The school choice fiasco - proposition for government coverage for attendance in any school of personal choice

Public Interest, Wntr, 1994 by Myron Lieberman

ON NOVEMBER 2, 1993, California residents voted on Proposition 174, a state initiative that would have provided pupils with "scholarships" (vouchers worth at least $2500) that could be applied to the cost of attending any private school. The initiative also would have permitted students to transfer into any public school, up to the limit of its capacity. The vote on Proposition 174 was 1,452,392 (30 percent) "Yes" to 3,336,763 (70 percent) "No," a margin of defeat that raises serious questions about the value of earlier polls in California and elsewhere that showed a majority of parents and voters in favor of school choice. In 1990 and 1992, similar state initiatives in Oregon and Colorado also lost by large margins, continuing a long series of setbacks for school choice. In this article, I propose to analyze the reasons for this pattern of defeats. Let me begin by summarizing a post-election analysis by Dr. James Guthrie, a co-director of California Policy Analysis for Education (PACE), an organization supported jointly by the University of California and Stanford University. In Guthrie's view, the Proposition 174 campaign was:

1) Internally disorganized.

2) Unable to raise the funds required for a successful campaign.

3) Without support from business or the Republican Party.

4) Based on a hastily drafted initiative that included several major flaws.

In Guthrie's view, the question to be asked is not why Proposition 174 was defeated but how an initiative with so many major weaknesses managed to attract so much national attention and frighten the public school establishment into raising $16 million to defeat it. Although my analysis differs in some important respects from Guthrie's, his analysis is a useful point of departure. Indisputably, the Republican Assembly caucus and the business community failed to support Proposition 174. Only one Republican state-wide office holder, Attorney General Dan Lungren, endorsed the initiative. Governor Pete Wilson opposed it, as did many Republicans in the California legislature.

Why the absence of Republican support? Perhaps one incident will help explain. Tom Campbell, who lost a close Republican primary for the U.S. Senate in 1992, was a candidate for the California Senate when he announced his support for Proposition 174. The California Teachers Association (CTA) then threatened to run one of its officers and "saturate the area" with money and campaign workers in an all-out campaign. Campbell, a Stanford University law professor, thereupon let it be known that after reading the initiative more carefully he had decided to oppose it.

One reason Campbell preferred to switch instead of fight is that education is not a major concern of the Republican Party. The Republican National Committee (RNC) does not employ a single staff member who is assigned to, or equipped to advise Republican candidates on, educational issues. One incident is especially revealing. The National Education Association is the nation's largest teacher union. About 40 percent of its 2.1 million members identify themselves as Republicans. At the NEA's 1991 convention, the twenty or so members of the Republican Educational Caucus (NEA-REC) voted to inform the RNC of the group's position on choice. The caucus draft was submitted for review to an NEA staff member who is assigned to the Republican members of Congress. Not surprisingly, the caucus statement was a faithful rendition of the NEA's opposition to school choice. In the context of an organization representing over 2 million members with enormous political resources, the incident reflects a political wipeout, but it was hardly unique in terms of the Republican outreach in the teacher unions. NEAREC is essentially the same group as the Teacher Advisory Council (TAC) in the RNC. TAC is scheduled to meet in January 1994 for its first conference in three years away from the NEA conference; difficult as it may be to believe, the conference will be held at the NEA building and the NEA is paying the travel expenses of members of the council. In other words, NEA-REC and TAC are vehicles for extending NEA influence in the Republican Party. They do not function even marginally as means of disseminating Republican positions among the union's ranks.

Business support for Proposition 174 was also weak. Despite the fact that prominent businessmen were instrumental in launching Proposition 174, it attracted more business opposition than support. Inasmuch as business dissatisfaction with public education is broad and deep in California, the lack of business support was remarkable. Clearly intimidation was one factor. When the owner of a restaurant chain in Southern California contributed $25,000 to the campaign, his name was unwisely listed on the letterhead of the campaign organization. Soon thereafter, threats to boycott the chain rolled in despite CTA claims that it would not engage in such tactics.

Another explanation is that business leaders did not want to jeopardize their state legislative agenda by supporting Proposition 174. Still another is that business leaders were concerned about the fact that the initiative did not include safeguards on curriculum, teacher qualifications, teacher testing, and public disclosure. The extent to which this was true is debatable, but some supporters of Proposition 174 believe in it strongly enough to be drafting a new initiative that includes these alleged safeguards. These supporters interpret the election results as evidence that the public will not accept a free market model but will accept a regulated voucher plan. I do not share this point of view, but if it is valid, it suggests a problem. The fundamentalist Christian denominations operate a large number of denominational schools in California and elsewhere. This group is adamantly opposed to government intrusion in or regulation of their schools and might defect from a coalition that accepted more than minimal regulation of voucher-redeeming schools. Other reasons