Getting an education - the November 1993 school-choice movement polls - includes related article - Brief Article

Reason, Nov, 1993 by Tim W. Ferguson

A half dozen entrepreneurial executives, including Joseph Alibrandi of Whittaker Corp., the motivating force behind the initiative, supplied most of the early capital. The biggest donor, through a corporate veil, has been Howard Ahmanson Jr., son of the late chairman of Home Savings of America and in recent years a major bankroller of conservative legislative candidates.

But another kind of supporter is Safi Qureshey, founding CEO of AST Research, now one of America's biggest personal-computer makers. Pakistani-born Qureshey believes there's "got to be minority community support" for the idea to have merit. Learning of the struggles of Polly Williams, the Afrocentrist who won a place for choice in Milwaukee, convinced him there was. His own family's experience confirmed his despair about the existing system even in the upscale community of Irvine, where he lives: When a son wanted to try a nearby public school, his parents agreed but soon found he was drifting academically; the Quresheys quickly put him back in private school.

At one point, before the Qureshey children accompanied their parents on a week-long trip, the family inquired about what homework might be taken along. The public school, says the AST chief, was interested only in getting him to sign a document that would maintain its attendance capitation from the state. "This system is incentivized in the wrong way," he says.

Outside of this early handful of business backers, the corporate community has been standoffish. This surprised and disappointed Alibrandi, who spoke last year of the encouragement he was getting from major executives he thought would be behind him in the clutch. Instead, when a few months ago he addressed the California Business Roundtable (whose school-reform panel he had chaired prior to launching the voucher drive), they nodded their heads as he made the case for competition and then voted to stay neutral. Same with the California Manufacturers Association.

For some, the latest promise to remake the public schools is always sufficient to merit a few more years' grace. Business leaders want to appear to be good citizens and community leaders. For others, fear of controversy or worse is the prime consideration. "There's such a tremendously powerful grip that the unions and the bureaucracy have on the legislature," says Alibrandi, that executives are "reluctant to put their companies in a position" where they might be punished for an association with the initiative.

That hesitance extends to otherwise bold academics. Guilbert Hentschke, dean of the University of Southern California's School of Education, asked Alibrandi to take his name off letterhead for the initiative campaign after "all hell broke loose." Educationists made clear that the school risked losing grants from public agencies over which they held sway because of the dean's overt sympathies.

Hentschke says he is interested in a range of options for "private provision of public services" but that "in these days of emotion, the fine points of a position get lost entirely." Nevertheless, he continues to meet with nearly 50 school superintendents in the state who share his interests, although in some cases their fascination with "private provision" extends only to seeking leverage in bargaining with their employees.