- IN THIS REPORT
Readers will find major state-level school choice developments, comments on Ambassador Annenberg's action to enhance school safety, on charter schools, and on religion-rooted education, and an Editor's View on the Mythology of Monopoly.
ARIZONA
Rep. Lisa Graham, chair of Arizona's House Education
Committee, has introduced an education reform package that includes provisions
for a modest educational choice program that would initially cost about
$3 million. Known as the Parental Choice Grant Program, the measure would
make education grants of $1,500 available to a limited number of Arizona
families, allowing them to send their children to private schools if they
choose. In the program's first year, 2,000 students from low-income families
would be eligible for the grants. By the fourth year, the program would
expand to 8,000 students. Children with disabilities who enter the program
would be awarded larger grants. Supporters of the measure are hoping to
bring it up for a vote in the near future.
Ray Archer, an editorial writer at the Arizona Republic, has written in support of the program. In a January 31 column he observed how much the "education establishment" opposes even a small amount of competition: "If 2,000 school vouchers is the difference between life and death for the public schools, then they and we (the taxpayers) are in bigger trouble than anyone ever imagined." (Arizona Republic, 01/09/94, 01/13/94, 01/30/94 and 01/31/94)
COLORADO
Rep. Penn Pfiffner has introduced legislation (HB 94-1138)
that would allow Colorado families to deduct education expenses for their
children from state income taxes. Under the proposal, families could deduct
up to $10,000 for the cost of books, lab fees, home-schooling expenses
and tuition at private schools (both religious and non-religious) and at
out-of-district public schools. HB 94-1139, it should be noted, is a tax
deduction bill, not a tax credit bill. Colorado law requires approval in
a state-wide referendum before any tax credit legislation could be enacted.
Wishing to avoid a referendum battle at this time, Rep. Pfiffner and his
allies have decided to focus their efforts on securing passage of the tax
deduction plan.
HB 94-1138 has been referred to the House Finance Committee where it received a favorable public hearing on February 9. For further information, contact Mr. Judd Ptak at (303) 258-3457 or Mr. Doug Delaney at (303) 388-4411.
GEORGIA
On February 3, Sen. Roy Allen introduced legislation,
titled the Parental Freedom Act, which would resurrect an unused 1961 Georgia
school choice law. That law was rediscovered last August by Atlanta attorney
and educational choice advocate Glenn Delk. Sen. Allen's proposed amendments
would bring genuine choice in education to the state by making education
grants, worth one-half the public school per-pupil cost, available to Georgia
families for use at the private school of their choice. Applications for
the grants would be made to the local board of education. During the first
year of the new program, the local board would be required to approve at
least 20% of the applications. That minimum percentage of approved applications
would increase annually over 5 years until it reached 100%. With preferences
given to siblings of grant recipients and to returning grant recipients,
all other applications would be awarded by lottery. The Blum Center can
provide copies of the Parental Freedom Act on request.
KANSAS
Rep. Kay O'Connor has sponsored a legislative proposal
known as the Kansas School Voucher Act (HB 2754). The measure would make
education vouchers available to Kansas families for use at any legally
recognized private school. The number of families eligible to receive the
education vouchers under the program would increase gradually over five
years, beginning with those with lower incomes. Additionally, the monetary
value of the vouchers would increase gradually over five years, beginning
at 50% of the state's contribution to public school per-pupil expenditures
and concluding at an amount equal to the state's contribution. The measure
would also create student trust accounts. If tuition at a chosen private
school is less than the value of the voucher, the difference would be deposited
in a trust account and could eventually be used by the student to help
pay for a college education.
HB 2754 is expected to be given public hearings in mid-February. The proposal, and a Blum Center commentary on it, are available from the Center on request.
NEW JERSEY
Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler has made comprehensive
choice in education the centerpiece of his plan to revitalize education
in his city. Four years ago the Jersey City public school system was performing
so poorly that its operations were taken over by the state. Performance,
however, has not improved despite a series of reform measures and despite
generous per-pupil expenditures which now stand at more than $9,200. Mayor
Schundler is currently working out the details of his plan which he believes
will receive considerable support when introduced in the state legislature.
The plan, as it stands now, calls for scholarship grants that would permit Jersey City families to send their children to any local independent school. It also calls for city-wide public school choice as well as charter school options. Mayor Schundler hopes to deflect potential opposition from public school teachers' unions and various state legislators by building into his plan certain guarantees, including assurance that per-pupil expenditures in the city's public schools will increase while overall education costs to the state will not increase as a result of implementing comprehensive choice.
Mayor Schundler's proposal has the full endorsement of newly-elected Governor Christie Whitman, as well as State Education Commissioner Leo Klagholz. The proposal will likely be introduced in the state legislature some time this year. (Wall Street Journal, 01/20/94; Philadelphia Inquirer, 01/23/94 and 02/10/94; New York Times, 02/09/94)
WISCONSIN
A group of state lawmakers has announced an intention
to introduce legislation that would expand the Milwaukee Parental Choice
Program (MPCP) and to include religious schools among those available to
participants in the four-year-old educational choice program. The struggle
to create the MPCP, which began operation in 1990, was led by nationally-known
educational choice advocate Rep. Annette Polly Williams. Currently, the
MPCP provides education grants to more than 700 children from low-income
families. The grants cannot now be used at religiously-affiliated schools.
The bi-partisan group of legislators supporting expansion of the MPCP wants
to see the grants made available to more families and they want to permit
families to use the grants at local religious schools if they choose. Milwaukee
Mayor John O. Norquist, also a strong advocate of parental choice, fully
supports expansion of the MPCP.
SCHOOL SAFETY &
THE ANNENBERG GIFT
Ambassador Walter Annenberg's generous $500,000,000 gift
to help American K-12 education was prompted largely by his concern for
increasing crime and declining safety in America's public schools. The
grant's implicit question: "What can be done to promote safety and a more
tranquil environment in the public schools?"
That is not a bad question, but there are better ones, and we hope they, too, will be asked: "If they had choice without financial penalty, what parents would send their children to unsafe schools?" And "If their existence and prosperity depended on convincing parents of their attractiveness, what schools would tolerate an insecure environment?"
The pertinence and power of these better questions stems from a pertinent and powerful fact: America's private schools, even in the most depressed inner-city areas, already know how to maintain a peaceful educational habitat. It is characteristic of a place with clearly-established principles and freely-established moral "contracts" binding together school leaders, teachers, students, and parents. Under a genuine choice system, public schools no less than private ones would have the advantage of such an environment, for they, too, would be chosen, not imposed.
To ask simply how we might improve conditions in the public schools is to be a captive of that system. To ask, instead, of parents' reaction to unsafe schools if parents were free to choose is to submit all schools (the means) to the test of excellent performance (the end).
The Charter School Movement
Authorizations for charter schools, in which public school
systems contract with independent operators to run public schools for a
school district, are proliferating around the nation. As seen from the
Blum Center, how do such efforts look?
Charter schools are better than no change at all, one can safely say. They can provide some human incentives for producing a better educational outcome, and such incentives are missing in the status quo. Insofar as they enable some differentiated schooling, teacher incentives, and the opportunity in part to compare outcomes, charters can reflect the spirit of educational choice.
But they are a very limited reflection of that spirit. A charter system does not break educational finance monopoly (EFM) — indeed some of its forms depend on maintaining monopoly fund distribution. None places allocation in parents' hands. A charter system may not attack central or local bureaucratic structures - indeed, it can give them new tasks. A charter system may create schools more efficient than today's public schools — but its cost-effectiveness may not withstand comparison to non-profit independent schools, already operating with great efficiency. A charter program may produce more and different public schools — but it cannot satisfy the ethical and religious concerns which motivate many parents to want schools reflecting the family's values, and would continue to discriminate against those parents.
Accordingly, it is possible to endorse a carefully-drawn charter provision as an improvement on a badly-performing status-quo, as a small step toward genuine choice. Seen as a substitute for true choice among all qualified schools — public, private, parochial, home — it would be a very bad mistake, yet another trap to be avoided. The very spirit which makes support for charters logical insists on going beyond them. We want to remember, also, that charter schools' provisions can be employed to deflect interest in and enthusiasm for genuine choice. That ironic effect has occurred in some jurisdictions.
CONTRIBUTION OF RELIGIOUS
SCHOOLS
The savings in cost of tuition at religious vs.
public schools is often cited by proponents of educational choice, and
opponents of choice often try to rebut such claims. In a recent article
aimed at discrediting the claims, Bruce G. Brodsky, President of the Nassau-Suffolk
School Boards Association, asserts that once the services offered by religious
schools are stacked up against the public schools' available services,
there is really no difference in cost. "If religious schools were held
to the same standards as public schools and taxpayers stopped paying for
the special services that public schools presently provide, the public
would realize the cost differences between the two are non-existent." ("The
Voucher Debate Adds Up to the Wrong Numbers," Newsday, 01/27/94)
In reality, religious schools do in most cases provide all worthwhile extracurricular and community services for a singularly powerful reason: their ethical and religious commitments demand it. Religious schools are inclined by their very nature to ensure academic excellence as an intrinsic part of religious and ethical formation. Tuition remains comparatively low, not because education is being shortchanged, but because religious schools must be responsive to parents' demands to the natural restraints of a voluntary versus monopolistic environment.
The religious schools and their clientele simply do not encourage nor tolerate bureaucratic excess and superfluous program proliferation. What the parents of religious school children do want is the extension of their own particular religious and ethical values to their children, via an appropriate educational environment. This is well portrayed by a faculty member at the Hebrew Academy, a Jewish day school in a large city in the southern U.S., "We don't teach values as a separate thing, because values are such an inherent part of their total education." The teacher's colleague remarked, "Our goals are high. I tell my students, 'The last thing you want to be is an ignorant Jew. You want to be able to learn and know on your own. . ..'" (Edward L. Harris, "Integrating and Preserving Values in a School Culture: A Qualitative Study of a Jewish Day School," Journal of Research on Christian Education, Vol. 2, No. 2, Autumn, 1993) In most cases the very nature of religious education provides a powerful motive for educational excellence, as a quality owed to the young. Contrary to Mr. Brodsky's surmise, religious schools provide comprehensive education, and do so efficiently, for innate reasons.
- On October 1, 1993, Wisconsin's Assistant Superintendent
of Public Instruction spoke some words which are rarely heard from defenders
of educational finance monopoly (EFM), though they seem implicit in much
of what is said by such people. On the Wisconsin Public Broadcast program
"Weekend," he said in effect that he seriously doubts whether parents,
even those financially able to do so, should be able to send their children
to schools of their choosing. This was an unusually bald expression of
the monolithic mentality of much of the bureaucratic establishment which
has grown up around monopoly-protected public schools.
Before going further, let us set the situation in which this Department of Public Instruction (DPI) representative found himself, and then let him speak for himself. "Weekend" was discussing a Landmark Legal Foundation lawsuit, announced the day before, which aims to show that the state-supported, limited choice experiment in Milwaukee is unconstitutional because it prohibits parents from choosing sectarian schools, thereby severely limiting their ability to choose among alternatives and violating their religious freedom rights. According to the suit, the Milwaukee program should be broadened to enable parents to choose religiously-oriented schools if they want that for their child.
In reacting against the lawsuit, the DPI representative asserted that the suit's objectives violated church-state prohibitions, but this contention was easily refuted by Landmark's Gerald Hill: aid to parents is not aid to churches. Rather than simply acknowledging the refutation, the DPI operative shifted his ground by saying that, even if there were no church-state problem, the Milwaukee program should not be broadened because it would be bad social policy. Correct social policy would presume the superiority of monopoly's public schools for children generally, and the inferiority of any parental judgment to the contrary.
The interviewer saw the radical monopolistic implications of this and the following exchange occurred:
The interviewer, incredulously: "...Let me see if I can understand this. You wouldn't argue that there is something wrong with parents sending their children, if they have the money, to private schools, religious schools. That's not wrong. That's not a bad thing."
The DPI Assistant Superintendent: "Well, I might argue that [it is wrong, indeed], because I believe that the need for all folks to go through a common school experience at some time in their life is extraordinarily important for this nation. We are not paying the kind of attention to our pluralism, the kind of commitment to diversity that we need to make."
It may be, of course, that the DPI representative suffered what amounts to a slip of the tongue, that he really did not mean what he said. But he offered no correction. Absent such a self-correction, we are left with his comment and what appears to be its plain meaning, which I would state as follows: "If I, a representative of the monopolistic public education bureaucracy, had my way, there would be little or no private schooling alternative, no practical way for parents rich or poor, black, brown, or white, religious or not, to choose educational options out of concern for their children. For all children should be made to go through the monopoly school experience which I defend as representing 'pluralism' but which, in fact, tramples on pluralism by forcing natural variety into a monolithic one-size-fits-all mold."
To put the best possible interpretation on things, let us assume that our DPI bureaucrat was trying to make a point about the socialization process which is supposed to occur advantageously in the so-called common school. But that is a myth. Private schools produce citizens as dedicated to the common welfare as anyone, and typically more self-disciplined than their public school counterparts. Private schools in major cities are typically more integrated than the public schools, increasingly abandoned by white parents. No, pluralism and diversity, the common good, and educational quality are clearly best served by empowering parents to choose the educational environment their children will experience. In the act of choosing, parents commit to support the school. In making itself choiceworthy, the school, public or private, is encouraged to excel. Thus does choice serve to perfect educational outcomes. The DPI's monolithic vision, by contrast, serves well only the vested interests of educational finance monopoly (EFM).n
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