The Historical Case for School Choice - By William Raspberry - Monday, August 17, 1998; Page A19 (Washington Post)
UNIONS FEAR GIVING MEMBERS CHOICE - Denver Publishing Co. - George Will; The Washington Post, UNIONS FEAR GIVING MEMBERS CHOICE, Rocky Mountain News, 8 Feb 1998, pp. 3B.
As Test of Vouchers, Milwaukee Parochial School Exceeds Expectations - By Jon Jeter - Washington Post Staff Writer - Tuesday, September 1, 1998; Page A03
Opinion: Vouchers Mask Hard-Core Problems Of Public Schools
The Historical Case for School Choice - By William Raspberry - Monday, August 17, 1998; Page A19 (Washington Post)
Andrew J. Coulson didn't really want to go where the facts seemed to be dragging him. But facts are facts, and the Seattle researcher is convinced that his conclusion, however reluctantly reached, is correct: The public school system is bad for education. Oh, boy, you say: Another public-education basher, another apologist for "choice." Well, yes, but listen: "I am an education researcher and writer, and I have had the luxury of dedicating myself full time for the past four years to a single question: What sort of school system would best meet the public's actual educational goals?
"To answer that question, I have analyzed public opinion data from polls and focus groups, I have studied school systems around the world from ancient times to the present, and I have pored over virtually every scrap of relevant research on the performance of public and private schools. In keeping with the public's broad range of aspirations for their institutions of learning, my investigation has gone beyond academic and job outcomes to include the indirect social effects that schools have on their communities and societies, and the impact of different school systems on poor and minority families."And his finding: "Free educational markets, in which parents have been able to choose any school for their children and schools have been forced to compete with one another to attract students, have consistently done a better job of serving families and nations than state-run systems such as we have today.
"In other words, the institution of public schooling is not the best mechanism for advancing the ideals of public education." Coulson's is a sweeping blow to those of us who keep hoping the system that served earlier generations reasonably well can be helped to overcome the effects of bad policies, inadequate teachers, disengaged parents and indifferent students to perform their magic yet again.
He wonders if the magic ever was there in the first place, though undoubtedly a lot of people -- including the 31-year-old Coulson himself -- have come out of public schools in good shape. He says he is convinced by his research, though he cannot prove it, that the free-market approach -- including competition, the profit motive and the direct cost to parents -- adds value to schooling. Unfortunately for his case, there is no place in the world where private and free-market systems can be fairly compared.
"That's why most of my book ["Market Education, the Unknown History" will be published next January] is historical. As far back as ancient Greece and the Muslim Empire of the eighth through the 11th centuries, you can find some really interesting comparisons.
"If you compare Athens' free-market education to Sparta's highly centralized state system, for example, you find some compelling distinctions. Athens, as anyone who's looked at history knows, produced fine literature and pioneering work in mathematics and art, had the most sophisticated economic system of its time, and left an enormous legacy of learning. Sparta didn't fail utterly, but it became mainly a narrow military society with no culture. Sparta has given us names for high school football teams and not much else." Coulson says he understands the radical nature of his conclusion and fears that it will be dismissed as the product of ideological fervor.
"I am neither a fundamentalist Christian nor a social conservative," he told me. "I am pro-choice on abortion, supportive of equal rights for all citizens irrespective of race, religion, sex or sexual orientation. And yet I'm afraid that my book will be discounted by many other well-meaning liberal-minded people simply because it is not favorable to the institution of public schooling." Coulson is not the first observer to note the connection between direct cost and parental involvement. He cites a prominent lawyer, born in the early '60s in a small town without a high school, who undertakes to endow a school out of his own pocket. But though he could afford to underwrite the entire tuition cost, he decides to provide only a third, for fear that his "gift might be abused for someone's selfish purposes, as I see happen in many places where teachers' salaries are paid from public funds."
The prominent lawyer was Pliny the Younger, born in the early '60s of the first century A.D.
You can pick from any number of proffered solutions:
 | * School-choice programs. |
| * State takeovers. |
| * New teaching practices. |
| * Improved teacher training. |
| * Higher academic standards. |
| * National achievement standards. |
All have been tried or adopted at one time or another, in various guises, and in different places. Some work in some places; some don't work anywhere. But the public agitation for change and improvement continues to build even as the "solutions" proliferate.
Listen:
"A necessary part of the solution is a return to content," says E.D. Hirsch Jr., University of Virginia professor and author of the best seller "Cultural Literacy."
"We also need teachers to teach reading to everybody by first grade - none of this pious `by third grade' stuff," adds Mr. Hirsch, founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation and developer of the "core knowledge curriculum."
The Hirsch curriculum, which rejects the faddism so prevalent in education today, has been adopted by Maryland's Calvert County for grades K-8 systemwide and in other pioneering school districts.
"We're phasing it into the middle schools - the first in the nation to do so," says Superintendent of Schools William J. Moloney.
Core Knowledge provides a guideline for what students should know in each grade and in each subject area: mathematics, language arts, American and world history, geography, science and fine arts. It lists specific topics to cover in each grade, and teachers can build on the knowledge base from the previous year with little repetition and no gaps.
Detractors say the content is too difficult for young students, but the sequential, building-block curriculum is spreading across the country. It appeals to parents who believe most schools have abandoned the transmission of knowledge and facts to teach vague "skills."
Early evidence shows an improvement in Calvert's test scores, but it's too soon after only two years to show a direct correlation to the curriculum, Mr. Moloney says.
Other education reformers argue for better-educated teachers, higher standards, more accountability and choice.
"Put highly educated teachers in every classroom," says Diane Ravitch, education historian and senior research fellow at New York University. "That's a big reform, and it has never happened."
A July report from the Department of Education said 36 percent of teachers in public schools are teaching a subject in which they have neither a college major nor a minor.
"People with no background are teaching about something they know nothing about," notes Miss Ravitch, a former assistant secretary of education in the Bush administration.
"Many things need to change, but the first thing is that educators as well as parents need a clear understanding that the role of a teacher is authoritative . . ." she adds. "When you have declining standards for teachers, declining standards for students follow as inevitably as night follows day."
Says Chris Greeson, a mother in North Carolina: "The standard should be that students ought to be able to do 12th-grade work in 12th grade. Now eighth-grade work is acceptable to graduate from high school in North Carolina. My daughter graduated with eight kids who couldn't read their diploma."
As she sees it, schools have become so fearful of crushing a child's self-esteem that they lower standards to help them succeed.
"My mother taught high school 32 years, and in her last years of teaching she couldn't flunk anybody," Mrs. Greeson recalls.
"We need higher standards," agrees William J. Bennett, co-director of Empower America and education secretary in the Reagan administration. "We need teeth in those standards, and accountability. People are going to have to meet them or they do not graduate or get a diploma."
Mr. Bennett criticizes a Clinton administration effort to assess educational progress through national testing, adding that he is considering developing his own test to spur higher school standards.
"If tests are set to the norm, the entire country can be going down the tubes because there are no objective standards," Mr. Bennett argues. "I would like to have a voluntary test with standards that individuals, schools, districts and states could buy. Then publicize it so people get furious about low performance."
He calls colleges and universities "the major culprits" because they have lowered their admission standards."
"So when good teachers say to students that if they don't do well they won't be able to go to college, the colleges and universities make a mockery of it because 90 percent of them accept anybody."
Chester E. Finn Jr., senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and assistant secretary of education in the Reagan administration, insists: "There must be two-directional accountability for schools - upward to a chartering authority or public bodies that set standards and administer tests with consequences attached to tests; and downward to customers and to a choice mechanism so nobody gets trapped against his will in a bad school."
Mr. Finn notes that ideas that lead to dumbing down are pervasive in the education establishment and have ideological and philosophical roots. Exposing those bad ideas helps, he says, and so does giving people alternatives such as charter schools that are not obliged to adopt these fads.
Government vouchers and school choice for low-income children will force failing inner-city public schools to shape up, according to Annette "Polly" Williams, a black Democratic Wisconsin state legislator who helped push through the state's school choice program - the first in the country that included private schools.
The program, though still facing court battles, has been operating for seven years for about 1,600 of Milwaukee's poorest children.
Mrs. Williams stresses that she supports school choice only for low-income families, to give them the same options available to families who can afford to pay private school tuition or to move to a neighborhood with quality public schools.
"At most, 10 to 15 percent of families will opt out of public schools," she says. "The overwhelming majority of low-income families will still be in public schools."
Even so, the fact that the choice approach allows some families to abandon public schools was "terrifying" to the public school bureaucracy, she says.
"But instead of changing the product to make it better, they are using force to try to stop parents, using lawsuits to stop children from leaving.
"The unions have a stranglehold on [elementary and secondary] public education based on their need to keep teachers employed, whether they are bad teachers or not. The unions have got to wake up and smell the coffee."
Copyright © 1997 News World Communications, Inc.
No issue unites the right as school choice does. The religious right, neocons, culturecons, supply-siders and libertarians all argue that vouchers will unleash market forces and break the iron grip of the National Education Association. Many on the right also see school choice as a means to promote moral and religious education.
But is publicly funded school choice really conservative? In arguing for vouchers, many of my brethren on the right sound a lot like liberals. Some examples:
The Egalitarian Argument. James K. Glassman makes this argument in a Washington Post column: "But there's the matter of justice, too. Chelsea Clinton's parents can choose the best school for their child. Why can't the parents of the poorest kids on the most dilapidated, drug-infested block in Washington, Los Angeles or Newark?"
Does justice demand that the government provide poor families the same choices rich families have in, say, health care? Conservatives have long argued that inequality is a fact of life and that when governments try to do something about it, they end up harming everyone; that instead of building up the poor, they tear down the wealthy and middle class.
Could vouchers harm private schools instead of helping public schools? Conservatives should at least consider the possibility.
The Right-to-a-Subsidy Argument. The Heritage Foundation's Denis P. Doyle and Fordham University's Bruce C. Cooper recently argued that without school choice, poor children's religious liberties are being violated. In other words, the Constitution obliges taxpayers to send poor children to religious schools if their parents so choose. "The First Amendment clearly proscribes the establishment of a state church," they write. "But it also guarantees the `free exercise' of religion."
"Poor children - compelled by economic necessity to attend government schools - are denied the opportunity to freely exercise their religious beliefs within a school setting," they maintain.
This argument - that First Amendment guarantees are not rights protected against government intrusion, but entitlements produced by government spending - is normally employed by liberals, not the Heritage Foundation.
Do Doyle and Cooper think the government should have to buy printing presses for poor people so they can exercise their freedom of the press? Do they agree with liberals that artists supported by the National Endowment for the Arts have a First Amendment "right" to a subsidy?
Poor people have the right to exercise their religion, but they don't have a right to do it with other people's money.
The Every-Other-Civilized-Country-Does-It Argument. Doyle writes in American Enterprise that in the Netherlands, "70 percent of children attend denominational schools at public expense," and "America is the only civilized country in the world that does not support religious elementary and secondary schools" with government funds.
Liberals often argue that every other civilized country has high tax rates, statist health care and so forth; therefore, the United States should, too. Conservatives usually retort that America's unparalleled prosperity is a result of our relative lack of government interference in the economy. We point out that if this country had French-style economic policies it would also have French levels of unemployment.
A similar argument could be made against Doyle. Why is the United States more religious than the countries he holds up as models? Perhaps because keeping church and state separate has strengthened religion in America.
The Just-Like-Pell-Grants Argument. Dan Mitchell of the Heritage Foundation recently condemned the ACLU's opposition to school choice: "What's their rationale? Well, (they say) this is a subsidy to a religious school. Well, now, hold on a second. You have students attending Brigham Young University, Notre Dame University, all sorts of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish - all sorts of religious colleges - with Pell grants and student loans from the federal government." Bob Dole said the vouchers in his school-choice proposal would be "like Pell grants."
If vouchers are like Pell grants, does that mean they will wildly inflate tuitions at private schools, as Pell grants and student loans have done at universities? Will school choice become a sacred cow that Republicans can cut only at a steep political price, as Pell grants and student loans have become? Will vouchers be used by liberals as an excuse to regulate private schools, as student aid has been used to regulate higher education? Shouldn't conservatives worry that if vouchers are "like Pell grants," they just might bear the same sour fruit?
Some on the right are leery of school choice. For one thing, it looks an awful lot like taxing citizens to advance religious teachings with which they disagree, a type of coercion that should be especially distasteful to religious citizens. And a heavy burden of proof is on those who claim, against the weight of history, that government money can come without government strings attached.
Fears about school choice may turn out to be unwarranted, but the liberal arguments some conservatives use to advance vouchers aren't reassuring.
Copyright © 1996, St. Louis Post-Dispatch -Timothy Lamer; The Washington Post, STRANGE ARGUMENTS FOR SCHOOL CHOICE, FIVE Ed., St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10 Nov 1996, pp. 03B.
Carol Innerst, Educators want change but can't agree on the solution, 2 Ed., The Washington Times, 16 Nov 1997, pp. 01.
African American leaders and Newt Gingrich, an avowed foe of affirmative action, rarely see eye to eye. But on Oct. 30, the conservative Speaker of the House stood shoulder to shoulder on Capitol Hill with liberal Representative Floyd H. Flake (D-N.Y.) and the Reverend Jarrett Ellis, grand-nephew of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to promote a bill that would provide vouchers for poor kids to attend private and parochial schools. ``Doesn't every child of every background in every neighborhood deserve the right to go to a school that their parents believe succeeds?'' asked Gingrich as Flake, Ellis, and dozens of black schoolchildren from a church-run academy nodded approvingly.
Sure it was a photo op, but it was one that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. When Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, their education policy amounted to calls to abolish the Education Dept.--to the dismay of blacks and Hispanics. Now, Republicans are touring high schools, reading to preschoolers, and holding town meetings to plug initiatives such as vouchers, education savings accounts, and more money for charter schools.
VETO THREAT. And it may be working: Polls show Republicans are starting to make inroads on an issue Democrats have long owned. So the Dems are battling furiously to hold their turf. On Oct. 27, some 75 Democratic lawmakers visited classrooms around the country to promote their own goals, such as giving parents the right to choose their kids' public schools and providing money to repair crumbling buildings. And on Nov. 4, Senate Democrats succeeded in killing a GOP bill that would have given parents tax breaks on education savings accounts. President Clinton, meanwhile, is threatening to veto other GOP bills that establish vouchers or that block his plan for national reading and math standards.
What prompted Republicans to retool their education game plan? Fear. They were getting creamed by Democrats, who assailed the GOP for education budget cuts at a time when better schools are a top priority for voters. ``It has exploded as an issue,'' says Republican pollster Frank Luntz. Besides, the GOP's harsh attacks on the Education Dept. and teacher unions turned voters off. Says Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), who chairs a House education panel: ``We have to demonstrate that we have appealing solutions.''
That's why a crisp October morning in New Hampshire found Representative John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) playing teacher to eighth graders at Dover Middle School. The students listened attentively as he quizzed them about how laws get passed and what the federal budget covers. A few gutsy kids asked the first-termer how much time he spends raising campaign cash and whether he'll follow in his father's footsteps and become governor. Dropping in on classrooms, something he has done about 30 times this year, gives Sununu a chance to show the GOP cares about education. ``People all over the country are concerned about education,'' says Sununu. ``It's important that we have a positive position on how we can improve schools.''
SLIPPERY SLOPE. The GOP now boasts an array of proposals geared mostly to helping parents sidestep a public education system that Republicans argue has failed. Among the most prominent GOP initiatives are tax breaks to pay for computers and other K-12 expenses at private or public schools, and more money for charter schools--public institutions that operate with wide autonomy. Such planks appeal to the GOP mainstream: suburban, middle-class whites.
The GOP also opposes national standards as the first step on a slippery slope toward a Washington-dictated curriculum. That plays well with the Republican Right and minorities. Conservatives who send their kids to religious schools fear Washington's meddling; black and Hispanic lawmakers worry that standards may be skewed against minorities.
But the centerpiece of GOP education policy is an old favorite--school tuition vouchers--dusted off and targeted at needy kids. ``Thousands of low-income students are trapped in schools where they don't learn, where they aren't safe, and where no one with money would ever send their children,'' argues Representative James Talent (R-Mo.), co-sponsor of a voucher bill. With Gingrich readying a new assault on affirmative action next year, vouchers could help the GOP deflect charges that it is anti-minority. ``This is their way of saying, `Giving children a good education is a better way to get ahead than affirmative action,''' says Nina Shokraii, education analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Vouchers are catching on--even among Democrats--and could help the GOP break the Dems' lock on the urban minority vote. ``Those we can rescue from the [public] system, we need to do so,'' says Flake, a leader of the Black Caucus and a minister who founded a private school in his New York City congressional district. Adds preacher Ellis: ``This is not a race issue. It is a survival issue.''
Pollster Mark J. Penn pegs support for vouchers for disadvantaged students at 69% of the general public and 68% of Democrats. ``It's a potent issue,'' he says. A June survey by the Joint Center for Political & Economic Studies found that 57% of blacks support vouchers, up 10 percentage points from a poll in January, 1996.
Democrats attack the GOP agenda as a threat to public education. ``Theirs is a bumper-sticker solution that solves the problem for a few thousand kids,'' scoffs Representative Tim J. Roemer (D-Ind.), co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill to expand funds for charter schools. Still, Republicans have tapped the public's frustration with the status quo. ``All the innovative ideas are coming from the Republican Party,'' says Gerald Reynolds, president of the Center for New Black Leadership in Washington. By giving voters more solutions for fixing education, the GOP is stealing Democratic thunder--and courting an important new constituency.
Copyright 1997 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. - Amy Borrus in Dover, N.H., Government: EDUCATION : A CRASH COURSE FOR THE GOP, Vol. 3553, Business Week, 17 Nov 1997, pp. 106.
Several African-Americans, including six United Methodist clergy, have declared opposition to school choice voucher plans.
In a statement released recently, a group of 17 African-Americans say politicians' proposals that do not provide additional funding for public schools actually would take money from public school budget.
Although labeled Civil Rights Movement program by some voucher-plan supporters, these African-Americans charge, "Those words were a device to make it seem a benefit to African-Americans and other minorities."
Rather, the group contends, voucher plans would take money from underfunded schools that serve most poor Black and white children and transfer that money to private and parochial schools.
The group is comprised of political leaders, educators, civil rights leaders, clergy, a psychiatrist and an attorney.
"The history of private school choice is one of white flight from public schools attended by large numbers of Black children; which therefore, results in neglect of those public schools," the statement declares.
In addition the group maintains, "African-American parents and their churches are not eager for the government to finance religious schools that convert children to denominations different from those of the parents."
The group cited studies indicating that because private schools are generally located in wealthy neighborhoods funding would flow from poor counties to richer counties.
"Private schools are not subject to constitutional protections" of students that are present in the public schools, the statement says.
School choice within public school systems, especially the use of magnet schools, has permitted children "to choose from academic courses and from vocational choices that prepare them for jobs in commerce and industry," the statement says. "Those choices do not exist in parochial or other private schools."
Among United Methodist clergy statement signers include retired Bishop James Thomas of Atlanta; Emanuel Cleaver, mayor of Kansas City, Mo.; Nelson Thompson, president of the Kansas City Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; and three ministers serving in California; Lewis Chase, James Lawson and Philip Lawson.
Others who signed include professors William Anderson, Gwen Thomas and Dorothy Cotton; civil rights leaders James Farmer and C.T. Vivian; and Hannah Atkins, former Oklahoma secretary of state.
Ethnic NewsWatch © SoftLine Information, Inc., Stamford, CT - Some religious leaders oppose school voucher plans, Philadelphia Tribune, The, 13 Dec 1996, pp. PG.
The most important voting this election year will not occur in November and will not award any office to anyone. It will happen June 2, when Californians vote on the Campaign Reform Initiative that would bar unions from spending any portion of any member's dues on political activity without the member's written consent, renewed annually. If passed, CRI almost certainly will radically reduce unions' political muscle, thereby substantially altering politics in a state that can be decisive in presidential elections. National labor leaders disparage CRI as ``payback'' for the $35 million that unions spent in 1996, which bought issue advocacy for Democrats and helped shave nine seats off the Republicans' House majority. But CRI actually began, in part, as payback for labor's intervention in the Saddleback Unified School Board election near here.
Frank Ury, member of a group promoting school-choice voucher systems and back-to-basics curricula, lost a school board election when the teachers' union spent $70,000 against him. (Five thousand dollars is a normal expenditure in such races.) When he heard from teachers who voted for him and resented being forced to fund opposition to him, Ury plucked up a pen. Brandishing a Jefferson maxim (``To compel a man to furnish contributions for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical''), he and two others wrote CRI.
In 1992 in Washington state, voters overwhelmingly (by 72 percent) passed something similar to CRI, and within a year the number of teachers' union members contributing $1 a month to political funds shrank from 48,000 to 8,000. Unions rightly fear freedom of choice regarding political spending for the same reason teachers' unions fear school choice: They know what people will choose.
About 40 percent of union households vote Republican. Seven of the top 10 contributors in the 1995-96 election cycle were unions, which gave 97 percent of their money to Democrats. An October Washington Post / ABC poll found 82 percent support for a federal version of CRI, called a ``Payroll Protection Act.''
Mark Bucher, another CRI co-author, was provoked by the $12.5 million the teachers' union alone spent to defeat a 1993 school-choice initiative. He says that when recent polling about CRI revealed an astonishing 82 percent support, a ``push-down question'' was included in polling to provoke hostile responses. Before those questioned gave their opinions on CRI, they were told:
``Your local school teachers' association opposes this initiative and says it will result in less money for our public schools. The teachers say this initiative will reduce their ability to make needed changes in Sacramento, such as class-size reduction.''
This drove support down, but only to 72 percent, including 66 percent of Democrats, with union and nonunion voters equally supportive. However, the public's healthy inattention to politics, and its healthy conservatism, meaning skepticism, about ballot measures, means that there usually is a 10 percent to 20 percent reflexive ``no'' vote against initiatives.
Still, the desperation of CRI's opponents can be gauged by their Orwellian rhetoric. Unions may spend more than $20 million to disseminate the idea that attempts to give union members a voice regarding political uses of their money amounts to ``an employee gag order'' and ``silencing workers.''
Opponents of CRI say ``fairness'' would require corporations to get prior permission from shareholders for political spending. But owning shares, unlike joining a union, is always optional.
Opponents say it would be unfair to limit union leaders' rights to spend members' money while, say, the National Rifle Association remains free to spend members' money without seeking special permission. But people join the NRA largely for political leverage, whereas the Supreme Court has held that under existing law the primary function of unions is to deal with employers on labor-management issues, and workers have a right to refunds of the portion of their dues not spent thereon.
One of President Clinton's first acts countermanded President Bush's order requiring government contractors to notify employees of this refund right. A survey indicates that 78 percent of workers do not know they can choose a refund. Today's ``pro-choice'' president likes that. The ``pro-choice'' party depends on that.
CRI's opponents made a hollow threat to sponsor retaliatory initiatives ending $10 billion of tax breaks for corporations. The peculiar threat was: Stop CRI or we will shrink the profits that provide our members' pay.
By opposing CRI, union leaders reveal their real - and you would think embarrassing - estimate of their ability to elicit members' voluntary participation in the leaders' politics. But embarrassment is nothing next to unions' fear of CRI's power to shift the balance of power in California and, as an infectious idea, elsewhere.
Copyright © 1998, Denver Publishing Co. - George Will; The Washington Post, UNIONS FEAR GIVING MEMBERS CHOICE, Rocky Mountain News, 8 Feb 1998, pp. 3B.
* Charter schools, school vouchers, and school choice all attack the idea that quality education is a "public good" which should be readily available to all children. They undermine the power of ordinary people by replacing community relationships with the competition of isolated individuals.
* Sharply raising standards for promotion and graduation, without dramatically raising the resources available in less-affluent school districts, sets many young people up to fail. Establishing high stakes tests for high school graduation legitimizes the failure of students.
* Increased reliance on standardized, multiple-choice tests narrows the curriculum and encourages rote learning. Increased focus on class "rank" harms solidarity among students and reduces education to a game of winners and losers.
* "School to Work" programs substitute job training for education and aim to shape every child to meet the needs of the corporations for a docile workforce.
Education reform is couched in terms of one great national purpose: business competition. Corporate success is held up as the source of moral authority and corporate profit as the measure of human achievement.
What is behind the assault on public education? In the past two decades, millions of jobs have been shipped overseas. Skilled manufacturing jobs have been replaced by low skill, low pay service jobs. Unprecedented numbers of white collar and middle-management jobs have been "restructured" out of existence.
The lack of skilled jobs is likely to worsen as automation advances. Computerization has greatly reduced the skills required in many jobs, and has wiped out many others. This, after all, is the appeal of computerization to corporations.
Our young people have greater talent than the corporate system can use, and greater dreams than it can fulfill. The attack on public education is intended to crash the self-confidence of millions of young people, so that if they have less fulfilling jobs and less rewarding lives in an increasingly unequal and undemocratic society, they will blame themselves instead of the economic system. Education reform is designed to restructure the expectations of young people so that they accept their place in the new corporate order.
Teachers have been under attack not because they have failed but because they have succeeded in raising expectations which the corporate system cannot fulfill. Attacking public education is also a way of blaming ordinary people for the increasing inequality in society. Corporate and political leaders are saying that if millions of people don't have adequate work or housing or much of a future, the fault lies with the people themselves, who could not meet the standards.
The attack on public education is part of a broader strategy to strengthen corporate domination of society. The 1960s and '70s witnessed a worldwide "revolution of rising expectations." Beginning around 1972, elites around the world undertook a counterrevolution to lower expectations and tighten their control. This counteroffensive has taken many forms, all designed to undermine the economic and psychological security of ordinary people. The export of jobs, the restructuring of corporations, the dismantling of social programs are all policies intended to make people frightened and controllable. What changes are needed in public education? The official reforms exacerbate the worst thing about the schools: their tendency to reinforce the inequality of society. Real reforms would move in the opposite direction.
If we want to change the schools, we must first ask, "What are we educating our students for?" The choices come down to two. We can either prepare our young people for unrewarding jobs in an unequal and undemocratic society, or we can prepare them to understand their world and to change it. The first is education to meet the needs of the corporate economy. The second is education for democracy.
The goal of real change in the schools must be education for democracy. With this goal we would encourage high expectations, cooperation, and equality rather than competition and inequality, and real commitment to our children rather than fake reforms.
Our task as we approach the end of the twentieth century is to create human society anew on a truly democratic basis, in which human beings are not reshaped and restructured to fit the needs of the economy, but rather economic and social structures are reshaped to allow our fulfillment as human beings.
Note: David Stratman can be reached at 617524-4073, or via email at: newdem@aol.com
David Stratman is a Boston-based consultant. He was Washington Director of the National Parent-Teacher Association. from 1977-79, is author of We CAN Change the World: The Real Meaning of Everyday Life, and edits New Democracy magazine.
COPYRIGHT 1998 Dollars & Sense -Stratman, David, School reform and the attack on public education.(Special Issue: The Great Schools Debate), Dollars & Sense, 13 Mar 1998, pp. 7(1).
"I want to know the issues that are on your radar screens," said Coleman, spe aking to a dozen or so of his 80th House District constituents Thursday night at the Berkeley Lake Elementary School cafeteria. Duluth and Berkeley Lake residents met with Coleman and Sen. Tom Price, whose three-county district includes a sliver of west central Gwinnett.
"What will happen in the future to the lottery money when (Gov. Zell) Miller leaves office?" asked Cheri Thayer from Duluth.
The Republican legislators agreed that lawmakers must act to ensure that the lottery continues to fund HOPE scholarships, pre-kindergarten and high-tech learning equipment once Miller, who has held a virtual monopoly over lottery spending, is gone.
Price said he had talked with the state school board chairman, Johnny Isakson, but the senator had no specific ideas.
Coleman had no solution either, but knew what he didn't want to see happen. "I don't want 56 senators and 180 representatives deciding," he said.
Heads nodded in agreement.
On school choice and vouchers, there was disagreement. Coleman and Price support the idea of schools and faculty having to prove themselves by competing for students. The parents drew the line at experimenting with free-market education solutions when it involves their children and their schools.
"What are we going to do? Put up a `no vacancy' sign in front of our school?" said Silvia Nielson, a Duluth homemaker who volunteers at Berkeley Lake Elementary. She worries about the school becoming too crowded with students from other areas.
The parents, however, agreed with the lawmakers who want community schools to have the freedom to tailor programs to meet the needs of local students.
As the meeting broke up, residents chatted about what didn't get discussed. Tax cuts don't draw the praise from voters that lawmakers are seeking in this election year.
"It's not such a big deal," said Sally Deneen, an X-ray technician from Duluth.
"I am concerned where the money will come from to make up for the cuts," said Margaret Crawford, a Duluth homemaker.
While they understand that continuing prosperity will bring in new tax money, it won't be the answer to all the problems. If lawmakers end the tax on cars, for example, Gwinnett County government stands to lose $20 million a year. The schools could be out as much as $25 million annually.
"Where else are we going to find it (the money)?" asked Deneen. "Property taxes?"
Copyright 1998, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, All rights reserved. -Peter J. Kent STAFF WRITER, Lottery funds' future among concerns voiced at meeting, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 17 Jan 1998, pp. J03.
About one in 10 students this year - 337,000 statewide - voluntarily attended a campus away from their neighborhood or in another school district, according to a survey by the agency.
Education officials said the number of students transferring out of low-rated schools increased eightfold this year, as more than 400 students participated in the school-choice program. Last year, about 50 transferred.
Those students were eligible to go to another campus because their regular schools either were rated "low performing" or had more than 50 percent of their students fail the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills.
"We have quite a high degree of instructional choice opportunities," said Joe Wisnowski, a TEA administrator who reported the numbers to a House committee on Monday.
The figures are significant because there is a growing movement in the state to give parents and their children greater school choice.
Gov. George W. Bush has joined school-choice advocates seeking a limited voucher program in Texas that would allow students to attend private schools using tax dollars for tuition.
Critics have contended that vouchers would deprive public schools of badly needed funds. They say students already have choice within public schools.
The TEA survey found that 176,000 students attended magnet schools or other schools that offered specialized curricula outside their neighborhoods.
Public school students in Texas generally are assigned to one campus based on where they reside.
An additional 113,000 students attended schools outside their neighborhoods because they live in open enrollment districts, such as the Garland school district. Those students are permitted to enroll in any school within their district.
Finally, 48,000 students attended schools outside the district where they resided. Some of those paid tuition, while others enrolled in a neighboring district because a parent was employed as a teacher or administrator.
Voucher supporters said the number of students attending schools outside their neighborhoods only shows how much parents want more choice.
"We are happy they have some choice within the public school system, but we want to give parents all the choices they need to get the best education for their children," said Greg Talley of Putting Children First, a pro-voucher group.
In 1997, the Legislature rejected a voucher measure but expanded other school-choice options such as independent charter schools and the state's Public Education Grant program, allowing students to transfer out of low-rated schools.
© 1998 The Dallas Morning News All Rights Reserved - Terrence Stutz / Austin Bureau of The Dallas Morning News, More Texas students opt for school choice: 1 in 10 forsake closest campus, TEA reports, The Dallas Morning News, 16 Jun 1998, pp. 11A.
By Jon Jeter - Washington Post Staff Writer - Tuesday, September 1, 1998; Page A03
MILWAUKEE, Aug. 31&emdash;Anticipating a jump in enrollment, administrators at Messmer High School here converted their choir hall into a classroom. And they were smart to do so.On the first day of class here today, 366 students showed up at the door, boosting the student body by nearly 20 percent in a year. Another 30 students are still trying to get in, which means that, for the first time in its 72-year history, this Catholic school needed a waiting list.Everything and nothing has changed at Messmer. Teenagers today fumbled with their lockers,searched for new homerooms and misplaced class schedules. What is different is that, for nearly half of the students attending this private religious institution, taxpayers -- not parents -- will pay the bill.
The familiar sounds and monotonous hum of a new school year at Messmer represent the extraordinary debut of the nation's most ambitious effort to retool urban education by allowing poor children to attend religious schools using state-funded vouchers. "Welcome to the beginning of a new era in education in Milwaukee," said Gov. Tommy G. Thompson (R) in an address to students today in Messmer's auditorium. "Instead of busing our kids all over town to a public school that just doesn't measure up, we're going to give parents the chance to send their kids to a school right down the street," Thompson said. "And if that school is private, so be it." Messmer's growth spurt stems largely from a ruling by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in June that cleared the way for more than 110 parochial and private, nonsectarian schools to receive public stipends -- or vouchers -- to teach students previously enrolled in Milwaukee public schools. Rejecting an appeal by opponents of school vouchers, the court ruled that the program violates neither the state's constitution nor the First Amendment, barring laws that promote religion.
At $4,900 annually per student, the city's voucher program will pay for as many as 15,000 low-income schoolchildren to attend private schools. Since the money comes from the public school system's budget, civil rights groups and teachers unions have opposed the program, arguing that the subsidy will siphon resources from already troubled public schools. City schools opened last week, and officials say that enrollment, based on applications, has increased slightly from 103,000 pupils last year. Still, they say it typically takes a few weeks for administrators to get an accurate head count, and state officials estimate that nearly 6,000 children will participate in Milwaukee's voucher program this year.
People for the American Way, a District-based civil rights organization, estimates that vouchers will cost Milwaukee's public schools more than $29 million in this school year alone.
"It's a recipe for flight from the public schools," said Elliot Mincberg, an attorney and vice president of People for the American Way, which today appealed Wisconsin's decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Messmer, among the first parochial high schools to open this year, is considered ground zero for Milwaukee's voucher enterprise, perhaps the city's primary beneficiary of the new program. Located in a toughened, overwhelmingly black neighborhood on the city's north side, Messmer draws heavily from the surrounding community.
And while Wisconsin's voucher program does not require children to attend neighborhood schools, proponents believe it will reduce long cross-town commutes.
Academically, the Catholic school has fared significantly better than most of the city's high schools. Messmer's graduation rate is 98 percent -- more than double the city's rate -- and 85 percent of its graduating seniors go on to college.
The school does not require school uniforms, but it is demanding. Students cannot chew gum, wear caps or swear, and the school's president, Brother Bob Smith, a Capuchin friar, can expel anyone he wants without a hearing. Expulsions still are rare, however. The absentee rate is 3 percent daily, on average.
But before they can settle in, the new children will need to find chairs. Expecting an influx of students, Ann Szekely grabbed a few extra chairs from another classroom. It still wasn't enough; 18 students crowded into her classroom today, and some had to sit on the floor until a few more desks could be retrieved.
"I've never had so many kids wanting to get into my class before," said Szekely, a teacher for six years, the last four at Messmer. "Usually they're trying to get out."
But most faculty members here are enthusiastic about vouchers and Messmer's growth. "It's exciting to me," Szekely said. "I feel like I'm on the cutting edge of education." Aisha James, 16 and opinionated, attended a city school last year and is glad her mother suggested she transfer this year.
"You can learn better here," she said. "People listen to the teacher. At Madison [a public high school], they don't teach you [anything]. The kids fight all the time, and the principal don't try to help people. If there's a problem, he would just suspend you."
Deseree Gordon said she couldn't imagine sending her two daughters to a public school now that vouchers are available. "There's just too many kids in gang trouble or involved with violence," she said. "The kids can actually learn something when they don't have to deal with all that."
Wisconsin began experimenting with school vouchers in 1990, but legal appeals blocked thestate's plans to expand the program to religious schools in 1995. The state's efforts represent the largest voucher program in the country and the only one where children are allowed to attend religious schools.
Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist (D), who like Thompson was an advocate for the city's use of school vouchers, appeared with Thompson at Messmer today to commemorate the shift in educational policy. He acknowledged the acrimonious and lingering resentment over th issue in speaking to reporters afterward about his appearance.
"I don't think it would have been appropriate to celebrate school choice at any of the public schools," Norquist said. "There are still some pretty raw feelings."
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
The attorney for opponents of the Southeast Delco School District's voucher plan argued in Delaware County Court yesterday that the idea was illegal, saying there is no authorization in state law to fund it. "The school board took the law into its own hands," lawyer David M. Silberman said after the hearing before Delaware County Judge Joseph F. Battle. But the attorney for Southeast Delco argued that the voucher plan -- which would award money to families of students who attend non-district schools -- fell within the board's general authority under the state school code to enact innovative programs.
"School boards do a variety of interesting things that have no authorization in the school code," lawyer Richard Komer said after the hearing. "You have to have flexibility within the system." Yesterday's hearing, the first in the lawsuit brought by eight district parents, stemmed from the plaintiffs' motion for a summary judgment to void the voucher plan. On one level, the hearing pitted eight Southeast Delco parents against the school board, which sets policy for the 4,100-student district. On another level, it pitted national interests on both sides of the controversial school-choice issue. Silberman represented the National Education Association, which is providing free legal representation for the plaintiffs. Behind him sat a battery of attorneys for such anti-voucher groups as People for the American Way, the American Jewish Congress, the Pennsylvania Congress of Parents and Teachers Inc., the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the ACLU Foundation of Pennsylvania, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
On the other hand, the school board was represented by Komer, who is with the Institute for Justice, a Washington-based, non-profit, public-interest law firm that advocates school vouchers. Silberman argued in the hearing that Pennsylvania school laws, spelled out in the state school code, authorize districts to do only what is necessary to administer the public schools. He said that districts have specific authority to pay private schools only for certain programs, such as those for students with exceptional needs. Komer countered that the school board needs leeway, flexibility and local control to respond to a financial crisis brought on by increasing enrollments. "As taxes have gone up, the individuals who have selected private education have been shifting to public education," he argued, swelling enrollments and worrying administrators about the need for more teachers and schools.
In June, the school board budgeted $1.2 million of its budget surplus for the plan, enough to pay for the 1,900 students in Southeast Delco who attended non-district schools last year. The board hoped the plan would stabilize enrollment at current levels or reduce it, Komer said.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision last month to leave intact a Milwaukee program that gives low-income parents up to $4,900 per year for private or religious schools is the latest episode in three decades of conflict over choice in public schools. Liberals first proposed vouchers in the late 1960s as a way to reform big-city schools. There were no takers then. Ever since, and especially in the 1980s, when criticism of public schools, based on declining test scores, reached a crescendo, libertarians, religious groups and mainstream Republicans have coalesced to support vouchers as a remedy for inferior schooling.
Few bureaucrats or educators in big-city districts know how to turn around schools on a scale that would substantially alter the shocking statistics of low academic performance and community poverty. In these neighborhoods, poor parents, unlike their wealthy suburban counterparts, have no choice but to send their children to the local fortress-like school. These justifiably desperate parents welcome any reform that promises to salvage their sons and daughters from a savage, predictable cycle of bent lives. Students leaving public schools for private ones, champions of vouchers contend, will jolt public schools into taking strong action to improve education or put them out of business. Competition and choice, adds the argument, will rescue the current generation of children attending inner-city schools.
Both the hopes and fears generated by vouchers have prompted changes in public schools. Virtually every state now has established curricular standards. The federal government has set national goals and proposed a national test. Almost half the states have introduced high-school tests that students must pass to graduate. More than 30 states rate the quality of their schools, wholly or in part, on the basis of test scores. More and more states--New York, New Jersey and Kentucky, for example--have provisions on the books for hostile takeovers of schools that continually produce low test scores. Since 1991, almost 30 states have authorized private and public charter schools that offer some choice to parents unsatisfied with public schools. These concerted efforts to improve education stem in large measure from the acute threat of tax monies hemorrhaging into private schools through vouchers.
Ironically, as schools set higher standards and students perform better on tests, enthusiasm for vouchers will likely shrink. Currently, one in 10 schoolchildren attend private schools, and that percentage is unlikely to exceed 15% in a decade and 20% in a quarter century. The reason is simple enough: Critics of schools, including voucher enthusiasts, underestimate the difficulties of starting new schools. They overlook the high mortality rate of start-up businesses; after all, that is what a new private school would be.
In any case, upgrading standards and creating harder-edged accountability for students and school staffs will hardly satisfy either advocates or critics of vouchers. Promoters will see any changes as piecemeal, in no way challenging the monopolistic status of public schools. Critics will fuss about the fall of the wall separating church and state, the siphoning off of funds from public schools and the transformation of schooling into a commodity.
The bottom line is that the public school system in 2025 will include far more choice than exists today, but that choice will remain predominantly public
Whether this hybrid system will be an improvement on today's public schools, especially in big cities, is anyone's guess. The reason is twofold. First, vouchers are no guarantee that teaching and learning will improve. No voucher advocate has articulated how giving choice to a small percentage of poor parents will stimulate public-school educators to teach better, students to learn more and both to feel a commitment to a larger community. The relationships between teaching and learning, between children and teachers and among teachers, students and the community depend far more upon who the teachers are, what they do in class and how they do it than upon parents receiving a check in the mail for their kids' schooling. Competition prods innovation in the marketplace, but the school and teacher, with their social and civic purposes, are not mere commodities subject to variations in supply and demand.
Second, what makes so many big-city schools awful places to learn goes well beyond their doors. The voucher "solution," which offers individual children a chance to grab the brass ring, distracts attention from the deeper social and economic inequities that are at the root of unemployment, poor housing, crime and fractured communities.
The voucher debate over the last 25 years has affected public schools, though the effects are insufficient to quiet either promoters or detractors of the idea. Piecemeal changes will continue for the next few decades as the decentralized system of U.S. schooling becomes slightly less public and more private. Beyond the statistics is a simple fact: The debate is not about better teaching or learning; it is about ideology and getting the edge politically. Unless the social purposes of schooling, teaching and learning, and the need to have citywide or regional solutions to the deeply embedded problems of urban schools are addressed, the ideological noise level over vouchers may abate, but hard-core issues will remain largely unaddressed.
by Larry Cuban Is a Professor of Education at Stanford University.