School Choice

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110006796

Free to Choose
After 50 years, education vouchers are beginning to catch on.

BY MILTON FRIEDMAN
Thursday, June 9, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Little did I know when I published an article in 1955 on "The Role of Government in Education" that it would lead to my becoming an activist for a major reform in the organization of schooling, and indeed that my wife and I would be led to establish a foundation to promote parental choice. The original article was not a reaction to a perceived deficiency in schooling. The quality of schooling in the United States then was far better than it is now, and both my wife and I were satisfied with the public schools we had attended. My interest was in the philosophy of a free society. Education was the area that I happened to write on early. I then went on to consider other areas as well. The end result was "Capitalism and Freedom," published seven years later with the education article as one chapter.

With respect to education, I pointed out that government was playing three major roles: (1) legislating compulsory schooling, (2) financing schooling, (3) administering schools. I concluded that there was some justification for compulsory schooling and the financing of schooling, but "the actual administration of educational institutions by the government, the 'nationalization,' as it were, of the bulk of the 'education industry' is much more difficult to justify on [free market] or, so far as I can see, on any other grounds." Yet finance and administration "could readily be separated. Governments could require a minimum of schooling financed by giving the parents vouchers redeemable for a given sum per child per year to be spent on purely educational services. . . . Denationalizing schooling," I went on, "would widen the range of choice available to parents. . . . If present public expenditure were made available to parents regardless of where they send their children, a wide variety of schools would spring up to meet the demand. . . . Here, as in other fields, competitive enterprise is likely to be far more efficient in meeting consumer demand than either nationalized enterprises or enterprises run to serve other purposes."


Though the article, and then "Capitalism and Freedom," generated some academic and popular attention at the time, so far as we know no attempts were made to introduce a system of educational vouchers until the Nixon administration, when the Office of Economic Opportunity took up the idea and offered to finance the actual experiments. One result of that initiative was an ambitious attempt to introduce vouchers in the large cities of New Hampshire, which appeared to be headed for success until it was aborted by the opposition of the teachers unions and the educational administrators--one of the first instances of the oppositional role they were destined to play in subsequent decades. Another result was an experiment in California's Alum Rock school system involving a choice of schools within a public system.
What really led to increased interest in vouchers was the deterioration of schooling, dating in particular from 1965 when the National Education Association converted itself from a professional association to a trade union. Concern about the quality of education led to the establishment of the National Commission of Excellence in Education, whose final report, "A Nation at Risk," was published in 1983. It used the following quote from Paul Copperman to dramatize its own conclusion:

"Each generation of Americans has outstripped its parents in education, in literacy, and in economic attainment. For the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach, those of their parents."

"A Nation at Risk" stimulated much soul-searching and a whole series of major attempts to reform the government educational system. These reforms, however extensive or bold, have, it is widely agreed, had negligible effect on the quality of the public school system. Though spending per pupil has more than doubled since 1970 after allowing for inflation, students continue to rank low in international comparisons; dropout rates are high; scores on SATs and the like have fallen and remain flat. Simple literacy, let alone functional literacy, in the United States is almost surely lower at the beginning of the 21st century than it was a century earlier. And all this is despite a major increase in real spending per student since "A Nation at Risk" was published.


One result has been experimentation with such alternatives as vouchers, tax credits, and charter schools. Government voucher programs are in effect in a few places (Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, the District of Columbia); private voucher programs are widespread; tax credits for educational expenses have been adopted in at least three states and tax credit vouchers (tax credits for gifts to scholarship-granting organizations) in three states. In addition, a major legal obstacle to the adoption of vouchers was removed when the Supreme Court affirmed the legality of the Cleveland voucher in 2002. However, all of these programs are limited; taken together they cover only a small fraction of all children in the country.

Throughout this long period, we have been repeatedly frustrated by the gulf between the clear and present need, the burning desire of parents to have more control over the schooling of their children, on the one hand, and the adamant and effective opposition of trade union leaders and educational administrators to any change that would in any way reduce their control of the educational system.

We have been involved in two initiatives in California to enact a statewide voucher system (in 1993 and 2000). In both cases, the initiatives were carefully drawn up, and the voucher sums moderate. In both cases, nine months or so before the election, public opinion polls recorded a sizable majority in favor of the initiative. In addition, of course, there was a sizable group of fervent supporters, whose hopes ran high of finally getting control of their children's schooling. In each case, about six months before the election, the voucher opponents launched a well-financed and thoroughly unscrupulous campaign against the initiative. Television ads blared that vouchers would break the budget, whereas in fact they would reduce spending since the proposed voucher was to be only a fraction of what government was spending per student. Teachers were induced to send home with their students misleading propaganda against the initiative. Dirty tricks of every variety were financed from a very deep purse. The result was to convert the initial majority into a landslide defeat. This has also occurred in Washington state, Colorado and Michigan. Opposition like this explains why progress has been so slow in such a good cause.

The good news is that, despite these setbacks, public interest in and support for vouchers and tax credits continues to grow. Legislative proposals to channel government funds directly to students rather than to schools are under consideration in something like 20 states. Sooner or later there will be a breakthrough; we shall get a universal voucher plan in one or more states. When we do, a competitive private educational market serving parents who are free to choose the school they believe best for each child will demonstrate how it can revolutionize schooling.

Mr. Friedman, chairman of the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, is a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Nobel laureate in economics.

[Goggles Pizano]

Great article. I recall public school in 1977 when busing began. All the signs of eventual failure were there but everyone was more interested in pushing the social agenda rather than admit that the graduation rate of the minority kids shipped in vs. the majority kids shipped out remained low. Fortunately for me my parents had enough for one year and off to a Catholic HS I went. 25 years later this state banned busing and school choice was initiated with this caveat: the school district's feeder patterns would remain the same. Therefore unless parents took responsibilty for where their child attended school all remained as before. Apparently the state has resigned any culpability for the destruction of the future of one generation, and blindfolds itself to continued denigration. Sad.

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/cc/?id=110006826

Judicial Clouds in the Sunshine State
Gov. Bush's voucher program is improving public schools, but Florida's Supreme Court may strike it down.

BY CLINT BOLICK
Thursday, June 16, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.--Historically, American courts have played a leading role in ensuring educational equality and opportunity. But the Florida Supreme Court may reject that tradition by denying the constitutionality of, and thereby ending, the most promising educational progress for minority schoolchildren in the U.S.

The saga began in 1999, when Gov. Jeb Bush signed into law the first money-back guarantee in the history of public education: the Opportunity Scholarship Program. Under the program, whenever a public school receives two failing grades on Florida's academic performance standards, state educational officials come into the school with a remedial program, and the students are allowed to transfer to better performing public schools or to use a share of their public funds as full payment of private-school tuition.

Six years later, only 750 children are attending private schools using opportunity scholarships. But their footsteps have reverberated across the state, prompting failing public schools to reform. Steps taken by failing schools have included spending more money in the classroom and less on administration, hiring tutors for poor performing teachers, and providing year-round instruction to pupils.

Defenders of the status quo insist that such reforms were already under way. But a freedom of information request by the Institute for Justice from school districts that lifted schools off the failing list revealed ubiquitous reference to the dreaded V-word: Without such measures, school officials warned, we wind up with vouchers. The rules of economics, it seems, do not stop at the schoolhouse doors.

The results have been stunning. Even with tougher state standards, nearly half of Florida's public schools now earn "A" grades, while a similar percentage scored "C's" when the program started. A 2003 study by Jay Greene found that gains were most concentrated among schools under threat of vouchers.

Most remarkable has been minority student progress. While the percentage of white third-graders reading at or above grade level has increased to 78% from 70% in 2001, the percentage among Hispanic third-graders has climbed from 46% to 61%, and among blacks from 36% to 52%. Graduation rates for Hispanic students have increased from 52.8% before the program started to 64% today; and for black students from 48.7% to 57.3%. Minority schoolchildren are not making such academic strides anywhere else.


The usual cast of characters that has opposed parental choice programs in other states--teachers unions, the American Civil Liberties Union, and People for the American Way--mounted a legal attack on the Florida program as the ink was drying.

Most attention had focused on the challenge under the state's Blaine Amendment, a relic of a late-19th-century campaign against Catholic immigrants that sought to block the use of public funds for parochial schools. State supreme courts in Wisconsin and Arizona (and past decisions by the Florida Supreme Court relating to other social benefits) have found that general aid programs in which religious institutions provide services do not violate the Blaine amendments. Moreover, a decision singling out religious schools for exclusion from an otherwise applicable aid program could violate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

But several of the Florida justices focused instead on the clause of the state constitution that establishes the "paramount duty of the state to make adequate provision for the education of all children," mandating that the state provide "a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools."

Although many states have similar provisions, no appellate court anywhere has ever held categorically that public funds cannot be used in private schools. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has held unanimously under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that where public schools fail to provide disabled children an "appropriate" education, they must do so in private schools at public expense. Students in every state receive public education in private schools.

Yet several Florida justices appeared open to such an unprecedented ruling. "Where does the Legislature . . . get the authority to, in fact, have other forms of education, other than public education?" asked one. Another wondered if allowing parents to use state funds in private schools "wouldn't completely undermine the system that has been provided in the Constitution for the free system of public schools?" Interesting question given that Florida's public schools are thriving like never before.

Courts in other states all have concluded that the requirement of a uniform system of public education is a floor, not a ceiling, for the provision of educational opportunities. So too would it seem in Florida: The same constitutional provision that mandates free public schools also decrees that they be high quality. What happens if they're not? The Opportunity Scholarship Program makes good on the fundamental right to education by providing an option for children who would otherwise be trapped in failing schools.


Should the Florida court strike down the program, it would spell a death sentence not only for opportunity scholarships, but for more than 10,000 scholarships used by disabled children to attend private schools, and for a host of other parental choice programs as well. Even more significant, it would doom the dramatic and unprecedented progress Florida has made in delivering high-quality educational opportunities.

Last month marked the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown II, which decreed that states make equal educational opportunities available "with all deliberate speed." Since that decision, we have lost large parts of three generations of schoolchildren to substandard education. The Sunshine State's great strides are long overdue and an example for the nation. We can only hope that the state's top court will not blot out progress with a dark jurisprudential cloud that once again turns the constitutional promise of educational opportunity into a cruel hoax.

Mr. Bolick is president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice (www.allianceforschoolchoice.org).