Educational snake oil - school vouchers - Church and State - Column

Humanist, Nov-Dec, 1996 by Edd Doerr

On July 17, 1996, presidential aspirant Bob Dole told a carefully selected audience of parochial school supporters that he strongly favors a voucher plan for tax aid to nonpublic schools. That was nothing new, of course, as Dole cosponsored--along with Senators Dan Coats (Republican--Indiana) and Joe Lieberman (Democrat--Connecticut) an unsuccessful voucher bill in 1994.

Immediately after National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" broke the story, NPR broadcast my response. I pointed out:

Vouchers would divert ever

scarcer educational dollars away

from needy public schools to

existing and new private schools--schools

that have the tremendous

unfair advantage of being selective

and not bound by the same rules

as our democratic public schools.

Over 80 percent of private schools

are pervasively sectarian, so

vouchers would tax all Americans

to support church institutions--a

clear violation of the First

Amendment principle of separation

of church and state. The

Supreme Court so ruled in 1973.

Vouchers are promoted under

the appealing but misleading banner

of school choice. But it is really

the private school that makes

the choice, through selective admissions

and by attracting applicants

chiefly from the faith that

runs the school. Vouchers would

fragment our children and our

communities along religious, ideological,

ethnic, social class, and

other lines. We have enough Bosnias

and Northern Irelands now.

Research on school choice in

the United States and other countries

has not shown that it improves

education and may actually

make education worse for the

poor and disadvantaged.

Finally, the American people

do not want to be taxed to pay

for private schools. In 20 state

wide referenda in recent years, by

a two to one margin voters have

rejected vouchers and other

schemes to provide tax aid to

private schools. There are ways to

improve our public schools, such

as providing more adequate and

more equitably distributed funding

for them. But tuition vouchers--educational

snake oil--will do

far more harm than good.

In case you missed other news during the summer, on July 31 a lower court in Ohio approved a voucher plan for sectarian and other private schools in Cleveland-a ruling that is being ap pealed. Meanwhile, on August 15 a federal court in Wisconsin ruled unconstitutional a plan to expand Milwaukee's private school voucher arrangement to include religious schools.

In other developments, Washington State voters on November 5 will face not one but two referenda on well funded but totally malignant voucher proposals, Initiatives 173 and 177, either of which would be devastating to public education. (Defenders of public education and church state separation are opposing these initiatives through the No on 173 and 177 Committee, 1530 East, lake Avenue E, Suite 100, Seattle, WA 98102; 206 720 6216.)

Let me devote the rest of this column to reviewing recent books on the school voucher controversy.

Breaking These Chains by Daniel McGroarty (Prima Publishing, 1996, 259 pp., $23.95) is a sorry screed about the Milwaukee voucher plan by a former Bush White House speechwriter. McGroarty's book, heartily endorsed by Jack Kemp, William Kristol, and other conservatives, is silent on the etiology of urban problems and how they affect public schools. Instead, in as mean spirited a manner as possible, McGroarty trashes, demonizes, and scapegoats public education and tries to make a case for massive public funding for sec tartan and other private schools. The book is so shallow and narrowly focused that it ignores the serious public policy, educational, economic, constitutional, and other objections to school vouchers.

Choosing Schools: Vouchers and American Education by Jerome J. Hanus and Peter W. Cookson, Jr. (American University Press, 1996, 179 pp., $19.50), provides two different takes on the issue: one pro and one con. Hanus' half of the book is a bizarre display of anti public school hysteria and ultra right paranoia best analyzed by a psychologist. Cookson's half is a cogent argument against vouchers based on real world data.

Myths of Educational Choice by Judith Pearson (Prayer, 1993, 152 pp., $39.95) is an experienced teacher/administrator's perceptive analysis of the problems and disruptions that can and do result even from well meaning choice plans confined to public schools.

Who Chooses? Who Loses? Culture, Institutions, and the Unequal Effects of School Choice, edited by Bruce Fuller and Richard F. Elmore (Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1996, 213 pp., $19.95), and School Choice: Examining the Evidence, edited by Edith Rasell and Richard Rothstein (Economic Policy Institute, 1993, 364 pp., $17.95), are excellent anthologies whose authors painstakingly show the fallacies of so called marketplace and school choice plans.

The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools by David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle (Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1994, 414 pp., $25.00) is a detailed analysis of the real problems of education in the United States and of the massive conservative and sectarian special interest propaganda assaults on public education.