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- Contents:
IN THIS REPORT
Readers will see once again the sharp distinction between the preponderance of African-American families who want school choice, and some of those who purport to lead those people even as they oppose parental freedom; an assortment of excellent state-level developments and pertinent developments; the editor's effort to dispel the "far right" smoke screen; and David Kirkpatrick's essay on "How Many Recommendations Are Needed?"
BLACK SUPPORT FOR SCHOOL CHOICE IS STRONG
According to the Joint Center for Economic and Political
Study, support for school choice among blacks is growing very quickly.
The Center's annual poll of American blacks showed that school choice is
favored by 86.5% of blacks between the ages of 25 and 36. Last year's survey
reported a percentage of 60.9 in favor of school choice. The National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) still officially opposes
school choice, although they invited Wisconsin State Representative Annette
"Polly" Williams to debate the topic at their annual conference last month.
(Baltimore Morning Sun, 07-17-97; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
07-16-97)
This official stance becomes more and more of a misrepresentation it seems, based on these poll results. Moreover, plenty of very significant voices in the black community have explicitly contradicted the official stance of the NAACP: Polly Williams herself; Representative J. C. Watts; Representative Floyd Flake; editorialist William Raspberry; former Superintendent of Schools for Milwaukee, Howard Fuller; members of the Council of Baptist Pastors in Detroit and Vicinity; and Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King. Also, the Black Conservative Unity Summit Organizing Committee, a nonpartisan coalition of 21 black conservatives from around the nation, voted in May to undertake a "National Campaign for School Choice." As noted below under "Announcements," one of the first steps of the campaign will be the upcoming "National School Choice Organizers Conference" on September 12.
Aside from the obvious inherent importance of these poll results, they demonstrate two additional significant points. First, as stated in Freedom Report #40, properly put polls are persistently pro-parent. Survey questions which accurately portray school choice as parental freedom in education consistently fetch favorable results. Second, many consider the Joint Center for Economic and Political Study to be a liberal organization, and opponents of school choice will sometimes characterize the issue as a "scheme" of the "far right." However, as explained in this month's Editor's View On the "Far Right" Smoke Screen (page four), the natural constituencies for school choice reside throughout the entire range of political ideologies, from left to right.
ARIZONA
Readers will remember that on April 7 Governor Symington
signed into law a limited but genuine school choice law, allowing citizens
up to $500 in tax credit for donations made to private and religious school
tuition organizations. (For additional details on the law see Freedom
Report #46.) Not long after the law was passed, the Arizona Education
Association began battling it, collecting signatures for a referendum in
November of 1998. They needed 40,000 signatures to succeed, which moreover
would have delayed implementation of the credit until the time of the referendum.
The Association was only able to collect 10,000 signatures by the filing
deadline, partly because Arizona Superintendent of Schools Lisa Graham
Keegan provided the state with enough information about the true benefits
of the law. The Association has announced that it will now resort to litigation.
(Arizona Republic 07-12-97; July 25 memorandum from the Institute
for Justice)
MAINE
Two noteworthy developments have taken place in the state
of Maine recently. The first is that the legislature approved a law in
June resolving that the State Board of Education will establish a committee
to study charter schools and school choice initiatives that have been developed
in other states and areas. The committee will meet at least four times,
studying legislation and collecting testimony, whereafter it will submit
a report to the legislature. The report must be submitted no later than
January 1, 1998.
The second development: on July 31 the Institute for Justice filed a lawsuit on behalf of four Maine families, challenging the exclusion of religious schools from the state's tuitioning program. Maine is very similar to Vermont in this case. When Maine children live in a town where there is no public high school, the state pays for them to attend any school their parents choose — in or out of state — except for religious schools. The tuitioning program has existed in the state, in one form or another, for over 200 years, and it did at one time allow religious school participation. Last year the program supported about 13,000 students from 140 different school districts. Approximately 40 percent attended nonsectarian private schools while the rest attended public schools.
Vermont excludes religious schools from its program because the state believes that the First Amendment prohibits it. In Maine, however, the statute which enables the tuitioning program also explicitly prohibits religious school participation. The Institute for Justice argues in its case, Bagley v. Town of Raymond, that the exclusion of religious schools violates free exercise of religion and equal protection of the law. (Washington Times, 07-31-97; July 31 memorandum from the Institute for Justice)
OHIO
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled, unanimously and without
comment, on July 24 that the Cleveland Scholarship Program will be allowed
to continue operating for another year while the Court reviews the case
against it. The state appeals court ruled in May that the program is unconstitutional.
In June the Ohio legislature voted to increase the size of the prorgam
from 2,000 to 3,000 students and also to add a fourth grade to the program,
so that last year's third grade may take advantage of the program again.
Now that the Ohio Supreme Court has voted to stay the decision of the appeals
court during the coming school year, the legislature's expansion of the
program may proceed. The life of the program was also extended by the legislature
for the next two years. By the end of July the program had received over
6,800 applicants and enrollment so far was at 2,600. The state chooses
new participants through lottery. Scholarships are worth up to $2,500 each.
Meanwhile, on July 29 the U.S. Senate's Labor and Human Resources Committee heard testimony from parents participating in the Cleveland Scholarhip Program as part of the committee's debate about how Congress might better help children from inner cities. The testimony of Pamela Ballard was particularly notable as she held up enlarged pictures of her four children, whose lives she claims have been permanently changed for the good thanks to the Cleveland Scholarship Program. The eight-year old, Antonice, who experienced frequent conflicts and failing grades at four different public schools, underwent dramatic improvements, and is now eager to learn. Ms. Ballard furthermore summarized perfectly to the committee of senators the heart of the school choice issue when she stated that "it is about the love and care of children." Testimony also came from those involved with the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.
WASHINGTON STATE
We call attention to an article that appeared in the
Wall Street Journal on July 31: "Why I'm Suing My Union." In it
Jeff Leer, a Washington state elementary school teacher, explains and defends
his reasons for joining the lawsuit against the Washington Education Association
(WEA). Washington state Attorney General Christine O. Gregoire charged
the union with multiple violations of campaign finance law in February.
See Freedom Report #45 for more details.
Mr. Leer, who has resigned from the union, still pays his dues to it, because he has been threatened by the WEA's lawyer that he will be sued if he stops. All Mr. Leer wants out of this lawsuit is "for the union to obey the law and stop taking our money without permission to fund its leaders' political agenda." Many teachers agreed with his position, he said, but have been far too afraid to take action. He said that he understood those fears: he himself pays the mandatory dues out of fear for his family's welfare. Mr. Leer wrote, "I don't want to be an activist; I want to be a teacher." However, the union has labeled Mr. Leer as a "disgruntled dinosaur" on account of his position, and he has been identified with "the right-wing conspiracy" against public education. What a perfect example of the "far right" smoke screen in action. For a detailed look at that tactic of school choice opponents, please refer to this month's Editor's View below, on page four.
WISCONSIN
On July 22 the 4th District Court of Appeals in Madison
heard oral arguments from both supporters and opponents of the expansion
of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) to include religious schools.
In the summer of 1995 the Wisconsin Legislature voted to expand the size
of MPCP and also voted to allow religious school participation. Dane County
Circuit Court Judge Paul Higginbotham ruled in January that the participation
of religious schools in MPCP is unconstitutional, based on readings of
both the state and federal constitutions. About 100 supporters of school
choice, including about five dozen families, packed the Court of Appeals
to hear the defense of the expansion. The defense of the expansion was
presented by the Institute for Justice (Washington D.C.), Landmark Legal
Foundation (Kansas City), and the office of Governor Tommy Thompson. Presenting
the case in opposition to the expansion were lawyers from the National
Education Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Clint Bolick, litigation
director for the Institute for Justice, said, "We are looking for a complete
reversal of the lower-court ruling. We will try to persuade the court of
appeals to allow the program to proceed in its entirety." (Washington
Times, 07-22-97; Capital Times, 07-23-97)
Meanwhile, Judge Higginbotham released on August 8 the remainder of his formal decision regarding the expansion of MPCP. While the January 15 decision covered that part of the expansion which allowed religious school participation, this decision formally condemns the expansion of MPCP in size. The legislature had voted to increased the program tenfold — approximately from 1,500 to 15,000 students. Higginbotham stated in a preliminary decision a year ago that his formal ruling would disallow the size expansion as well as the religious school participation, so the August 8 ruling comes as no surprise. Higginbotham believes that the size of the expansion violated state constitutional provisions which prohibit items of local interest to be included in the state budget. Although no new students may be added to the program, Higginbotham ordered that those currently participating in the program may continue doing so, even though the total number of participants (over 1,600) has superseded the maximum of 1,500. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 08-09-97)
Finally, the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Research on Poverty released a study this month which states that low-income and under-achieving students perform better in non-religious private schools than in public schools. The study states: "Consistent with recent work on the Milwaukee school choice program, the positive effects are most substantial for low-income and initially unachieving students." The report also said that when minority students attended religious schools, they outperformed public school counterparts. Although other population groups did not show better performance in religious schools, the study suggests that religious schools could nonetheless be considered more cost-effective, since they tend to spend much less per pupil. The study ("School Choice and Student Performance: Are Private Schools Really Better?") was researched by University of Oregon professors David Figlio and Joe Stone. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 08-04-97)
NATIONAL NEWS
The headline in the August 1 Atlanta Journal was
most appropriate: "'Education' President Kills Education IRA." The Coverdell
Amendment, mentioned in last month's Freedom Report, was a modest
school choice program which would have allowed parents to receive tax free
interest on savings set aside for K-12 education at private and religious
schools. As part of the national budget package, the amendment survived
weeks of negotiating until, hours after Congress reached a budget accord,
President Clinton sent a late-night letter to House Speaker Newt Gingrich
in which he threatened to veto the entire budget agreement unless the Coverdell
Amendment was removed. The Atlanta Journal thought it was "an unusual
move by a president who in the same week said initiatives were needed to
ensure that elementary and secondary students get a world-class education
in the next century." We agree.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
¨ Parents Raising Educational
Standards in Schools (PRESS) will hold its Fourth Annual Conference on
Education on October 4 in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Please call Leah Vukmir,
President of PRESS, at 414-453-8116 for reservations and information.
¨ As mentioned above, the Organizing Committee of the Black Conservative Unity Summit will be hosting the "National School Choice Organizers Conference" on September 12 at the Heritage Institute in Washington D.C.. The conference is part of the Committee's effort to ally nonpartisan school choice supporters from across the country. For more information please call Jaqueline Gordon at 301-464-7889.
¨ The Center of the American Experiment and the CELM Foundation will hold a national convention for school choice activists on November 10 and 11 in Minneapolis. The title of the conference is "Minnesota's School Choice Breakthrough: Lessons for the Nation." Plans for the conference were prompted by Minnesota's recent tax credit and deduction success in the legislature, led by Governor Arne Carlson. Time will be spent looking at Minnesota's grass-roots campaign, along with other significant efforts around the country. For more information contact Mr. Mitch Pearlstein at 612-338-3605.
NOTEWORTHY ITEMS
¨ In a spirit similar
to that of this month's Editor's View below, the Alexis de Toqueville Institution
has just released a study entitled "The Tactics and Rhetoric of the NEA
and AFT." Written by Paul Steidler, it examines the unions' rhetoric on
a number of issues. For copies of of this study please contact Paul Steidler
at 703-351-4969.
¨ The Blum Center briefly notes that a number of newspaper editorials in support of school choice have recently appeared across the nation. Papers that have run favorable editorials in the last month include Ohio's Plain Dealer (08-02-97), Virginia's Richmond Times-Dispatch (07-29-97), the Atlanta Journal (07-25-97), and the Arizona Republic (07-12-97).
¨ The Miami Herald
ran a story by Nina Shokraii of the Heritage Foundation on July 28: "'At-Risk'
Kids Do Very Well in Catholic Schools." The article highlights the results
of several studies done in the last decade on that topic, all of which
demonstrate that Catholic schools offer safe environments at low cost where
test scores and graduation rates are consistently improved among "at-risk"
students.
- One of the worst violations of logic, and one of the
most dehumanizing pseudo-arguments, is the unjustified label or the smear:
rather than analyzing a person’s or group's argument, trying just to wipe
it out or cover it up by applying a smearing label.
Let us assume, no doubt correctly, that the terms "far right," "right-wing ideologues," and "extremists of the right" are generally "devil" terms in the public mind, terms that tend to provoke negative reactions. The words "far," "ideologue," and "extremist" practically ensure such a reaction. If you apply such terms to an opponent, without defining them carefully so that they have clear meaning; and without showing precisely how they apply to the persons and cases at hand, then your objective is plain: obliterate your opponent as a worthy figure in the listener’s mind, even though you have done nothing to expose weakness in his argument. This unfortunately common device is crudely illogical, and a patent dehumanization of the other party. Such an approach is equally crude, and equally dehumanizing, if it is used against undefined and unspecified "far left" or "left-wing extremists."
As regularly employed in American politics and the journalism which reports it, the terms "left-wing" and "right-wing" are rarely given the kind of careful definition and application which alone can make them useful. They are, rather, regularly used as substitutes for careful articulation, as slogans taking the place of thought, and as smears rather than arguments. It is possible to give such categories serious meaning: "on the right" can usefully describe people less inclined to invoke government to solve social ills, and "on the left" can usefully describe people more readily inclined to invoke that same government. Even then, however, the pertinence of such categories must always be applied to the case at hand with care and commitment to truthful portrayal. Such definition and careful application are rare, indeed.
I am inclined to believe that there are few if any areas where sloganistic smearing is more common than in the effort of educational finance monopoly (EFM) to defend itself against parental freedom in education. Perhaps EFM’s reliance on this smoke screen is second only to its reliance on the church-state hobgoblin. People who, quite naturally, may want to permit parents’ love to have some influence in choosing the schools in which their children will be educated are commonly demeaned, branded as puppets of the "far right-wing" — a "wing" described by the National Education Association’s President as "bullying," capable of "cowing" "good, decent Americans." (NEA Handbook, 1996-1997, p. 8.) Exactly who these "bullies" are is not indicated, exactly what makes them "extreme" is not defined, and how they are able to "cow" a notoriously independent citizenry is not established. But the smear is done, the label is applied, and perhaps some unsuspecting and uncritical readers have been led by this smoke screen to imagine that anyone who criticizes EFM is an "extremist," well-known to be "disproportionately from the far right-wing." Shame on the NEA for committing such grievous errors of logic and of civility. And a different kind of shame but shame no less on anyone who succumbs to such nonsense.
What the NEA does, its state-level mimics do, as well. Thus, for example, the President of the Wisconsin Educational Council (the state-level trade union affiliate of the NEA), dismissed backers of a pro-parent candidate for Secretary of Public Instruction as representative of the (undefined, unspecified, and unapplied) "far right" (Education Week, 2/20/97). Describing the same candidate in the same race, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (2/20/97) perfectly typically called her a representative of the "ideological right" and warned that her victory would result in "a sharp turn to the right" — again, with no effort to describe, define, and apply. Label, smear, smoke — all as substitutes for thought.
These three illustrations can be duplicated every day in every jurisdiction in the nation where efforts are being made to liberate America’s parents from the yoke of EFM. One of the major, recurring smearing smoke screens used to defend EFM is simply to assert that its critics, the champions of parental freedom, are either agents or puppets of the [undefined and unspecified] "far right."
What is the truth of the matter? As I have often pointed out, the "natural constituencies" in support of parental freedom via school choice without financial penalty are multiple, varied, and range all over an even properly-defined ideological map. Are there properly-defined "rightwing" elements (i.e., those inclined to seek less government) among them? Of course. Such people can see that EFM is the single most extensive and monolithic governmental monopoly in the U.S., and quite naturally wish to replace it with freedom of parental choice. But such people, perhaps moved by a before-the-fact belief in competition and "markets," are a small part of the "multiple constituencies" of choice. Catholic parents, for example, are a far larger and more politically potent constituency if ever they mobilized — and the social teaching of their Church can hardly be described as "right wing."
An even more "leftist" source provides one of today’s most active choice constituencies: the parents of the inner cities who, though traditionally allied with the Democratic party, are shown by poll after poll to desire fervently the capacity to choose their children’s schools. "Right wing"? Hardly! Deceived and betrayed by that political party to which they have traditionally given support, and finally rebelling against it re parental freedom, would be a more accurate description. And the largest constituency for school choice, no doubt, is the millions of parents, solidly in the political center and with no concept of ideological predisposition, who are concerned for the educational and ethical quality of the monopoly’s schools to which their children are assigned.
Multiple constituencies, ranging across the political spectrum, naturally rally to parental freedom in education. And the only label which can be applied accurately to them is exactly that: "These are the natural, multiple constituencies of school choice." I have often noted that trying truthfully to defend the monopolistic status quo is a thankless task, at best. But while the difficulty of finding an objective defense for EFM may explain why its defenders resort so often to smearing slogans, it does not justify such behavior. As was advised in Freedom Report #7 (3/18/94): DAMN THE LABELS: FULL SPEED AHEAD!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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