Los Angeles Daily Journal, February 20, 2002

Educators, legislators, and parents alike are speculating on how the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on Cleveland’s school choice plan. Oral arguments before the Court will be held today. The decision is of grave consequence to America’s children, especially the countless number of black children who continue to be failed by the government’s public school system.

A recent study by Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute revealed that, nationwide, only 56 percent of eligible African Americans graduated from high school in 1998, compared to white students’ rate of 78 percent. Wisconsin graduated only 40 percent of African American students that year, and seven states graduated fewer than half.

Of the country’s 50 largest school districts, 15 failed to graduate even 50 percent of black students. Cleveland deserves special mention as the worst big district in the country.

Only 29 percent of the city’s African-American students graduate. Other studies of the beleaguered city show that out of the few who do get diplomas, only about one in 15 goes on to pass all of the state’s competency tests. These results should not be surprising considering the heartbreaking scores reported by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a nationwide test often called the “nation’s report card.”

The NAEP results in 2000 showed that more than 60 percent of the country’s black fourth graders fail to read at the basic level. It is a travesty that nearly two thirds of these children lack this fundamental skill. But help might be on the way.

Today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on Cleveland’s school-choice plan, one that currently empowers 4,000 mostly low-income parents to make the personal and critical decision of where their children will go to school. Contrary to anti-choice rhetoric, the public schools in Cleveland and the handful of other cities with real choice have not disappeared, done worse, or been drained of funds. They have risen to meet the new challenges with universally positive results for students and their parents.

In Milwaukee, per pupil spending has risen, not dwindled, in the public schools during the course of the city’s choice program. Harvard economist Carolyn Hoxby, evaluating Milwaukee’s groundbreaking program, concluded, “public schools have a strong, positive response from vouchers.”

Florida’s A+ plan gives students the right to seek out a better education if their public school gets an “F” grade for two consecutive years. An Urban League-sponsored study of the state’s choice program noted that it “instilled in the public schools a sense of urgency and zeal for reform not seenŠwhen a school’s failure was rewarded only with more money.”

After the first year of A+, more than 70 schools were in danger of reaching the two-year failure limit. Only two eventually failed. Internal documents overwhelmingly cited the threat of vouchers as the impetus for the change and improvement. Choice equals accountability.

Privately financed scholarship plans in Dayton, New York, and Washington, D.C. have provided black students with gains that after only two years, raised their national percentage rankings more than six percent, and considerably closed the test-score gap between white and black students.

Not surprisingly, young black parents support choice programs everywhere. They have spearheaded the successful movements in Cleveland and Milwaukee, and polling data suggest that they are ready to do so across the country. They will have some strange enemies.

Traditional civil rights groups such as the NAACP, still fighting 30-year old battles and saying that “vouchers don’t educate, they segregate,” are so out of touch that they have signed on to an amicus brief trying to block vouchers in Cleveland.

Vouchers don’t segregate, but massive educational failure certainly does. A lack of adequate preparation now will lead to fewer job opportunities and lower earnings in the future. To avoid that outcome, children need help now.

The most important education case since Brown comes before the court during Black History Month, an opportune time for the Court to make it clear that school choice is nothing less than a civil rights issue. Until all parents have the right to vote with their feet, and take their kids out of schools that fail them, millions of children will be left behind.

Matt Cox is a public policy fellow for the Center for School Reform at the California-based Pacific Research Institute (PRI). He can be reached at mcox@pacificresearch.org.