Politicians float reform options, from school choice to tax credit: Americans remain divided on the issue of school vouchers, according to recent polls, although some experts see a coalition forming among free-marketeers, inner-city blacks and Catholics

Insight on the News, August 18, 1997 by Carol Innerst

Americans remain divided on the issue of school vouchers, according to recent polls, although some experts see a coalition forming among free-marketeers, inner-city blacks and Catholics.

Despite legal setbacks for voucher programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Chittendon, Vt., many Americans remain dissatisfied with public schools and continue to lobby for school choice.

"The growing support for school choice is, in many ways, the result of growing dissatisfaction with public-school education," says Nina H. Shokraii, education policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "Over 43 governors supported some type of public or private choice in education in 1996, and Congress is finally connecting with the grassroots movement around the country."

Minnesota just increased its state tax deduction for public or private education and instituted a tax credit that can be used for a variety of educational purposes, including private tutoring, textbooks and transportation (but not for private-school tuition). Arizona recently passed a tax credit for citizens who want to contribute to a private scholarship fund.

At the federal level, Sen. Paul Coverdell, Georgia Republican, has offered a budget amendment that would allow a $500-per-child tax credit to be used for tuition to private schools. House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas has offered a school-choice plan for the District of Columbia that garnered the support of Rep. Floyd H. Flake, a liberal black Democrat from New York, Shokraii notes.

Public-opinion polls provide different readings on school choice, but all show growing support -- or at least a lessening of opposition -- to the idea of government vouchers. A 1996 poll commissioned by the Center for Education Reform, a free-market education clearinghouse and advocacy organization, revealed that 70 percent of the public support the idea of giving poor parents tax dollars to send their children to a private, parochial or public school.

A 1996 Phi Delta Kappa-Gallup poll, however, showed no clear majority on the government-voucher question, with parents with children in public schools evenly split. On the other hand, 86.5 percent of blacks age 26 to 35 support vouchers, according to a poll released in June by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

"I don't think there's majority support for vouchers yet ... that's still up in the air ... but blacks are shifting toward vouchers." says John J. Jennings, director of the Center on Education Policy, an independent advocacy group. "You have an unusual coalition in favor of vouchers that includes conservatives who are free-market people and inner-city blacks, and of course the Catholics and other religious-school people. They're all coming from different perspectives, and we've already seen the beginnings of how it will play in Milwaukee. Inner-city blacks are so frustrated with the state of inner-city schools they just want out, and it's pretty hard to blame them."

President Clinton, Education Secretary Richard Riley and others "fighting for public schools" are hoping the charter-school movement will channel the energy that is building for school choice in a different direction than vouchers, according to Jennings. By fall, there will be about 700 charter schools throughout the country.

"The reason school choice works is that it shifts the locus of power away from the bureaucracy to students and parents," says Richard C. Leonardi, president of the 3-year-old Buckeye Institute, a research and educational public-policy organization in Ohio. "Consumers will make better decisions than the bureaucrats."