Learning opportunities - school choice - includes related article

National Review, Sept 12, 1994 by David Boaz

In New Jersey, Governor Christine Todd Whitman is committed to legislation that would allow Mayor Bret Schundler to implement a voucher program in Jersey City, where the schools currently cost $9,200 per pupil each year. A poll taken in May showed that 62.5 per cent of New Jersey voters approve of letting Jersey City test a pilot program. Support among African Americans was 71.6 per cent. The New Jersey Education Association, however, has recently announced that it is imposing a $50 union dues surcharge on its members to raise $10 million to defeat Schundler's plan and other reform initiatives. In Wisconsin, state Representative Polly Williams and Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, both Democrats, are backing legislation to open the voucher program that began in 1990 to all schools, not just nonsectarian schools. The 1994 legislative session has ended, so the voucher expansion will have to wait until 1995.

More modest reforms in the direction of choice are being implemented or at least debated throughout the states. The private firm Education Alternatives, Inc., is running nine Baltimore schools under contract. Chris Whittle's Edison Project has won a contract to run three charter schools in Massachusetts beginning in 1995. The idea of charter schools--autonomous public institutions freed of most regulations--is popular in many states, partly as a way to relieve pressure for choice. But by the time the lobbyists and insiders get through with a charter school bill, there usually is not much room for innovation left.

Minnesota, the state that launched the public-school choice movement, is operating a grand total of six charter schools this year. In Michigan, where a game of chicken between the Democratic legislature and Republican Governor John Engler led to a total restructuring of educational finance, the outcome was an increase in the sales tax and a disappointing charter-school provision that limits sponsoring agencies to public-school boards and state universities and requires charter schools to employ state-certified teachers. Massachusetts allows only 25 charter schools, which may not enroll more than 0.75 per cent of the state's students, but Republican Governor William F. Weld is trying to lift both caps.

In the vast educational wasteland of Washington, D.C., School Superintendent Franklin L. Smith recently tried to contract out the operation of 15 low-performing schools to a private company but was stymied by a reactionary school board. Smith vowed to press the fight again next year; in the meantime, the Washington Post reported, "Smith, anxious to graduate more students who can read, plans to hire a private firm to provide eleventh-hour tutoring to as many as 600 District high school juniors and seniors who on average read at the fourth-grade level."

Some choice supporters, taking a leaf from the Left, have asked the courts to give them what the voters won't. The Institute for Justice filed suit on behalf of low-income parents in both Chicago and Los Angeles, arguing that the state's promise of "equal educational opportunity" can be fulfilled only by giving its clients a voucher to pay for their own high-quality education. Institute lawyer Clint Bolick has also been in court defending legislative voucher programs in Milwaukee and Puerto Rico.