Opening up the public-school gulag

National Review, July 20, 1992 by Charles J. Sykes

IF PRESIDENT BUSH wanted a hint of just how powerful an issue he has in school choice, he did not have to look any farther than his audience at the White House ceremony where he unveiled his G.I. Bill for Children. He was joined by black parents who have pioneered school choice in Milwaukee's inner city; Governor Tommy Thompson, who has once again made Wisconsin a "laboratory of democracy"; and Brother Bob Smith.

Brother Bob, who is black, is the principal of Milwaukee's Messmer High School, an independent Catholic school with a predominantly poor, black, and non-Catholic student body. The 35-year-old Capuchin has become a powerful symbol of the political and educational promise of choice, but also of the lengths to which opponents will go to stop low-income parents from escaping the public-school gulag.

Milwaukee's public schools, like those of many other big cities, are educational Bhopals. Only 32 per cent of their black students graduate from high school; at some schools, the average grade point average for black students is F+ or below (the grade point average for all students is D+). Is this appalling rate of failure the result of spending cuts? Hardly. Between 1976 and 1988, per-pupil spending in Milwaukee rose by 190 per cent; state aid leaped by 278 per cent. The city now spends about $6,000 per pupil.

By comparison, although half of Messmer's students come from families at or below the poverty line and 62 per cent are black, 98 per cent of Messmer's students graduate; 78 per cent go on to college. Messmer does this while spending about $4,400 per pupil. Tuition is only $2,050, and most Messmer students receive some form of financial aid.

Until this year, Messmer had not seriously considered that it might be part of the Wisconsin school-choice program, since participation is limited to non-sectarian private schools. However, Messmer is not part of the Milwaukee archdiocesan school system (it severed its ties with the archdiocese in 1974, after the Church announced that it would close the school, and reopened with major support from the DeRance Foundation), and so Brother Bob thought it worth applying. Three weeks later, the Department of Public Instruction approved Messmet for the program, which provides $2,500 in tuition aid to low-income parents. Within days, Messmer had received 44 completed applications from low-income parents and requests from another 50. Reaction in the black community was enthusiastic. "The inclusion of Messmer in the choice program," editorialized the black-owned Community Journal, "is a godsend for poor parents."

The reaction of the education establishment was outrage. School choice had been bitterly fought from the beginning by an alliance of teachers unions, the Wisconsin Association of School Administrators, and the NAACP. Choice's most virulent critic, however, has been the state superintendent of public instruction, Herbert Grover. How must Grover have felt when he learned that his own department had somehow slipped up and allowed Messmer into the program?

Once the establishment sounded the alarm, he dispatched a team of bureaucrats to Messmer to sniff out signs of religiosity, count crucifixes, and monitor prayers. They brought with them a two-page checklist ("Review trophy case(s) for references to conferences like Catholic Conference"). Within days, Grover's department reversed itself and declared Messmer ineligible for choice on the grounds that it was "pervasively religious."

Brother Bob notes that the investigators expressed little interest in Messmer's educational program. "They told us they were not questioning our educational program. They never asked us how we teach, how we are so successful. They never talked to parents or teachers, nothing like that." The DPI investigators did, however, raise one other issue repeatedly. As their questionnaire put it: "Has the school received services from the Bradley Foundation? Explain."

On its face, the question was bizarre. What had the Bradley Foundation to do with an investigation into the sectarian nature of the school? When Brother Bob asked, the investigators explained, "Every time choice comes up we hear about Bradley."

That is understandable. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation had made a $200,000 challenge grant to Messmer; had helped finance the legal defense of the state's choice program; and would soon announce a multi-million-dollar privately funded voucher plan in the city. Superintendent Grover has made no secret of his suspicions that the Bradley Foundation was hatching dark plots against him. "They asked us if we were being put up to this as a test case," Brother Bob recalls.

Bradley Foundation president Michael Joyce, incensed by the DPI's bullying tactics, demanded an explanation. Grover and his aides dodged Joyce for several days. When Grover finally came up with an explanation, it was that he had been misunderstood: he hadn't meant that Bradley Foundation, he had been interested in another Bradley Foundation altogether. (There is another Bradley Foundation, but its sole function is to run a sculpture garden.) Grover's response was so laughable that one radio call-in show devoted a program to a "Bert Grover the-dog-ate-my-homework contest." (Winners were offered movie tickets and careers in the Department of Public Instruction.)