Schools of Thought

The school choice movement is divided over tactics and faces enormous establishment resistance. But it may still get what it wants.

Rick Henderson from the January 1997 issue

(Page 2 of 5)

Friedman has always opposed what he calls "welfare vouchers," arguing that they separate individuals because of their incomes. He reasserts that as long as public schooling remains an entitlement, tuition vouchers should be considered a form of tax relief, and "people of all income levels are entitled to get some of their taxes back if they relieve the government of the burden of providing schooling for their children."

He also believes the widespread implementation of means-tested vouchers would create a new poverty bureaucracy that would exist to perpetuate itself--case workers whose main concern would become maintaining their budgets rather than educating students. If school choice is identified as an anti-poverty program, rather than an initiative for systemic reforms, momentum for structural change may be stifled. Even if inner-city performance improves under a system of vouchers, middle-class parents might not demand similar changes in their schools. "A program for poor people is a poor program," he says.

But the political momentum is solidly behind means-tested proposals. And no wonder: The grim statistics of inner-city schools, says Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice, are "off the charts." In Milwaukee, 85 percent of students on public assistance don't graduate from high school. In Cleveland, only 7 percent of inner-city students graduate on time; 14 percent are crime victims while on school property. If vouchers improve the educational performance of disadvantaged children, they may help reduce crime and welfare dependency.

So while vouchers may have originated in the ivory tower, many of their most passionate supporters are such community leaders as Democratic state Rep. Polly Williams from Milwaukee, Cleveland school board member Genevieve Mitchell, and Dallas-area Democratic state Rep. Glenn Lewis, who is lining up support for a 1997 voucher bill. How much longer, ask voucher advocates, must inner-city youngsters be condemned to a schooling experience that approaches incarceration? It may take years, if not decades, to generate the necessary broad-based support for a major universal voucher initiative. In the interim, aren't the rewards of rescuing a few thousand kids worth the risks of supporting even flawed means-tested voucher proposals?

The Institute for Justice's Mellor and Bolick are quite clear that they intend no quarrel with the Friedmans. But they eagerly defend means-tested voucher programs in court, arguing that even low-income programs could entice entrepreneurs to create schools that would serve students bearing tuition vouchers. In the interim, vouchers could rescue impoverished students from violence-ridden inner-city schools and break the death-grip of teachers' unions and powerful administrators on public-school governance. "Milton Friedman is right that his [universal] voucher proposal would most completely transform the education market," says Mellor. "But the battles are now in a different arena. The fate of vouchers will be decided in the courts."

Fighting the Unions

Along with Ohio and Wisconsin, Vermont has its own voucher-like program, called "tuitioning." In Vermont, those towns that are too small to finance a public high school let their school-aged children attend private schools; the town's taxpayers pay at least part of the tuition. All three plans have been taken to court by civil-liberties groups and teachers' unions, citing the First Amendment's Establishment Clause to challenge the use of vouchers to subsidize students who want to attend religious schools. The Institute for Justice has represented parents in all three states, hoping to establish a precedent that would allow any school to accept vouchers. Its rallying cry echoes the advertising slogan of a D.C.-area personal-injury attorney: "If you have a school-choice plan," says IJ, "you have a lawyer." By defending school choice plans, the institute hopes to establish legal precedents that will let all sorts of voucher proposals, universal or means-tested, go forward.

Teachers' unions have been the institute's most obstreperous opponents in court. The 2.2- million-member National Education Association and its state affiliates have thrown time, money, and expertise into opposing every educational reform that would inject competitive pressures into schooling, no matter how minimal. From merit pay to charter schools to measures that would relax teaching certification requirements, the NEA's recalcitrance has earned it the title bestowed by Forbes in 1993: the National Extortion Association. In every case the institute has litigated, says Mellor, "the unions' opposition has bordered on hysteria."

In August, the institute's Cleveland case advanced the legal argument for including religious schools. The voucher program there gives 2,000 students vouchers worth $2,250 so they can choose among religious and secular private schools. In a state trial court, Judge Lisa Sadler ruled for the parents, saying vouchers (much like collegiate Pell Grants or scholarships under the G.I. Bill) primarily benefit students rather than schools. The Ohio Court of Appeals refused to overturn Sadler's ruling, making the next battleground the state Supreme Court. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court, which has made no definitive statement on the constitutionality of tuition vouchers, will decide if religious schools can be included.

School choice advocates consider the inclusion of religious schools crucial. Vouchers would give low-income parents the wherewithal to gain complete control over the upbringing of their children, including the option to take advantage of a religious education. Almost 80 percent of the nation's private schools are religiously based; excluding them from voucher plans would reduce the competitive pressures on public schools. And religious schools are often heavily subsidized by church members, so they can offer much lower tuitions than their secular counterparts.

To date, means-tested voucher programs have been limited to a small number of students in a few cities. Few existing private schools have large numbers of vacancies. If a larger plan went into effect, would it offer enough money to entice new school operators into the education marketplace?

While nothing is certain, the voucher programs now in place would cover tuition costs for most private schools in the country. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that about two-thirds of the nation's private schools charged tuitions of $2,500 or less in the 1993�1994 school year. A March 1996 Cato Institute survey of private-school tuitions by David Boaz and R. Morris Barnett shows that in the four cities surveyed--Indianapolis, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Jersey City--the median private elementary school tuition was between $1,775 (Jersey City) and $3,312 (Atlanta) and the median private high school tuition was between $1,850 (Indianapolis) and $7,200 (San Francisco). Even with vouchers of a relatively modest amount, the Cato authors conclude, "Schools would expand; new schools would be established; some schools might lower their tuition or offer scholarships; new teaching methods would be tested and new technologies employed; and government schools would compete to stay open."

New schools may open. But Friedman is concerned that they would not differ much from the ones already operating--they would certainly not be the pathbreaking institutions that would be created by a new marketplace in commercial schools. Under these circumstances, he fears, a market for commercial "Rolls Royce" schools might never emerge. "Where will the innovations [in education] come from--Rolls Royce schools or McDonald's schools?" he asks. Mellor and Bolick won't predict what market-based private schools would look like; their goal is to gain legal sanction for the broadest possible application of school choice. Mellor envisions "a dynamic education market in which consumer choices drive the provision of services. We can only speculate on its future shape."

Regulatory Concerns

Over the past quarter century, several opponents of the public-school monopoly have voiced objections to vouchers, fearing that they would lead to additional regulation of private schools. (See sidebar "The Separationists Weigh In," page 34.) Public choice scholar Dwight R. Lee, an economist at the University of Georgia, argues that the political process would inevitably taint any voucher program and allow unions and education bureaucrats to impose new regulations on private schools that accept vouchers. For instance, voucher-accepting schools might have to comply with anti-discrimination laws (a provision in Bob Dole's "opportunity scholarship" proposal), preventing, say, single-sex classrooms or forcing religious schools to separate spiritual instruction from the rest of their curricula.