- IN THIS REPORT
Readers will find updates on important state-level choice developments, a picture of Sweden's happy experience with true choice, a critique of ideological labeling of parents' freedom, reference to newly-acquired documents, and an Editor's View on educational finance monopoly.
ARIZONA
On February 18, Arizona's House Education Committee passed
Rep. Lisa Graham's educational reform package by a 6-4 vote. The package
includes a $3 million comprehensive voucher program, which would provide
$1,500 vouchers to a limited number of Arizona families. 30 of the 31 needed
votes have been secured in the House. ('Education Stuck at 30 Votes, Bill
Awaits Converts,' Phoenix Gazette, 02/27/94) If the bill passes
in the House, proponents expect it will face another fight in the Senate,
where 14 out of the 16 needed votes have been identified. Proponents have
been trying to gain enough support so that Gov. Symington will call a special
legislative session to consider the voucher issue.
Supporters of the Graham bill have lately found new support from Hispanic citizens and leaders. Parents, church leaders, members of the Arizona Hispanic Community Forum, Chicanos por la Causa, Valle del Sol and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce have all come forward to voice their support for the program, hoping it can help turn around Hispanic drop-out rates and poor education statistics. Frustrated with the status quo, Hispanic leaders have stated that "they want change regardless of who they have to cross to get it, including a sea of Democrats, the 27,000-member Arizona Education Association and nearly every other education organization." (Lisa Davis, 'Hispanics Back School Vouchers,' Phoenix Gazette, 02/16/94)
Those opposing Rep. Graham's legislation — including the Arizona Education Association, Arizona Federation of Teachers, Arizona School Boards Association and Arizona PTA — accept all provisions in the bill except the voucher provision. Ray Archer of the Arizona Republic comments on the situation: "The voucher debate is not about children or education, but about power and who controls it — bureaucrats or parents." (Ray Archer, 'Arizona's Education Choice: Empowering Bureaucrats or Parents,' Arizona Republic, 02/21/94)
ARKANSAS
Arkansans for School Choice, under the direction of Fort
Smith attorney Oscar Stilley, is leading a signature-gathering effort to
place a state constitutional amendment known as the Education Voucher Amendment
on the November, 1994, ballot. The Education Voucher Amendment calls for
genuine choice in education for all Arkansas families. In addition to providing
for state-wide public school choice, the proposed amendment would make
education vouchers available to parents who choose to send their children
to private schools, including religious schools.
Under the proposal, the voucher's value would increase gradually over 4 years, beginning in the first year of the program at 30% of the combined state and local public school per-pupil cost and increasing by the fourth year to 75%. Parents receiving education vouchers could redeem them for cash at the conclusion of the school year if their children demonstrate sufficient academic progress by passing one of several approved standardized examinations. The state legislature could waive the testing requirement in favor of other evidence of academic progress. For further information contact Arkansans for School Choice, Central Mall #516, Fort Smith, Arkansas 72903.
PUERTO RICO
Puerto Rico continues to be a hotbed of parental freedom
activity in the wake of Laws 71 and 18, passed in September and the previous
June, respectively, and supported by Gov. Pedro Rosselló. Rosselló,
still faced with dogged opposition from Puerto Rican teachers' unions,
declared his intention in January to forge ahead in 1994 with all of his
1993 promises.
Law 71, a comprehensive voucher measure, has already awarded 1,809 families whose income is under $18,000 with education vouchers to send their children to the school of their choice. Of the 1,809 vouchers (each worth $1,500), 1,181 were used to transfer between public schools, 317 were used to transfer students from private to the newly-formed public community schools, while 311 were used to transfer from public to private. (Clint Bolick, 'Puerto Rico: Leading the Way to School Choice,' Wall Street Journal, 01/14/94) These numbers exemplify a key fact: the essence of a voucher program is enabling choice, not the school chosen. Parents gain new control, and all schools will strive to be chosen. (See the Swedish case below.)
Law 18, the Education Reform Law, has meanwhile transformed 112 public schools into community schools, autonomous from the Education Department. An initial goal and limit has been set for 240 schools to achieve this transformation, at which point the program will be further evaluated. One of Rosselló's major reform promises is to replace entirely the Education Department within the next six years with his own Institute for Education Reform (IRE), whose current task is to supervise the 112 new community schools. Teachers from the Puerto Rican Teachers' Federation and Teachers' Association have persistently demonstrated their objections to Rosselló and his plans, most recently by supporting a bill in the legislature that would amend Law 18. This bill, according to Education Secretary José Arsenio Torres, "would cut the legs of the Education Reform Institute so that it is unable to walk." (Lorraine Blasor, 'Torres Scores Nogueras Bill on Educational Reform,' San Juan Star, 03/02/94.)
WISCONSIN
Proposal
to Expand Milwaukee's Choice Program
Efforts to expand the ground-breaking Milwaukee Parental
Choice Program (MPCP) received a major boost last month when state Rep.
Annette Polly Williams, the principal sponsor of the original legislation,
and Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist announced their support for the program's
expansion at a February 16 joint news conference. "The bottom line is to
empower parents," observed Rep. Williams during the news conference. (Milwaukee
Journal, 02/17/94)
Rep. Williams and Mayor Norquist, along with a bi-partisan group of legislators, seek to allow a larger number of Milwaukee children — up to 5,000 — from low-income families to participate in the four-year-old MPCP. Currently, only about 1,000 children are eligible for the program's education grants. They also seek to lift the program's ban on use of the grants at religiously-affiliated schools. As a result of that ban, only 12 non-religious private schools are now included in the program. Several other provisions, including the current funding mechanism, would also have to be amended to permit the expansion. With little time remaining in the current legislative session, supporters of the expansion may be forced to look for opportunities to bring the measure to a vote next year. Part of what is moving Williams, Norquist, et al. is noted in the next segment. (Milwaukee Sentinel, 02/17/94, 03/11/94; Milwaukee Journal, 02/17/94)
Assessment of MPCP
A recently published collection of studies about the
Milwaukee public school system included a chapter called "Are Big City
Schools Holding Their Own?" by Paul E. Peterson, Professor of Government
at Harvard University and Director of its Center for American Political
Studies. Peterson devotes a large portion of that chapter to discussion
of the current structural limitations imposed on MPCP. He observes that
the many restrictions forced upon MPCP by its opponents have resulted in
a "program that seems better designed to fail than to succeed." (p. 297)
The fact the program has overcome its limitations to achieve considerable
success, Peterson argues, allows "one to be quite optimistic about the
potential for choice in improving education in central-city schools." (p.
293) He places particular emphasis on the high level of parental satisfaction
with the program, for such satisfaction has great educational potential.
Despite questionable and premature evaluations (part of the 'design to fail' according to Peterson), and despite the severe restrictions imposed on the MPCP, Peterson sees enough evidence of success to recommend that the program be greatly expanded. Most significantly, he recommends that more students be allowed to participate and that religious schools, which represent some of the most stable and successful schools, be included in the program. (See John L. Rury and Frank A. Cassell, eds., Seeds of Crisis: Public Schooling in Milwaukee Since 1920, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1993)
FOREIGN NATIONS: SWEDEN
Two years ago, Sweden initiated a comprehensive educational
choice program. Among other provisions, the program makes vouchers worth
85% of the average per-pupil cost in the local state-operated schools available
to parents who wish to send their children to an independent school. The
impressive success of Sweden's educational choice program was reported
by John O'Leary in The Times of London (November 29, 1993). Independent
schools, the article notes, are increasing in Sweden at a rapid rate to
keep pace with the demand: "The number of private schools has doubled in
the past year, and a new one is opening every four days at the moment."
Religious schools as well as Montessori and Waldorf schools have been quick
to respond to the new demand. These "have now been followed by a third
wave of schools rescued from closure by parents and local communities,
and the government is hoping there will be a fourth, consisting of educators
who want to control their own institutions." Polls indicate that 85% of
all Swedes are pleased with the program, and Odd Eiken, the minister for
schools, is convinced that choice in education has caused improvement in
all of Sweden's schools. The Times' article quotes Mr. Eiken: "It
is the very existence of an exit possibility that gives families muscles
— not necessarily the use of it — and this changes the balance of power
in schools. In Sweden, we can already point to numerous examples of schools
that have changed, not because parents have chosen another school, but
because they have just shown their muscles."
This is a near-perfect illustration of a point routinely made in Blum Center documents concerning the dynamics of choice: America's public schools are likely to be the primary beneficiaries of choice without financial penalty, as they strive to make themselves choiceworthy in a new, voluntary environment.
DAMN THE LABELS:
FULL SPEED AHEAD
The terms "liberal" and "conservative" are practically
useless unless defined and used with precision. Absent such diligence,
they are typically employed as ideological tools, to smear or applaud,
to create an a priori impression that the thing to be described
as liberal or conservative is thereby suspect or heaven-sent. Thus, for
example, many critics of school choice routinely refer to it as a pet "conservative"
project. That is to mislabel and mislead, very badly. For while school
choice can be warmly endorsed by those called "conservative" and even "libertarian,"
it can be and is just as easily championed by those called "liberal" or
"progressive."
The truth about choice is not ideological: People may be standing anywhere on the ideological spectrum when they first see the virtue of school choice from their particular perspective. They may be libertarians who oppose concentrated governmental power, and recognize educational finance monopoly (EFM) as precisely that. But they may just as easily be on the left, concerned for empowering the poor and disenfranchised by giving them educational clout. Most likely of all, they will be ideological moderates, shunning all labels, who are moved by recognition that monopoly school budgeting is done in a vacuum; that monopoly-sheltered schools are not responding to parental concerns for clear ethical guidance; that EFM is strangling schools that are responding; that no amount of tax spending is producing decent levels of educational quality; that massive numbers of inner-city youth are ending up on the educational and social junk heap.
Whatever their beginning motivation and concern, choice advocates see the derivative relationship of such ills to the policy and structure of EFM. The next and final step is to see the curative capacity of educational choice, in which some or all of tax dollars for education are allocated by parents.
When we recognize that school choice naturally attracts many constituent groups from anywhere on the ideological spectrum, then we will recognize, too, that it is purely a smoke screen for choice opponents and various journalists to call choice a "movement of the right." It is a movement of the left, right, and center — wherever people have freed themselves to look clearly at today's hurtful educational symptoms and causes.
BLUM CENTER RECENT
ACQUISITIONS
The Blum Center recently acquired Kansas HB 2754, introduced
by Rep. Kay O'Connor; Ohio HB 564 and its companion, SB 236, along with
program outline and description; Georgia's "Parental Freedom Act," introduced
in the legislature by Sen. Roy Allen; and Florida's HB 583, the revised
"Parental Choice in Education Act," currently before the Florida legislature.
Thanks to Gov. Pedro Rosselló of Puerto Rico, we have acquired a copy of the report, "Ahead of the Learning Curve: Empowering Teachers, Students and Parents, How Puerto Rico is Reforming Public Education." It is an excellent compendium of background information to the comprehensive school reform effort enacted in Puerto Rico last year.
We have also obtained from Mr. Mitchell B. Pearlstein, President of the Center of the American Experiment, a copy of the Minnesota Public Opinion Survey, dated February 8, 1994, along with an accompanying commentary on its findings. This poll revealed, among other things, that 70% of Minnesotans think open enrollment should include private and parochial schools, and 61% support a voucher system which would enable parents to send their children to the public, private, or parochial school of their choice.
Another excellent addition to our holdings is Janet Beales' "School Voucher Programs in the United States: Implications and Applications for California," the Reason Foundation's Policy Study No. 172, January, 1994. Copies are available from the Reason Foundation, 3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 400, Los Angeles, CA 90034 (310) 391-2245/FAX (310) 391-4395 ($15 each).
- The Educational Freedom Report and other Blum
Center publications frequently refer to educational finance monopoly (EFM).
In those references EFM is identified as the enemy and opposite of educational
choice without financial penalty. EFM is also labeled a funding
policy, not an alternative educational model. It is appropriate to explain
why EFM is so much the focus of our attention.
The term "educational finance monopoly" describes the way we distribute tax dollars for K-12 education in the United States. Such dollars go only to public schools and they go only via monopolistic bureaucratic structures, at state and district levels.
The immediate educational effects of this are twofold: the public schools sheltered by these monopolistic financing methods are deprived of the normal human incentives to excel; and parents who want to choose independent educational alternatives are forced to pay a large and often impossible financial penalty for such a choice. The penalty: paying ever-increasing taxes for the public schools and ever-increasing tuition for any alternative selected.
The negative implications of those two effects are inescapable: the public schools, absent a comparative and competitive environment, tend to underproduce in terms of educational quality; personnel and program proliferation characteristically occur; vested interests grow up around the monopoly financing structures to ensure they remain intact; political alliances form for this purpose; poor educational performance in the artificially-protected public schools becomes the (ironic) justification for increased funding; and, in the meantime, most independent schools, often performing superlatively, are under constant financial pressure and in constant peril.
An obvious alternative to EFM is to place some or all of education-dedicated tax dollars in parents' hands, thus creating choice without financial penalty. Inevitable positive impacts: public schools, subject to comparison and competition under this new arrangement, will be encouraged to excel and to economize; independent options will be encouraged; family integrity will be strengthened because families will actively choose their child's environment, public or private.
Seen from this perspective, many of the problems of contemporary American education are quite understandable: they are not the fault of "public schools," nor personal failures of teachers and administrators. They are the unsurprising result of a humanly destructive funding policy (EFM) which, once in place, naturally spawns other policies and structures injurious to educational quality and familial integrity. Educational choice without financial penalty would automatically end the monopoly and its ill effects. Public schools, seen as educational providers rather than protectors of finance monopoly, could only be improved by the new incentives to perform better.
In subsequent Reports we will look more closely at several of EFM's most direct and harmful repercussions, to illustrate its influence.n
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