whether society wants educated children. The argument has nothing to do with whether parents are held responsible. The argument has nothing to do with whether the state rightly can provide public schools to assist its objective of educational achievement for youngsters. In plain truth, the conflict is really about who will control and assign the dollars already committed to education in the various jurisdictions.
Educational finance monopoly's chief defenders of the status quo — the educational unions and bureaucracies — are just defending a financial spigot from which they benefit. One understands and respects the pursuit of self-interest, of course, but another party's pursuit of self-interest is no reason for us to be moved by it. Parents and all citizens must ask themselves whether monopoly is on its face a humanly beneficial or hurtful arrangement; and whether, in this case, it tends to produce an educational financing system that is essentially self-serving, that is removed from ultimate and complete dedication to the welfare of the children it is supposed to serve, and that has had the practical effect of divorcing parental control from the educational system for most American parents.
Today's school funding policy, educational finance monopoly, is, in fact, just a monopoly with no rational defense and no redeeming virtue. Monopolies are well known, should always be suspect, and this one is no exception. Parental freedom via school choice is simply the alternative way to assign already agreed-to tax dollars. What it proposes is to enable parental love to work in education without today's severe financial penalty. Neither public schools nor their teachers are under attack by parental freedom. Indeed, as educational providers, their work can only benefit from being chosen by parents. Under school choice, all schools, governmental and independent, will be schools of choice. All will be beneficiaries of the "natural moral contracts," the mutual obligations, created by free actions. And all will be encouraged to excel, so as to be choiceworthy. That is what parental freedom can achieve.
- The Editor's View on page three of this Report
is devoted to "Plain Talk about the Plain Truth." A near-perfect example
of such plain, truthful talk about parental freedom is the 1992 U.S. District
Court decision in Luthens, et al. v. Bair. Regular readers of the
Freedom Report know that its Editor does not admire the role of
courts as policy-makers via judicial review. But you know, also,
that, as long as judicial review exists, defenders of parental freedom
must use it successfully to remove legalistic obstructions. In the three
primary prevailing U.S. Supreme Court decisions which affirm the validity
of well-constructed school choice legislation — Mueller, Witters,
and Zobrest — there is a clear portrayal of the court-approved characteristics
which legally successful school choice proposals will display.
The first of those prevailing precedents was 1983's Mueller v. Allen, arising out of a challenge to Minnesota's provision of a limited tax deduction for the costs of private, including religious, schooling. Though the actual tax relief from this provision was (and is) very small, the case provided a clear test of the constitutionality of such an approach.
In its Mueller decision affirming the constitutionality of Minnesota's tax deduction, the Supreme Court enunciated clearly the non-entangling and non-establishing characteristics the Court would want to see to ensure the constitutionality of school choice legislation. When Iowa in 1987 enacted tax deduction and tax credit legislation (modified in 1996 to be entirely tax credit) to bring some relief and justice to Iowa parents who selected independent schools, its legislators took care to shape the policy in accord with the Mueller precedent's principles.
As we have often pointed out, such facts do not deter the defenders of educational finance monopoly (EFM) from trying to obstruct school choice by judicial means. It appears in such cases that they hope at least to delay, and at best to find a court willing to invoke false church-state fears to block, the implementation of school choice programs.
And so it was in Iowa: though the Iowa tax deduction/tax credit legislation seemed on any plain reading to conform to the Mueller precedent's guidelines, EFM's defenders in the Hawkeye state brought suit claiming the provision violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Common sense knows that is not true: the tax credit helps parents, not churches. But given judicial review, the relevant category is not common sense but judicial interpretation precedent: did the Iowa legislation clearly conform to Mueller?
The 1992 Luthens decision found simply, decisively, and plainly that Iowa's legislation met all requirements of the Mueller precedent, and was simply, decisively, and plainly constitutional. Not only is that true, this also is: Luthens is expressed in such clear and conclusive language, and with such convincing argument, that it must be recognized as a powerful precedent in its own right. Moreover, since it deals with all issues of pertinent principle, and has no concern with amounts of tax credit, it seems by any interpretation to provide before-the-fact constitutional authorization for Iowa's contemplated expansion of its tax credit. The Iowa legislature will begin deliberation this month on whether and how far to increase its tax credit so as to make the program more beneficial to Iowa's parents and to the general quality of Iowa's education. (See Iowa summary in Freedom Report #42). Given Luthens, the Iowa legislature and administration should be able to concentrate entirely on the educational efficacy of expanded parental freedom, and not be distracted by church-state smoke screens.
EFM's enemies of parental freedom will still try to rattle people with the church-state bogeyman, of course. The Des Moines Register in a May 13, 1996, editorial, for example, was prepared to say of the tax credit provision "Such credits are direct taxpayer support of religion in clear violation of the concept of separation of church and state." We know that in any objective, common sense understanding, that is absolutely false. Empowerment of parents to choose any school, religious or not, is not "support of religion," any more than war is peace or love is hate. Moreover, as a matter of constitutional interpretation, we know that in Mueller and its plain-spoken Luthens application, the federal judiciary absolutely denies the Register's assertion. Luthens just states the truth: the law's "benefits...go to the parents of schoolchildren rather than to the schools"; and "...the nature of the aid is clearly benign in terms of Establishment Clause concerns."
That EFM's defenders of the status quo can, in the face of objective analysis and clear court decisions, continue to shout church and state alarms should surprise no one familiar with the forces opposed to parental freedom. It is the smoke screen of last resort, as we have often noted. But no one interested in the truth of things, and least of all Iowans with the excellent Luthens decision before them, should be misled. Iowa's tax credit program, now and in its future forms, is good for education, right for parents, and entirely free of church-state entanglements.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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