CER and Education Reform In The News

NO VOTER SUPPORT FOR VOUCHERS: California's voucher proposition failed
By Anjetta McQueen
AP Wire, November 9, 2000

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Stagnant test scores. Schoolyard violence. Frustrated parents.

        Yet the nation's public schools still aren't bad enough for American voters to approve paying their tax dollars for private tuitions, even after 30 years of attempts. Voters in Michigan and California proved it again this week.

        "By and large, it's the weakest link of society we have to help," said John Hangartner, a 68-year-old retiree in Livonia, Mich., after his vote Tuesday for pro-voucher Bush and against financing $3,300 vouchers for pupils in the state's least-successful public schools. "Vouchers aren't going to help them."

        The well-financed Michigan measure was soundly defeated by a 2-1 margin. California's sweeping plan to provide any child, rich or poor, with a $4,000 voucher got just 30 percent of the vote, despite a $30 million-plus campaign led by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper.

        Government funds or tax credits for private education have appeared on statewide ballots 10 times in recent years. Voters have rejected every one. A handful of programs, in Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida, were created by legislators, not the electorate.

        "The thorough thrashing of vouchers in California and Michigan should be a death knell to a bad idea," declared Bob Chase, president of the 2.5 million-teacher National Education Association, which spent $7.2 million fighting vouchers.

        This year's infusion of cash aside, the classic rivalry remains between status quo education groups like teachers' unions and education reformers with a conservative bent. With voucher programs still alive despite court battles, neither side is ready to back down.

        "More than a third of the population is shouting school vouchers," Draper said Tuesday night as defeat of his California Proposition 38 became apparent. "This is decades of bureaucracy that's been built up. It was unlikely we would be able to vaporize it in one fell swoop."

        School choice has been around for decades, but it focuses mainly on choices within public school systems ‹ magnet or charter schools. Few families have received government money to send children to private schools.

        The issue remains among education's most emotional.

        Supporters argue that poor children, like their more-affluent peers, deserve a way out of troubled public schools. Foes contend vouchers help few children and drain money from public schools.

        In 1972, Maryland voters rejected a plan to fund private educations. California and Michigan have now rejected similar measures twice at the polls. Voters in Oregon, Colorado, and the District of Columbia defeated tax-credit plans for private schooling.

        Who turns them down?

        Exit polls show that almost all demographic groups do, except for people identifying themselves as Republican or as politically conservative. The poor black and Hispanic voters that voucher backers contend are more likely to be victims of bad schools also strongly oppose vouchers.

        "Vouchers are just Band-Aids to cover just a small section of a problem," said Henry Duvall, a spokesman for the Council of Great City Schools, an organization of urban school officials. "The public realizes there are better ways to improve public education. A good example is reduced class sizes."

        Jeanne Allen, director of the pro-school choice Center For Education Reform, believes rejection has more to do with being asked to say "yes" or "no" to a complex, emotional issue.

        "People want options" she said. But "they are uncomfortable voting directly on any issue that would dramatically change the way schools do business."

        Though Allen believes activists will continue to put up voucher measures, she sees hope in the election of pro-voucher candidates to Congress and state legislatures.

        "School choice will prevail much more at the legislative level than it will at the ballot box," she said.

# # #

Additional articles on School Choice and Election 2000: 

CER Home Page School Choice In the News  E-Mail CER