For Immediate Release: January 8, 1999

San Francisco, CA – A new Pacific Research Institute publication, Making School Choice Work for All Families, outlines the constitutional and practical considerations that drafters of school choice programs must weigh before moving ahead with their plans. The first in a three-part series, the publication presents the information in the form of a legislative and policy "template" that can be used by school reformers nationwide.

Co-authors John E. Coons and Stephen D. Sugarman, professors at University of California-Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, address such issues as who should receive and how government should pay for school-choice scholarships, how much the scholarships should be worth, and what schools should participate. They also examine the constitutional problems and political realities facing school choice proponents.

According to Coons and Sugarman: "There is no single ideal model. Just as we reject the notion of ‘one size fits all’ with regard to schools, so too must we resist it with regard to school choice programs. School choice programs must be defined by local needs, realities, and possibilities." Coons and Sugarman assert, however, that experience shows that certain legislative designs will work better than others.

In Making School Choice Work for All Families, Coons and Sugarman suggest that a school-choice plan that meets the following criteria will have the best chances of success:

• It is a plan that is easily justified to the public.
  
  
• It initially targets a particular group, preferably low-income families (although the report also looks at opportunities for programs targeting students in poor-performing public schools, in bankrupt school districts, in high-crime schools, or in special education programs).
  
  
• It must reasonably protect low-income children from exclusion and from being priced out by unaffordable added tuition, if it is to be extended to all children.
  
  
• It offers scholarship recipients reasonable security of continued eligibility.
  
  
• It operates within a mixed private-public system, which includes traditional public schools; public charter schools financed by scholarships; participating and non-participating private and religious schools; for-profit schools; and possibly home schools.
  
  
• It typically pegs scholarships for low-income children at approximately 80-90 percent of the average that public schools spend on children in their respective age levels and circumstances.
  
  
• It provides scholarship assistance directly to the family, not as cash, but in effect as "educational food stamps."
  
  

Coons and Sugarman note that it is the child’s own interest and the "common" good that justify school choice programs, claiming "there is now a body of experience and a burgeoning social science supporting the conclusion that parental choice facilitated by publicly funded scholarships serves all of these private and public purposes more effectively than does the regime of coercion now imposed upon the non-rich [by the current educational establishment]."

Coons and Sugarman discuss in detail the constitutional issues surrounding such programs and conclude that recent court decisions – particularly the Supreme Court decision not to review Wisconsin’s school choice program – bode well for the future of school-choice programs.

Even though courts are now more likely to allow well-drafted school choice programs, political obstacles remain. Most of the opposition, they say, now comes from teachers’ unions, PTAs, school boards and their state and national associations, legislators and other politicians nurtured by unions, the faculties and administrators of teachers’ colleges, and school administrators’ trade associations.

To be politically successful, school choice coalitions must include the following:

• Leaders who represent the disadvantaged, particularly racial minorities.
  
  
• Conservative and libertarian supporters of the project. Their commitment, however, should be muted until the coalition has secured grassroots and liberal leadership whom the media will see as having a genuine concern for the disadvantaged.
  
  
• Local political leaders who know and understand the political landscape, including the potential players and their needs.
  
  
• A term, other than vouchers, that resonates with the community and captures the dignity of the family in its role as educator.
  
  
• A set of bottom-line criteria to ensure participation of low-income families.
  
  

Former U.S. Democratic Representative and author of "No Excuses For Failing Our Children," Reverend Floyd Flake, who wrote the foreword to this PRI publication: "This book is must reading for anyone who is concerned about the future direction of public schools and the alternative choices that are now available."

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A copy of model legislation, school criteria information, and the complete template are available from Jennifer Berkowitz at 415/989-0833.

The Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy is a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of the principles of individual freedom and personal responsibility. The Institute believes these principles are best encouraged through policies that emphasize a free economy, private initiative, and limited government. By focusing on public policy issues such as health care, welfare, education, and the environment, the Institute strives to foster a better understanding of the principles of a free society among leaders in government, academia, the media, and the business community.