School choice a tangled national issue
Commentary by ADAM TANOUS
With the economy booming and America’s military basking in a glory
of some sort, it appears that education, albeit belatedly, is finally at the top of our
list of concerns. And an issue that is destined to come into play during the coming
election is school choice.
Over the years, "school choice" has taken several fairly
innocuous forms. There have been magnet schools with their specific academic features;
charter schools that are public yet operate autonomously (i.e. design their own
curricula); open enrollment programs which allow students to enroll in schools outside
their neighborhood; and simple tax credit programs to offset the cost of a child attending
a private college.
Quietly working its way into the national fray is the most
controversial concept to date: the school voucher program. It presents both legal and
political conflicts that, once resolved, will profoundly affect the future of American
education. In addition, the school voucher brings into focus the 200 year old debate of
Federalism—that is, the balance of power within our nation, its states and, in this
case, the people.
The two biggest school voucher programs, in Milwaukee and Cleveland,
sound simple: a family, generally low income, receives a voucher from state and local tax
agencies worth somewhere between $2,000 and $2,500 per year. The money can then be used to
send a child to a private school, secular or religious.
As it turns out, most of the students (80 percent in Cleveland) enroll
in religious schools: Islamic, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist and
Lutheran. The reason for this is that the tuition for religious schools is significantly
less than for secular schools ($2,000-$5,000 for most Catholic schools versus, say,
$12,000 at The Community School, $13,000 at Hathaway Brown and $20,000 at Andover).
Most religious schools subsidize their tuition costs with charitable
donations and fund-raisers. They also pay their teachers very low salaries. (A teacher in
a Cleveland Catholic school starts at $16,000 versus $26,490 in the public schools.)
This is where the constitutional issue comes into the debate. State
money, in the form of tax receipts, is ending up in religious institutions, namely
schools. Critics of the program say that it is a clear violation of the First Amendment,
which declares, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Proponents argue that the money is going
to the parents, and they, not the state, are choosing to use it at religious schools.
The constitutionality of the program may hinge on the degree of choice
parents actually face. If there truly is free choice, then it is hard to imagine that the
state is furthering religion. If, however, there is no realistic freedom of choice other
than using the vouchers in religious schools, then the argument loses some validity.
Channeling the money through the parents becomes little more than laundering.
Another argument for the program centers on "child-benefit
theory," an argument cited in previous Supreme Court cases. Basically, this doctrine
has to do with balancing the needs of children with the First Amendment limitations placed
on the government. The argument would be that if kids in the inner city have no effective
public education (and therefore no future prospects) then the First Amendment restrictions
would be overlooked as long as the state is making it possible for them to attend a
religious school with some sense of order and learning environment.
While the Supreme Court is likely to take up the legal issues (perhaps
this October), we, as a people, may have more to say about the political and social
ramifications of voucher programs. If children and money do, in fact, leave the public
schools for private, religious schools, several scenarios are possible. One is that we
will become a nation of schools segregated by religion. While the Supreme Court in Brown
v. Board of Education (curiously, it was a Kansas school board trying to uphold
segregation) ruled that racially separate schools could never be equal, it is an open
question whether that would be true of religion as well. I think from a social-cultural
point of view, however, it would do the children a disservice to segregate them by
religion.
Perhaps the greatest quality of our public school system is that it is
the democratic ideal in action. Children may learn about democracy in history class, but
that experience pales in comparison to living with it every day at school. And it may be
the only true democratic experience they have their entire lives. That lesson may be the
most important one they get throughout their education.
A second likely scenario under the voucher program, and an arguing
point for proponents, is that it will put competitive pressure on public schools. If there
is a threat of losing students and, therefore, funding, then perhaps the public schools
will respond by getting better. It is an attempt to let free market economics solve a
public policy dilemma.
The problem, as I see it, is that students and their educational
experience should not be treated like widgets in a competitive widget industry. When a
school fails in the proposed free market of education, the effects of the failure are much
more profound and disruptive than when a business fails. Children pay a huge price in lost
education and in relocating to new schools with new teachers.
Another potential complication is that schools will take their
new-found competitive situations too seriously. It is not hard to envision the
slick marketing of high schools, "trendy" curricula and other business practices
that don’t quite mesh with the task of educating a child.
One last issue that arises with school vouchers has to do with the
balance of power among the federal government, the states and the people. The 10th
Amendment, what Jefferson called the "bedrock of the Constitution," states that
the powers not given to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved for the
states, or for the people. As there is no mention of, nor right to education spelled out
in the Constitution, the job of educating children has always fallen to the local level.
The states carry out their task until the federal judiciary systems decides that the
states have somehow failed their constitutional duties.
To further complicate the picture, the people themselves are now
wrestling control of education from the states by trying to get their tax dollars back.
Ultimately, the battle will come down to who gets to decide what an education for a child
should entail. If I decide to home school my child, even though I may be totally
unqualified to do that, who looks out for the child? Parents think they know what’s
best for their child, and they usually do, but not always. The states usually think they
know what’s best too, but they have made some dubious decisions over the years as
well.
The fundamental problem with further localizing control of
education is that the world itself is becoming less local. Our children will be more
mobile than us, and their education will have to be broader in scope and more versatile.
Balkanizing schools into various religious sects seems to be narrowing their experience at
a time when they need a more comprehensive understanding of the world and its people.
