WE SHOULD CELEBRATE SCHOOL CHOICE
AS GOOD FOR ALL STUDENTS
By David Brennan, Akron industrialist and proponent of school vouchers and
charter schools.
The writer is an Akron industrialist who
chaired the 1991 commission formed by Gov. George Voinovich to study
school choice. He has been at the forefront of the voucher and later
charter school movements in Ohio. He is a former trustee of Ohio State
University and Case Western Reserve University.
By David L. Brennan
A strong, and to some a frightening, wind blew through the American
educational establishment just a year ago on June 27 when the U.S. Supreme
Court upheld the constitutionality of the Cleveland school voucher
program.
School choice was legally opened to all. Failing public schools and
dysfunctional systems were no longer safe from competition.
Minority children and children of the economically disadvantaged need no
longer be sentenced to lives of semi-functional illiteracy.
The court's historic decision has given states and cities across the
country an opportunity to change this by allowing, for the first time,
competition with the established public school system for the taxpayers'
dollar.
The power of the court's decision on vouchers has also forced the
educational establishment to begin at least to consider educational
alternatives as never before -- charter, contract, private, magnet,
voucher, and home schooling, if only as a cover.
Beyond the legal decision, the high court answered the more fundamental
human question of who has a greater right to decide as to where a child
should go to school -- the state or the child's parents?
No one should be frightened by school choice. Everyone should be concerned
with school failure.
The past and ongoing tragedy of the nation's inner-city public schools
threatens America's ability to compete in an ever more challenging world.
Reformed school systems could, in fact, play a critical role in reversing
the decline of our cities.
School-choice opponents contend that school options will severely damage
the public school system. I have much more faith in the public school
system than they do.
Armed with the court's decision, a grass-roots revolution of determined
parents can force the public schools to do a better job or pay the
penalty. This will raise the quality of primary and secondary education
across America. Public education is not exempt from the economic reality
that competition improves all competitors.
Indeed, there is a growing body of evidence that competition is already
improving public schools in areas where there are alternatives to the
state monopoly system.
The highly regarded Koret Task Force on K-12 Education has stated:
``Choice-based reforms have not had a fair test. Most evidence to date
suggests that they can boost student learning and parental satisfaction,
but constraints have kept them from being tried in full. Opponents have
hamstrung school-choice programs at every turn: fighting voucher programs
in legislative chambers and courtrooms; limiting per pupil funding so
tightly that it's impractical for new schools to come into being, capping
the number of charter schools and regulating and harassing them into near
conformity with conventional schools.''
A recent well-researched report of the Heritage Foundation stated: ``New
studies have added to the growing body of evidence that, when parents are
empowered to choose their children's schools -- whether they choose
public, public charter, private or home schools -- all students can
benefit.
``This research has added to the growing recognition that competition
produced by school choice improves the public system.''
To date, 10 states have put in place publicly funded voucher or tax credit
programs, and 39 states and the District of Columbia have charter school
laws. State legislative sessions saw the introduction of more than 40
school choice bills in 2002.
As surveys continue to show increasingly broad-based support for choice,
the most obdurate opponents of school choice have decided to base their
last-ditch legal opposition on the most notorious examples of government
sanctioned bigotry remaining in America, the Blaine amendments, to some
state constitutions.
Conceived in 1876, the Blaine amendment stated that no public money or
land should be put under the control of religious sects. These amendments
were added to state constitutions, especially in the West, as a
prerequisite for being considered for statehood.
These laws are not only outdated, but have been subverted by choice
opponents as an excuse to keep low-income students in poorly functioning
public schools.
I am not accusing opponents of being bigoted, but simply of being willing
to use these vestigial remnants of bigotry as their last hope in the wake
of the Supreme Court decision. These amendments, once directed at Roman
Catholics, now damage African-Americans and other poor minorities.
Refusing to examine alternatives to a failed system would be
intellectually unacceptable in any field of endeavor. When the failed
system concerns the welfare of children, it should be beyond debate.
The 1-year-old Supreme Court decision was the first salvo in what bids
fair to be a long and difficult struggle. My fervent hope is that it has
also signaled the beginning of an open-minded, joint effort by all those
dedicated to putting kids first.
originally printed in The Beacon Journal
copyright (c) 2003.
The
Beacon Journal.