At a legislative hearing last year, prominent Democratic State Senators John Vasconcellos and Tom Hayden warned representatives of the public-education establishment that unless California’s public schools improved soon they would consider supporting school-choice vouchers. In November, when Pacific Research Institute held a seminar on school choice at the State Capitol, more Democratic than Republican legislators sent staff members to attend the workshop. If these signs suggest more open-mindedness on the part of Democratic lawmakers with regard to school choice, then they should be interested in a recent speech at the Manhattan Institute based in New York City by Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke.

Schmoke is a Democrat, an African-American, and a liberal on the majority of issues. He’s also an outspoken proponent of school-choice vouchers. According to Schmoke, "the Democratic Party should re-evaluate its position on school choice issues." His own embrace of school choice didn’t occur overnight.

When first elected mayor in 1987, he was a big booster of public education and supported a host of programs designed to reform Baltimore’s public schools. "Our successes," he admits, "were still the exceptions, not the norm." Says the mayor, "My belief in school choice grew out of my experiences and, yes, my frustrations in trying to improve Baltimore’s public schools over the last twelve years." But the situation in Baltimore is not unique.

"In most cities in this nation," Schmoke notes, "if your child is zoned into a school that is not performing well academically, and where teachers and administrators don’t see themselves as responsible for academic performance, parents have no recourse." Mayor Schmoke’s observation certainly applies here in California, where most teachers and administrators have little incentive to improve since, under Governor Gray Davis’s anemic program for school accountability, only a paltry 15 percent of the state’s poor-performing schools are required to increase student achievement.

Only school choice, notes Schmoke, promises "an innovation strong enough to change the course of what was widely recognized as an ailing system." Says the African-American Democrat: "Under a school choice plan, a parent would have options. There would be consequences for a school’s poor performance. Parents could pull their children out of poorly performing schools and enroll them someplace else. If exercising this option leads to a mass exodus from certain underachieving schools, schools will learn this painful lesson: schools will either improve, or close due to declining enrollments."

Schmoke has equally tough words for school-choice opponents. To those who say that vouchers will destroy public education, he says, "choice can only strengthen public education by introducing competition and accountability into the mix." To those who charge that school choice is elitist, he says: "The truth is that black low-income children are among the prime victims of the nation’s failing public schools."

Schmoke predicts that over time and through open dialogue, "critics of school choice will come to see this movement for what it is: part of an emerging new civil rights battle for the millennium, the battle for education equity."

California Democrats should invite the mayor of Baltimore to testify to the legislature and to speak at state party conventions. Mr. Schmoke’s ideas are the future in education, and Democrats ignore them at their peril.

--Lance T. Izumi