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School Choice Facts complied by The Institute For Justice, Washington, DC |
Nine Lies About School Choice Press Release and School Choice Full Report
School Choice in the District of Columbia
School Choice in the Cleveland, Ohio
School Choice in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Under the title "Not the Usual Suspects," Policy Review
collects some quotes on school vouchers from unusual sources.
For instance,
Arthur Levine, President of Columbia University Teachers College:
"Throughout my career, I have been an opponent of school voucher programs .
. . . However, after much soul-searching, I have reluctantly concluded that a
limited school voucher program is now essential for the poorest Americans
attending the worst public schools . . . . Today, to force children into
inadequate schools is to deny them any chance of success. To do so simply on the
basis of their parents' income is a sin" (Wall Street Journal, June
15, 1998).
And, of all people, Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School: "Any
objection that anyone would have to a voucher program would have to be
policy-based and could not rest on legal doctrine. One would have to be awfully
clumsy to write voucher legislation that could not pass constitutional scrutiny
. . . . Aid to parents. . . would be constitutional" (New York Times,
June 12, 1991).
Then there is Brent Staples of the New York Times
editorial board: "Democrats who had made careers as champions of the poor
opposed the [school choice] plan, arguing that a solution that did not save
every child was unacceptable. The Democrats got the worst of the exchange. They
seemed more interested in preserving the public school monopoly than in saving
at least some children's lives [through vouchers]." (New York Times,
January 4, 1998).
Would you believe U.S. Senator John Kerry? He said:
"Shame on us for not realizing that there are parents in this country who .
. . today support vouchers not because they are enamored with private schools
but because they want a choice for their children. They want alternatives, and
seeing none in our rigid system, they are willing and some even desperate to
look elsewhere" (speech at Northeastern University, June 16, 1998).
Finally, columnist William Raspberry: "If I find myself slowly morphing
into a supporter of charter schools and vouchers, it isn't because I harbor any
illusions that there's something magical about these alternatives. It is because
I am increasingly doubtful that the public schools can do (or at any rate will
do) what is necessary to educate poor minority children" (Washington
Post, June 26, 1998).
First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life June 1, 1999.
"The official evaluator of the original school choice program in Milwaukee, whose reports have been used by choice opponents to suggest that the program was a failure, is endorsing the program here in a new book set to be released later this month. In the book 'The Market Approach to Education: An Analysis of America's First Voucher Program,' John Witte said his primary message is that 'choice can be a useful tool to aid families and educators in inner city and poor communities where education has been a struggle for several generations.'"
Joe Williams, "Ex-Milwaukee evaluator endorses school choice: Opponents of program have used his earlier work to argue it has failed," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, January 9, 2000, p. A1.
"My involvement with the Milwaukee Public Schools - as a member of the school board, as a parent and as an active and concerned citizen - has persuaded me that MPS's internal reforms require the sustained challenge and competition of the Milwaukee Parental School Choice Program. The program puts effective pressure on MPS to expand, accelerate and improve reforms long deliberated and too-long postponed."
John Gardner, at-large member of the Milwaukee Public Schools Board of Directors and member of the NAACP and ACLU, in a 1997 affidavit submitted in defense of the parental choice program for both Jackson v. Benson and Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association v. Benson, two cases which challenged the constitutionality of the program.
"Look at it from the viewpoint of those parents who grab so avidly for the chance to get their children into better schools: Should they be required to keep their children in dreadful schools in order to keep those schools from growing even worse? Should they be made to wait until we get around to improving all the public schools? . . . Surely voucher opponents cannot believe the logic of their counterargument: that if you can't save everybody-whether from a burning apartment house, a sinking ship or a dreadful school system-it's better not to save anybody at all."
William Raspberry, "Not Enough Lifeboats," The Washington Post, March 9, 1998, p. A19.
"If I were running a public school system, I'd sign a contract with the parochial schools--as Mayor Guiliani wanted to do in New York-and have them educate some of the poorest kids," [Senator John Kerry (D-MA)] told New Yorker magazine. 'I don't see the First Amendment as so rigid that it prevents us from contracting with people who are getting the job done right.'"
Matthew Robinson, "Is Left Warming to Vouchers?" Investor's Business Daily, March 2, 1998, p. A1.
"When you have an area of the country - and most often here we are talking about inner cities - where the public schools are abysmal or dysfunctional or not working and where most of the children have no way out, it is legitimate to ask what would happen to the public schools with increased competition from private schools and what would happen to the quality of education for the children who live there."
Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), "District of Columbia Appropriations Act," Congressional Record, September 30, 1997, p. S10192.
"'A Brighter Choice [scholarship program] made [school administrators and educators] take a look at what was happening, or not happening, at Giffen, and take actions they may not otherwise have taken,' said Anne Pope, president of the Albany branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People."
James Dao, "How to Make a Poor School Change; A Well-Financed Exodus of Students Is Countered by a Flurry of Fixing," The New York Times, Section B; p. 1; Column 3; Metropolitan Desk, September 29, 1997.
"I believe that our educational systems are essentially organized to protect the interests of those of us who work in these systems, not the needs and interests of the families we are supposed to serve . . . . My experience as a superintendent left no doubt in my mind about the impact of the exercise of power on the teaching and learning process. I will argue as long as I have a breath that poor parents must be empowered to have their aspirations for their children's education taken seriously by educators. A critical step in that direction is when we give them the capacity to exercise choice."
Dr. Howard Fuller, former Superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools and currently Director of The Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University, The School Choice Advocate, December 1999, p. 3.
"It is unjust to allow those students in failing inner city schools to languish while we wait for the public system to implement their long-awaited reforms. School choice will immediately assist students who currently have no other option but to attend the schools that have failed to properly educate thus far."
Former Democratic Congressman Floyd Flake, The School Choice Advocate, January 1998, p. 5.
"T. Willard Fair, leader of the Urban League of Greater Miami, is opposing a lawsuit against Florida's new voucher program. The NAACP, on the other hand, is one of the parties suing to stop vouchers. "Vouchers allow us to have access to educational opportunity," says Mr. Fair. "Why should a kid be forced to go to a school where it is obvious that the school is not preparing him or her to be competitive?"
Gail Russell Chaddock, "Voucher Strain Old Alliance," The Christian Science Monitor, September 23, 1999, p. 1.
Andrew Young, Former U.N. Ambassador, had the following to say in his feature, "Let Parents Choose Their Kids' Schools: Scholarships, or vouchers, will allow them the option of finding a decent education," which appeared in the Los Angeles Times on April 29, 1999:
Certain flash points in America's civil rights struggle represent moments of
moral awakening: Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her bus seat; John Lewis'
beating at the Edmund Pettus Bridge; Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from
Birmingham jail. By raising long submerged issues into stark and vivid relief,
these events forced a reckoning--and reckoned a change. They forced us to
reevaluate our beliefs, and, finally, take action.
This month witnessed another such
moment: 1.25 million cries for help voiced by poor, largely minority families,
seeking something most Americans take for granted--a decent education for their
children. To anyone who cared to listen, this was the loud and clear message
sent by those who applied to the Children's Scholarship Fund to win one of the
40,000 partial, K-8 scholarships we offered to help low-income families send
their children to the public, private or parochial school of their choice.
Until now, the denial crowd could
argue: Inner-city families are fairly satisfied with their schools, they assured
us, and besides, poor parents are really too out of it to take an active role in
their children's education anyway. The families who sent in 1.25 million
applicants from 20,000 communities in all 50 states clearly beg to
disagree.
While scholarships were offered
nationally, one-quarter to more than one-third of the eligible population in
many urban school districts applied: 26% in Chicago; 29% in New York; 33% in
Washington, D.C.; 44% in Baltimore. The most scholarships, 3,750, were handed
out to Los Angeles families. New York and Chicago received 2,500 each.
These families were not asking for
handouts, quite the opposite. Despite an average income of less than $22,000,
applicants were asking to contribute on average $1,000 a year, over four years
to supplement the partial scholarship. This represents $5 billion from families
who are financially struggling, and who are already enjoying a public education
for "free."
Yet, behind the 40,000 who will be
helped loom more than 1 million applicants--and many more who suffer in similar
circumstances. What can be done to help them, not five or 10 years from now,
when their childhood, their precious chance to learn, is over, but today? Let
parents, especially among the poor, seek a decent education wherever it may be
found.
Will allowing parents to choose from
different education options "destroy public education"? Did
competition from Toyota "destroy" General Motors? Has competition from
Compaq, Dell and Apple "destroyed" IBM. Or to use an even closer
analogy: Has competition from Federal Express "destroyed" the
government postal service, or has the latter indeed become better, faster, more
innovative in response?
If families were allowed to seek a
quality education wherever it may be found, who would benefit? Simple: Those who
aren't getting a quality education and those who can deliver it. Certainly, some
will oppose competition--just as AT&T once fought the breakup of its
monopoly. Others will reflexively resist the redistribution of power to poor
families. Still others will wave their worn-out ideologies to defend a system of
educational apartheid while demonizing anyone who promotes a parent's right to
choose.
But is this right such a radical
proposition? It wasn't to the founders of the United Nations. As stated in the
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Parents have a prior right to
choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children." It
wasn't to Nelson Mandela, who urged his countrymen to "defend the rights of
African parents to decide the kind of education that shall be given to their
children."
It is true, that those 1.25 million
parents who applied to the Children's Scholarship Fund were probably less
concerned with universal rights than immediate needs: gaining access to a good
school for their child. But when Rosa Parks refused to take her seat at the back
of the bus, she was not thinking of sparking a civil rights crusade, even
afterwards; all she sought was an apology from the Montgomery Public Transit
Authority. It was for others to see in her small, yet courageous gesture of
defiance the universals of human dignity undaunted, of freedom and equality
unjustly denied.
I predict that we will one day look
back on the 1.25 million who applied for educational emancipation--for the
chance to seek the light and oxygen of a nourishing education--not as victims,
but as unwitting heroes with whom a great awakening was begun.
[For additional information on this subject, see Nina Shokraii, "What People Are Saying About School Choice," The Heritage Foundation Backgrounder 1188, June 2, 1998.]
School Choice Facts
complied by
The Institute For Justice,
Washington, DC
