A Look at Anti-Voucher Ads

With less than two weeks to go before the election, the opponents of Proposition 174, the school voucher initiative, have dominated the airwaves. They released their fifth television commercial Tuesday, featuring state Controller Gray Davis. The pro-voucher camp has aired only one spot. Here are analyses of two of the anti-voucher commercials.

* THE AD: Titled “Budget Problems,” the 30-second ad opens with Davis sitting in an office. “You know, with all our budget problems, the last thing California needs is a new billion-dollar entitlement program. Yet that’s what we’d have with Proposition 174. The voucher initiative spends hundreds of millions of tax dollars subsidizing students already in private schools. It lets voucher schools operate with no real teaching standards, and no public disclosure of what they do with our tax money.”

* THE ANALYSIS: As controller, Davis oversees state expenditures, including money spent by public schools. Proposition 174 does not provide for government audits of private schools’ use of the vouchers, worth about $2,600. Although the ad makes no factual errors, the initiative would authorize the state to require that private schools give achievement tests and release the results. Davis’ comment about private school standards overlooks the fact that, overall, private school students score higher on achievement tests than do public school students. Private schools are lightly regulated, and the initiative would make require a three-fourths vote of the Legislature to impose new requirements, such as for teacher credentialing.

* THE AD: Titled “Closed Door,” the 30-second ad shows children walking upstairs to school. One child lags and the door swings shut in his face. “Promoters of the school voucher initiative say it’s about school choice. But under Proposition 174, it’s the voucher schools who get to choose. Proposition 174 schools can reject a child based on religion, or gender, or income, or mental or physical ability.” The spot closes with the boy alone on the steps.

* THE ANALYSIS: This spot, airing for seven weeks, argues that private schools accepting vouchers could discriminate against many students. Although the initiative would allow single-sex schools to take vouchers, it prohibits voucher schools from discriminating on the basis of race, ethnicity, color or national origin, and it withholds voucher payments to schools that teach hatred of any person or group because of religion, gender or ethnicity. It is unclear whether schools would have to provide access to the disabled, but federal law could impose such requirements. Parochial schools could receive vouchers, but opponents of vouchers say they would sue because of the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. The initiative would allow private schools to expel students on academic grounds. Voucher schools do not have to make allowances in tuition for lower-income families.