Tough Choice

Can school choice win in Michigan? Should it?

John J. Miller from the June 2000 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Perhaps most important, it's not as if school reform is dead in Michigan, even without private-school choice. Hard-core choice advocates complain that Engler never has been much of a friend, telling activists with each new election cycle that the timing for school choice just isn't right. But, in fact, Engler has dramatically expanded school choice in Michigan--public school choice. Thanks largely to him, students can move freely within districts and even attend schools in adjoining ones. There are some 170 charter schools now open for business, and they enroll about 50,000 kids. Engler is currently working to create more, and the only thing stopping him is a handful of dissident Republicans who have joined a unified Democratic front in opposing this variety of school choice. It could be argued that spending a portion of the money earmarked for the initiative to defeat these politicians might do more than a quixotic referendum to expand parent and student options or even offering private scholarships to poor kids as an act of philanthropy.

It's tempting to support the Michigan drive simply because of the people who oppose it. Last September, children at an elementary school in Rochester Hills were given anti-school choice flyers to take home to their parents. The flyers tendentiously labeled school choice a racist plot "to avoid desegregation" (in the 1950s) and even took a shot at Milton Friedman, whom they weirdly described as "best known to the world as the former economics advisor to Augusto Pinochet, the fascist dictator of Chile." Forget the Nobel Prize; meet Milton Friedman, crypto-Nazi.

But that really isn't good enough. California's 1993 school choice initiative, which lost by a 2-to-1 margin, saw ordinary Republican voters, along with virtually everyone else except for inner-city residents of all races, opposing the measure for an obvious reason: They were basically satisfied with their schools. Surveys show that parents tend to think other people's schools are a mess, but that the ones their kids attend are okay.

Opponents of the California initiative ran a "conservative" campaign against it, raising budgetary concerns, suggesting there was no problem to fix, and even hiring Republican operatives to craft these messages. Republican Gov. Pete Wilson came out against the proposition fairly late in the campaign; the biggest difference in Michigan may be that Engler has come out early. In March, he teamed up with state Democrats to pass a budget bill that warns public schools may lose some funding if voters approve the school-choice initiative. That's a gift for the teacher unions' fall campaign.

Engler makes a final point worth considering: It's still far from certain the Supreme Court will uphold school choice. Cleveland and Florida's programs are currently in litigation, and one of them will probably wind up before the Court in the next two years or so. Given the Court's current composition, odds are that the program will be upheld. But why should Michigan lay out $5 million now, as opposed to a couple of years from now, when the question of constitutionality is more settled? In fact, there may be a new justice on the court by then, appointed by President Gore. Another reason--and perhaps a decisive one--for Engler to make sure Michigan winds up in the GOP column in November. School choice just may be too important to run on this year.