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1/16/01
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Chester E. Finn Jr. is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a former assistant U.S. secretary of education. Michael J. Petrilli, formerly with the Manhattan Institute, works at K12, an Internet education company.
There’s no doubt that the Bush team seems ready to put most of its eggs in the “standards-based” reform strategy that has worked well in Texas rather than in the marketplace approach signified by vouchers. But those who know Bush recognize that he believes in choice, too, both for the near-term benefit it brings to needy children and for the pressure it builds on the “system” to change. Texas, it’s well to recall, also has a large and vigorous charter-school movement that he strongly supported. It also has several privately funded voucher programs. It’s just possible that Bush recognizes that the school-choice movement would benefit from a pinch of patience — and a swig of strategic thinking. It’s also important to recognize that, within the choice movement, can be found two rival visions of how tomorrow’s school system should work. It’s impossible to satisfy both camps — because their goals aren’t the same. The libertarians among us — believing that education is fundamentally a “private good” — want a universal voucher or tax-credit system. In this scenario, families would enjoy complete freedom to decide which school is best for their children, including private schools, religious schools, cyber schools, etc. The government would have no right to second-guess their choices. If families opt to send their kids to flaky schools, so be it. Schools themselves would be virtually deregulated, being accountable only to their customers via the marketplace. Adherents of this view would love Bush to offer a juicy universal education tax credit for all Americans, or at least a big-time voucher program targeted on the poor. Other choice advocates — asserting that society has an obligation to educate its young but that a monopoly government school system isn’t a good way to do that — dream of something closer to universal charter schools. In this scenario, states would continue to fund public schools but the definition of “public” would significantly loosen. In effect, any school willing to be held accountable for pupil achievement (measured against the state’s academic standards) and accessible to all would be deemed a public school and funded with public dollars based on how many children enroll in it. Today’s private and parochial schools could choose to become “public” schools — with the Supreme Court eventually deciding whether that means every crucifix and Star of David would have to be stripped from their walls. Schools wanting to remain completely independent (or selective) could choose to stay private. All public schools would enjoy substantial freedom from state and district regulation — including control over budget, staff, and curriculum — but would face the same strict public accountability for academic results. Families would have many more options than they do today, but their choices would be limited to schools that prove to be educationally competent and have an open-enrollment policy. Bush and his team seemingly favor the second view. But what can he do as president to bring a universal charter-style system to the entire nation? Pretty much what he’s doing, but more so. First, he can push states to test their kids regularly. Accountability and information about school performance are crucial in a universal charter-school system (or any other education marketplace); both depend on regular testing with the results reported against clear standards setting forth what youngsters at various grade levels are supposed to know. Second, he can establish the principle in federal law that money intended for needy youngsters — whether poor, disabled, or non-English speaking — should follow them to the public school of their choice. As states’ definition of “public” widens, however, and as families make new choices, federal dollars would flow to more and more schools. Here Bush is moving too slowly. His campaign proposals would take the big Title I program (about $8 billion a year in “compensatory” aid for disadvantaged children) and empower parents with kids in failing public schools to take their share of that federal appropriation to other providers — including private schools — but only after the public school has failed for three consecutive years. (Florida under Jeb Bush has a similar program operating now at the state level.) Despite howls of outrage from the left about a “foot in the door” for vouchers, this approach isn’t quite right for Uncle Sam. On the one hand, it’s too ambitious because it forces private school choice on places that don’t want it, and raises needless ire for measly gain. On the other hand, it isn’t ambitious enough; a child’s federal dollars don’t become portable until he has endured three years at an irremediably bad school, losing academic ground all the while. What’s the right balance? First, President Bush and Education Secretary Rod Paige should persuade Congress to transform the big federal programs for needy children — Title I for the poor, special education for those with disabilities, bilingual education for non-English speakers — into payments on behalf of individual youngsters who qualify, money that accompanies them to the schools of their choice. That’s a big change from present policy, which sends the money to public-school districts (and only to public-school districts) through complex formulas based on residency and census counts — and which keeps the money in those districts even if students leave for better education elsewhere. Second, federal policy should become neutral with respect to today’s choice debates. Let the states decide. They are already deciding which schools, and how many different sorts of schools, their own dollars can go to. Let the federal dollars go where the state’s dollars go. No more. No less. The range of a family’s choices would thus be determined by individual states in accord with their own evolving education policies, subject to their constitutional quirks and political singularities. If and when private schools receive state funding (as in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Florida), then federal dollars would flow to those schools. As states allow private schools to opt into their universal public charter-school system, federal dollars would go there as well. This is no federally imposed voucher. Choice zealots will protest. (To anyone who thinks the 107th Congress is about to enact a mandatory voucher program, however, we can offer opportunities to bid on a couple of bridges over the Potomac.) But it would make two huge contributions to school choice. First, it would establish the principle — long present in higher education — that federal money is properly attached to students, not schools. Second, it would remove the impediments that present federal policy places in the way of states, communities and families that want to exercise choice. It would at least direct federal dollars to the schools where states send their own dollars — so long as students want to enroll in them. We’re ardently for school choice. But when it comes to Washington’s always-marginal role in education policy, we agree with Howard Fuller, the celebrated education activist, choice booster, and head of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. After Election Day defeats of California’s and Michigan’s voucher initiatives, he remarked of the movement: “We’ve got to stop being so stupid. We’ve got to start thinking ten, twenty years down the road.” President Bush can lead the country part way down that bumpy road. By demanding regular testing at the state level, clear information for families about school performance, and schools that are accountable for that performance, he is helping to build tomorrow’s universal charter-school system. If he can also make the big federal programs student-centered in their funding and neutral with respect to school choice, he will prove himself not only compassionate but also wisely strategic. CORRECTION:
We regret that our quotation of Howard Fuller made it appear that
he agrees with the arguments in this article. We merely meant to support
his proposition that the school choice movement needs to think more strategically
as it moves forward. We sincerely regret this misunderstanding. |
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ust months after Tim
Draper wounded the school-choice movement by pressing his well-meaning
but dismally constructed California voucher initiative to a crashing failure
at the polls, many conservatives hanker for the new Bush administration
to push vouchers via federal legislation. This his team is said to be
resisting — or paying only lip service to. While such equivocation
is naturally hailed by liberals as welcome “flexibility,” “reasonableness”
or “bipartisanship,” some conservatives see treachery, especially in light
of the rap on Bush that, as governor, he expended no political capital
to enact a state-level voucher program in Texas.
