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- Contents:
- IN THIS REPORT
Readers will find commentary on excellent parental freedom developments in many political jurisdictions; they will through these various portrayals see growing momentum flowing from the splendid progress of 1998; and they will encounter an Editor’s View examining two cases of educational finance monopoly (EFM) extremism.
THE SNOWBALL ROLLS
INTO NEW YORK
Long time readers of the Freedom Report will recall
that in 1995, when Wisconsin and Ohio legislatures acted in favor of Milwaukee
and Cleveland parents by expanding the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program
(MPCP) and creating the Cleveland Scholarship Program, the Freedom Report
pictured a snowball at the top of a hill, ready to gather mass and momentum
as it proceeded.
EFM-induced court delays suspended the motion of the snowball for a bit, but the June, 1998, Wisconsin Supreme Court action, followed by the more recent U.S. Supreme Court’s splendid inaction has freed the snowball for what we hope is a climactic descent.
Consider: during a 95-minute speech on January 14 New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani proposed that one school district in the city of New York implement a private and religious school voucher program for its students, using Milwaukee’s MPCP as a model for design. This would “give poor parents the same opportunity to make choices about their children’s education that the richest and most affluent parents in New York City have.” Mayor Giuliani’s office said that such a plan would have to be approved by the Board of Education and the Schools Chancellor, Rudy Crew.
To no one’s surprise, Mayor Giuliani’s request drew immediate criticism from the “usual suspects.” The Mayor, however, is convinced that a program like MPCP would create competition among public schools and force the failing public schools to improve. Mayor’s Giuliani’s statements in this case are reminiscent of a Blum Center slogan: “If you love public schools, you will love parental choice in education (PCE) — the surest way to encourage excellence in those public schools.” (New York Times, 01/15/99; Newsday, 01/15/99)
ARIZONA
On December 24 Arizona Superintendent of Public
Instruction Lisa Graham Keegan announced that she will push a statewide
voucher program for low-income students in the 1999 legislature.
If passed, Keegan’s proposal could be the first statewide private school
voucher enactment in the nation. The details of the plan will not
be released until the end of this month.
The proposal has the support of both Governor Jane Hull and Senator John Huppenthal, who heads the state Senate’s education committee. The governor’s education advisor said that “The governor has always supported school choice,” and that, “She has always said that any kind of voucher bill is fine with her.” Huppenthal likewise stated that as long as Keegan is behind the proposal, “that’s all we need. I would be willing to support whatever she is trying to do.”
Meanwhile, the governor’s office said that it expects the Arizona Supreme Court to make a decision any time now on Arizona’s $500 tuition tax credit law, approved by the legislature in 1997. (Arizona Republic, 01/06/99, 12/25/98)
FLORIDA
The Miami Archdiocesan Education Foundation has
pledged to donate $150,000 toward Miami-Dade County’s version of the Children’s
Scholarship Fund. The Children’s Scholarship Fund is the national,
privately funded private school voucher program started by Theodore J.
Forstmann and John Walton. Archhbishop John Clement Favalora of Miami
said, “We fully support this effort and realize the important link between
community involvement and educational opportunities to all students — regardless
of income.” Parents can apply for the scholarships by calling 1-800-805-KIDS.
The deadline for applications is March 31. About 1,250 students in
grades K-8 will be chosen to receive the $1,000 scholarships by lottery
on April 17, based on financial need. (Miami Herald, 12/29/98)
ILLINOIS
The Editor has often noted the relative reluctance
of Catholic leadership to invite Catholic citizens to work for parental
freedom for all. There are growing exceptions, thankfully.
Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George is a recent powerful example: he is calling
eloquently for tax credit action in Illinois, and his voice can only help
the efforts already promised by Governor-elect George Ryan and Illinois
legislative leaders. A new and stronger coalition is being built.
(Chicago Tribune, 12/16/98) May such exceptions soon become the rule.
MASSACHUSETTS
James A. Peyser, executive director of the Pioneer
Institute for Public Policy Research, resigned from his position on the
state Board of Education so that he can legally run for the office of state
education commissioner. He has stated that if elected he will create
a “market-driven educational system” through deregulation, independently
managed schools, and parental choice. (Boston Globe, 12/24/98)
NEW MEXICO
The Catholic Schools Office of the Archdiocese
of Santa Fe, has created a web page that argues in defense of school choice
for the state (www.nedcomm.nm.org/~cathschl). It outlines a number
of common myths that are put forth by opponents of school choice.
If you host a school choice web page, the Office encourages you to add
a hyperlink to their site. The Office can also be contacted through
their new e-mail address: “cathschl@nedcomm.nm.org”.
Additional news from
NEW YORK
On December 18 the state legislature approved Governor
George Pataki’s charter school law, which, according to the Center for
Education Reform, is strong among charter school laws. The Blum Center
has always regarded charter schools as a good step, though an incomplete
one, towards the goal of parental freedom in education. As a result,
we tend to agree with the Wall Street Journal’s December 24 editorial on
the matter, “Unchartered Gotham,” when it says, “We ourselves prefer vouchers,
which give schools and parents maximum autonomy. But charters are
a start, and New York City kids, some of the nation’s most deprived, deserve
a chance to be part of their experiment.” (CER memorandum, 12/18/98; Wall
Street Journal, 12/24/98)
Although religious schools are explicitly not eligible under the new charter schools law, religious leaders — particularly black and Hispanic ministers — across the state have said that they will nonetheless take advantage of the new law, arguing that each church could organize a secular arm with a secular school that only teaches religious instructions after hours. (New York Times, 12/29/98)
OHIO
The Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program
has released several documents which together provide a gold mine of statistics
and information on the Program. They include the program’s official
newsletter, the Cleveland Scholarship & Tutoring Program Empowerer.
The January, 1999, issue of the Empowerer contains an overview of the program,
summaries of program evaluations, instructions for participation, quotations
from participating parents, and future goals for the program. Also
published was a program status report and compilation of outcomes for the
program. For copies of these materials please contact Ms. Bert Holt
at 216-787-9732.
PENNSYLVANIA
Some encouraging pieces of information have come
to our attention which make it seem likely that school choice legislation
will make progress in the Pennsylvania legislature this year. Readers
may remember that Governor Tom Ridge, after his fall reelection, was pushing
a voucher proposal at the end of 1998 — during the last few frantic days
of the year’s final session. Senators at that time finally decided,
however, to hold the Governor’s voucher proposal over until this year’s
session, after a new legislature had been sworn in.
Now that the new session has begun, indications remain strong that the snowball may be building momentum in Pennsylvania. Gov. Ridge continues to support the measure. Senator Jeff Piccola, whose district includes the state capitol, has said that he expects a school choice law to be on the books by June of this year. Also, Representatives Dwight Evans and Anthony Williams — members of the Black Caucus — say that they will now vote for school choice. Evans’ support is particularly important, since he is both the Democratic Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and an announced candidate for Mayor of Philadelphia this year. (Information provided by Blum Center Distinguished Fellow David Kirkpatrick.)
VIRGINIA
Parental freedom advocates in the Virginia legislature
announced in December that when the new session began this year, which
it did on January 13, they would start pushing for school choice via tax
credits. The state’s new Governor, Republican James S. Gilmore III,
has meanwhile said that although he will not push the issues of abortion
restriction or school choice, he will nonetheless consider proposals that
are made on those issues.
That receptivity will be tested immediately. Two Republican delegates — Jay Katzen of Fauquier County and Richard Black of Loudon County — are currently working to introduce a proposal that was developed with the help of the Family Foundation and of Mrs. Patricia Grigsby of the Tax Equity Committee, a citizens’ commission which is searching for ways to lower county government costs.
Their proposal would create a system of tax credits good towards both private educational costs, like Minnesota’s current law, and also donations to tuition organizations, like Arizona’s current law. The bill would be phased in over five years. Families who do not pay taxes could qualify for privately funded scholarships. A draft of the proposal and arguments in favor of the proposal are at Mrs. Grigsby’s web site (http://members.aol.com/ergnatz/). For more information, please contact Mrs. Patricia Grigsby at 540-668-6682. (Washington Times, 12/12/98; correspondence from the Tax Equity Committee)
WISCONSIN
An October poll done by the Institute for Survey
and Policy Research for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee shows that
Wisconsin residents increasingly favor the idea of providing vouchers to
students so that they can attend the private and religious schools of their
choice. 60% of residents said they “strongly favor” or “favor somewhat”
using vouchers or tax credits. This represents a large increase since
the same poll was conducted in the spring of 1997, when only 49% favored
the use of vouchers or tax credits. This year 14% said they somewhat
oppose vouchers or tax credits, while only 21% were strongly opposed.
Four percent didn’t know. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 12/17/98; Wisconsin
State Journal, 12/17/98)
The Milwaukee Public School (MPS) system has recently been running a radio campaign which features the concepts of parental choice within the confines of MPS, trumpeting the capacity of parents to choose among a variety of schools within the MPS system (e.g., magnet schools). It is interesting to note how MPS uses the language of choice in these recent ads. Even within their own monopolistic structure, the administrators of MPS recognize the attractiveness of the language of choice. By appealing to parents in this way, they are demonstrating the power of offering choice to parents, even within the confines of their monopoly. Again, the slogan rings true: “If you love public schools, you will love parental choice in education (PCE) — the surest way to encourage excellence in those public schools.” Whether they realize it or not, the administrators of MPS are confirming that truth, too.
NATIONAL NEWS
As the year begins, it is appropriate to mention
that one of the new members of the United States House of Representatives
this year is long-time friend of the Blum Center and advocate of parental
freedom in education: Mr. Tom Tancredo of Colorado. In 1992 he headed
the movement in Colorado to get school choice on the ballot, and now his
work on education issues has earned him a position on the House Committee
on Education and the Workforce. After being elected to that committee,
he said, in reference to school choice, “It’s certainly the most significant
and important change we can make in education. I intend to spend
my time on the committee advancing that.” The two other new members
of that committee — Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky and Jim DeMint of South
Carolina —are expected to be sympathetic to Mr. Tancredo’s views, since
they campaigned on similar ideas. (Education Week, 12/16/98; InsideDenver.com
[online version of the Rocky Mountain News], 11/04/98)
Two recent news pieces of national interest deserve some brief attention, sad though they be. First, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris released a study in November which said that American high school graduation rates — the highest in the world for generations — are now below the rates of most industrialized countries. (New York Times, 11/24/98) Second, a recent poll conducted by Public Agenda, a public policy research group, says that even though an overwhelming majority of teachers, parents, and students claim that they have excellent schools, employers and professors are increasingly unhappy with the behavior and abilities of recent high school graduates. “Reality Check: The Status of Standards Reform” can be obtained from Public Agenda’s web site (http://www.publicagenda.org).
NOTEWORTHY ITEMS
* The Blum Center has just received a copy of CEO
America’s “The Year in Review 1998.” We would like to take this occasion
to congratulate CEO America and its President, Fritz Steiger, for helping
parents and children across the nation, helping independent schools, and
helping acclimatize the public to the principle of choosing. Readers
can obtain copies of the report by contacting CEO America at 501-273-6957.
* Since we first announced the Blum Center’s web page (http://www.mu.edu/blum) last summer, several new sections have been added, and improvements have been made. Most importantly, the Blum Center’s web page now features the full text of all issues of the Freedom Report, going back to its beginnings in the summer of 1993. This effectively provides an online history of the school choice movement since that time. The page now also provides hyperlinks to other web sites and more details about the Blum Center itself.
* For the latest contribution to the legal argument concerning the constitutionality of school choice, see Michael Vaccari’s “Public Purpose and the Public Funding of Sectarian Educational Institutions: A More Rational Approach After Rosenberger and Agostini” in last fall’s issue of the Marquette Law Review.
It is obvious that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision not to review the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s resounding affirmation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program has jarred many EFM defenders. They had hoped against hope that a perverse judicial review might rescue their failed political efforts to stop the growth of parental freedom. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, many people tied to the status quo have become shriller and angrier — and further removed from rational discourse. In this essay we will look at two interesting cases in which being upset appears to have led to being unbalanced.
Going to the Extreme
Jesse Jackson, Jr., Democratic Congressman from
Illinois, visited Milwaukee December 8, 1998, to stir up enmity against
“vouchers” and efforts to expand the freedom of parents to decide the schools
their children will attend. His attack on parental choice in education
(PCE), and his defense of educational finance monopoly (EFM), were sponsored
by well-known defenders of EFM, the ironically-entitled People for the
American Way and the local branch of the NAACP. These two organizations
are routinely allied with the educators’ trade unions (NEA and AFT) and
with their bureaucratic, school board, and PTA partners. Together
they strive to maintain the current finance monopoly, working to prevent,
at all costs, parental participation in the allocation of tax dollars raised
for education.
Representing such groups, as he was, Congressman Jackson’s anti-PCE, pro-EFM remarks could be taken for granted, no doubt. The extremity of those remarks, and their pronounced detachment from reality, could not be taken for granted, however. They had to be heard to be believed. As reported in the December 9, 1998, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Mr. Jackson referred to the voucher movement in America (as if there were one movement instead of 50) as an effort to keep white students separated from black students (though the Milwaukee and Cleveland programs are assisting probably the most integrated schools in their communities, and though the very nature of true choice will benefit first and foremost financially-deprived minority students and parents, inevitably). But these silly comments only served to get him warmed up. He went on to say that voucher programs were segregationist political schemes that originated in the Deep South (Ohio? Wisconsin?) and that “The crowd who lost the Civil War is now running the federal government.”
Mr. Clinton would probably find that interesting, if it was he Mr. Jackson was talking about. And if it was not he, then presumably it was the GOP majorities in Congress, the heirs of Lincoln, whose government won the Civil War. Either way, what is obvious is that Mr. Jackson, trying to impede parental freedom’s expansion, broke loose from the limitations of rational dialogue. Even Madison’s Wisconsin State Journal, no friend of parental choice, was moved on December 21 to opine: “With friends like U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., the public schools don’t need any more enemies.”
Official Pollster of EFM?
The November 25, 1998, issue of Education Week
carried a story of a new poll, sponsored and released by a group called
Recruiting New Teachers Inc. (RNT). RNT says its objectives are to
“raise esteem for teaching, expand the pool of prospective teachers, and
improve the nation’s teacher recruitment and development policies and practices.”
If The Essential Profession, the new “study” based on the new poll, is
any indication, RNT is especially devoted to increasing educators’ salaries
and protecting their self-regulated privileges, such as credentialing.
What caught my eye, however, as well as pro-EFM Education Week’s attention, was one aspect of the poll in which school choice was made to seem inferior to another thing: teacher quality. Education Week reported that “Improving teacher quality also won soundly when it went head-to-head against school choice.” It reported the poll as asking whether it was better to put a fully qualified teacher in every classroom or allow parents to play a role in assigning tax dollars already raised for K-12 education.
Such a question poisons and foredooms the answer by falsely juxtaposing two perfectly good and in no way mutually-exclusive values (teacher quality and parental freedom are not opposed, they are not even related — each is a legitimate answer to a different legitimate question, as will be seen below). That RNT, dedicated to the EFM status quo, would foster such craziness is not surprising, perhaps, but I could not imagine a responsible polling organization prosecuting such a thing. But, Education Week reported, Louis Harris conducted the poll and, in doing so, he criticized the abundant recent polls showing tremendous and growing citizen support for school choice. Those surveys advantage vouchers, he is alleged to have said, by “never having an alternative pitted against them.”
All this seemed bizarre and, frankly, unbelievable. I decided I needed to study the primary source, The Essential Profession “study” and the poll on which it rested. I did not imagine the Louis Harris organization could stray so far from reality. Sadly, I was wrong. The poll did exactly as Education Week had said: at question #39 it asked the poll respondents to choose between good teaching and parental choice. But, of course, any reasonable person would reject this as an entirely unnecessary either/or. Parental choice is an alternative to monopolistic control of school taxes, not an alternative to “good teaching.” Indeed, it is reasonable to expect school choice to encourage good teaching. “Good teachers” are an alternative to “bad teachers,” not an alternative to parental freedom.
“Parental freedom” is an answer to this question:
when it comes to assigning some or all of the tax dollars dedicated to
education, would you prefer parental freedom or the bureaucratic monopoly
now in place? “Good teachers” is an answer to this question:
do you prefer good teachers or bad ones in the nation’s classrooms?
To ask, as Louis Harris and RNT did, would you choose “good teachers or
vouchers,” as if choosing parental freedom meant choosing bad teachers,
is absurd. “This and that” not “this or that” applies in this case,
as Gandhi would say. One might as well ask America’s parents if they
want their children to have water to drink or clothes to cover their bodies;
food or shelter; police protection or fire protection. The answer,
in every case, will be the same: We want both! And so should
it be in education: we want good teachers and parental choice and
adequate funding and greater efficiency. False, mutually-exclusive
questions preordained to produce desired results and thereby help to tarnish
school choice are unworthy even of EFM’s defenders. The Wisconsin
State Journal might observe that, with friends like that, EFM needs no
enemies. 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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