Justice issues are common ground for Catholic, public school alliance

National Catholic Reporter, March 27, 1998 by Stan Karp

For 20 years I've been a classroom teacher in Paterson, N.J., one of my state's poorest and least successful school districts. I'm used to seeing reforms wash over my district, like waves on the Jersey shore, occasionally carrying in a fresh breeze, though more often erasing past efforts and only making room for more short-lived footprints.

But it is only recently that I can remember hearing so much talk of abandoning public schools altogether. Politicians call for their replacement by charter schools, vouchers and other market mechanisms. Poor parents seek alternatives for their children in communities where school failure has reached desperate proportions, and a me-first, dollar-driven culture resists the collective obligations that a system of public education implies. In a word, the common ground of support on which public schools depend seems to be eroding.

One of the constituencies that has been especially receptive to arguments for "choice" is the religious community. In fact, the rhetoric and political maneuvering around choice have frequently found Catholic and other church, groups in a de facto alliance with the fundamentalist Christian right. Though these religious voices, come from very different places, they have sometimes merged together in a chorus of complaint about public education that has included demands for everything from vouchers to full privatization of the public schools.

The tacit coalition that has united voucher advocates on one side against supporters of public education on the other is alarming for several reasons:

* Despite their high profile and divisive impact as a wedge issue, vouchers remain a marginal matter, diverting attention and funds from the central issue of how to provide quality education for all our children.

* The far right's crusade against public education is at odds with -- indeed, is ultimately a threat to -- the vision of religious communities committed to social justice.

* The survival and renewal of public education is vital to the prospects of nourishing a multiracial democracy in the next century, and public schools desperately need the moral, material, political and community support that churches and religious groups can provide.

A response to problems

It is easy to understand why many Catholic educators see in vouchers a legitimate response to real problems. Changing demographics and the crushing costs of sustaining good schools in poor areas are overwhelming what Leonard DeFiore, the president of the National Catholic Educational Association, has called the "historic mission of the church to give priority to the poor."

Given these pressures, Catholic educators are quite naturally attracted to the influx of funds and students that vouchers could bring. But if, in the best traditions of the church's teachings on social justice, they rise above considerations of narrow self-interest, they will find compelling reasons to seek common ground with public schools and the communities they serve as both fight for renewal.

The 2.6 million students who attend Catholic schools account for roughly half of the 10 percent of all school-age children who are enrolled in private schools. By 2006, the National Center of Education Statistics projects that just over 6 percent of the nations's 54 million school-age children will be in private schools.

This means that the great majority of children, including Catholic children, poor children and children of color are and will continue to be in public schools. Neither vouchers, nor charter schools nor other choice reforms will change this (though they may seriously undermine the public schools left behind). For all the attention and rhetoric about vouchers over the past decade, there are just two small experimental voucher plans operating today, in Cleveland and Milwaukee. They involve small fractions of the school population in those cities, and the results have been, at best, quite mixed.

The limitations on voucher programs stem not just from the strong opposition of those who fear their impact on public schools. They remain largely a rhetorical matter of service to politicians because they hold no practical answers to the current crisis of education. No voucher program proposed anywhere can come close to making alternative placements available to the majority of students now attending public schools. The schools and seats do not exist, and the astronomical costs of creating them are not part of the voucher package.

Typically, voucher plans involve the transfer of funds from public to private schools rather than new, large investments in education spending or school construction. Vouchers are about investing less in the public education we make available to all children in order to provide a government subsidy for the private education of some children, and they do so in the interests of a much broader political and ideological agenda.

Even a synthetically created, government-subsidized market in education will do for educational services in poor communities only what markets have done in areas such as health care or housing. It may create profitable opportunities for some well-financed investors and allow a few more fortunate education consumers to buy their way out of troubled schools. But it will also reproduce the class and racial inequalities that various customers bring to the market with them, Nor would vouchers give urban poor and working parents effective "power" over the schools any more than food stamps have given them "power" over the local supermarkets.