A Matter of Choice

IN THE late 1980s, J. Patrick Rooney, chairman of Golden Rule, the largest privately held insurance company in the United States, was faced with a dilemma. He couldn’t find enough qualified applicants from the local Indianapolis school system to fill the job demands of his rapidly growing company. As a businessman, Rooney knew that the key to reforming public education was to break up the monopoly that existed not just in Indianapolis, but across the country. He realized that without competition, those in power had no real interest in making dramatic changes in education. The public-school system, in fact, was being rewarded with more money each year, despite a dismal record of declining test scores. Low-income’ families, meanwhile, did not have the means to avoid the worst schools by sending their children to expensive private schools, or by re-locating to a neighborhood where a better school existed.

Rooney lobbied the state legislature to enact a pilot program of school choice. But tremendous opposition from the education establishment doomed a legislative victory. So in 1991, Rooney and Golden Rule began the first private voucher program in the nation.

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Fritz Steiger

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IN THE late 1980s, J. Patrick Rooney, chairman of Golden Rule, the largest privately held insurance company in the United States, was faced with a dilemma. He couldn’t find enough qualified applicants from the local Indianapolis school system to fill the job demands of his rapidly growing company. As a businessman, Rooney knew that the key to reforming public education was to break up the monopoly that existed not just in Indianapolis, but across the country. He realized that without competition, those in power had no real interest in making dramatic changes in education. The public-school system, in fact, was being rewarded with more money each year, despite a dismal record of declining test scores. Low-income’ families, meanwhile, did not have the means to avoid the worst schools by sending their children to expensive private schools, or by re-locating to a neighborhood where a better school existed.

Rooney lobbied the state legislature to enact a pilot program of school choice. But tremendous opposition from the education establishment doomed a legislative victory. So in 1991, Rooney and Golden Rule began the first private voucher program in the nation.