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- Contents:
- IN THIS REPORT
Readers will encounter recent further proofs of support for parental freedom, descriptions of several state-level developments worthy of note, David Kirkpatrick's recitation of important happenings, and the Editor's View on the lack of business support for school choice.
MAJORITY OF AMERICANS FAVOR SCHOOL CHOICE
— AGAIN AND AGAIN!
No, you have not received a copy of September's Freedom
Report again this month, but we have indeed duplicated last month's
headline, because twice more the news has arrived that the majority of
Americans support school choice.
The Center for Education Reform (CER) released its 1997 Survey of Americans' Attitudes Toward Education and School Reform. In direct response to the detrimental way in which the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll asks about school choice each year, CER designed a question which it believes to be more fair and accurate. Rather than asking if they support school choice "at public expense," CER asked if parents should be given "the tax dollars allotted for their child's education" to spend where they wish. 72% of those surveyed supported school choice in response to that question. 25% opposed and 4% did not choose to favor or oppose the question. Percentages come from a total weighted sample of 1,919 respondents (unweighted: 1003).
A second poll which came to our attention this month was the Association of American Educators (AAE) Member Survey. AAE is a non-partisan, national professional trade association which provides a non-union alternative for America's teachers. From 3,272 member responses, representing members in all fifty states plus the District of Columbia, 62% said that parents indeed should "receive vouchers to help pay for their children's education if they choose a non-public school." 32% said no, and 6% were not sure. It is important to note as well that 90% of AAE members are public school teachers.
ARIZONA
The Arizona Education Association, the teachers' trade
union, along with a group of Arizona citizens, filed a lawsuit on September
29 challenging the constitutionality of Arizona's newly passed educational
tax credit law. The law provides income tax credits of up to $500 for contributions
to private school scholarships and up to $200 for public school extracurricular
activities. The plaintiffs filed a special action suit in the Arizona Supreme
Court rather than a standard trial court suit in order to expedite the
court processes. Oral arguments will occur in December, while the law is
scheduled to go into effect in January. The Institute for Justice leads
the defense. (Memorandum from the Institute for Justice, 10/03/97)
CALIFORNIA
At the end of September the California Teachers Association
(CTA) settled a year-long lawsuit with a San Diego special-education teacher,
Ms. Jean Apple. Ms. Apple decided in August of 1996 that she did not like
the way the union was spending her dues on its political agenda, so she
announced her resignation from the CTA. The CTA responded by telling her
that she was not rightfully allowed to address the matter for another two
years, when the existing bargaining contract would run out. Until then
she was legally obligated to remain a member and continue paying dues.
The CTA finally agreed in settlement last month to let Ms. Apple quit and to refund the portion of her dues used for political support (about $200 annually). The settlement moreover allows all teachers in the state to resign and receive the same compensation. The Orange County Register noted in a September 29 story that the settlement is not a judicial ruling, but a contract between the CTA and the teachers of California, and therefore does not set precedent the way in which a judicial ruling does. Ms. Apple was represented by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation in Springfield, Virginia. (Orange County Register, 09/29/97; Washington Times, 10/07/97)
KANSAS
State Representative Kay O'Connor is forming a new 501(c)(4)
organization dedicated to the achievement of school choice in the nation:
Parents In Control (PIC). While Rep. O'Connor will continue to work out
of Kansas, PIC will be national in scope. Since PIC will be a 501(c)(4)
organization, donations to it will not be tax deductible, yet that status
simultaneously will allow PIC to be a politically active organization.
PIC will be a grassroots effort which will include much emphasis on fund
raising for the purpose of hiring professional lobbyists for the cause
of school choice.
After her experiences in politics, Mrs. O'Connor believes that the presence of professional lobbyists is a tool which has been used by opponents of school choice with regular success, but which proponents have so far not utilized as best they could. Nor would the use of professional lobbyists compromise the grassroots nature of school choice, she believes.
The goals of PIC are to establish PIC chapters across the country, maintain a National PIC office for support, and establish State Federations of PIC chapters in areas of heavy school choice activity. Those interested in providing support of any kind to PIC may contact Rep. Kay O'Connor with the following information: P.O. Box 2232, Olathe, Kansas 66051; Voice - (913) 393-1991; Toll Free - 1-800-277-6368 (at prompt, enter #3092), Fax - (913) 761-4492.
MAINE
The Institute for Justice has now filed a lawsuit against
the state of Maine on behalf of Maine families, challenging the exclusion
of religious schools from its rural school choice program. This case is
very similar to the situation in Vermont, which was challenged in court
last year. The Vermont system was upheld on June 27 of this year by a lower
court and is now being challenged in Vermont's Supreme Court. See Freedom
Report # 39 for the details on Vermont's system. Lawyers at the Institute
for Justice argue that Maine's system violates its families' free exercise
of religion and equal protection under the law. (School Reform News,
10/97)
NEW JERSEY
A brief but significant piece of news has come in from
New Jersey: on September 16 Senator Robert G. Toricelli (D., NJ) endorsed
Senator Paul Coverdell's plan for tax free savings accounts which could
be used for private school tuition. While Toricelli said that he still
strongly opposes vouchers, his endorsement of the Coverdell plan "places
him squarely at odds with President Clinton, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D -
N.J., and teachers unions," said the New Jersey Record. (Record,
10/17/97)
OHIO
This summer Paul Peterson, Jay Greene, and William Howell
released the first independent study of the Cleveland Scholarship Program.
As we mentioned in Freedom Report # 49, the study found that participants
in the program showed moderate gains in reading (five percentile points)
and even greater gains in math (fifteen percentile points).
As part of the study Peterson, Greene, and Howell also conducted a survey of 2,020 of the parents who applied for the program. Now, several months later, a number of newspapers across the country have run stories about the survey portion of the study and its results. About half of the parents who applied received vouchers (1,014); the other half (1,006) either refused the vouchers or were refused. 63% of parents using the scholarships were "very satisfied" with the "academic quality" of their children's school. Of the parents who applied but did not participate (whose children remained in public schools), only 30% were satisfied with those schools.
Regarding school safety, almost 60% of participant parents were satisfied, while only just over a quarter of non-participant parents were satisfied. Regarding discipline, 55% of participant parents were satisfied, compared to only 23% of non-participant parents. Finally, when asked about the teaching of moral values, 71% of participant parents were satisfied, while only 25% of public school parents were satisfied. The news of these results has recently been covered by the Wall Street Journal (09/18/97), the New York Times (09/18/97), and Education Week (10/01/97).
WASHINGTON D.C.
The Senate version of the Washington Scholarship Act
was defeated on September 30, but the House version passed on October 9
by a narrow margin. The Washington Scholarship Act is a plan to provide
scholarships of up to $3,200 to 2,000 District of Columbia students to
attend public or private schools of their choosing.
On September 30 Senator Joseph Lieberman (D., CT) delivered a speech on the Senate floor in an attempt to persuade the Senate, particularly members of his own party, to pass the Scholarship Act. After his speech, three Democrats voted with him: Sens. Daniel Moynihan (NY), John Breau (LA), and Mary Landrieu (LA). Nevertheless, Sen. Kennedy (D., MA) had been threatening a filibuster before the speech, and proponents were not able to muster enough votes (58-41) to overcome it. Also, earlier that day President Clinton had released an Oval Office statement in which he rejected the proposal and threatened to veto it if it passed.
Despite the defeat, Sen. Lieberman's speech contained some very appropriate words of wisdom: "The true choice here is....whether the status quo of the public education orthodoxy, which is letting down so many children, is so important that we are willing to sacrifice the hopes and aspirations of thousands of children for the sake of a process, not for the sake of the children." (Wall Street Journal, 10/14/97; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10/01/97)
The House, however, managed to pass its version of the Scholarship Act on a close vote of 203-202. House Speaker Newt Gingrich cast the tie-breaking vote. The bill scholarship measure was passed as part of an $827.5 million spending bill for the District. Once the Senate passes its final version of the spending bill, both houses will then meet in joint conference to reconcile their separate versions. A joint-house version will then go to the President for his approval. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10/10/97; Education Week, 10/15/97)
As part of the rhetoric surrounding his September 30 threat to veto congressional efforts to provide school choice to poor District of Columbia parents, President Clinton declared that public schools are the "cornerstone of democracy." (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10/10/97) This smoke screen has been blown away many times, in many places, one of which is the Editor's View on the "Bedrock of Democracy" myth in Freedom Report #39, September, 1996. Mr. Clinton's personal enslavement to NEA-type smoke screens has been duly noted, also, for example in "Making Smoke in High Places," Freedom Report #1, October, 1993.
Despite such previous commentaries, it is worthwhile to note once again the almost comical internal contradictions of Mr. Clinton on the question of public vs. private schools. This person, capable of describing public schools as the "cornerstone of democracy" is at the same time capable of depriving his only child of this "cornerstone" by sending her first to the very expensive and selective Sidwell Academy — not a state school; and second to Stanford University, also not a state school. Even more interesting, Clinton himself, of course, was the beneficiary of Catholic schools as a youth, though not a Catholic; and did undergraduate studies at Georgetown and legal studies at Yale, neither of which qualifies as a state school.
Does Clinton's dedication to democracy suffer as a result of his evasion of its "cornerstone"? Is he a closet non-democrat? More likely, he is simply the defender of educational unions' dedication to educational finance monopoly.
WISCONSIN
The October 16 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contained
a front-page story on Dr. Cecelia Rouse's evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental
Choice Program (MPCP), released in December of 1996 and mentioned in Freedom
Report #44. Dr. Rouse, of Princeton, believed that previous studies
on MPCP, by John Witte on the one hand and Paul Peterson and Jay Greene
on the other, contained flaws which produced partisan results. In any case,
she concluded in her study that students made positive academic gains on
account of participating in MPCP. MPCP students especially showed higher
gains in math than public school students. Dr. Rouse's study will be published
in an upcoming issue of Harvard's Quarterly Journal of Economics,
and so has received renewed attention.
On October 15 the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to review during the current term the question of whether or not the expansion of MPCP to include religious schools in 1995 by the Wisconsin Legislature was unconstitutional. This same case was before the Supreme Court in March of 1996. At that time, however, one of the justices, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, stepped down from the decision due to conflict of interest. As a result, only six justices were present to decide the case, and they produced a 3-3 split decision. The case then went down to the lower court which it had leap-frogged in the first place, and the judge of that court ruled the expansion unconstitutional. The appeals court upheld his decision.
Now that the case is back at the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Justice Bradley has chosen to step down again. Since the last decision was made, however, one of the justices who voted against the expansion has been replaced by Justice N. Patrick Crooks. Justice Crooks may therefore cast the deciding vote. If the court splits again, the appeals court decision would stand. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10/16/97)
Noteworthy Items
¨ Last month we announced
a book by Alan Bonsteel and Carlos Bonilla, A Choice for Our Children:
Curing the Crisis in America's Schools. We would like to add that if
readers cannot obtain the book at a local bookstore, it can be ordered
from the publisher, the Institute for Contemporary Studies, and the price
is $19.95. The Institute can be reached by telephone at (800) 326-0263,
but the book can also be ordered at a 10% discount on the Internet. The
Institute's web page is located at this address: www.icspress.com.
¨ We would like to remind readers that on November 10 and 11 a conference will be held for school choice activists in Minneapolis entitled "Minnesota's School Choice Breakthrough: Lessons for the Nation." The conference will be sponsored by the Center of the American Experiment, the CELM Foundation, the American Education Reform Foundation, CEO America, and the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation. The conference will feature speeches by Governor Arne Carlson, the Honorable Vin Weber, Editorialist John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice, and many others. For more information, please call Laurie Steinfeldt at the Center for American Experiment at (612) 338-3605.
Over the last six years, while much has changed for the better in the battle for parental freedom and school choice, one thing has remained sadly constant: most business leadership has been tuned out and unhelpful toward a cause that one would expect to unite and ignite them.
National and local business and business associations cannot be accused of ignoring education and the "reform" thereof. They make loud noises on the subject, devote a good bit of time, and spend shareholders' dollars on it. What most of them are guilty of, however, is succumbing to the status quo; confusing the end (students' perfection) with a means (the monopoly's governmental schools); and thereby becoming unwitting agents of the monopoly itself. One of the great ironies of our situation is the inclination of anti-parental freedom forces — the monopoly's own publications and the religion-fearing press which echoes them — to dismiss school choice as a tool of the "right." Business is "the right" to a large extent, but it has never realized it should be a champion of parental freedom. Rather, it tends to mimic the very monopolistic forces that produce what business loudly proclaims to be a defective educational product.
To illustrate my point, I will cite recent correspondence between me and a national business leader whose educational reform efforts have been highly publicized. Part of my comments to that person went as follows: "From what I have seen of your approach in the public press, your basic push is for reform in the public schools. That has been a constant temptation confronting business leadership, and it can have disastrous results. Essentially, its dangers are these: it confuses ends (the educational perfection of our youth) with a specific means (one delivery system known as 'public schools'); by so doing, it puts the public schools beyond basic criticism and it pushes out of consideration the independent alternatives.
"When that happens, unwittingly or not, the effect is to confirm the essential status quo: educational finance monopoly, the monopolistic assignment of all tax dollars to the monopoly's own schools. And the effect of that: shelter the public schools from normal stimuli to excel, and choke off the natural financial resources needed for the independent alternatives to thrive. America's parents, then, are caught in a financial vise, one jaw being rising taxes to pay for monopolistic public schools, and the other jaw being rising tuition in private schools as they struggle to survive. Under that regime, the private schools shrink or die in poor and middle-class areas."
There was much more in the message, but these passages make plain the effort to get the person in question to step outside the lockless prison of inertia and the status quo. The executive's representative responded with a litany of comments drawn directly from the monopoly's bag of smoke screens. For example, I was told, yes, ". . . we are focusing our efforts on reforming the public education system . . ." (rather than reforming education). Then, sad to say, I was advised that "School choice and other alternative financing mechanisms are critical issues in reform, but not the only answers to achieving meaningful improvements." That, of course, is the hackneyed "get in line" smoke screen, as if parental freedom were just another of the countless "education reforms" we are bombarded with. School choice is not an "educational reform" but an attack on finance monopoly and the introduction of parental freedom to the process of allocating tax dollars assigned to education. It is, thus, a systemic, architectonic reform, within which any other more particular "reform" can be implemented more easily, and with greater chance of success, than within the change-resistant status quo.
And then, in what one hopes was a fit of distraction, I was advised that "America's parents and other concerned business and community members must not look at the system as monopolistic, but rather democratic." Say what? "Must not look at the system as monopolistic" — even though that is exactly what it is? Must see educational finance monopoly as "democratic" — even though finance monopoly (an economic arrangement) has nothing to do with democracy (a political arrangement) and in spirit violates the very idea?
These expressions, lacking any empirical or analytic foundations, are typical of persons and groups that have been mesmerized by inertia and the status quo. In that condition, they are susceptible to EFM's smoke screens, and regularly are blinded by them. Thus, the group one might most expect to realize that monopoly is destructive, and that parental freedom would end the monopoly and introduce comparison and competition, is regularly a laggard. The exceptions stand out brilliantly — for example, David Brennan of Ohio, Chrysler President Robert Lutz, Apple's Steven Jobs, Chicago's Jack Roeser, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Association of Commerce, so instrumental in supporting school choice in Wisconsin. But their willingness to step outside the status quo, and to go to the systemic root of our educational difficulties is so exceptional as to prove the rule: business lags, not leads, the effort to achieve the most fundamental and true reform: parental freedom in education via school choice without financial penalty.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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