Vouchers Give Chance at Best Education

American society changed in a fundamental way when the Supreme Court heard Brown vs. Board of Education in 1953. In perhaps the seminal civil rights case of the century, America’s greatest legal minds debated whether to allow black children an equal opportunity at education. In the final decision in 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren seared the following words into the nation’s consciousness:

“To separate [black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. . . . We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

With these weighty words, all American children were promised an equal opportunity of education. The greatness of this decision lay in its understanding that equal education is the quintessential civil right. Without it, our citizens have little chance to enjoy enlightenment, prosperity or genuine democracy.

More than four decades later, Brown vs. Board of Education has come full circle with the school vouchers debate, an issue that turns on the premise that thousands of children in poor neighborhoods still lack a chance for equal education.

In a nutshell, school voucher programs seek to apply tax dollars toward sending children to private schools. Under a voucher program, the state would pay all or part of the tuition of children attending private schools. Supporters argue that vouchers would improve the quality of education received by minorities by enabling the parents to choose where their children learn. Against the backdrop of chronically underfunded public schools that simply lack the resources to properly educate minority students, the voucher program has ignited fervent support among African Americans and is emerging as the dominant civil rights issue of the next decade.

Rightly so. Proper education enables us to realize our individual dreams, not the nightmares that some parents have about sending their children to public schools. Every day too many youngsters enter classrooms through metal detectors only to confront gang violence, drug problems and pervasive academic failure.

“I feel that [school vouchers] literally saved my daughter’s life,” explained Nicky Cavanaugh, a single mother who was able to switch her daughter to a private school with the help of a Florida voucher program. Cavanaugh said that her fifth-grade daughter, Stacy, was so terrorized by stabbings, theft and other random acts of violence that every morning the little girl begged and cried not to return. Getting accepted into the school voucher program provided a way out. “You know, since we got the scholarship, it gave us the opportunity for a new life,” Cavanaugh said.

The fear of losing another generation to a decaying school system probably explains why, according to a 1992 Gallup poll, 73% of low-income respondents favor vouchers. Unfortunately, the school voucher program has met resistance on Capitol Hill, where its detractors argue that vouchers would only exacerbate the problems currently facing public education. They contend parental choice would mean that bad schools would be abandoned (as opposed to keeping intact their tradition of failure). They also argue that parents might not be competent enough to choose the best school for their children. Not coincidentally, none of the politicians arguing against the voucher legislation send their children to public schools. Not one! Including President Clinton, who recently failed to support legislation that would have given disadvantaged parents the opportunity to send their children to a private school--just as the president was able to do for his own daughter.

It occurs to me that if the president had been forced to send Chelsea to an inner-city school, he would have viewed it as an act of war. It occurs to me that if affluent families were forced to send their children to inner-city schools, school vouchers would be a sacrament.

We cannot write off entire generations by the whim of geography. If the true mark of a society is the education that its poor and underprivileged receive--and I believe it is--then voucher programs should be embraced as a fundamental civil right.