School Choice Campaign Goes Beyond the Election

Whether the California school voucher initiative, Proposition 174, wins or loses at the ballot box Nov. 2, it will fail in practice because the numbers are so daunting. But the school choice campaign will go on.

Vouchers are the educational equivalent of corporate downsizing. Under Proposition 174, the state would offer a voucher for private school tuition worth $2,600 a year to any kid who would leave the public school system.

As that sum is roughly half the system’s current expenditure per pupil, proposition supporters claim the state would save $2,600 a year for each leaving student.

But just as in corporate buyouts, there is a hefty upfront cost. Vouchers would have to be paid to more than 500,000 kids now in private school, an annual bill of $1.3 billion.

To generate enough savings to offset that upfront burden, almost 1 million kids would have to leave the 5-million-student California elementary and high school system--and do it in a big hurry. That is, private schooling in the state would have to triple in size to take in enough students for the public school system theoretically to save money.

Such arithmetic tells you the proposition is not a practical reality.

But it’s a potent symbol. The political ground swell that put Proposition 174 on the ballot represents a cry for help from parents, particularly poor parents, despairing of the public school system. They want some of the tax money now paid for the public system to help them find better schools, private or otherwise, for their children.

The campaign has been bitter, with blame abundant and civility scarce. More light and less heat would help us know what we’re talking about.

The public schools today are suffering two crises, one of mission and one of finance. And ironically, the finance crisis could be easier to cope with, even though breakdown is near. California school enrollments are projected to grow by more than 1 million students in this decade, according to a study by RAND, the Santa Monica research firm. School expenditure is slated to rise 41% to $31 billion in the same period, even though that’s practically impossible.

“The state has been borrowing local sales taxes to fund schools as it is, and the projections would push school costs to 43% of the budget and freeze out higher education,” says Stephen Carroll, senior economist at RAND.

School finance has hit a wall and new ways will have to be found to pay for education--and not only in California. Eight states are considering voucher programs; in Maryland, Gov. William Schaefer tried to get private school vouchers for poor families in Baltimore but his state legislature killed the idea. Milwaukee has a small voucher program going.

Trouble is, the assumption that private schools will spring up in response to vouchers may be an illusion. Why haven’t they sprung up already? There are waiting lists for affluent private schools, yet entrepreneurs are not rushing to seize opportunity. The $2 billion in investments that Christopher Whittle is seeking for his Edison Project chain of private schools has been slow in coming.

It just may be that school economics are not free market economics. Schools, which date to ancient India, China and Greece, were largely the province of religious bodies until the last century. Church schools today are helped not only by donations in collection baskets but by all sorts of free labor contributed by parents.

Another point is that school finance, while a problem everywhere, may only be a crisis in certain states. The federal Government Accounting Office notes in a new report that California, Texas, New York, Florida and Illinois contain 75% of all poor and immigrant children. Perhaps what we need is real federal help for areas coping with great numbers of immigrant children.

Yes, the United States educated waves of immigrants in former times. But in those days drop outs were common because work was plentiful for uneducated people. Today high school education is necessary for just about every job.

But just as job markets have changed, so too has the mission of the schools. The original purpose of the public schools, which date to Colonial Massachusetts, was to educate a citizenry and later a labor force for an industrializing America. Public schools used to expel unruly pupils or those who really couldn’t do the work.

Today, fostering equality and providing care for children of working parents have come to rank as high as education in the school’s purpose. No student is expelled. Teachers are expected to be part parent, part police, part educator.

This drives poor families with ambitions crazy. They want a good education for their children and the chance at the American dream that goes with it.

They know why the Clintons sent their daughter to a private school in Washington, D.C.: Because the Clintons don’t play politics with their child.

But the poor feel that the state, or politically powerful teachers unions, or somebody is playing politics with their children, and they are angry.

That’s why Proposition 174 is on the ballot, and why its probable defeat won’t end demands for school choice.

Yes but, anger is not an answer. What kind of choice is needed? Probably schools that are locally administered with a lot of parental involvement. As it happens, there are models.

In many cities, poor parents, whatever their religion, have been sending their kids to Catholic schools, which have attained a reputation for teaching kids in low-income neighborhoods.

“Their strengths are on-site control--they don’t answer to a bureaucracy downtown--and parental involvement,” says James Lusby, headmaster of an Episcopal Church school, St. Michael and All Angels in Studio City. After that it’s expectations, adds Lusby: “Teachers and parents expect the work will be done, fellow students do the work and the idea gets across that you have to do the work.”

Hard work and high standards are hardly a revelation, but they’re cheaper than vouchers.