Voucher Idea Lives to Fight Another Day : Prop. 174 planted the seed of such an approach to education reform; the voters are ready if the right plan was offered.

School vouchers lost a battle last Tuesday, but what about the war?

Most ideas in politics go through several manifestations before being accepted or finally rejected. Proposition 174 is California voters’ introduction to vouchers; few believe this will be the end. Simple logic dictates that there are other ways to dress this idea in legislative clothing. Voters expect supporters to retreat to the drawing boards, not to the cemetery.

The historical parallel is Proposition 13. In a similar atmosphere of exasperation with government, tax caps were supported by the people and opposed by an entrenched elite intent on preserving its privileges, perks and power. Though few may remember the history, the first incarnation of the Proposition 13 idea wasn’t an opening-night hit. The Jarvis-Gann odyssey stumbled through three defeats before idea and product combined in a form voters would accept. We can expect a similar experience for vouchers.

In a statewide survey by my firm from Oct. 23-26, we asked voters to indicate their feelings about the idea of school vouchers and Proposition 174. Only 21% liked both the idea and Proposition 174; 26% liked the idea of vouchers but planned to vote against that “particular version,” and 41% disliked both idea and proposition. Undecideds were the remaining 12%.

Even in the midst of a battle that pro-174 strategist Ken Khachigian called the most “deceitfully malicious and intellectually fraudulent” campaign he has ever seen, the idea of vouchers enjoyed a plurality of support, 47% to 41%. So even though two-thirds of the voters intended at that time to vote against 174, more voters than not are simply waiting for a better incarnation to come along.

Most important, the idea is now in active play. Debate about vouchers will continue because the defeat of 174 won’t do one thing to solve the problems that spawned it in the first place. We still have a deteriorating public-school system, and parents continue to fear for their children’s safety at too many schools. More and more voters will ask what can be done and the traditional answer of the educational elite--spend more money--won’t play much longer. Next year, the Legislature will trot out well-trumpeted reforms to dilute voter dissatisfaction, but such attempts, of necessity, will be tepid and thin if the Democratic majority is to keep its California Teachers Assn. ally happy. Because such sham reform won’t have bite, voters will eventually look to outside ideas. Enter again vouchers.

As for the campaign itself, the anti-174 forces crafted the correct strategy, but made a fatal mistake for the long-term war. Anti-174 strategists and their union money blocked a clear test of the two competing ideas. They wouldn’t allow the campaign to be framed yes or no on whether public schools should change. (Their spokesmen were instructed never to engage in a debate about the quality of public schools.) And they thwarted a pure test framing of the central principle of vouchers--whether there should be a place for a free-market mechanism in public education.

By refusing to debate the state of public schools, they admitted their weak product. They admitted they don’t have the solution to the problem. Their only hope of maintaining the status quo for their clients is to attack everything else. Well, that works some of the time, but not forever. Voters know something must be done and this campaign signaled that the educational Establishment isn’t the player to do it.

What they did was similar to the horse-and-buggy set attacking the Model T and trying thereby to disparage all automobiles. That’s fine if the Model T is the only embodiment of the idea of a car and there are no improvements. But each time a better model is presented, more people will become converted to the idea of a car, no matter the tactical defeats. Soon the idea of improving the horse-and-buggy system becomes laughable and the only question is not whether to buy a car, but how to perfect the right model.

Through money and deceitful messages, the education Establishment defeated the equivalent of the Model T, but in the process many voters became converted to the idea of vouchers. The best thing the voucher people could do is to thoroughly reanalyze their product, jettison the weaker parts, strengthen other points and put the hummer right back on the ballot.