School Choice or Polarization?

PFAW sides with the NAACP in attacking the new school voucher system recently passed by Congress for the District of Colombia. (See Organization Trends, September 2003.) Research on school choice shows that inner-city minority children stand to benefit most from school vouchers that allow them to leave failing public school systems. Vouchers reduce polarization when parents can be sure their kids have an equal opportunity to receive a good education. Isn’t that what PFAW says it wants to achieve? 

            A PFAW report titled “Voucher Veneer” finds all voucher programs distasteful and accuses them of representing a “deeper agenda.”  The report goes so far as to say that school choice programs are simply part of a long-term goal “…to make all schooling an activity supplied by private sources: for-profit management companies, religious organizations and home schools.”

            But voucher supporters have never advocated abolishing public education. Indeed, they say school choice improves the quality of public education by making it compete with private schools. A 2003 study by Manhattan Institute scholars Dr. Jay Greene and Marcus Winters examined Florida’s A+ Program, which gives vouchers to students in failing public schools. They found that Florida’s low-performing public schools improve in proportion to the threat they face from voucher competition. Failed schools where students are eligible for vouchers improved by 10.1 points for reading, as measured by Florida’s official standardized test for assessing academic performance, and 9.3 on math.

            The PFAW report also claims that there is an “unreceptive public” to school voucher programs. Not true. A poll by the First Amendment Center found that 62 percent of Americans support a school voucher program that provides more educational options. This finding is in agreement with similar polls by the Washington Post, the Pew Research Center, and NBC News, among others. PFAW responds by saying, “There are good reasons to believe that the public–if it were made fully aware of the deeper agenda that many leading voucher advocates have–would oppose taking the first step toward privatizing the educational system.”

            Opponents of school choice like PFAW also claim it will undermine the Bill of Rights’ guarantee of separation of church and state. However, many legal scholars and the U.S. Supreme Court disagree. They say the voucher contract exists between the government and the parent, not between the government and a church. As Chief Justice William Rehnquist explained in his 2002 ruling that Cleveland, Ohio’s school voucher program is constitutional: Programs are “neutral in respect to religion [because they] provide assistance directly to a broad class of citizens, who, in turn direct government aid to religious schools wholly as a result of their own genuine and independent private choice.” In effect, the parents or guardians, not the state, choose to send funds to a religious organization.

            PFAW makes other charges against school choice. It says the program would allow for discrimination based on religion, disability, gender, English language proficiency, and academic performance. In reality, vouchers may lead to more racially integrated schools. According to Gary Orefield at Harvard University, “more than 70 percent of the nation’s black students now attend predominately minority [public] schools.” But a voucher program would bring more minority students into predominately white private schools. 

            Finally, PFAW denies that school vouchers improve academic success.  But  “The ABC’s of School Choice,” a report by the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation, observes, “Almost all studies in states and areas with school voucher programs show that vouchers help students on standardized tests.” The Friedman report cites studies of voucher programs in Cleveland, Milwaukee, New York, Dayton, and Charlotte showing improved test scores for students who receive vouchers. Dr. Paul E. Peterson, director of Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy, also published a major study in 2002 that assessed the impact of a private scholarship program on African-American children in New York City. He found that children who received vouchers to attend private schools scored eight percentile points higher on the reading and math sections of standardized tests than their peers in public schools.

            The Colorado Supreme Court ruling was an unfortunate step backwards because the demand for school choice is at its peak. As Chip Mellor, president and general counsel of the Institute for Justice, noted shortly after the Colorado ruling, “Nationwide, more than 31,000 children currently exercise school choice, and more than a thousand in the District of Columbia are set to join them this fall through a new program in the nation’s capital.  The demand and support for choice has never been greater.”

That’s why liberal Democratic politicians such as Washington, DC mayor Anthony Williams endorse voucher programs. Said Williams, “At the very least, we should experiment with choice in the city. If people are afraid to at least experiment, that tells me there is some self-interest in this motive.” When PFAW president Ralph Neas denounced Williams for backing school choice, the mayor shot back that true “people for the American way” would know “part of democracy is a free exchange and competition of ideas.”  

            That sums up the core problem with People for the American Way. Its name is a misnomer. PFAW is not interested in competition and merit. Its political self-interest is in maintaining a failed education bureaucracy and the status quo.

            Kelly Naku is a Fund for American Studies Summer Fellow at Capital Research Center. She is a student at Holy Cross College.