Church is at the center of voucher debate: would political win put church at odds with common good? - the students left behind in the public schools present a moral issue for the Catholic church - Catholic Education

National Catholic Reporter, March 28, 1997 by John Allen

Would political win put church at odds with common good?

Meet the two faces of the push for public funding for private schools in America.

The first belongs to Pilar Gonzales. Gonzales and her family struggle to make ends meet in their working-class Milwaukee home.

"We light candles a lot of the time instead of using electricity. We cook one huge meal for the week to avoid using the stove very often," she said. Yet, Gonzales pays to send her three school-aged children to Catholic schools instead of to the city's free public schools.

Leigha, 16, attends Pius High School, while Andres, 10, and Bianca, 8, are enrolled at St. Lawrence Elementary.

Horrified by the crumbling public school system in Milwaukee, Gonzales wanted something better for her children. "The public schools are overcrowded and unsafe," she said. "I have to do right by my kids.... This is their future."

Vouchers, a system through which parents could receive public funds to help pay private school tuition, are a very practical matter for Pilar Gonzales. If vouchers would help her kids stay in safer, more caring schools, she's for them.

The second face of the voucher movement belongs to Michael Joyce, president of the Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee, from which position he acts as godfather of a conservative philanthropic movement that aims to use private dollars to influence public debates. Joyce is widely considered a major figure in Republican intellectual circles, pushing an antigovernment agenda he calls "new citizenship."

"Over time, citizenship has come to be understood as voting and then standing aside while the experts in government take over," Joyce said. "We need to change that."

With its $24 million in annual grants, the Bradley Foundation is a leading donor to PAVE, a private scholarship program that gives half-tuition grants to 4,400 students attending private schools in Milwaukee, including Gonzales' three children. The Bradley Foundation also provides funds to the American Enterprise Institute, American Spectator magazine, the Heritage Foundation, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and scores of other conservative causes.

While Joyce is adamant that vouchers will help the poor, for him the debate is much bigger than the fate of a few families. Ultimately, it's about the proper role of government -- a role Joyce and his fellow devotees of the free market say ought to be minimal. His goal is for market mechanisms to replace public policy in determining the allocation of educational resources.

These two centers of support -- one a social justice concern for the urban poor, the other an ideological belief in free markets and limited government -- are driving the voucher crusade forward. On the other side of the political fence are the public school system and its defenders, especially the teacher's unions.

The battle is being fought in state and federal legislatures, courtrooms and the media. All signs suggest it is heating up.

The Catholic church is caught squarely in the middle. With its network of more than 8,000 private elementary and secondary schools, the church would be the largest beneficiary of vouchers. That makes it a major player in the debate at all levels of government.

Church leadership

The educational leadership of the church has made its support for vouchers clear. As it positions itself in the political fray, however, the church faces a very basic question of allegiance. Is its primary loyalty with Gonzales and the urban poor? If so, in addition to pressing for vouchers for its inner-city schools, will the church also call openly and forcefully for the resuscitation of the public system, recognizing that under any scenario, public schools will continue to educate the bulk of America's poor children? Will the church be guided on this issue by self-interest or by the common good?

Or, will the adversarial dynamics of the voucher debate place the church in a tacit alliance with the free-market conservative vanguard, which sees schooling as another commodity awaiting its turn on the auction block? Many observers believe the answers to those questions will determine a great deal, not only about the future of the voucher movement, but also about the role the Catholic church plays in American public life.

Few dispute the appalling condition of many inner-city public schools. Consider these statistics from the Center for Education Reform, a leading critic of the public system:

* In Philadelphia, less than 10 percent of the district's public elementary schools meet or exceed the national reading norm.

* In Detroit, the public high school graduation rate is less than 30 percent.

* In Cleveland, more than 25 percent of high school seniors failed to pass a required 9th grade proficiency test--and that's only 35 percent of the original 9th grade class. The rest had either failed, dropped out or been placed in special education classes.

* In Toledo, Ohio, one in eight high school students misses more than 50 days of school.