School choice debate needed
This week, at the outset of another academic year, our rural highways and the streets of our cities, towns and villages will once again be sprinkled with the familiar yellow school buses that transport elementary and secondary students to their school of choice.
This past June, the hope of genuine choice in education for parents and children received a boost from the United States Supreme Court, which ruled in the Zelman v. Simmons-Harris case that a Cleveland, Ohio, school voucher program is constitutional.
Created in response to the poor conditions of Cleveland City Schools, the program allows parents to use up to $2,250 of public school money toward tuition at schools of their choice. At one time, among the eligible participants in the program, only 10 percent of ninth graders met state standards, and only 40 percent of the students graduated from high school.
Choice of schools
Parents whose income falls below federal poverty lines are eligible for school vouchers. While the majority of the more than 4,000 students in the program attend Catholic schools, the Court ruled the program does not violate church-and-state separation concerns since parents can choose from a variety of schools -þ including other public schools, private schools and charter schools.
The Court's decision is historically significant because opponents of school choice can no longer use the First Amendment's Religious Establishment Clause to attack vouchers for religiously sponsored schools as being constitutionally prohibited. Vouchers are no more a violation of the Constitution than the GI Bill, which paid for the education of millions of World War II veterans at Notre Dame, Holy Cross, Siena, St. Rose and other Church-sponsored colleges.
Roadblocks
Sadly, the hope of June's Supreme Court decision still remains elusive for most parents and their children because many state constitutions throughout the nation, including our own, have so-called "Blaine Amendments," which explicitly forbid aid to "sectarian education." When many of these constitutional provisions were enacted, that was a code word for Roman Catholic schools.
The Supreme Court's decision does, however, offer a path for state courts to allow private choice voucher programs by underscoring that it is not the government, but the parents receiving vouchers who will direct the money to church-related schools.
A greater obstacle to the fulfillment of the promise of school choice than state constitutional issues is the organized opposition and political clout of the teachers' unions, as well as the apathy and indifference of the general population to the plight of parents who seek a better educational choice for their children.
Public's view
In reaction to the Supreme Court's decision, Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association, said, "We will continue to fight for public schools and against vouchers -þ or related schemes to provide public funds to private and religious schools -þ at the ballot box, in state legislatures and in state courts. We will continue this fight in allegiance with the vast majority of American parents who want good schools in their communities. And we will continue this fight with the best interest of children foremost in our minds."
The general public's opposition to school vouchers is evidenced by the fact that in almost all instances where states have offered ballot initiatives to establish such programs, they have been defeated soundly at the polls.
Most American parents take school choice for granted. They either choose to live in neighborhoods with decent public schools or have the economic wherewithal to choose a private or parochial school. Unfortunately, such parents and other Americans are largely unaware of or indifferent to the plight of many inner-city school children.
As Sandra Smokes wrote in her Albany Times Union column of July 1, "The people who decry the use of vouchers, who view the programs as a threat to the public school system, more than likely have school choice. Their children aren't going to schools without adequate resources where the buildings are falling apart, where textbooks are outdated or not in adequate supply. In fact, they would not even think of sending their children to the schools that states have taken over or the ones that fail to graduate the majority of their students."
Poor children
Most of the schools which Ms. Smokes describes are in our inner cities, and those students most negatively impacted by their failures are the children of the urban poor, most of whom are black.
Columnist Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe opines that "the average black high school senior is about as well educated as the average white middle school student. There are many ways to ruin someone's life, but few are as effective as ignorance. And ignorance, by and large, is what public schooling guarantees for children from America's poorest and blackest neighborhoods."
These urban parents and other parents in districts with failing public schools deserve a choice in the education of their children, and vouchers offer such a choice.
Follow the money
Another argument against school choice is that vouchers will drain money away from the public schools, making it harder for them to provide a good education to the students remaining.
But as the columnist Thomas Sowell points out, "That argument is just bad arithmetic, perhaps brought on by fuzzy math. Vouchers almost invariably pay less money than the average cost of educating students in the public schools. When students who cost $8,000 a year to educate in public schools transfer to a private school with a $4,000 voucher, the total cost of educating all these students does not go up it goes down.
"Far from reducing per capita spending in the public schools, the departure of voucher students frees more money per pupil for those left behind. It is, of course, true that the total sum of money in the public schools may decline; but if half the students depart, should the school continue to get the same money it had when there were twice as many students?
"This emphasis on money is a tragic farce, in view of all the research that shows virtually no correlation between spending per pupil and educational outcomes. Districts with some of the highest per pupil expenditures have some of the lowest test results, and vice-versa. Countries that spend less than half as much per pupil outperform American students on international tests, year after year."
Debate
In the final analysis, however, it seems to me that the debate is not between public and private or religious schools. Indeed, public schools have served our nation well and have been a bedrock for our society. They must be supported and strengthened.
Rather, the debate should be about how best to provide sound education for all our children in a way that ensures that each child can achieve his or her potential, and that parents, who are the prime educators of their children, are able to access schools which support their religious, moral and spiritual values.
Most other western nations have accommodated these educational goals. Now that the Supreme Court has made it clear that there are no constitutional barriers for governmental assistance to religiously based schools, our society needs to do the same, especially in the highly secularized milieu which engulfs us.
As the constitutional, philosophical and economic arguments concerning the validity and effectiveness of voucher programs are being waged, children continue to struggle in poorly performing schools. The time for an in-depth and enlightened debate and decision about this critically important issue is now.
Hopefully the decision of the United States Supreme Court, removing the constitutional prohibition to voucher programs, will lead to such a constructive societal dialogue. The well-being of children and the future of our society depend upon it.