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- Contents:
IN THIS REPORT
Readers will encounter excellent information regarding
state-level developments, including the good and bad in D.C., and the bad,
good, and better in Wisconsin; an argument for how the five school choice
successes can lead to greater success in the future; and pertinent information
regarding the Blum Center and the Educational Freedom Report.
COLORADO
State Treasurer Bill Owens, who just won this year’s
Republican nomination for Governor of Colorado on August 11, has stated
that he favors genuine parental freedom in education through vouchers.
Mr. Owens believes that vouchers for K-12 children in private schools are
in no way different from the GI Bill. Mr. Owens won with 59% of the vote.
Mr. Owens has made school choice so central to his campaign that he is
calling himself the "children’s candidate." General elections will be on
November 3. (Denver Post, 08/12/98; Rocky Mountain News,
08/07/98)
FLORIDA
Mr. Jeb Bush, son of former President George Bush, will
officially appear as the Republican party’s gubernatorial candidate in
Florida this fall. Mr. Bush, like Mr. Owens from Colorado (see above),
has chosen to make school choice the centerpiece of his campaign to reform
education in the state. His running mate will be Florida Education Commissioner
Frank Brogan. His specific proposal for education reform includes a plan
that would allow students in chronically failing schools either to attend
different public schools or to receive tuition vouchers worth a percentage
of the state’s approximate per-pupil spending amount of $3,500. Vouchers
could be redeemed at private schools. (Miami Herald, 08/06/98)
KANSAS
Dedicated readers of the Freedom Report will know
well of State Representative Kay O’Connor and her tireless efforts in the
school choice battle — both locally and on a national level. They may also
recall her latest endeavor: Parents In Control (PIC), an organization of
national scope dedicated to the legislative achievement of school choice
in each of the states.
PIC has now announced that it has formally received three separate Kansas incorporations to further its mission: first, there is "PIC, inc.," which serves as a 501(c)(4) organization, for promotion of political efforts; second, the "PIC Education Foundation" is a 501(c)(3) organization for education and research; and third, the "PIC PAC," which may endorse political candidates. Donations to the 501(c)(3) PIC Education Foundation are tax deductible.
PIC also moved to a new address: 815 S. Clairborne, Suite 225, Olathe, Kansas 66062. Their telephone number is 1-800-277-6368 (PIN# 3092). Those who would like either to be added to PIC’s mailing list or to start a PIC chapter in their own states should contact Rep. O’Connor at the above address.
MICHIGAN
Organizers of "School Choice YES!" — a movement which
proposes to amend Michigan’s constitution to allow school choice and then
establish a statewide K-12 tuition tax credit plan for public and nonpublic
school students — have been claiming a steady rise in support of their
proposal across the state recently. In July three members of the state’s
Congressional delegation — Reps. Pete Hoekstra, Vernon Ehlers, and James
Barcia — expressed their support of School Choice YES! and its goals on
a School Choice YES! questionnaire. On the same questionnaire over thirty
state and federal Democratic candidates said that they were in favor of
the initiative.
Now, after Michigan’s primaries, School Choice YES! organizers report that they have already "won" ten seats in the state House and three in the Senate. These are districts in which both the Democratic and the Republican candidates have voiced support for the initiative. School Choice YES! President Gary Glenn stated that the August 4 primary election proved strong bipartisan support for "ending the discrimination in our state tax and education policies by giving K-12 parents the same kind of tuition tax relief Michigan already gives to parents of older students." (In Michigan a tuition tax credit plan already exists for parents of college-aged students.)
In related news, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce voted in April to support initiatives which significantly expand parental freedom in education, such as voucher and tax credit proposals. Also, the office of Gov. John Engler has issued a brochure, targeted to Detroit voters, which promotes general support of greater parental freedom in education. (Detroit Free Press, 08/12/98; School Choice YES! press releases, 07/14/98 to 08/06/98; TEACH Michigan press release, 07/08/98)
MINNESOTA
Three efforts to dilute the state's tax credit and deduction
plan for parents with children in private and public schools failed to
pass the legislature this year. Two of the bills would have imposed regulations
on nonpublic schools that accepted students whose parents claimed the tax
credit and deductions. Those regulations would have included admission
and dismissal policies and graduation requirements. The third bill would
have lowered the maximum income level for families that claimed tax breaks.
(School Reform News, 05/98)
Meanwhile, Gov. Carlson continues to support school choice in a fervent manner: in May he visited New Hampshire in an effort to promote parental freedom in education. He denies that he is campaigning for the Presidency, but says that he is making sure that "school choice becomes part of the Presidential debate." (New York Times, 05/15/98)
WASHINGTON, D.C.
On August 7 the House of Representatives approved a $6.8
billion budget for 1999 which includes a voucher proposal authored by House
Majority Leader Richard Armey. The proposal would provide vouchers worth
up to $3,200 to low-income D.C. students which could be redeemed at private
and parochial schools.
The Senate is not scheduled to vote on the budget until next month, but congressional staff members say that Senator Dan Coats has indicated that he will add a voucher proposal to the Senate version of the budget bill. (Washington Post, 08/07/98)
WISCONSIN: the Bad, the Good, and the Better
July in Wisconsin brought some unsightly displays of
how educational finance monopoly (EFM) operates — and one excellent picture
of how political leaders can function when they are freed of EFM's embrace.
"Unsightly" Case #One: on July 26 it was reported that the state's primary EFM bureaucracy, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI), had decided that single-sex private schools could not participate in the new, expanded Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCPII), for such places violated the DPI's understanding of gender neutrality. This attempted intrusion on the free choices of private schools, parents, and students obviously violated legislative intention, and was clearly doomed to failure. Nonetheless, despite the monumental authorizing achievement of Wisconsin's legislature in 1995, and the June 10, 1998, state Supreme Court's affirmation of MPCPII, EFM's bureaucratic last bastion was still trying to send in a destructive torpedo. Four days later, on July 30, DPI, confronted by a clear legislative intent to act against DPI if necessary, announced that it would not attempt to enforce its announced ban on single-sex school participation in MPCP II.
"Unsightly" Case #Two: on July 29, one Milwaukee School Board member, a supporter of school choice, described for a conference how school choice has stimulated state schools to work better in other nations and how, by analogy, we might expect the same happy results here.
Another School Board member, not a school choice supporter, said the presence of the new choice program would not help Milwaukee's public schools because the bureaucrats who run the system ". . . don't intend to be affected by competition . . .." "They are going to concede 6,000 students, 25,000 students if it gets that high, simply because they are insulated within the walls of a bureaucracy that need not respond to competition."
As to case #One: even after death, muscles sometimes contract, appearing still to be alive. As to case #Two: if one believes what is there said about bureaucratic walls, the only suitable comment is: "Joshua, come blow those horns!" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 7/26/98, 7/30/98, 7/31/98)
But then, on August 4, comes a statement from Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist that can serve to remind us that Wisconsin remains a prime source of progressive insight. Mayor Norquist announced that he would support expansion of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program to much higher income levels, or even the complete removal of income limits. Under such a true choice condition, he would support also removal of residency requirements for Milwaukee teachers. This double-barreled pronouncement, reported in the August 5 Journal Sentinel, is particularly interesting in connection with the Editor's View on page four of this Freedom Report.
The Journal Sentinel, much opposed to true parental freedom in education, then commissioned a public opinion poll for city residents to list their reaction to the Mayor's proposal. 60% of those polled favored the current income-limited Milwaukee choice program, while only 33% oppose it. As to expanding the program to include middle-and upper-income students, 60% favor that, as well, and only 34% oppose it. Milwaukee's citizens, it seems, know that beginning choice with income limitations may be entirely rational, but stopping it there is not.
And, just as we are going to press, a new Louis Harris poll commissioned by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute reports overwhelming statewide support for school choice. We will provide more details in Educational Freedom Report #63.
NATIONAL NON-NEWS
President Clinton, as expected, once again fulfilled
his threat to veto any of Congress’ moves toward school choice. On July
21 he vetoed the Education Savings and School Excellence Act — Senator
Paul Coverdell’s proposal — which was approved in April by the Senate and
last fall by the House. (See Freedom Report #54.) (Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel, 07/22/98)
NOTEWORTHY ITEMS
¨ In
recognition of the initiative of the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation
to extend the Blum Center's life; and because of the appropriateness of
linking the names of two parental freedom pioneers; I am delighted with
this Freedom Report issue to change the Report's name
from "The Blum Center's Educational Freedom Report" to "The Friedman-Blum
Educational Freedom Report." Now let no one ever suggest again
that I am a rigid stick-in-the-mud! QLQ.
¨ Because
the Blum Center has begun something of a new life this month, it is appropriate
in this issue of the Report to offer our readers an updated look
at the Blum Center Staff:
- Dr. Quentin L. Quade, now Professor Emeritus and
Executive Vice-President Emeritus at Marquette University, will remain
Director of the Blum Center.
Mr. David W. Kirkpatrick will continue as a Distinguished Fellow at the Blum Center, although his essays will no longer appear as inserts in the Freedom Report. Rather, watch for essays by Mr. Kirkpatrick in issues 64, 68, and 72.
Mr. David D. Urbanski now functions as the Blum Center's Managing Director.
Mrs. Donna Blackburn continues at the Blum Center as its Administrative Associate.
Mr. Joseph Schneider, Blum Center Associate, has taken a job at Lamar University in Texas as a government documents librarian. Good luck to Joe and his family!
Mr. John Zemler, our newest staff member, has taken over for Mr. Schneider as Blum Center Associate, in charge of maintaining our information library.
- We now have five genuine school choice programs fully
enacted by open, responsible legislative processes: the tax credit programs
in Minnesota, Iowa, and Arizona; and the voucher programs in Cleveland
and Milwaukee. The Arizona effort is held up by state court intervention,
while the others are in operation. Cleveland will be tested in the Ohio
Supreme Court; Milwaukee cleared the Wisconsin Supreme Court handsomely
but may yet be considered by the U.S. Supreme court; while the Minnesota
and Iowa initiatives, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's Mueller
case and the powerful Luthens application of Mueller in federal
district court, appear to confront no substantial legal hurdles.
Each of these five policies represents tremendous political achievement: the lifting of decades of social inertia supporting educational finance monopoly (EFM) in K-12 funding; and the neutralizing of the powerful and well-funded vested interests, educational unions and bureaucracies, which live off that monopoly and preserve it by cozy relationships to political institutions. At the same time, we must realize that each of these achievements is small, partial, and far removed from complete parental freedom in education. That blessed objective will be achieved in the U.S. when, in 50 states and the District of Columbia, all parents are free to choose among all schools without financial penalty.
Whether these five splendid achievements turn out to be truly beginnings for parental freedom, or just momentary impediments for EFM, depends in part on the clarity with which we see them, and the clarity political leaders demonstrate as they consider next steps. Are the five enactments first steps toward the North Star of parental freedom, steps that should lead to other and wider programs in other states and the beginning five, as well? Or are they just transitory "experiments," like uncounted other educational experiments first propagated by and then dumped by EFM's "professionals"?
The Clarity of Our Own Vision
In the broadest sense, any policy initiative is experimental, of course. Every legislative venture should be tested, perfected, and abandoned if it produces unintended and undesirable results. But there are other senses in which even small and partial school choice programs are unlike all other "reforms," and are not experimental, either. True school choice after all, just empowers parents, even as it reduces the power of self-serving monopolies. We do not really need a lot of experiments to show the validity of those two actions, for:
1. We already know that, as a motive for seeking the child's welfare, parental and guardian love for those children is superior to EFM's drive for monopoly control of school finances.
2. We already know that it is unjust to hold parents responsible for their children's upbringing and then tell them they cannot decide the school they want as a partner in that upbringing, including the moral formation of those children.
3. We already know that monopoly is conducive to self-serving rather than client-serving, and that the ability of clients (parents, in this case) to choose provides a strong incentive for the producers (schools, in this case) to perform well, to satisfy those clients.
4. We already know that comparative and competitive environments similarly encourage more efficient use of resources, so that costs can be restrained, thus enhancing the attractiveness of those offering the service.
5. And because we know all those things we know also that, as between parental freedom and finance monopoly, the burden of proof must be on the monopoly, as always, and not on the free alternative. Knowing this, we know as well that our current situation, in which EFM is accepted by many as natural just because it has been in place a long time, is essentially perverse, a reversal of the natural order of things.
And what does all this knowledge mean for the five "experiments" with school choice? It means that at the moment of their enactment they have already achieved great things: they have helped to restore the natural order between parents and schools; they have helped create the "natural moral contracts of choice" which exist among parents, students, teachers and staff when they freely choose their schools; they have begun to create a level playing field so that schools can be compared, and artificially starved independent schools have a fair chance of survival; they have started to erode the finance monopoly that is so destructive of educational virtue; it means, in short, that unless someone can show that parental freedom actually produces negative educational outcomes — a claim not made yet by even the most rabid defenders of EFM — school choice cannot fail the "experiment." The five beginning steps, without question, should provide stimulus for new and longer steps toward the North Star in all political jurisdictions.
Encouraging Political Precision
American politicians in the various states are in several different camps on the question of replacing EFM with parental freedom in education. Some of them are essentially "owned" by EFM, so dependent on educational unions and bureaucracies for political funding and support that one cannot expect them to serve either parents or the truth of things. Even if they understand that monopoly is destructive, they will not quarrel with it until it is so palsied that they can ignore it without threat to their political lives. Champions of parental freedom cannot expect timely help from such people.
Others are not subservient to EFM but are so enslaved by social inertia, the habit of EFM long in place, that they have come to imagine that "is" to be an "ought." They may be very unhappy with various educational symptoms, but simply unable to pierce through to the EFM cause. Workers for school choice need to keep working with such people, asking them to go from episodic treatment of symptoms to systemic treatment of cause; and asking them to realize that EFM is only an accident of history, an indefensible policy option when subjected to objective analysis.
Still others have gotten to the first plateau of genuine understanding: they may see that monopoly is destructive in a restricted sense — in Milwaukee or Cleveland, or other large cities, for example — but not realize that it is generally destructive, that though the problems of EFM are most severe in the most needy environments, the whole of education will be better served to the extent parents are free to decide the schools their children will attend. These people need to be encouraged to remove the blinders from their eyes, and see beyond the "crisis of the inner cities" — though such cities are entirely legitimate places to begin expanding parental freedom. They need to be encouraged to examine, think about, and ultimately emulate the political leaders who have provided the clearest calls for parental freedom. They need to examine, for example, such bi-partisan models as Minnesota's Republican Governor Arne Carlson, and Milwaukee's Democratic Mayor John Norquist. Mayor Norquist is an eloquent spokesman for genuine parental freedom in education, and fully recognizes that there is no logical reason for limiting such freedom to the confines of his city, nor to restricted economic classes. At the same time, he realizes there were very good reasons for Wisconsin school choice to start in Milwaukee, where EFM's bad results were most drastically seen.
Governor Carlson, in turn, has provided the clearest statement by an American politician of what I call the North Star of parental freedom: he realizes that states should decide what their educational objectives are, how much money they want to spend on them, divide those dollars by the number of children to be served (with appropriate supplements for educational handicap and financial need), and then invite parents and guardians to assign those dollars to best achieve the educational welfare of the children in their care.
Mayor Norquist did not begin his educational journey with complete understanding. He worked his way to it because he was open to the truth of things. Governor Carlson was not born with a clear view of the North Star he came to articulate, but he, too, was open to the truth of things and permitted the harsh reality of EFM to educate him as to the need for basic reform. And neither of these men imagined that it would be possible to move from the depths of EFM captivity to complete parental freedom in one large step. They know many steps will be needed — but they know, also, that unless they have a North Star to guide them, they will never step in the right direction. And they know, too, that there is nothing radical in having as an ultimate objective the complete liberation of Milwaukee or Minnesota parents. Parents have educational freedom in enlightened democracies around the world, and that is the proper goal for America's parents, too — however many partial, gradual steps may be needed to get there.
To ensure that the first five steps lead to more and greater
advances in parental freedom, those working in that vineyard will need
to find effective ways to encourage politicians in all jurisdictions to
take rationally compelling actions in favor of school choice. If the North
Star is not plainly described and seen, individual, partial actions are
less likely to be intelligently directed, less likely to attract support,
and less likely to add to the overall momentum needed to halt EFM and expand
parental freedom. Like the rest of us, politicians can learn from the power
of good example — examples such as Arne Carlson and John Norquist.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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