No. 26
July 2, 1999
By K. Lloyd Billingsley*

When legislators return from summer recess they will find the pathway to educational choice clearer and more broad than ever before. The nation’s children now enjoy influential allies among the ranks of liberals and Democrats, and a plan is on the table.

Matthew Miller, author of "A Bold Experiment to Fix City Schools," in the July Atlantic Monthly, will be familiar to readers of the New Republic and listeners of National Public Radio. Miller is a liberal who says that unions are "one of the few sources of progressive ideas in American public life." At the same time, he says that vouchers are a progressive idea and he advances a "progressive pro-voucher" perspective exemplified by Jack Coons of UC Berkeley. Professor Coons, co-author with Stephen Sugarman of PRI’s Making School Choice Work for All Families, long ago decried the public school system as "socialism for the rich." Coons sees school choice as a question of justice and civil rights.

Choice for every child

Miller proposes increasing school funding by 20 percent in cities where the public schools are failing, a demand echoed by an education establishment that sees increased spending as the answer to every problem. But spending is only half the plan. Miller wants to channel that 20-percent increase through "a universal voucher system that finally gives every child a choice." (His emphasis).

The author is dismayed that current choice programs in Milwaukee and Cleveland, along with private plans such as the Children’s Scholarship Fund of John Walton and Ted Forstmann, amount to only about 0.1 percent of the nation’s 52 million K-12 students. Add the 200,000 students in some 1,200 charter schools, who do not enjoy full choice, and the total increases to only 0.5 percent. He wants a plan that would touch 500,000 children.

Jack Coons likes the plan, and so does Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice, a tireless advocate of school choice and defender of Milwaukee’s voucher system. While choice pioneer Milton Friedman is wary that the plan would "fuel the racketeers in the education business," he could live with a plan that funded pupils at $7,600 and provided a voucher for departing students at $3,800. The NAACP’s Kweisi Mfume would accept a similar plan, and so would Republican presidential candidate Lamar Alexander, former Secretary of Education under George Bush. Rarely has such agreement existed on the issue of choice. But Miller got a different answer from the teacher union bosses he interviewed on his radio show.

A reactionary establishment

Bob Chase is president of the 2.2 million-member National Education Association, the nation’s biggest union, which sent more delegates to the 1996 Democratic convention than did the state of California. Chase told Miller he would not accept the voucher plan if inner-city funding were doubled or even tripled. "It’s pure and simply not going to happen," he said. Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who has even attacked private scholarship programs, likewise refused to consider the plan under any circumstances and calls vouchers "a radical abandonment of public schools and public education." Having let them state their predictable case, Mr. Miller still took the trouble to demolish anti-choice arguments.

There is no evidence that vouchers work. Miller finds this ironic coming from people who have done everything in their power to quash choice. Ultimately this argument, "says more about union chutzpah than voucher performance."

Vouchers drain money from public schools. Miller notes that Cleveland provided $10 million in additional funding for its plan. Further, "when broader voucher plans let the amount that public schools receive per student follow the students who leave the system, the public-school coffers are not drained — schools receive the resources their enrollment merits."

Vouchers are unconstitutional. The United States Supreme Court, which upheld Milwaukee’s program last June, doesn’t think so (the money goes to parents, not to religious schools) and neither does Miller. "No one thinks that federal student loans are unconstitutional when used by students to attend Notre Dame," he says, adding: "It can’t be that we are constitutionally obligated to imprison urban children in failing schools."

The capacity isn’t there. "Then what’s the problem?" says Miller, noting that limited private school capacity makes a mass exodus from government schools impossible. But even a limited exodus, he thinks, would spur efforts to improve public schools, making vouchers a win-win situation.

Profit is bad. "Public education is already big business," Miller writes, noting that the $320 billion spent on K-12 education is "lusted after by textbook publishers, test designers, building contractors, food and janitorial services, and software companies to name only a few."

An urgent task

Giving parents and children the power to choose, Miller argues, should make sense to liberals, "for whom the moral urgency of helping city children trumps ancient union ties." Democrats, he argues, "should see large-scale urban voucher programs as an opportunity, not a threat." If they ignore it they show themselves to be a party "that favors its funders at the expense of its constituents." But wouldn’t such a voucher plan constitute a risk?

Yes, says Miller, but it wouldn’t be the first time. He notes how the land-grant colleges of the 1860s, an untried idea, sparked the research that fueled the boom in American agriculture. Likewise the G.I. Bill, which funded the student, not the institution, "helped to spawn the post-war middle class." But widespread educational failure has made the "moral urgency" of the voucher issue much greater.

Miller notes that, according to Education Week, most fourth graders in major cities can’t read and understand a simple children’s book. Most eight graders can’t use arithmetic to solve a practical problem. Miller notes the call of Arthur Levine of Columbia University teachers college for a "rescue operation" that would give vouchers to 2-3 million children in the worst schools, something Levine calls "the education equivalent of Schindler’s List." Levine is not alone in this assessment. Floyd Flake, a Democrat and former congressman from New York, decries "educational genocide" in the cities. A strong voucher proponent, the African-American former congressman has endorsed PRI’s study Making School Choice Work for All Families.

A time for action

Miller’s Atlantic article is the latest confirmation that the academic debate about school choice is over. Parents and children should be able to choose the schools their children attend as a matter of basic civil rights. The dollars should follow the scholars, just as they do with college students, who take their grants to the school of their own selection. There are no constitutional or practical reasons preventing children from exercising this choice, only the view of a reactionary education establishment, which puts politics above the interests of children and seeks to turn back the clock to the days of regulation and bureaucracy. With the debate over, pro-choice forces are taking action.

Florida has passed a voucher plan and expects 12,000 of the state’s 2.3 million K-12 students to participate. But this is not enough. All states, particularly trendsetting California, should advance a voucher plan that involves all students. As Miller notes, educational choice is the progressive position. In the new millennium, the question will not be whether to allow choice, but how we may best extend choice to all families.

*K. Lloyd Billingsley is editorial director at the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy.