Whose choice? School choice has its natural opponents. Hint: they're not black parents

National Review, Dec 14, 1992 by John J. Miller

IF YOU harbor even the slightest doubt about media bias, examine the case of the report on school choice issued by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Although a final version of the study will not become available until later this year, its promoters released draft copies and executive summaries to the press on October 26 eight days before the election and just in time to help discredit an issue touted by President Bush, and to defeat a Colorado ballot initiative which would have created the nation's broadest school choice program.

The New York Times splattered a story on the Carnegie study across its front page ("Research Questions Effectiveness of Most School-Choice Programs"), and the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and many other newspapers gave it respectful coverage. Granted, the Carnegie study is by no means solely responsible for what happened in the presidential election or even in Colorado, but the non-critical promotion of this document points to the enormous power of the opponents of school choice.

The report is so obviously biased and flawed that one hardly knows where to begin--so let's take the first two sentences: "The decade-long struggle to reform American education seems suddenly to hang on a single word: 'choice.' Just a generation ago, freedom of choice was the rallying cry of those who clung to their self-proclaimed right to attend single-race schools." Nice association. Critics of school choice like to allege that a voucher plan would lead to increased racial stratification, with suburbanites using vouchers to help send their children to all-white enclaves. Innercity parents, meanwhile, are supposedly left with cheap and predominantly black private schools and an already rotten public-school system.

No real evidence reinforces this accusation. Black Americans, indeed, are among the strongest boosters of choice 88 per cent approve of a private-school voucher plan, according to a recent survey conducted by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. The tale of Polly Williams, the radical black Wisconsin state representative, and her battle to implement a choice program for Milwaukee youngsters is now widely familiar. In fact, vouchers would encourage a racial commingling that does not occur in our present neighborhood-based public schools. A walk through the hallways of urban parochial schools will reveal some of the most diverse student populations in the country. Moreover, many voucher programs are means-tested for low- and middle-income families, and most choice plans include non-discrimination clauses. Parents who cannot otherwise afford to remove their children from the public-school system would ultimately gain the most. Despite all this, the Carnegie report shamelessly tosses off its allegations of racism.

The aspect of the report which has garnered the most attention is the claim that most Americans do not favor voucher programs. According to Carnegie, 62 per cent oppose them. This directly contradicts a wealth of polling data. For over twenty years, Gallup has asked this question: "In some nations, the government allots a certain amount of money for each child's education. The parents can then send the child to any public, parechial, or private school they choose. This is called the "voucher system.' Would you like to see such an idea adopted in this country?" Over the course of two decades, support for the voucher system has slowly risen, reaching 70 per cent this year. A Harris poll recently conducted for Business Week showed 69 per cent support for a means-tested private-school-choice program. An Associated Press survey found 63 per cent approval for President Bush's "G.I. Bill for Children," which would provide $500 million to fund several school-choice demonstration sites. Unlike these surveys, however, the Carnegie report restricted its questions to parents with children in public schools, ignoring everyone else.

Another highly publicized Carnegie poll claims that 82 per cent of Americans would rather support existing public schools than try a market approach. But what the survey question asked was whether respondents more closely identified with Mr. Smith, who would give "every school the resources needed to achieve excellence," or with Mr. Jones, who would 'get schools compete with each other for students." Tendentiously, the question posits an either/ or situation: one can have either widespread educational improvement or a market system in which certain schools will improve and others will shut down. The possibility that competition will cause general improvement is not allowed.

The deeper one delves into the report, the worse it looks. Joe Nathan, an education expert at the University of Minnesota, counted 64 "misstatements, serious omissions, and major distortions" in chapter four, which focuses on statewide public-school programs like the one Nathan helped create in Minnesota. For example, the report suggests that school choice has not dramatically increased the number of Minnesota's college-level advanced-placement courses--the number of schools offering such classes, it says, has risen only from 125 to 147 since 1989. There are three problems with this analysis. First, the report uses the wrong base-year: the law which spurred much of this change was implemented in 1985, not 1989. Second, the number of actual AP classes--as opposed to the number of schools scheduling them--has more than doubled since the 1984-5 academic year. Third, the report does not mention the 46 schools which now provide over 130 classes worth college credit through the University of Minnesota.