Bennett Predicts Huge Response If Voucher Drive Wins : Education: On a local visit to support reform initiative, the former Cabinet official says up to 50% of children in L.A. district would transfer.

Former U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, in Southern California stumping for the controversial school voucher initiative, predicted Friday that 25% of the state’s public school children and up to half of those in the Los Angeles district would transfer to private or parochial campuses if the measure passes in November.

Bennett said the flight from public education would come over the next few years as parents receive tax-funded vouchers, worth $2,600 each, that could be applied toward tuition.

Speaking to reporters at the Warner Center Hilton and Towers, Bennett said that parents would pull their youngsters from the state’s beleaguered public schools in large numbers because “the current system is broken”--especially in Los Angeles, where test scores remain abysmal, Bennett said.

His remarks drew fire from officials of the Los Angeles Unified School District, who characterized as “totally unrealistic” Bennett’s prediction that 40% to 50% of the district’s 641,000 students would leave the system.

“I talk to literally hundreds and hundreds of parents,” Deputy Supt. Ruben Zacarias said. “They may have some concerns about some aspects of our public schools, but they express strong confidence that public education is still the best source of education for their kids.”

Many of the city’s campuses also provide important social services that parents find helpful, Zacarias added, such as child immunization and adult English classes.

Anti-voucher leaders also contend that not enough schools could possibly be formed to accommodate an exodus of 25% of the state’s 5.3 million public school students. “There’s no place for them to go,” said Rick Ruiz, a spokesman for the No on Proposition 174 campaign.

The projected transfer rate of 25% is an important element of the pro-voucher message. Recent analyses estimate that 20% of public school youngsters would have to switch to private and parochial academies for the state to save money.

Backers of the initiative maintain that free-market forces will lead to the blossoming of hundreds of private and parochial schools, whose quality will be accountable through competition with other campuses, both public and private.

“That’s the discipline of the market,” Bennett said.

The former Cabinet member, who served in the Ronald Reagan and George Bush administrations, acknowledged that the voucher campaign will be an uphill battle. Even his fellow Republicans are divided on the issue.

But he said the concept has garnered national attention--perhaps to eventually become the new “wedge issue” in the debate over school reform across the country--and that “one state or another is going to (push) it through.”

“It’s larger than California,” said Bennett, who is widely regarded as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 1996. “The idea will not go away, and there’s too much unhappiness in this country over the state of public education.”

So far, only two other states--Oregon and Colorado--have put similar measures on the ballot. Both were soundly rejected.