Fight Over School Choice, Vouchers Heats Up Along The Campaign Trail

Michael W. Lynch | March 2, 2000

Delores Justice is bubbling with excitement. The 65-year-old administrative assistant at the State Department is reading the report card of her grandson Christian Kennedy, whom she has reared since birth.

She's dedicated her life to preparing Christian to "stand on his own and have a good life," and the piece of paper in her hand tells her she's succeeding. He earned straight A's in his first semester as a freshman at Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, D.C., a school he can attend thanks to her hard work and help from a private education voucher.

School choice has become an issue politicians can't avoid. Congress has faced it in various forms since the Republicans took over in 1994.

In 1997, it passed a limited voucher program for residents of the nation's capital, where few students perform to grade level despite per-pupil spending of $9,123. President Clinton vetoed it. The Supreme Court, which so far has declined to hear a voucher case, may soon take one.

Last December, a federal judge in Ohio declared Cleveland's program unconstitutional. The case is on appeal, but could work its way up to the high court. And it may very well become the defining educational issue in this year's presidential race.

Polls show education is on the minds of voters and each major Republican candidate favors some form of choice. It's already playing out in the primaries.

At the Democratic debate at Harlem's Apollo Theater on President's Day, Time's Tamala Edwards noted that 60% of African Americans support vouchers.

"Why should the parents here have to keep their kids in public schools because they don't have the financial resources that you do?" she asked Vice President Al Gore, noting that Gore sends his own son to the elite and private Sidwell Friends school, not to one of Washington's public schools.

CNN's Jeff Greenfield pointed out that the most strident opponents of vouchers are the two teachers unions, which happen to supply one in nine delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

"Why shouldn't these parents conclude that the Democratic Party's opposition to choice is an example of supporting a special interest rather than their interest?" he asked.

Gore, who in December dismissed vouchers as a "tiny little down payment on tuition," claimed vouchers would be a "historic mistake by draining money away from public schools." Instead, he said he'd like to see "revolutionary improvements to our public schools, not gradual improvements."

Democrats' opposition to vouchers may soon exact a political toll. As both publicly and privately funded voucher programs have sprouted in cities across America, support has grown. And academic studies, on balance, show they work.

A study released Monday by Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government found that black voucher recipients entering Washington's private schools in the second to fifth grade outperformed their peers in public schools by 6 percentile points in math and 2 percentile points in reading, after only seven months. In Dayton, Ohio, children gained 7 percentile points in math and 5 percentile points in reading.

"If the initial findings from Dayton and D.C. hold up over time, vouchers for students beginning in elementary school may help eliminate the black-white test-score gap," said the study's co-author, Paul E. Peterson.

With such results, parents, along with urban ministers, local civil rights leaders and even a former public school superintendent, are joining free-market minded conservatives in pushing vouchers.