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- Contents:
IN THIS REPORT
Readers will find a summary of the latest great news from Wisconsin, a description of other D.C. and state-level
parental freedom developments, a comment on an exemplary epiphany in Illinois, David Kirkpatrick's pithy reflections on school violence, and the Editor's View on the Blum Center's future: it never left, but it's BAACCKK!
Milwaukee's Parents...............................................4
Educational Finance Monopoly (EFM)...............2
On June 10, 1998, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a 4
- 2 decision on the constitutionality of the Milwaukee Parental Choice
Program of 1995 (MPCPII), handed down what represents a powerful victory
for Milwaukee's parents. We had anticipated such a
victory (see Freedom Report #46), but the extraordinary strength of the
decision gives it great importance and utility. It endorses and magnifies
the earlier excellent dissent of Circuit Court Judge Peggy Roggensack (see
Freedom Report #51.) It can provide great impetus to the educational liberation
of parents across the nation. It relies strongly on the Witters, Mueller,
& Zobrest decisions to resolve all federal constitutional issues. And
it rejects every effort of EFM defenders to find state-level constitutional
impediments.
Before 1995 MPCP had allowed up to 1,500 low-income Milwaukee
students to attend private, non-sectarian
schools in the city. The great legislative breakthrough
of 1995, covered in Freedom Report #23, was the Wisconsin legislature's
expansion of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). Governor Tommy
Thompson announced on January 14, 1995, his intention to include a provision
in his budget proposal that year which would expand MPCP, increasing the
number of eligible students and allowing the participation of religious
schools.
After a tremendous political effort fought against Wisconsin's
traditional defenders of EFM, the legislature finalized
its approval of Gov. Thompson's budget on June 29, 1995.
The legislature had only modified Gov. Thompson's
proposal by capping the program's enrollement at a higher
level than he — at 15,000 students. Readers may
remember that the Ohio legislature was on the verge of
approving the Cleveland Scholarship Program at the same
time, but the expanded MPCP — MPCPII — represented the
very first legislatively-approved genuine school
choice program on the American mainland.
Wisconsin defenders of EFM, including local teachers'
unions and the Wisconsin branch of the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU), immediately began challenging
the legality of the expansion and filed a lawsuit, arguing
that MPCPII violated the separation of church and state.
On August 25, 1995, the Wisconsin Supreme Court
granted their request for a temporary injunction which
halted the implementation of MPCPII while the courts
decided upon its legality. At the request of Gov. Thompson,
the case skipped lower courts and was heard first by
the Wisconsin Supreme Court. With one member abstaining
due to conflict of interest, the Court rendered a
stalemate decision, 3 - 3, in March of 1996, sending
the case back down to the lower courts.
Dane County Circuit Court Judge Paul Higginbotham, sympathetic to the smoke screens of EFM's defenders, ruled against MPCPII's inclusion of sectarian schools on August 15, 1996. He then issued his formal decision against the expansion of MPCP on January 15, 1997, alleging that MPCPII violates Wisconsin's constitution. As expected, the Wisconsin Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Higginbotham's decision, 2 - 1, on August 22, 1997. That day, however, also produced the strong and useful dissent of Judge Peggy Roggensack, mentioned above. The case then returned to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, whose configuration had changed since 1996 through judicial elections. This month the Court produced its final decision. The ACLU has already announced that it will appeal to the United States Supreme Court. They may again attempt to halt the implementation of MPCPII through injunction, but it is rare for the Supreme Court to grant such requests.
Even as we all rejoice in a most welcome and rational
court action, we must remind ourselves that it is but a small
step toward complete parental freedom in education. As
noted below, MPCPII is limited geographically, and is
limited by understandable but arbitrary income restrictions.
But, such artificial restrictions, coupled with the court's
clear resolution of all issues of principle, should ignite
"parent envy" and provide great stimulus for the spread of
parental freedom.
It is also vital to recall that the Supreme Court is not
the liberator of Milwaukee's parents. Governor Thompson
and the state legislature did that liberating in 1995,
only to be trapped by judicial review at lower court levels. The
Supreme Court has, at last, liberated the legislative
process from the intrusions of lower courts acting as
non-accountable super legislatures.
CALIFORNIA
On June 2 California voters rejected Proposition 226,
the "Paycheck Protection" initiative, 53% to 47%. Prop. 226 would have
required unions to obtain annual written consent from their members before
spending membership dues on political causes. Supporters of Prop. 226 claim
that labor groups and allies of those groups spent about $20 million in
their campaign against the initiative. The California Teachers Association
by itself spent $6.4 million to defeat Prop. 226 — more than the entire
budget of the proponents. Proponents of Prop. 226 promise to rejuvenate
the initiative in two years. (Wall Street Journal, 06/04/98)
INDIANA
State Senator Teresa S. Lubbers introduced a tax credit
proposal into the Indiana legislature earlier this year which was modeled
after the package of educational choice legislation most recently passed
in Minnesota. (See Freedom Report #54.) The bill was approved by the Senate,
but it died in the House. However, Sen. Lubbers notes as a sign of progress
that educational choice is "definitely a campaign issue now," and that
"House Republicans are using it as a top issue as they campaign across
the state." (Education Week, 06/03/98)
MAINE
Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Nancy Mills has
ruled that it is not unconstitutional for the state of
Maine to exclude religious schools from its tuitioning
program. The lawsuit was filed last July 31. See Freedom
Report #54 for additional details. The Institute for
Justice, leading the plaintiffs in the suit against the state, said
that they will appeal the case to the Maine Supreme Court.
(Education Week, 05/06/98)
MICHIGAN
The Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity
have released a report, published by TEACH Michigan,
entitled, "Empowering Parents To Drive Education Reform,"
which clearly outlines the group's dedication to the
principles of educational choice. It states emphatically,
"We believe that school choice is critical to ensure that
Detroit residents can benefit from the city's resurgence."
It also argues that, "Choice is a civil right, as basic as
democracy, because it lets families vote with their feet
on the best school for their child."
OHIO
Both houses of the Ohio legislature approved a bill at
the end of May which makes mid-course changes to the
state's budget. One of the amendments to the bill, added
by Rep. Mike Wise, requires that the Cleveland School
District provide transportation to students in the Cleveland
Scholarship Program just the same as it is provided to
eligible non-scholarship private school students in the
city. Opponents fear that this amendment may surreptitiously
increase the number of students who can take advantage
of the scholarship program when it frees up money in the
program's budget which was originally intended for transportation.
The Senate approved the measure on a vote of
23 - 9, while the House approved it 79 - 14. (Plain Dealer,
05/29/98, 05/27/98)
OREGON
Bill Sizemore, the Republican candidate for governor
in Oregon, has presented his list of proposed educational
reforms for the state. Among other things, Sizemore proposes
a state tax credit for private school tuition costs,
worth as much as half of what it costs to educate public
school students in Oregon. Last year Oregon spent
approximately $5,400 per student. Sizemore's Democratic
opponent, incumbent Gov. John Kitzhaber, has stated
that he opposes tax credits for private school tuition
costs. (Oregonian, 05/30/98, 04/24/98)
PENNSYLVANIA
Representative Dwight Evans, a bold advocate for school
choice, was reelected last month to the state legislature despite a $150,000
campaign against him, funded by local unions, including the teachers' union.
Moreover, Rep. Evans won 75% of the vote.
As described in a May 15 editorial in the Wall Street
Journal ("Breaking Ranks"), Rep. Evans had always been a
strong supporter of organized labor. He quickly lost
all backing from that constituency in April when he pushed
through a piece of legislation which allows the state
to take over failing public schools in Philadelphia and implement radical
reforms in union contracts. Readers may recall Rep. Evans from Freedom
Report #55. He is a leading Mayoral candidate for 1999, and in 1997 he
sponsored a $5,500 school choice proposal for low-performing Philadelphia
students. Rep. Evans vows to continue fighting for school choice as part
of his Mayoral campaign. (Wall Street Journal, 05/21/98, 05/15/98)
Meanwhile, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua has formally requested
that Ed Rendell, current Mayor of Philadelphia,
and David Hornbeck, Philadelphia School Superintendent,
consider a voucher proposal for the city which would
allow students to attend private and parochial schools.
Cardinal Bevilacqua stated in his letter to them that a
voucher program of that kind would alleviate a number
of problems: overcrowding in the city's public schools, the financial problems
of the school district, and vacancies in diocesan schools. Cardinal Bevilacqua
has long supported school choice, but this is the first time he has offered
specific ideas to city officials. (Philadelphia Inquirer, 05/28/98)
WASHINGTON, D.C.
On May 20 President Clinton fulfilled his promise to
veto the "Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Act." No references
to an override attempt have yet been made. The bill was designed to provide
about 2,000 D.C. students with $3,200 tuition scholarships which could
be redeemed at local public, private, or religious schools. The Senate
passed the measure last November and the House approved it last month.
(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 05/21/98)
According to a Washington Post survey conducted between May 11 and May 17, 56% of D.C. residents stated that they favor the use of private or religious school tuition vouchers for low-income students, compared to 36% who oppose the idea. 60% of blacks who were surveyed favor the use of vouchers, while only 32% oppose it. It is useful to note that the results were so strong despite the relatively destructive manner in which the Washington Post phrased its question: "Do you favor or oppose using federal money in the form of vouchers to help send low-income students in the District to private or parochial schools?"
The Washington Post also noted in its May 23 article,
which released the results of the survey, that support for
school choice among D.C. residents "was in sharp contrast
to the views of elected city leaders." (Washington Post, 05/23/98)
NATIONAL NEWS
On June 9 Ted Forstmann and John Walton announced the
Children's Scholarship Fund (CSF), in which they
pledged $100,000,000.00 to be matched by the same amount
by other donors in various cities across the land.
These dollars are to provide private school scholarships
to students in financial need, children who, according to
Forstmann, ". . . have so far been deprived of equal
opportunity in education."
Magnificent efforts such as this, carrying on the pioneering
efforts of Golden Rule in Indianapolis and PAVE in
Milwaukee, will have three immediate and irrefutable
positive results: first, they will provide direct and vital
assistance to thousands of individual students and parents;
second, the enhanced ability of those parents to choose
often under-financed private schools, will help those
schools remain vital until public policy can be changed; third,
the overwhelming response of parents to these privately-funded
voucher programs will provide further evidence
that parental choice rather than educational finance
monopoly (EFM) should be the public policy motif for funding
education.
Freedom Report readers will not miss the irony of President Clinton's comment when informed of CSF: he praised it for ". . . helping to widen the circle of educational opportunity." This is the same President who has expended every effort to prevent the widening of the circle of educational opportunity for poor children and parents in the District of Columbia and across the land, the same President who is EFM's most important defender.
ACQUISITIONS
u As part of its "Issues
in School Choice" series, the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation
has published Voucher Wars: Strategy and Tactics as School Choice Advocates
Battle the Labor Leviathan by Daniel McGroarty. Voucher Wars is Number
2 in the series. To order copies of Voucher Wars, please contact the Friedman
Foundation at: (317) 681-0745.
u The Blum Center recently
received a significant study from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy
in Michigan:
"Do Private Schools Serve Difficult-to-Educate Students?
Analysis and Michigan Case Studies of How Nongovernmental Schools Educate
Disabled, At-risk, and Incarcerated Youth." In this study Janet R. Beales,
adjunct scholar for the Mackinac Center, and Thomas F. Bertonneau, senior
education policy analyst for Mackinac, explain that although conventional
public schools handle the vast majority of difficult-to-educate students,
those whom they "can or will not enroll are often sent, at public expense,
to private schools with expertise in educating a certain type of student."
For copies of the study, please contact the Mackinac Center at: (517) 631-0900.
u Focus on the Family has released a research report written by Perry Glanzer and Travis Pardo: "A Critical Look at the National Education Association." In a concise manner this booklet outlines the political views and tactics which are endorsed by the NEA, as offered in their own literature. It discusses the options which teachers have who disagree with those views and tactics. Glanzer and Pardo also encourage the promotion of parent-empowerment reforms, along with reforms which would limit the extraordinary influence of the NEA. For copies, please contact: Focus on the Family, Colorado Springs, CO 80995.
NOTEWORTHY ITEM
u The National Congress
of Black Conservatives (N-CBC) announced in the premiere issue of its newsletter,
The Tuskegee Rail, that its education reform platform for the 21st century
centers on a total commitment to the achievement of "full school choice
options," including tuition vouchers, tuition tax credits, home schooling,
and charter schools. The N-CBC states that its principal task is to fortify
the national grassroots movement for school choice through coalition building
and political activity. It will promote these ideas in its forthcoming
"National Campaign for School Choice."
An American historian once noted that "microcosm is macrocosm." If a case happens to illustrate the characteristics of a class of cases, it may be used to represent the class in truthful ways. The same theory gave rise to public opinion polls. If their samples are accurately designed, they can produce a picture much like the larger public they represent.
It is in this spirit — that once in awhile a particular case arises which nearly perfectly represents the general class of cases — that I call to the attention of Freedom Report readers a truly perceptive letter to the editor in Education Week of June 3, 1998. The letter was authored by Mrs. Marilyn Keller Rittmeyer of Arlington Heights, Illinois. Mrs. Rittmeyer is a mother of five school-age children, and has been a public school educator for 22 years. With such a professional history, there can be no surprise that Mrs. Rittmeyer until recently believed as habit inclines us to believe until something jolts us and prompts us to reconsider. In her words, she ". . . believed that suburban education was outstanding"; and ". . . that school administrators and boards listened to parents and teachers, and tried to respond respectfully to their interests and needs."
But the enrollment of Mrs. Rittmeyer's children in those
schools introduced a very concrete and personal dimension into what had
been a more abstract view. She ". . . began questioning whether my own
children were being harmed both intellectually and emotionally by attending
the local public schools." While this concern is bad enough, it is not
the central message of Mrs. Rittmeyer's letter. The central and powerful
message is, rather, that when she and other concerned parents tried to
achieve change within the system they were rebuffed, time and time again.
Their repeated efforts to have the public school system itself create a
charter school using the Core Knowledge Sequence were repeatedly denied.
Hoop after hoop was placed before them, and each time they jumped through
one they received not the reward of parental satisfaction but just more
hoops, as the system all the while was refusing ". . . to recognize the
desires of parents and teachers who prefer a more
traditional, content-rich program."
Unable to achieve parental influence within the educational finance monopoly (EFM) to this point, Mrs. Rittmeyer has enrolled her own children in Lutheran and Catholic schools. She had been suspicious of such schools' ability to provide solid education ". . . at less than half the cost of public education," but reports now that ". . . they do an exceptional job with the core academics." And, though she did not choose these parochial schools for their religious educational offerings, she is now ". . . pleased with the moral and ethical foundation they are receiving in these close-knit school communities."
Mrs. Rittmeyer thus describes as well as I have ever seen them described these two realities: first, that the basic and natural tendency of EFM, as with monopolies generally, is to serve itself, not its parental clients; second, that educational miracles regularly — and not surprisingly — occur under the "natural moral contracts" created by free choice of schools, public or private.
And the conclusion she draws from her experiences is the
exactly right conclusion: "After two years of struggle, we are more convinced
than ever that, as parents, we must have the right to choose the education
that is best for our children." She deserves, as do all, parental freedom
of education via school choice without financial penalty.n
- In Financing Education: The Struggle Between Governmental
Monopoly and Parental Control (Transaction Publishers, 1996), I noted
that the expanded Milwaukee school choice program enacted in 1995, MPCPII,
was being obstructed by EFM's use of judicial intrusion. But I noted,
also, that advocates of parental freedom could be delighted that MPCPII
was the test case for it "...fully meets the criteria of ruling legal precedents,
and...can once and for all put to rest the contention that parent-assigned
tax dollars constitute undue entanglement of church and state" (p. 122).
In the same book, I noted concerning MPCPII that, when EFM forces saw the results of the November 8, 1994, elections re the Wisconsin legislature, they knew the new Republican majorities owed them nothing. When the Governor announced in January, 1995, that his executive budget would include MPCPII, EFM's smoke screens spewed forth everywhere but "...became at once shriller and weaker day by day,..." (p. 147). They reminded me of the Wicked Witch of the West, shriveling up when touched by water.
When the State Supreme Court announced that, indeed, MPCPII met all constitutional tests and could commence this fall, the Wicked Witch arose one more time, in the guise of Wisconsin's Secretary of Education, a classic EFM defender. That poor man, completely distraught that Milwaukee's parents would now break the monopoly's stranglehold, was moved to say that a) we should have a moment of silence for the death of religious freedom and b) we could anticipate "a Timothy McVeigh" starting a church and school in Milwaukee now. So the California witches smoke screen comes to Wisconsin, from the lips of a failed monopolist. Monopoly in Milwaukee goes not with a bang but with an extremist whimper.n
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