‘Vouchers were thought of as a white, Republican type of issue,” says Louisiana state representative Austin Badon Jr., a Democratic member of the legislature’s black caucus.
Indeed, in the half century since Milton Friedman started pushing vouchers — the idea of giving parents, especially those with children in underperforming public schools, money to spend on private education — they’ve been mostly a project of conservatives and libertarians, two relatively Caucasian groups. To make matters worse, teachers’ unions, which hold a lot of sway in the Democratic party, hate the idea of the government’s helping their private competitors.
Even though poor children, the folks Democrats purport to care about most, are the ones typically stuck in failing public schools, only Republicans have been willing to do anything to get them out. That is, until recently: in the last several years, there has been a remarkable rise in Democratic support for vouchers. Democrats have played an important role in more than half of recent school-choice successes. This is an important step forward for the school-choice movement.
Examples abound. Badon introduced a bill — another Democrat subsequently introduced it in the state senate, and the Republican governor signed it — to authorize up to 1,500 “scholarships” for students in Orleans Parish. Children in grades kindergarten through three can enter the program, and Badon hopes to add more grades with subsequent legislation.
Democrats have also supported school-choice initiatives in Maryland, New Jersey, and Iowa. Arizona’s Democratic governor signed two voucher bills, albeit as part of a budget-deal concession. Some Democrats in the federal Congress support continuing the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, and Democratic city officials there have earned a reputation for reform-mindedness.
Perhaps most illustrative of the changing mood is Florida, whose 2001 school-choice program passed with but a single Democratic vote. This year, one-third of Democrats voted to expand that same program. About half the black caucus and the entire Hispanic caucus were on board, and the program’s cap rose to $118 million.
Democratic representative Bill Heller — who as a public-school teacher worked with disabled students — joined the Florida legislature after the 2001 vote, but voted against expanding the program last year, and also in a committee called the Schools & Learning Council. He voted for the final bill this year. “I wanted to go out and see what was happening to the kids on these scholarships. My district had 58, and I visited several of their schools and talked to parents,” he says. “I saw that it was an alternative for a child who might not have been successful in a public school — not a means of operating a separate system of education.”
Why is this happening, and why now? There are several important reasons. One is that politicians representing poor districts face increasing “pressure from the bottom,” says Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform (which takes no position on private-school vouchers). “Parents are looking for results and answers, and it’s getting harder for elected officials to sit back and not offer any,” he adds.
Also, since the Milwaukee voucher program passed in 1990, various rebellious Democrats have stuck their necks out for school choice. Seeing these heads stay attached to their torsos, other legislators have been more willing to follow suit.
And as Democrats have become more supportive of vouchers, the voucher movement has gone out of its way to make itself more palatable to Democrats. The outreach, especially to minorities representing districts with failing schools, was long overdue: For years, polls have indicated significant, sometimes majority, support for vouchers in the black community.
Bringing in liberals requires framing the issue in terms of social justice, rather than as a way to limit government. This is not just political, but also honest: Research shows significant academic gains when kids leave the very worst public schools (there is much less, if any, advantage in moving a child from an average public school to a private school).
Also, the movement reworked school choice in a way that reduces political risk; many of these Democrat-enabled voucher programs aren’t actually voucher programs, but rather “corporate tax-credit scholarship programs.”
The difference: In a traditional voucher program, the government gives parents money to spend on private schools. But in the new programs, a corporation ponies up the cash, and gets a tax credit for a large portion of the donation. In Maryland, for example, that portion is 75 percent. Bear in mind that a tax credit is not the same as a tax deduction — if a Maryland corporation donates $1,000, it pays $750 less in taxes, instead of just deducting $750 from its taxable income. So, in effect, the government is paying most of the bill.
There can be an advantage to this method — Maryland forgoes only $750 in tax revenue for every $1,000 spent on school choice, instead of the full $1,000 it would pay in a normal voucher program. But it’s clear the more important advantage is political: Florida, for example, offers dollar-for-dollar credits, basically allowing corporations to direct their tax money to vouchers so politicians don’t have to.
“The trend we’re seeing right now is that scholarship tax-credit programs pass statewide,” says Andrew Campanella, director of communications and marketing for the Alliance for School Choice. “Otherwise, you can only pass a citywide program, or a limited program like one for special-needs students.” By the Cato Institute’s count, seven statewide “tax credit” programs have passed since 1995, and all have survived. Only four statewide voucher programs have passed, and three have since ended.
One reason for this: When money comes from a corporation instead of the government, even only nominally, it seems less like public money supporting a private organization. It’s also easier to convince voters that the vouchers won’t affect the public schools’ budgets.
And of course there’s the clever vocabulary switch from “voucher” to “scholarship.” The notion behind the change is clear enough: “Voucher” is not a marketable word. Many people don’t really know what it means, and teachers’ unions have worked hard and successfully to equate the term with taking money from public schools.
It seems likely that this trend will continue, as Democrats’ reflexive aversion to vouchers continues to subside. But even if the unions have lost some power, they’re not going anywhere, and pro-voucher Democrats don’t always have an easy time.
“It’s been a tough issue for me personally, spiritually, and mentally,” says Jason Fields of Milwaukee, a Wisconsin assemblyman who broke with his party in voting to expand his city’s voucher program (a Democratic governor signed the bill in a compromise with the Republican-controlled legislature). “When you go against people who don’t want change, they feel threatened or challenged by everything you try to do. I always heard, ‘You’re being misled, you’re being fooled,’ as if I’m not intelligent enough to make decisions myself.”
Comments