Vouchers, Prop 38 -- and a populist hope betrayed

By John E. Coons and Stephen D. Sugarman

Published Sept. 24, 2000

Save for occasional centrists like Joe Lieberman, the voices arguing for and against school vouchers have for two decades come largely from the two poles of our politics. The result has been to deflect our public debate from the real problem -- the

inadequate schooling received by poor children -- and the role vouchers could play in dealing with it.

The anti-choice pole is occupied, of course, by the teachers unions and public school administrators -- and Al Gore. They say the basic flaw of our public school system is a shortage of money, a defect that vouchers might somehow aggravate.

This line of attack secures a united political front for what in fact is a deeply fractured teaching profession. When consulted individually, educators are highly conflicted over the teaching methods, intellectual content and school restructuring that might remedy the urban education calamity. But were their political leaders to concede this professional discord, they would make school choice a solution surely worth testing. Hence the troops rally round the all-consoling need for more cash.

These artful opponents of choice do, of course, make negative arguments that are directed specifically at vouchers. One example is their claim (important were it true) that extending choice to the private sector would encourage undesirable social

attitudes (as if today's private school graduates were our present problem).

Again, however, these same critics disagree among themselves about the proper way to train good citizens just as much as they quarrel about the teaching of reading. The consistency of their anti-private-school propaganda is another handy device

that obscures this professional division. The effect of these smokescreens on the level of debate is dreadful, because it keeps voters in the dark about the public school failures that money won't fix.

Unfortunately, the frustrated citizen will learn little more from the champions of the version of school choice that is now before California voters. Seldom do the arguments of the supporters of Proposition 38 focus upon any of the wide range of potential outcomes of school vouchers (other than asserting that there will be a rise in test scores). For example, what would be the impact of parental choice on children who are in special education and on those from low-income families? These are important questions of justice and policy that should be addressed by more than brief TV images of smiling minority children in wheelchairs.

Why do many prominent champions of choice neglect these specifics? Blame the dominating influence that "pure" market ideology has achieved in libertarian circles over the last 20 years. Proposition 38 is promoted as if it were an application of

the economic theory used to deregulate banks and airlines. The voter is asked to assume that, once deregulation is achieved in any complex human activity, all outcomes are by definition correct. With schools, as with banks, laissez faire is itself the sufficient criterion of reform.

This intellectual addiction has strongly influenced the practical design of such efforts as Proposition 38. Detesting every sort of regulation, backers of Proposition 38 have sponsored a measure lacking any of the protections that could make choice

actually work for the poor who most need it.

These protections are modest enough. Either the voucher must be provided exclusively to the poor or their reasonable access to participating schools must be assured. The simplest solution would: 1) make the voucher adequate to fund good quality new schools and 2) require random selection among all or some of a school's applicants.

The American public cares about all this. If only by intuition, California citizens grasp that the flat $4,000 subsidy promised by Proposition 38 would build few new private schools for the poor, while encouraging them for the middle class. Only the latter can afford the extra tuition that would be necessary to stimulate the new providers.

In their economic purity the drafters of Proposition 38 have even made it problematic for the Catholic bishops, whose long established schools would be the most immediate beneficiaries. Without an effective "preference for the poor," the church is not interested.

Ironically, in picking Joe Lieberman as his running mate, Al Gore has identified a reincarnation of the Democratic party's historic hope for vouchers. The first practical proposals for empowering low-income families were designed by liberals in the

1960s, stimulated by Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Making the poor responsible to choose the provider of their child's education was to be a step toward the middle class.

This is the sort of school choice scheme Lieberman favors. For example, Lieberman voted for a proposed experiment in which low-income families in the District of Columbia would receive federally funded scholarships to be used to send their

children to participating private schools.

Sadly, the Democrats dumped vouchers in the 1970s, not because they wouldn't work for the poor but precisely because they would. School choice threatened to discomfort union leaders. Gore made that clear the day after he selected Lieberman. In the same breath, he proclaimed that he opposed giving needy families scholarships to help their children attend private elementary and secondary schools but that he favored giving those same families tax credits that would enable their children to enroll in private colleges and universities of their choice. Gore is well aware that the giant national teachers' unions have yet to organize faculty at the college level.

Alas, the intellectual vacuum created by the abandonment of school vouchers by most Democrats was filled in the late '70s by libertarian apostles of a pure market. In California, as elsewhere, their schemes are likely to attract about 30 percent of the voters. The bulk of us in the middle can only hope for the chance one day to vote on a Lieberman-like proposition that is directed at what is the real problem and our own social concern.

You can see this story at: http://www.sacbee.com/voices/news/old/voices06_20000924.html