Don’t Limit ‘Choice’ to Public Schools Only

George Bush wants to be the “education President” who will restore the schools to health. After years of traditional therapy the schools remain a pathological enigma. Bush would reform them through competition by giving parents a choice. His favorite example is East Harlem whose freely chosen schools succeed where compulsion had failed. He encourages the states to extend such options.

For other goods and services, choice is the rule and serves the common good. The exception is in education, where choice is effectively limited to the wealthy. Neighborhood schools exclude outsiders, and attendance areas tend to be uniform in race and income. Affluent families cluster in fancy districts, and tax money provides them elite and expensive education--socialism for the rich. The poor cluster in Watts and Oakland and take what is offered: Except by the accident of charity they lack the option of private school. We call this system “public,” but for the poor it is about as public as a conscripted army.

Throughout the rest of the Western world parental authority is the rule. Japan subsidizes private high school; in Europe choice is standard. In the United States the GI Bill succeeded at the college level. Choice among elementary and secondary schools could be made equally simple. Parents would receive state scholarships. Public schools would be deregulated and allowed to compete for students with private schools and one another. Discrimination by wealth and race would be avoided by rules governing admissions and tuition. Transport could be subsidized for the poor. The inclusion of religious schools would survive First Amendment scrutiny, and the polls show their inclusion to be popular. Half the public school teachers in major cities use such schools for their own children. Experts say that the community of shared belief represents the best option for disadvantaged children.

The effects of choice have long been plain in private schools, which operate at half the $4,800 per pupil spent in California public schools. Many private schools are well integrated socially and racially, and integration is stable, because it is chosen. Their teachers, alas, are underpaid but they can function as true professionals. Since their clients are free to leave, the relation is one of mutual respect, fostering the crucial sense of community. Happily, subsidized choice would raise teacher salaries in both sectors. Today the state gives 40 cents of each tax dollar to classroom teachers; parents, by contrast, favor emphasis on teaching over administration.

Ironically, educators who criticize parents for indifference often oppose choice, though it is choice that underlies responsibility. An authentic GI Bill for children would empower families to avoid and correct mistakes. Excluded families could begin to share the normal human experience of growth through self-regulation. Further, a general display of trust in our fellow citizens could prove infectious; the society that treats the poor with dignity might find them returning the favor.

Sadly, Bush’s version of choice is limited to schools in the public sector. Why is this objectionable? First, it is insulting to ordinary families. If private education is good enough for the rich, why not for the poor? Second, choice confined to public schools may prove largely cosmetic. California school Supt. Bill Honig recently applauded choice, then announced a proposal that would still allow school districts to exclude outsiders. Would the elite districts decide to participate? Will Beverly Hills expand to welcome kids from Watts?

Third, even “successful” systems of choice among public schools are problematic. East Harlem worked because of brilliant local administration, but whole systems cannot operate on genius. Clustering good teachers and administrators in magnet schools simply leaves the other schools to decay. It is an iron law that schools cannot succeed so long as ineffectual teachers are guaranteed employment. Mikhail S. Gorbachev would understand this. For a socialized enterprise to work, production units must compete successfully for customers or perish. Unsuccessful individual producers must acquire other means of support. Give unwanted teachers their pensions, but don’t give them the children. It is politically unlikely that such a sternly competitive system could be adopted for the government sector alone: Honig’s soft proposal is the more probable outcome.

In any case, if--as the experts tell us--effective education communities depend on common beliefs, what exactly are the shared ideals that would characterize individual government schools? Private schools have no difficulty identifying themselves as liberal, traditional, humanistic or naturalistic. Politically, however, for the public sector these themes are hard to imagine as explicit options. Religion is out by law, but these secular forms of social glue are just as problematic.

Even if specific secular themes could succeed, should America deny the poor access to good education based on religious community? Indeed, should a pluralist society deliberately frustrate any parental preference for a school that is acceptable when it is chosen by the rich?.