Return to Home PageFebruary 1998 Message...
A recent article in The New York Times (Dec. 27, 1997) cited a new class action lawsuit filed in Denver as evidence of the growing support among Black and Hispanic parents nationwide for publicly financed vouchers to send children to private and parochial schools.
Recruited at Black churches and Hispanic grocery stores, nearly 3,500 mothers and fathers of public school students signed on as parties to this initiative. Said lawsuit organizer, Black attorney Joe Roberts: "If we had kept going, we could have had 10,000 plaintiffs."
Two recent national polls reinforce the assumption of the Denver lawsuit that minority groups favor school vouchers:
* A Gallup Poll last summer for Phi Delta Kappa, a professional educational association, showed that 72 percent of Black respondents favored vouchers;
* A poll conducted last spring by the Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington research group that specializes in Black issues, discovered that 65 percent of Hispanics responding and 56 percent of Blacks supported school vouchers.
Widespread support
Indeed, it is not only Blacks and Hispanics in Denver and elsewhere who have become proponents for school vouchers. Such voucher proposals are being advanced in approximately half of our nation's 50 states. In our own state, for example, our New York State Catholic Conference, along with many other groups, have long advocated for school vouchers, especially for pilot projects in selected inner-city neighborhoods where there is a long-standing track record of failing public schools.
We have been joined by such public policymakers as New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, who has urged educators and lawmakers to use Catholic schools as models for reform and to allow public school students performing in the bottom 5 percent to attend a religious school, a proposal that Cardinal John O'Connor has repeatedly offered to implement at no charge. A similar plan was offered by Regent Carlos Carballada to allow children in New York City's 87 failing public schools to choose an attractive non-public school.
Unfortunately, because of fierce opposition from the educational establishment, both proposals were rejected.
Public favor
Yet, the public continues to favor the concept of school choice. For example, a 1995 survey conducted by The Empire Foundation and the Lehrman Institute revealed that 54 percent of New York residents want to allow school parents to send children to the public, parochial or private school of their choice and to use tax dollars to pay for all or part of it.
The survey further indicated that even more New Yorkers (60 percent) believe that school choice would improve the quality of education in our state.
Those convictions of the majority of New Yorkers underscore the long-standing position of our Church that parents have a fundamental right and responsibility to direct their children's education and to choose the public, nonpublic or religiously affiliated school they feel best suits the needs of their children.
School choice
Some families have the financial means to choose any desirable school, but the vast majority of parents do not. These parents are then compelled by law to send their children to a school that, for a variety of reasons, they might otherwise avoid -- schools that may be too large or overcrowded, schools whose academic performance is questionable or even failing, schools void of the values which are important to parents, and schools that present a clear danger to the health and safety of children and teachers.
School choice, whether through vouchers, tax credits or equity grants, would give these parents the opportunity to select a safer, more effective learning environment for their children.
The choice of that environment, be it public or nonpublic, ought to be the parents' choice, not the choice of our political and educational leaders.
Advantages
Sadly, poor children forced to attend low-performing schools are often trapped in a lifetime of poverty and dependence. Like their parents, they, too, will stand in unemployment lines, sit in social service waiting rooms, and sleep in prison beds. The cost in shattered dreams, failed lives and unfulfilled human potential is devastating. School choice offers them a real chance for a diploma, a job, and a bright future.
In addition, school choice has other benefits:
* It would save tax dollars. Since the average annual spending per pupil in public schools is approximately $9,000, and the average spending per pupil in Catholic schools is approximately $2,200, taxpayers would see immediate tax relief.
* Because only a portion of what is currently spent on a public school pupil would follow that pupil to a nonpublic school, expenditures per pupil would increase for those pupils remaining in the public school. Student/teacher and student/resource ratios would likewise improve.
* The school-age population boom is causing classroom chaos in places like New York City; school buildings are decayed beyond repair; and municipal and school district budgets are strapped beyond belief. It makes no sense to construct new schools while classrooms in neighborhood nonpublic schools have empty seats -- seats that many parents would love their children to fill.
Opposition
If school choice, especially through vouchers, seems to make such eminent good sense educationally and fiscally, and to enjoy the support of the majority of our state's residents, why does the very mention of the "v-word" raise such fear and mobilize what now has become a routine recital of anti-voucher rhetoric by the advocates of public school education?
Opponents contend that vouchers will drain public schools of needed resources, that only the wealthy will benefit, that vouchers will help only a few motivated families and students, and that use of vouchers is an abandonment of our public school system. Let me address each of these objections:
1. Vouchers will drain public schools of needed resources. First of all, it is entirely possible to create a voucher program in which no dollars leave the public schools. That was the case with the recent voucher proposal in the District of Columbia where Congress intended to use "new" dollars instead of dollars currently being spent on public school pupils. But whether or not one uses new dollars or current dollars, one fact is true: For those students remaining in the particular public school, resources per pupil actually increase.
2. Only the wealthy will benefit. Practically every voucher or choice scholarship program in the country (approximately 30 are privately funded) are targeted to poor families or students attending low-performing schools. Like food stamps, Medicaid and other forms of public assistance, those who are financially able to exercise their choice in schools generally do not benefit from voucher programs.
3. Vouchers will benefit only a few motivated families and students. When Regent Carballada proposed using vouchers for low-performing schools, the idea was criticized as being too narrow in that it would help only a limited number of students. However, in response, one can use an analogy: If a building is burning and you know you cannot save everyone in the building, you still try to save as many as possible.
Furthermore, that objection presumes that only a small percentage of families and students are motivated to pursue an alternative school placement for their children. The school voucher programs operative in Cleveland and Milwaukee belie that presumption, not only showing that large numbers of parents and students are eager to avail themselves of a voucher program, but also proving that those who may not be so inclined (for whatever reason) benefit from the competition which school vouchers generate.
For example, in the City of Albany this past year, the ABC (A Better Choice) program offered scholarships to students from Giffen School to attend a private or parochial school. The result, as The New York Times recently reported, is that the Albany public school system, in response to this program, "quickly made sweeping changes" to restore community confidence.
In so doing, "school officials seemed to have inadvertently bolstered a central argument for vouchers: that they foster competition and thereby force public schools to respond."
This local experience reinforces the findings of educational policy analyst John Chubb of the prestigious Brookings Institute where it was concluded that the best way to improve public education is through a system of "competition and choice."
4. A voucher program is an abandonment of our public schools system. Although some of the first schools in this country were religiously based, the public school system has appropriately become a necessary and vital role of government. We, as a faith community, support a strong public school system for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact that there are more Catholic students in public schools than in Catholic schools. The same can be said of our Jewish, Lutheran et al counterparts.
In 1995, the bishops of the United States issued a statement titled, "Principles for Educational Reform in the United States," which shows clearly our interest in and commitment to the educational well-being of children in our public schools as well as in nonpublic schools.
Currently, at the state level, our Catholic Conference is preparing a statement on the need for all citizens to support public school education and to recognize the invaluable contribution that so many of the teachers, administrators and school board members in our public schools make in educating the young, often against overwhelming odds.
Last thought
Finally, I would note that our Governor in his State-of-the-State message advocated support for charter schools. Unfortunately, that support for the concept of charter schools would not extend to parochial and other religiously affiliated schools.
While generally supportive of the concept of charter schools, since they would promote the opportunity for choice and competition, and, we believe, are conducive to improving education in our state, why exclude religiously affiliated schools? Do we not already have in place schools that meet the test of charter schools? Why, then, at this juncture in history, should our state waste the time and money to create new, untested schools when existing nonpublic schools have not only proven track records, but vacant seats, seats that many parents want their children to fill?
I hope that all Catholic school parents, alumni and alumnae, and Catholic parishioners, along with all other New Yorkers who favor educational reform and parental choice, would contact our Governor and the members of the State Legislature to let them know of our support for choice in education, especially allowing those parents who want a values-based education for their children in our increasingly secularistic society to have this option which is extended to parents in every western nation except our own.
I can think of no better way to celebrate the value and contributions of our Catholic schools, to ensure their future and to improve education for all of New York's school children than this type of advocacy for school choice.