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- Contents:
- IN THIS REPORT
Readers will be reminded by our year-end summary that 1997 was a banner year, probably the most fruitful year, for the effort to secure parental freedom in education. Definitive legislative successes in Arizona and Minnesota, steps toward conclusive court action in support of legislation in Ohio and Wisconsin, and imaginative preliminary efforts in many other states and the nation provide a clear impression of gathering momentum helping the process of parental liberation. We are delighted to bring you the "glad tidings," and with them to wish you all a Blessed Christmas and an even more productive New Year.
New Mexico - New Mexico's Governor Gary Johnson on November 5 announced a new, many-sided program of educational reforms. The overall theme given these reforms could not be better expressed: "For the Children's Sake." In choosing such a title, Governor Johnson and his colleagues show in one simple expression that they, unlike the opponents of school choice, know the difference between the end and the means when it comes to education. The educational welfare of the children is the end; schools and school systems are the means. In a finance monopoly, the means (state-run schools) is treated as if it were the end.
While there are many worthwhile components in the Governor's proposal, the one of most interest to Freedom Report readers will be the provision for parental choice in education summarized below. In proclaiming that, Governor Johnson once again shows clear thinking and logical power: he wants to "let the [educational] money follow the child," the very essence of enlightened educational finance policy. Although Governor Johnson has yet to release the details of his educational choice plan, it will incorporate the following goal: comprehensive school choice for every child in New Mexico by the year 2002 through a scholarship program, resulting in greater educational accountability, competition among schools, and generally higher standards. The scholarships would be phased in over a period of five years and could be redeemed at any school — public, private, or parochial.
With this initiative Governor Johnson joins the ranks of gubernatorial leaders of the school choice effort such as Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, Arne Carlson of Minnesota, and George Voinovich of Ohio.
Arizona - On April 7 Governor Fife Symington signed into law a bill which allows tax credits of up to $500 for those who make donations to private and religious school tuition organizations. On that day Arizona joined Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin in the list of states which have completed the legislative enactment of school choice. The tax credits will also apply to up to $200 of activity fees at public schools in Arizona. Tuition organizations may not provide scholarships for the dependents of any donors, so this bill represents limited, but nonetheless genuine, parental freedom in education. Not long after the law was passed the Arizona Education Association (AEA) began battling it, collecting signatures for a November, 1998, referendum. After having collected only 10,000 of the minimum 40,000 signatures required by the filing deadline, opponents of the law resorted to litigation. On September 29 the AEA with other opponents filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law. The plaintiffs filed a special action suit in order to expedite the process. The law is scheduled to go into effect next month.
California - Governor Pete Wilson held a press conference on November 13 to announce the successful completion of the signature drive to qualify the "Campaign Reform Initiative" for the June, 1998, ballot. The initiative would require labor unions and employers to obtain annual written and signed consent forms from union employees before deducting any money from their salaries to support political purposes. Proponents of the initiative exceeded their goal of 700,000 signatures by more than 40,000. It requires just over 433,000 approved signatures to get an initiative on ballot. Governor Pete Wilson reintroduced the voucher bill which he had strongly supported last year as part of a Republican-sponsored package of education measures. No action was taken on the bill this year. The bill would have allowed students in poorly performing schools to be eligible to use "opportunity scholarships" at a private school of choice.
Colorado - Tom Tancredo, executive director of the Independence Institute, has filed papers with the state for a ballot initiative issue in 1998 that would give Colorado residents the vote on whether or not to allow the legislature to create a comprehensive voucher system. Although Colorado residents rejected a school choice ballot initiative in 1992 by a large margin, Mr. Tancredo says that this initiative will be different. For one thing, the 1992 initiative was a very specific plan with broad effects — each student in the state would have received a $2,500 voucher. As an initiative, it could not allow for the political adjustments that regularly occur in a legislature, which might have made a voucher proposal more politically feasible for Colorado at that time. The 1998 initiative would allow the legislature to develop a program on its own, tailoring it to fit Colorado's political situation. Moreover, support for school choice in Colorado has grown since 1992. Since May almost 3,500 parents have joined a class-action lawsuit against Denver Public Schools, contending that only a private school voucher system can rescue their children from the failing public schools of Denver.
Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) - The American commonwealth known as CNMI, whose capitol city is Saipan, lies east of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean. CNMI attained great significance among school choice proponents this year, since the commonwealth's legislature has been reportedly on the verge of passing a comprehensive voucher program for its islands. Governor Froilan Tenorio and Representative Heinz Hofschneider of the commonwealth's legislature introduced the Parental Choice Scholarship Program this year. The program would give a scholarship, probably worth $1,500, to each of the 12,000 students in the CNMI student population which they could redeem at any school chosen by their families. Natural support for vouchers has developed unimpeded among the people there, and the support for vouchers is almost unanimous. There are no teachers unions in CNMI.
Delaware - Representative Deborah H. Capano introduced HB 367 into the Delaware House on June 25. It would have created a scholarship program to offset the costs of private school tuition. Through HB 367 the state would have provided annual scholarships to the parent or guardian of any Delaware student attending an accredited non-public school, and whose public school district would have chosen to participate in the program by vote of school board or referendum. The program would have been phased in one grade year at a time, starting with First grade in the first year, until all grades are eligible after twelve years. Individual scholarship amounts would have varied, based on family income, with a maximum value of $2,700. HB 367 never left the education committee.
Florida - On April 8 both the House Education and Senate Education Innovation Committees approved a school choice bill, the Public Education Enhancement Program (PEEP). Rep. Steve Wise sponsors PEEP in the House and Sen. John McKay sponsors it in the Senate. The bill would create pilot scholarship programs in specified counties in Florida, allowing up to 5% of the counties' public education student population to move to nonpublic settings. Scholarships would be worth 50% of the per-pupil spending of the school from which the student came. The House committee approved the bill on a vote of 6-1 and the Senate committee on a vote of 9-5. The Florida legislative session ended on May 2, however, without further progress in either the House or Senate. Nonetheless, this marks the farthest a school choice bill has advanced so far in Florida's legislature. Since May, Rep. Wise made some revisions to PEEP and refiled it for next year.
Illinois - The legislature has passed a $500 refundable tax credit measure for families with children in public, private, or parochial schools. Gov. Jim Edgar has not said if he will sign the bill yet. If made into law, the bill would allow families who have spent at least $250 on school expenses to claim one fourth of those expenses in tax credit, with a maximum credit of $500 per family. The measure was sponsored by Rep. Kevin McCarthy and Sen. Dan Cronin. It passed the House on April 23 by a vote of 61-50 and the Senate on November 14 by a vote of 38-14.
Iowa - At the beginning of the year Governor Terry Branstad included a provision in this year's state budget which would have doubled the state's tax credit for private school tuition costs — from $100 to $200. We reported in March that the provision was approved by the Senate Education Committee on a vote of 10-5 and in April that it had passed the Senate Ways and Means Committee. In the final days of the legislative session the provision became entangled with another controversial issue when a group of Senators attached an amendment to it which allowed tax credits for fees at public and nonpublic schools. This increased the cost of the legislation by over $3 million and disallowed additional action on the bill in 1997. The provision is alive and eligible for debate next session.
Kansas - Representative Kay O'Connor introduced on February 14 her "Parent Control of Education Act" as HB 2379. For years the Blum Center has used Rep. O'Connor's legislation as a model for school choice advocates. The bill proposes to establish a statewide program, phased in over six years, which would eventually allow all K-12 students in the state to attend the school of their choice — public, private, or parochial. The value of vouchers would also be phased in, so that by the sixth year students in grades 9-12 would be eligible for vouchers valued at 100% of the state's per-pupil expense. The current expense is $3,648. No action was taken on Rep. O'Connor's bill this year.
Louisiana - On May 1 the Louisiana Senate Education Committee defeated a $300 million voucher proposal for private and parochial schools on a vote of 4-3. This bill, SB 343, was sponsored by the Committee's Chair, Senator Tom Greene. SB 343 would have phased in the "Educational Voucher Program" over the course of twelve years, starting with kindergarten and first grade. The voucher amount would have been based on the state per-pupil spending figure, which currently stands at about $2,500. Senator Greene introduced the bill in order to empower parents and introduce competition into Louisiana education. The bill had the support of Ed Steimel, former president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry and the Public Affairs Research Council. Unsurprisingly, SB 343 was opposed by the Louisiana School Board Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the local teacher unions.
Maine - 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.
Also in Maine, the legislature approved a law in June which resolved that the State Board of Education establish a committee to study charter school and school choice initiatives that have been developed in other states. The report must be submitted no later than January 1, 1998.
Maryland - Senator Larry Haines introduced a tuition tax credit bill at the beginning of the year. It would have provided tax credit of up to $1,000 for tuition paid to a private elementary or secondary school, including religiously affiliated schools, on behalf of a dependent child. The bill received a hearing on February 12 before the Taxation Committee, but no further action was taken on the bill.
Michigan - Several significant events occurred in Michigan this year. In February TEACH Michigan released the results of its school choice poll, conducted by EPIC/MRA and taken of 600 Michigan residents. 54% said they would favor a proposal that would allow state tax dollars to fund scholarships which would allow poor children in failing schools to attend a public, private, or religious school of their parents' choice. Then in April the "politically influential" Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity publicly stated their interest in school choice as an educational reform option. Finally, a group of Detroiters plans to begin collecting signatures in January to put a constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot next year which would allow tax money to be used for private school tuition.
Minnesota - At the beginning of 1997, Governor Arne Carlson, strongly devoted to the goals of parental freedom in education, announced that he would veto any education bill that didn't expand school choice to all parents in the state. Not taking him seriously, the legislature passed a $6.7 billion public education bill with no school choice provisions in it. He vetoed that bill on June 4 and refused to budge from his original position. As a result, the legislature passed a bill on June 26 which included provisions to expand school choice in Minnesota, although Gov. Carlson's original proposal for expansion, released last December, was somewhat compromised.
The compromise expands the state's current tax deduction law for educational expenses for tuition, fees, textbooks, instructional materials, and transportation costs to also include summer school and camp costs, tutoring, and personal computer costs. The deduction will be increased from $650 to $1,625 per child in grades K-6 and from $1,000 to $2,500 for grades 7-12. The bill also includes a refundable tax credit of $1,000 per child, capped at $2,000 per family, for families with annual incomes of less than $33,500. The credit can be used for all of the items listed above except "tuition." While very limited, the prorgam indeed offers true choice to all Minnesota parents, and its passage brings Minnesota all the closer to the goal of comprehensive choice in education.
Missouri - In May the state Senate approved an amendment to a larger tax bill which would have provided tax deductions for parents with children in Missouri's private and parochial high schools, on a vote of 18-13. The entire tax plan then went to a House-Senate Conference where the amendment has since been dropped from the plan. The amendment was backed by Senators John Schneider and Peter Kinder. With it parents could have taken up to $2,500 in deductions for tuition, school supply, or transportation costs.
New Hampshire - A group of state legislators (Sen. Jim Rubens and Reps. Brown, Alger, Arnold, Riley, and White) has drafted a bill, HB 2056, for the 1998 session which would enable school districts to vote to reimburse parents for public, nonpublic, and home school tuition costs.
New Jersey - In January the school board of Lincoln Park, a small New Jersey school district, voted to introduce a voucher program for its high-school aged students. Lincoln Park has no high school of its own, and members of its school district have become greatly dissatisfied with the low standards of nearby Boonton High School, where Lincoln Park students attend. However, on April 7 the state Board of Education sent Lincoln Park a letter, barring it from continuing with its school choice plan. The letter, from Education Commissioner Leo Klagholz, unsurprisingly stated that the plan did not have legitimate legislative approval. Vouchers would have been worth $1,000 and could have been used at any public, private, or parochial school.
New York - A school choice bill was introduced in both the Senate and the Assembly this year in New York's legislature. The bill, S. 3150 in the Senate and A. 5354 in the Assembly, was the 1997 version of the Maltese-Hikind bill mentioned in Freedom Report #42, the 1996 year-end issue. This year the bill had four sponsors in the Senate and twelve in the Assembly. The bill included a three year phase-in component which would have provided tuition vouchers to the poorest third of the students in the state during the first year, to the poorest two-thirds during the second year, and to all students in the third year. The value of the vouchers would also have been phased in, ending up at 28% of public school per-pupil tuition cost for K-8 students and 40% for 9-12 graders after the third year. No action was taken on the bill.
Ohio - The Ohio District Court of Appeals ruled 3-0 against the Cleveland parental freedom effort at the beginning of May, stating that the Cleveland Scholarship Program is unconstitutional based on both federal and state constitutional grounds. The Court decided that the program "provides direct and substantial non-neutral government aid to sectarian schools." The case has since been accepted in the Ohio Supreme Court, and the Court decided unanimously on July 24 to allow the program to continue during the 1997-98 school year while they judged the merits of the case. The legislature had voted in June to expand the program from 2,000 to 3,000 students, and to add a fourth grade to it. Scholarships are worth up to $2,500, and the program had over 6,800 applicants this year. The program is currently being considered by the Ohio Supreme Court. Meanwhile, State Treasurer J. Kenneth Blackwell, along with Rep. Jim Jordan and Buckeye Institute President Richard Leonardi, released a plan in November to expand the scholarship program to all students in the state and also raise the scholarship value to $4,000. This demonstrates that there are in fact no logical geographical boundaries to the spirit of choice.
This summer Paul Peterson, Jay Greene, and William Howell released the first independent study of the program. It found that participants showed moderate gains in reading (five percentile points) and even greater gains in math (fifteen percentile points). The study also found that 63% of parents using scholarships last year were "very satisfied" with the "academic quality" of their children's schools. Of the parents who applied last year but were not accepted, only 30% were satisfied with their childrens' schools.
Oklahoma - The Committee for Oklahoma Educational Reform (COER) developed a plan this year for basic education reform and enhancement of parental freedom through the amendment of the state constitution. This summer COER circulated the plan to state legislators to promote it and to gather feedback.
Oregon - This year the Oregon School Choice Task Force has been working on two school choice efforts. The first was HJR 33, a House Joint Resolution which would have allowed Oregon voters to amend the state constitution through referendum to explicitly allow state funding to be given to parents so that they could send their children to the public, private, or parochial school of their choice. HJR 33 did not leave the House Education Committee. Secondly, they have been working on a draft of a constitutional amendment proposal to create a tuition tax credit program.
Pennsylvania - In a situation much like that of Lincoln Park, New Jersey (see above), the Southeast Delco school board was considering a limited voucher proposal for its students entering grades five through ten. Also, Rep. Dwight Evans sponsored a bill in the House which would have given $5,500 scholarships to students in low-performing schools. No action was taken on either proposal.
Texas - Senator Teel Bivins introduced a bill into the Texas Senate this year, SB 1206, that would have given vouchers to students in low-performing schools which they could have used for tuition at private or parochial schools. Voucher amounts would have varied from district to district. The bill passed out of the Senate Education Committee, but was never brought up for a vote on the Senate floor. A House version of the same bill, HB 318, sponsored by Rep. Henry Cuellar, passed out of the Education Committee also, but the private school choice aspect of it could not be added to it (via amendment) on account of parliamentary maneuver. The progress of these efforts in Texas appears to be a reflection of growing awareness of and support for school choice. In a poll done early in the year by the University of Texas' office of survey research, 62% of Texans said they would support a comprehensive voucher system.
Utah - Representative Evan Olsen sponsored a bill this year, HB 102, which would have provided state income tax credits to parents who choose to send their children to non-public schools. The credits would have been phased in over several years, until they were worth up to $2,000 per year per child. No action was taken on HB 102.
Vermont - On June 27 Rutland County Superior Court Judge Alden Byron ruled that it is unconstitutional for the Chittenden school district to cover tuition costs for children attending religious schools in the area. (See Freedom Report #39.) The Chittenden school board voted shortly afterwards to appeal the case to the Vermont Supreme Court, where the case currently awaits a ruling.
Virginia - A private school tuition tax credit plan for Loudoun County is on its way to the county's Board of Supervisors for consideration. The plan was developed over a month ago by the county's Tax Equity Committee in an effort to relieve Loudoun County's overcrowding problem. Last year their enrollment was 21,733. This year enrollment in the county is 23,873, and they expect an enrollment of 25,917 next year. The tax credit plan would provide credits of up to $1,250 per child with a maximum credit of $3,000 for a family each year. The Tax Equity Committee resolved on November 3 to send the plan to the county's Board of Supervisors, on a vote of 5-4. Mrs. Pat Grigsby of the Tax Equity Committee estimates that the plan would save the county about $4,150 for each student that participated.
Washington State - State Attorney General Christine Gregoire filed a lawsuit at the beginning of the year which charged the Washington Education Association (WEA) with multiple violations of campaign finance law. The suit accuses the WEA of having failed to report correctly hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions and loans for political activities. Despite the attempts of the WEA to halt the proceedings, the state's Public Disclosure Commission ruled on August 19 that a political operative working for the National Education Association (NEA) was guilty of "falsely reporting her employer" as the WEA and failing to comply with proper campaign finance laws. On November 11 the WEA's lead counsel announced that they agreed with several additional allegations which they had previously denied, including that the NEA had laundered at least $465,000 through the WEA to affect state elections.
Washington, D.C. - On June 4 there was introduced into Congress the "Washington D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Act," an updated version of similar legislation introduced in 1995. (See Freedom Report #29.) The plan would essentially provide 2,000 scholarships, worth $3,200 each, which could be redeemed at public or private schools. In the end, the bill was pulled from the floor of Congress until a later time, probably in early 1998, when proponents can solidify even greater support for it against its opponents, which include President Clinton.
The Act was passed by the House as part of the District's Appropriations bill on October 9, but the Senate's version of the spending bill did not include it. Because the House version of the spending bill differed so greatly from the Senate version, House Speaker Newt Gingrich directed Rep. Thomas Davis to revise the bill so that it could pass more easily. In the revised version of the Appropriations bill, the Scholarship Act was rewritten as a stand-alone bill that the President could easily line-item veto without killing the entire Appropriations bill. With this deal having been made, Senator Edward Kennedy, who has blocked Senate bills in the past on account of vouchers, said that he would not filibuster the newly written bill. He would, however, vote against it, he stated at that time. The Senate was therefore able to pass the compromise version by voice vote on November 9, late Sunday night. Yet after the Senate-approved version of the Appropriations bill came to the House floor, its last stop before the President's office, Rep. Dick Armey pulled the Scholarship Act from the package. The bill is still fully alive. As stated above, proponents will delay further action on the bill until a time when greater support for it can be secured in all arenas.
Wisconsin - Dane County Circuit Judge Paul Higginbotham issued his formal 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 Wisconsin Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to uphold Higginbotham's decision. The dissenting opinion, however, was strong, energetic, and detailed. (See Freedom Report #51.) On October 15 the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to review the case during the current term.
Also, there were two elections in Wisconsin this year which were pertinent to parental freedom in education. In the first, a position on the Wisconsin Supreme Court was won by incumbent John Wilcox. When the Court issued its 3-3 decision on the expansion of MPCP in March of 1996, Wilcox had voted in favor of the constitutionality of the expansion. His opponent was energetically sympathetic with the educational trade unions, who oppose school choice. In the second election, John Benson, the incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction and classic representative of educational finance monopoly, was reelected by only a small margin (54% to 46%) against Linda Cross, a public school teacher who believes in greater parental freedom in education. Although Mrs. Cross did not win, she did remarkably well after having been outspent 4-1 in campaign spending.
National Efforts - Congress was considering two proposals this session which would have promoted parental freedom on the national level. Neither, however, was able to pass Congress this session.
The first of these was the "A+ Education Savings Account" bill, authored by Senator Paul Coverdell and co-sponsored by Sen. Robert Torricelli. It would have allowed families to put up to $2,500 of after-tax dollars into a savings account each year for K-12 education expenses, including private and religious school tuition costs. The accounts would then have earned tax-free interest. The plan was originally introduced as part of the national tax plan last summer, but was removed after President Clinton threatened to veto the entire package on account of the plan. Versions of the plan were then re-introduced this fall as independent bills in both the House and the Senate. The plan was sponsored in the House this fall by Rep. Newt Gingrich, along with numerous co-sponsors, where it passed on a vote of 230-198 on October 23. In the Senate, however, opponents of the Coverdell A+ Accounts performed a successful filibuster on the bill, likening it to a voucher program and arguing that it would draw money and students away from public schools. Proponents of the bill failed to get cloture on it on two separate occasions — on October 31 and on November 4 — which would have halted the filibuster and brought the bill up for a vote. Although a simple majority of senators voted in favor of ending the filibuster on both occasions — 56-41 on October 31 and 56-44 on November 4 — the Senate requires a 60-vote majority to break a filibuster. Sen. Coverdell remarked that "come February 1998, this bill will be back before us, and we will ultimately secure passage of it."
The second bill with national scope was the "Helping Empower Low-Income Parents" (HELP) scholarship proposal, HR 2746, sponsored chiefly by Rep. Frank Riggs and additionally by Republican leaders and Democrat Representative Floyd Flake. This bill would have allowed school districts from across the country, with the approval of their states, to use money from the Title VI omnibus block grant to fund vouchers for low-income students. The vouchers could have been used at any public, private, or parochial school. Key lawmakers put the bill on a fast track after an October 24 committee vote on it was cancelled. The House voted 214-198 on October 31 in favor of letting the bill come to the floor without a committee hearing on it. Then on November 4 the House voted 228-191 against passage of HR 2746.
Note from the Director:
¨ Important developments
in the struggle for parental freedom in education indicated it would be
advisable to keep the Blum Center open through July, 1998. Funds were located
which make that possible. Hence, I am pleased to inform you the Center
will be up and running through July 31, 1998, instead of closing on May
31, as had earlier been announced.
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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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