American education, carried on essentially at the state level, is in precarious condition in many jurisdictions.  In the major cities, "precarious" has too often given way to "perilous" — perilous for the young people who experience it, for their families, and for their communities.  We will look at the symptoms and a primary cause of this distress, but first we need to establish the objectives or ends educational policy should serve.  Absent that, we have no way to evaluate the policy tools, or means, available to us.

The Natural Ends of Educational Policy
        I invite readers to join me in stripping away all the historical accidents that surround questions of American education and the family today, and begin with a fresh view of family, education, and ourselves as if we were in a pure state of nature.  One of the reasons we have such difficulty in achieving rationality and justice in education is because, typically, our discussions begin as if, whatever else happens, our first obligation is to preserve the essence of the status quo.  We end up captives of and tampering with a  destructive system instead of replacing it.  We are in a mess, and we have to fight through a great maze before we can even think clearly.  Our vision is blurred by long habit, an inertia manipulated by vested interests tied to political power.

        Seen from a fresh vantage point the natural ends and objectives of educational policy will be quite clear.  In a democratic society such as our own, those natural ends begin with the welfare of the individual.  That is, we want from educational policy the best assurance we can get that the individual capacities of all citizens within society will be developed to the largest extent possible.  We want and expect as a corollary the betterment which society itself will experience from the advancement and perfection of each individual within it.  As a companion of those two points we hope that the educational system and policies will help produce citizens able to work effectively within the contemporary economy and particularly within the conditions of a highly competitive international economic order.  And we want education to contribute to, or at least not detract from, those habits of social civility and good citizenship needed for democracy's relatively consensual politics.  Those seem to be the natural objectives of educational policy if we look at it plainly, without any of the clouds which befog it as it exists in fact.  As noted above, only if we focus on these ends can we rationally assess the alternative means thereto.

        With such ends in mind we can see as well that there is a natural multiplicity of means, or methods and models of education, that can be used to achieve those ends.  Many people can look at the objectives I have just stated and visualize alternative approaches to the achievement of those objectives.  That would be true in a state of nature without question.  We know that from experience and do not have to speculate about it.  We know that as a matter of fact in a free society many different people fashion many different modes of achieving educational excellence and these modes are attractive to different segments of society.  That is true in the United States, and it is true in every free society around the world.

The Family's Responsibility for Child-Nurturing
        The next thing to contemplate in our state of nature, is, again, logically obvious.  We would expect a natural symmetry between what society expects of families in nurturing their children, on the one hand, and what society encourages and provides for on the other hand.  We would expect, in other words, because logic would compel us to expect it, that there would be a symmetry in the relationship between family responsibilities and family capacities.  What we expect we should make possible.

        Proceeding, we expect the family to nurture children to maturity and independence in all of life's facets.  We expect the family to nurture children in terms of their physical requirements, their intellectual growth, their emotional stability; and we expect that family nurturing to occur in the area of the ethical formation of children.  This is a particularly critical issue today, where increasing numbers of youth manifest a lack of internalized values or respect for others, and appear to be increasingly bereft of self-restraint, as a frustrated jurist recently observed.  (Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Ronald S. Goldberger, discussing juvenile offenders who came before him.  Milwaukee Sentinel, July 7, 1994.)

        What is crucial to realize is that some type of ethical formation is inescapable.  When we say so and so "lacks ethics," what we really mean is that his ethics are wrong, his values are misplaced.  No one lacks ethics — but many may lack good ones.  Pure selfishness is an ethic, for example — just not an edifying one.  Every child, every person developing within a given society will take on a particular ethical form and shape and character.  The only question is under what particular influences that shaping and forming will occur.  The fact of it, I repeat, is inescapable.  Because life is an ethical life.  Life is a life of choosing.  Life is a life of valuing things and making choices on the basis of the good or bad values we have taken for our own.  We are designed in such a fashion as to see all of life in terms of ought and ought not and to differentiate between alternative actions in terms of their relative goodness or badness; and that is an inescapable reality.  What is less certain is the source of the values which will help us shape ourselves as we take on ethical maturity.

        In that context one can see that the family is a font of the particular values which children may take on.  The family is, in fact, the first and primary context in which children learn how to differentiate among alternative actions in terms of their goodness and badness.  The family is an obvious and natural source of ethical formation for all children.  Children will be formed by something, they will be shaped by some source of values; and the question is whether the family, that agency which more than any other agency in society values and loves and wants the betterment of the child, will be the primary formative influence in that child's ethical formation.  This is not to be confused with enslavement.  It is not meant to preclude the ultimate freedom of the child, as he or she grows and matures, to test the values that they have received, to perfect those values and indeed to replace them if need be.  It is, rather, simply to assert that the family is in the natural position to provide original ethical formation; and without it the child will be formed by other influences, much less certain in terms of their benevolence toward the child's welfare.

Home and School
        Continuing on in our state of nature, it seems entirely natural to expect the school to be an extension of and support for the family effort.  At the very worst a school might be conceived of as neutral in its relationships to family values, but could never rationally be desired as an opponent or subverter of those values.  It literally makes no sense to imagine parents consciously, willingly, freely choosing schools which will be in some fundamental sense juxtaposed to the value structure that they offer the child at home.  But though parents never chose it, that is what has happened and is happening in much of American education.  That is one of the most compelling reasons why we must change American educational funding policy to enhance parents' capacity to choose their child's school environment.  But there are many other reasons, as we can see from considering the great complaints about today's education.

Symptoms of Our Distress
        There is a general indictment of contemporary American education, conceded essentially by all parties — even by those who are part of the system, perhaps because for them failure is often turned into an argument for more dollars, more personnel, more programs, as is entirely characteristic of a monopolistic system.  This general indictment is actually a list of symptoms, the causes of which are rarely noted.  And each symptom has the capacity to generate a natural constituency which — if it understands the common source and the fact that there is no educational downside for reform (when the public schools are seen as educational providers, not as fortresses protecting vested interests) — can help forge alliances to cure the root cause and liberate the system.  But let us look at the standard list of charges against the status quo.  First, most urgent and humanly devastating is the crisis in education in the great cities, carrying mammoth personal and social costs.  For example, Milwaukee, a favored city in many respects, shows the following:  "The percentage of a freshman class graduating four years later has fallen from 79% in 1971 to 44% in 1993" (Susan Mitchell, 'Why MPS Doesn't Work - Barriers to Reform in the Milwaukee Public Schools,' Wisconsin Policy Research Institute Report, January, 1994, Vol. 7, No. 1, p. 34).

        Second, there is general educational underachievement in the U.S.  This is less well known, but no less clearly true, as shown by all international comparisons.  It is nowhere better demonstrated than in a Louis Harris poll conducted for the Committee on Economic Development (CED), the results of which were published in 1992 by CED as An Assessment of American Education.  CED was aware that there seemed to be large discrepancies in evaluating American education, so they commissioned the Harris organization to conduct a poll of American employers, representatives of higher education, the public, recent high-school graduates and their parents.  Only recent high-school grads, not drop-outs, were included in the study, and thus the massive numbers of those who do not even make it out of the system were not represented.

        Earlier work had indicated that there was a large gap between students' impression of the quality of their education and the judgments of those who want to hire or further educate these young people.  The CED-Harris study was designed to test that gap.  The results are devastating and should be a wake-up call for any parents who think graduation alone signifies satisfactory achievement.  Regarding that too-rosy inclination, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Albert Shanker says the study "...is the story of two different worlds:  the fantasy land of American students and their parents who think they're tops in education performance and the real world of educators and employers who say our high school graduates can't cut it in college and on the job.   We therefore have a choice:  allow our youngsters to continue to live in a fantasy world which does not issue paychecks, or insist that they meet higher standards and work harder at school today so they can make it in the real world tomorrow" (back page commentary on An Assessment of American Education).
 Of course, Shanker's prescription is always the same:  more money for public schools and teachers, even though hugely increased budgets in the last two decades have not been accompanied by improved educational achievement; no link has been found between educational expenditure and educational quality; and despite the fact that all international comparisons show we are already spending more per pupil than all other nations except Switzerland  (See, e.g., Janet Novack, 'What Do We Get For Our School Dollars,' Forbes, October 12, 1992, pp. 92-96; and 'Education at a Glance,' a December, 1993, report on comparative expenditures by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD]).  But though Shanker does not know the solution — educational choice — he surely interprets the Harris results correctly.  For example, while 70 percent of graduates and 71 percent of their parents think they were "learning mathematics well," only 27 percent of college educators shared that judgment; as to "learning how to write well" the same comparisons were 71 percent, 77 percent, and 18 percent; while for "learning how to solve complex problems" they were 63 percent, 71 percent, and 15 percent (p. 10 of An Assessment of American Education).  Lest we think educators were simply using unrealistic standards, let us note that employers evaluated the recent grads even more harshly on the same three qualities:  22 percent gave positive responses re math skills, while 74 percent gave negative; on writing well, 12 percent positive and 84 percent negative; on solving complex problems, 10 percent positive and 86 percent negative (p. 8).

        These startling disparities illustrate the reality that America's educational achievement problems are not confined to the crises besetting the central cities.  By every international comparison and by the assessment of all who "consume" our educational "products," the system in general is under-performing.  That students and parents do not know it does not change the fact, and probably derives from the very absence of comparison and competition typical of a monopolistic environment.

        The third point in the indictment is that despite the poor performance, educational costs have been escalating rapidly, but there is no apparent connection of cost to educational outcome.  This escalation in costs represents a great burden on the taxpayer, especially property owners in most American jurisdictions, and on the whole economy.  For example, according to the National Center for Education Statistics' January, 1993, report, U.S. per-pupil expenditure in constant 1989-90 dollars rose from approximately $3,000.00 in 1970 to approximately $5,000.00 in 1990 (120 Years of American Education:  A Statistical Portrait, Thomas D. Snyder, ed., National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Ed., Office of Educational Research and Improvement, p. 33).  This is to be considered alongside Eric A. Hanushek's conclusion in his ongoing study of the effects of increased expenditures on school performance:  "Over the past quarter century researchers have made the surprising discovery that there is little systematic relationship between school resources and student performance" ("Making America's Schools Work, This Time Money is Not the Answer," The Brookings Review, Fall, 1994, p. 10).

        The fourth item on the bill of particulars in a true analysis of the nation's educational system is cost's companion:  the program, personnel, and bureaucratic proliferation so unsettling to anyone concerned about too much governmental presence in society generally and in the educational arena particularly.  These proliferating tentacles wrap around the exposed power points of American politics to perpetuate themselves and the system from which they draw their disproportionate sustenance.  According to the 1993 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) study noted above, 5.6% of American workers are employed in education, and 2.6% actually teach.  The remaining 3% consist of support staff and administrators, essentially non-academic personnel.  Only in America does such an imbalance exist.

        The fifth symptom is that the public schools, operating behind the immunizing protections of finance monopoly, are beyond the control of the parent consumers and effectively outside all normal dialectical restraints.  As a result, they do not reflect parental desires directly and not even indirectly via political responsibility.

        The directly related and last of the particular indictments, discussed above, is that the public schools which operate within the finance monopoly have become less and less capable of serving American families as ethical extensions of themselves, to teach ethics and demand ethical behavior.  Indeed, they have too often become centers of counter-family values in a kind of culture war.

        These sad symptoms of educational failure create corollary groups demanding change and improvement.  Though smoke screens may at first stop them from seeing the real route to improvement, these groups are, nonetheless, the "natural constituencies of school choice," for school choice, once understood, will be seen by them as a basic solution to their most aggravating educational problems.  Major constituency groups include:
 

* Parents generally, witnessing educational under-achievement, are a primary and ultimately decisive constituency.

* And parents of the critically endangered children of the inner cities, parents who know education can be a way out for their youngsters, but who see persisting failure instead.

* And the business community, intensely concerned for a well-schooled work force able to help America be competitive in the new world.

* And the taxpayers' associations seeing ever-rising school costs without educational betterment.

* And the burgeoning numbers of people who realize and abhor the fact that current educational finance methods have created massive monopolistic bureaucratic structures in all states and districts.

* Finally, the massive number of parents and citizens who want their children to be in schools that support the values taught at home.
 

A Primary Cause of the Symptoms of Distress — and the Obvious Cure
        To understand why America, such a favored nation in so many ways, is so beset by these educational difficulties, we need first to understand the prevailing policy which gives rise to them.  That policy, in place in every state:  educational finance monopoly (EFM).

        EFM is the enemy and opposite of educational choice without financial penalty.  Both are funding policies, not alternative educational models.  "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 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 stimulated to excel and to economize; independent options will be encouraged; family integrity will be strengthened because families will actively choose their child's educational 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 vested interests, could only be improved by the new incentives to perform better.  This is what is meant when it is pointed out that public schools would be prime beneficiaries of educational choice.  Another way of saying the same thing:  school choice is school neutral and parent positive.

        School choice will not single-handedly solve all education-related problems, e.g., uneven resource availabilities, broken and dysfunctional families, both of which make the dream of a level playing field for all children difficult to achieve.  But educational choice is an obvious and inevitable cure for much of what ails us, and an immediate solution to the destructive effects of EFM.

Why the Cure Has Not Been Taken:  Defending the Indefensible
        Logic, common sense knowledge of the destructive results of monopoly, American experience with other forms of choice, and the vast experience of other nations with genuine school choice all make it clear:  educational freedom should be in, EFM should be out.  But if that is so obvious, why are we mired in finance monopoly in all 50 states?

        The first thing we must understand in thinking about these matters is that today's schooling battle is a political conflict, not an educational one; and the prize awaiting the victor is funding policy, not an educational approach.  EFM vs. parents as conduits for assigning some or all tax dollars — that is the actual shape of today's conflict.  Public schools and teachers are not the enemy.  EFM is the enemy.  That is the essential reality readers need to contemplate and respond to.  EFM, a funding policy, creates structures to defend itself, and those structures work within the political order to maintain and advance their interests.

        EFM's primary defenders are not "bad guys," but they are vested interests deriving material benefits from the status quo.  I am talking here about everyone who has a stake in the system, everyone who benefits from monopolistic financial controls, thus educational and bureaucratic unions, state and district educational superstructures, departments of public instruction, school suppliers and contractors, and the like.  These are the groups directly benefitting from the maintenance of the status quo.  Understandably, these groups seek to maintain that status quo.  That does not make them evil; it does not make them perverse.  It simply means that if one's material self-interest is involved in something, one's inclination is to support that thing, unless you become convinced, as some public educators have, by the way, that the thing in question is so injurious to the general welfare that you should go against your private interests and support its reform.  For the most part that is not what one expects from human nature  (For an illuminating, and troubling, window on EFM's primary defenders and their political efforts to protect their financial advantage, see Myron Lieberman, Charlene K. Haar, and Leo Troy, The NEA and AFT:  Teacher Unions in Power and Politics, Rockport, Massachusetts, 1994).

        The vested interests find natural allies among more altruistic groups, such as PTA members, to the extent they can convince them their children's welfare is threatened by school choice.  And, in addition to the obvious vested interest supports for the current situation and their altruistic allies, there are other groups which have different reasons for maintaining things as they are.  These include, for example, certain anti-religious organizations, which are chasing church-state bogeymen, imagining that any change away from EFM towards educational choice will advantage the churches, an objective they would not want to prosper.  There are other groups which appear to be moved more by anti-Catholic than by anti-religious motivations.  They also become supporters of EFM and opponents of educational choice, because they imagine educational choice to be a fake banner behind which is lurking the Vatican and its operatives.  There are, of course, politicians tied to vested interests who derive much of their support, financial and otherwise, from those interest groups.  And these political clusters within state legislatures, and the union and bureaucratic structures they work with, know how to employ the forces of inertia in society to maintain the status quo.
 
        Those forces of inertia are simply the forces of habit.  We have maintained our current system for a long time; it has positive, nostalgic memories for many people, and these are reinforced by various myths about common schools, democratization, and socialization.  The public schools as they once were, protected by "fair weather" conditions of economic abundance, and relative social, cultural, and ethical homogeneity in the communities they represented, had a chance even under EFM to plant their roots very, very deeply in the American psyche and thus to be relatively easily defended against change  (See my 'School Choice Advocates Have No Excuse for Frustration,' Network News & Views, March 1994, for a closer look at how social inertia can be exploited by defenders of the status quo.).

        As to EFM's defenses, contrasted with its defenders, those defenses are the classic smoke screens that I and others have written a great deal about.  There are in truth no good arguments for EFM, just as there are no downside arguments against educational choice without financial penalty.  The long and the short of it is that no one wants directly to defend monopoly, and no one wants directly to deny parents' rights.  As a result, instead of serious arguments supporting educational finance monopoly, there exists a  variety of diversionary tactics that can best be understood essentially as smoke screens, or red herrings that have the effect of taking us away from the serious issues.  That is not surprising.  If one wants to defend the status quo, but has no objectively powerful case to make for it, one may still make smoke.  Illustrations abound, but one will rarely see a clearer one than a recent effort by Wisconsin's Superintendent of Public Instruction to defend EFM by launching a personal attack on Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist, an eloquent advocate of parents' rights and school choice.  The Superintendent asserted that Norquist's devotion to school choice and distrust of EFM "expose an elitist nature"  (Milwaukee Sentinel, July 20, 1994).  This charge of elitism against a Democratic populist, a people's mayor if there ever were one, is amusing in its inaccuracy, and amazing in its irrelevance.  Even if Mayor Norquist were a radical closet elitist, that would tell us nothing about the relative worth of parent choice vs. EFM.  It is simply smoke.

        Those smoke screen arguments range from the church-state specters noted above and below, to the assertion that choice will "siphon dollars from public schools" — as if those schools were an end in themselves; to the charge, as in the "elitist" labeling of John Norquist,  that choice will abandon the neediest children — the very ones already abandoned under EFM who might in fact be rescued by choice; and so on.  There is a standard passel of such easily-refuted diversions.  Of these, perhaps the most often employed one is the "myth of the common school."  The essence of that diversion is that having a well-ordered, unified civil society somehow requires having monopoly-imposed, peas-in-a-pod, "common" schools for all citizens.  This slogan is chanted endlessly, despite the fact that such places increasingly find it difficult to honor genuine social diversity; substitute and impose an artificial commonality for a genuine synthesis; have led to radical two-tiered conditions and abandonment of the poorest of the poor; have routinely developed humanly destructive behavioral patterns, including rising crime incidences; and despite the fact that experiences in America and other nations show, resoundingly, that civic virtue and community spirit are at least as well promoted by independent schools as by any common school system.  For example, American Catholic graduates of American Catholic schools, by any comparative standard, have been exemplary citizens.

        The overall and ultimate objective of those who have laid down the smoke has been to confuse education's ends with educational means.  When that happens, anyone critical of the means — EFM — can be demonized and accused of being against education, or even "against the kids."  To a considerable extent, that objective has been achieved, which largely explains the tactics and the successes of EFM's defenders in such cases as California's resounding defeat of Proposition 174 in November, 1993.  Prop. 174 had many problems built into it, making it relatively easy prey.  And it had inadequate organization supporting it.  But above all, it had no antidote for the ends/means confusion which leads to this absurdity:  the status quo is horrible — but we must not disturb the status quo!

        The obstacles to educational freedom, and the justice it can provide, are high, but they are in no sense insuperable.  Indeed, to see them clearly is to see at once how to overcome them.

Getting Out of the Mess We're In
        The most vital requirement for the success of most journeys is to know exactly where we want to go.  So it is in this case:  we must fix our sights clearly and unwaveringly on the goal.  School choice advocates want to stop educational finance monopoly (EFM); and they want parents and guardians, the people most dedicated to their children's welfare, to assign some or all of tax dollars dedicated to education.

        That is why, when the many-sided destructiveness of EFM is understood, and the powerful cure provided by school choice is seen, so-called public school choice and the charter school variant of it are understood as fundamentally inadequate ultimate objectives.  They may well provide ways to improve a seriously malfunctioning public system, but they maintain the finance monopoly — indeed, depend on it; and they do not enable parents and families to erect or choose an educational environment most compatible with the family's values, including religious values.  "Only in America," laboring as it is under the inertia of a long-entrenched EFM, and confused by discredited but still effective church-state smoke screens, would anyone think the logic and need for parental freedom in education are satisfied by public school choice and charters.  That logic and that need can only be met by comprehensive school choice without financial penalty, the very natural condition enjoyed by parents in most civilized nations, but thus far denied them in the U.S.

        There are as many ways to get to the goal of school choice as there are jurisdictions currently obstructing it.  We need not fixate on any particular "way out of the fix we're in," either organizational or substantive.  But any organization working productively for choice can be expected to exhibit some of the traits here described as necessary for success.  And any genuine school choice policy proposal will be moving toward the true end of parental freedom in education, no matter how many steps its designers think are necessary before complete success can be achieved.

        Political action is required to achieve these objectives, political action in 50 states.  Since the political processes in all states up to now have been destructive of choice and supportive of EFM, it is obvious that what is needed in these jurisdictions is a new political conviction — intellectual understanding and endorsement of the arguments for school choice; and a new motive — countervailing political pressures able to offset the very strong political power of EFM's defenders.  That is what is called for to break the grip of social inertia and the status quo.  Politicians and parties not only need to be helped to see the virtue of school choice.  It has to be made safe for them, and that can be done by neutralizing its opponents' power, by creating manifest, countervailing support for choice.

EFM's Defenders
        EFM's defense is led by professionally-staffed, permanent, and very richly-funded organizations in the various states.  These organizations, in turn, are augmented, bolstered, and advised by national organizations (See, e.g., an analysis of the National Education Association entitled 'The National Extortion Association?' by Peter Brimelow and Leslie Spencer, Forbes, June 7, 1993, and Myron Lieberman, et al., The NEA and AFT...above.).  And the state-level union and bureaucratic structures often maintain elaborate regional and local subunits.  These groups make extraordinarily plain their dedication to maintaining their finance monopoly and preventing parental choice.  Note, for example, these elements of the 1993-94 legislative program of the primary Wisconsin public teachers' union, WEAC, the Wisconsin Education Association Council.  WEAC's Priority Number One has four parts, the first of which just hopes school taxes will be shifted from property tax rolls to other taxes.  As for the rest, WEAC pledges to be:
 

"2. actively seeking the development of additional sources of revenue for the support of public education" (note: more dollars, not for education and the youth but for public schools, which completely mixes up the end and the means)

"3. opposing all legislation seeking to create tuition tax credits, vouchers, or other forms of financial support to non-public schools" (note: ditto, plus blatant effort to confuse readers by describing choice as a program for non-public schools when it is, in fact, a program for parents)

"4. opposing all forms of educational cost controls" (note: emphasis added to highlight the ultimate dedication to both 'more' and 'monopoly')
 

        According to WEAC, it will number in excess of 76,000 members after its expected merger with its American Federation of Teachers counterpart.  It incorporates many groups with shared material interest in EFM, including, e.g., public school teachers, administrators, the 700 bureaucratic employees of the Department of Public Instruction.  When we add to these the associated non-professional unions, and suppliers to all, we have begun to describe the vested interests gathered around and living off EFM in Wisconsin, a representative state.  Together, they staff, service, and woo the citizen-based groups such as school boards, PTAs, and the like, which groups tend to accept quite uncritically the task of defending the system for "the sake of the kids."  These groups are what may be called the "altruistic corollaries" of EFM's vested interests.  Though they do not profit from EFM, they have succumbed to the ends/means confusion, and to the particular smoke screen which says, in effect, any movement against monopoly and for parents' rights will injure the youth of this land.

        During its effort to keep the Proposition 174 school choice effort off the ballot, the California Teachers Association (CTA) exhibited precisely that spirit when its President said of parental freedom in education:  "There are some proposals that are so evil that they should never even be presented to the voters"  (Wall Street Journal, September 14, 1992).  Recall that, though described as "so evil," school choice without financial penalty just does two things:  it lets parents' rights match their responsibilities; and it breaks monopoly control.  "Evil," indeed!  Such blatantly excessive comments are fairly typical of the attitude of those groups which, benefiting from the EFM status quo, work feverishly to sustain it and prevent school choice.  They are large, politically active, and able to generate much funding quickly.  Thus, for example, the 230,000-member CTA, in opposing Prop. 174, developed the lion's share of the money it wanted simply by "taxing" its membership and instantly creating an anti-Prop. 174 war chest of around $12,000,000.  Prop. 174 supporters, with no well-developed, broadly-based funding sources, ended up being outspent about eight to one.  Similarly, just to lobby against Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler's effort to achieve choice for his city's parents and against the Governor's education budget, the New Jersey Educational Association has laid a $50 surcharge on its members, as part of creating a $10,000,000 fund to oppose any and all limitations on EFM (Record, June 9 and July 4, 1994).

        EFM is very bad public policy, and it is producing bad results, as we saw above.  But just as it provokes natural constituencies who want change, so it dissipates some of the inertia which is used to support it.  When the pot begins to boil, it is possible for events to develop in such a way that choice might be introduced fairly spontaneously.  Tumultuous conditions, effectively exploited by enlightened political leaders, have produced several near-misses for choice in, e.g., Arizona, Connecticut, Pennsylvania.  A breakout of sorts has already occurred in Puerto Rico, of course, though the mainland has been slow to note the fact.  In the aforementioned states, and in other unusually active places such as New Jersey and Wisconsin, trailblazing, breakthrough, limited-but-genuine school choice programs may be adopted in the near future.

        Whenever a shortcut — some confluence of persons and events which permits choice advocates to capitalize on circumstances in such a way as to telescope the needed steps — presents itself, it should be taken, of course, presuming it ultimately leads to genuine choice and not to frustrating dead-ends.  But for the most part, while always being ready to seize a shortcut opportunity, choice advocates will need to see the nature of EFM's defense and defenders, and plan and organize accordingly.  Their commitment must be for the duration and must immunize them from the loss of enthusiasm and the sense of despair and frustration which have too often marked school choice failures in the past.  Until that kind of vulnerability is replaced by durable and strong commitment for the duration, defenders of EFM's status quo are likely to win most contests, just by attrition.

Organizing for Parental Freedom
        Above we glimpsed the kind of defenses which support EFM.  That can tell us a great deal about the kind of organization needed to achieve school choice.  Barring an unpredictable (though certainly possible) shortcut, state-level school choice workers will probably want to organize along these lines:
 

* Rely on professional, preferably full-time personnel to guide and service the volunteers, for that is the antidote to the kind of shallow-rooted enthusiasm which wilts at the first defeat.  There very likely will be early defeats for every school choice effort, given the kind of opposition described.

* The staff and structure will need predictable and broadly-based income sources so that they can concentrate on the work which needs doing, rather than spending most of their time raising funds.  The previously-described natural constituencies — e.g., independent school parents' groups, business associations, taxpayer alliances — are obvious sources of financing which can be simultaneously broadly-based, predictable, and long-lasting.

* Professional, well-schooled, and predictably-funded is the formula for having staying power, for being "in it for the duration."  And what does such an organization do during that duration?  It carries on the articulation of the choice message, helping the open-minded see its virtues.  It combats the smoke screens.  It works with and stimulates the natural constituency groups, and it provides a unifying house for those many mansions.  While those constituent groups are unlikely to be successful in isolation from one another, if united they are much too powerful to be resisted.  But how can they get together?  That is the most vital role that must be played by the state-level school choice organization:  be a rallying point, an articulator of interests, and a synthesizing force so that the constituent groups become a powerful political presence, thus making school choice safe for the state's politicians.

* And through all such efforts, blowing away the smoke screens and sensitizing the groups whose interests will be best served by parental freedom, what the school choice organization will be accomplishing is this:  making plain to all who wish to see the truth that the actual central educational conflict of our time is entirely a political contest, not an educational one.  It has to do with using political and rhetorical devices to defend a collection of financial, material interests fed by the status quo.  That is what will be seen when all the smoke is dispelled.  (To assist in this dispelling, I alert readers to several concise, easily obtainable documents devoted to rebutting the standard smoke screens.  These include Jeanne Allen's 'Nine Lies About School Choice:  Answering the Critics,' Center for Education Reform, 1994; Chapter 11, 'Common Criticisms of Privatization and Choice' in James R. Rinehart and Jackson F. Lee, Jr., American Education and the Dynamics of Choice, New York, Praeger, 1991; Jackie Ducote and Fanny Godwin's 'Questions and Answers About Educational Choice' in Heartland Institute's Rebuilding America's Schools, 1991; and my own 'Smoke Screens,' WI Wisconsin Interest, Summer/Fall, 1992.)

        The obvious need is to point out to the separate groups that, while their particular motivation — displeasure with one or another symptom of EFM — is enough of a reason for them to want basic change, they will not in isolation be successful.  If they can see this — and many painful experiences in many places make it plain — they should naturally see the need to coalesce.  But for the most part, that has not happened around the country.

        One of the reasons for that is that many of the most publicized failed efforts — California, Colorado, Oregon, for instance — involved referenda, and the decision was made by less-than-comprehensive groups to go with a very particular instrument which, in one action if approved by the voters, would a) authorize choice and b) put a particular choice program in place.  The effect of this is to alienate some of the natural constituencies who did not have a chance to work on the specific proposal, and thus to be satisfied that their interests were represented.  Moreover, in the case of California, Prop. 174 authors built into it a provision which made subsequent amendment and refinement difficult.  Thus, any school choice group not satisfied with Prop. 174 could not be persuaded to support it with the promise that it could easily be remedied to suit their needs.  Yet another problem which accompanies the referendum method is that it necessarily targets the state's entire voting population and that, in turn, leads naturally to using the mass media as the center of the campaign.  But mass media buys, especially purchasing TV air time, are extremely expensive, and that emphasizes the typical funding discrepancy between EFM defenders and choice advocates.

        What such experiences can tell us, I think, is quite clear.  One of the surest ways to bring the needed coalition together, and to cement its parts once they are together, is to involve them in the process of shaping and refining the specific school choice proposal.  That is the surest way to achieve understanding, generate commitment, and assure a lasting alliance precisely "for the duration."  Related to this, continuing consultations with the coalition elements will be necessary as the legislative process itself unfolds, for change will occur in that process, and such change may well split the alliance unless it is participated in by all major groups.  Moreover, one can know for certain, before the process even begins, that the end product will not be perfectly satisfactory to all parties, perhaps no parties.  Hence, as with public policy generally, the core presumption in school choice must be that we have to start somewhere, and we will perfect it as we go along, the basic test always being the same:  does what we are doing contribute to genuine parental freedom, help in the restoration of family integrity, and assist the dismantling of EFM?

        Implicit in these understandings are several others.  In those states where a state constitutional impediment must be overcome before a specific school choice program can be put in place, there is good reason to think about a clear two-step process:  first, a constitutional amendment which authorizes and encourages the legislature to broaden parental freedom and enact school choice, but does not specify its form; with that step followed by a normal legislative process to make the specification.  Such an approach probably would make the amendment easier to achieve because it provides a non-divisive banner for all school choice advocates.  Success at that level would go a long way toward convincing politicians that choice is safe — indeed, that opposition to it might be dangerous.  And, above all, such an approach would assure all parties that the first choice approach would not have to be the last, that any flaws could be easily remedied, that prudence could work in the kind of perpetual perfecting which most human undertakings require.

        It should be noted, as well, that when the focus can be shifted to the legislature, the traditional alliance of EFM defenders — e.g., the NEA — with one of the parties means that the other major party and its representatives typically owe nothing to those
 defenders.  Indeed, opposition to them and their monopoly controls can be a natural legislative and electoral rallying cry.  This is another powerful reason for striving to get the school choice battle into the legislative arena.

To the Political Process
        We already know how intimately connected to state politics are the forces defending EFM.  These connections have been forged over many decades, and they are quite natural.  Power in state legislatures, analogous to power in Washington, is splintered and held in many fiefdoms, many committees and the hands of their chairs.  Moreover, the educational unions often are closely tied to one particular political party as sources of inspiration, funding, and political spadework.

        What such realities tell us about the political task choice faces is that the task is straightforward enough — very difficult, but not especially complicated.  They tell us that the school choice organization operating in a given state naturally will want to forge relationships with executive and legislative seats of power.  In every state, there are politicians of both parties who already see the curative power of school choice.  They need to be supported and made safe, as noted above.  Some among them need to be encouraged to be spear carriers for the effort, the ones around whom other politicians can cluster.

        Still others are not opposed to parental freedom, but need convincing that the sky will not fall if EFM is broken and replaced.  They are in the grip of social inertia and need help to free themselves of it.  Other politicians may need to be directly challenged if seen to be entirely captive of the status quo.  All of them, friend and foe alike, need to see the actual faces and hear the voices of their own constituents who are, in turn, the natural constituents of school choice.

        Thus, the state-level school choice organizations which truly comprehend the realities of EFM will see the essentially political task which must be done; the rhetorical components of that task; and, above all, the need to assemble the political critical mass of choice's natural constituents.  If this looks like a hill too high to climb, a fortress too strong to capture, choice workers need not despair.  It has been my intention to help all interested parties avoid the enthusiasm-dashing which comes from underestimating the problem.  But EFM, when seen clearly, does not stand analysis and is indefensible.  It is, finally, a house of cards.  The school choice near-misses mentioned above show the vulnerability of that house, if choice advocates do their good work in organized and durable fashion.  When that work is done, and educational finance monopoly crumbles into dust, America's parents will possess at last the educational freedom due them — the educational freedom taken for granted in enlightened societies around the world.
 
 
 

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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 Brooks Hall, Room 209 Marquette University * P.O. Box 1881 * Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881 Phone: 414-288-7040* Fax: 414-288-3170 E-mail: blumcenter@vms.csd.mu.edu

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