Will voters vouch for schools? - California referendum proposes school choice amendment - Cover Story

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 15, 1993 | by Richard Miniter

Summary: Passage of a state constitutional amendment in California may put vouchers to the test as a means of school choice. Many conservatives laud the plan, but others fear it will dear the way for government control of private schools.

Californians can launch a revolution in education Nov. 2. If they approve Proposition 174, a measure that would amend the state's constitution to allow school choice, 5 million public school students will receive annual vouchers worth an average of $2,600. In theory, competition among public and private schools for the vouchers would improve teaching and boost student performance.

School choice, an idea that has gained popularity across the nation, would loosen the grip governments have had on education since the mid-1800s. Parents would no longer be required to send their children to the public schools in their district, and the state would be required to share education funds with taxpayers who send their children to private schools. School choice is the dream of conservative activists and the nightmare of teachers unions, including the California Teachers Association, which represents 235,000 public school teachers.

Whatever the result, the vote on Proposition 174 will resonate coast-to-coast. California is home to 10 percent of the nation's population and is what political scientists call a "bell-wether state," a leading indicator in American politics.

Nearly everyone agrees that public schools have been in crisis for at least a decade. The National Commission on Excellence in Education's 1983 report, "A Nation At Risk'" described a country plagued by falling test scores, illiterate graduates and soaring education costs. Two Newsweek headlines reveal what happened during the subsequent decade: In 1988, "A Nation Still At Risk"; in 1993, "A Nation Still At Risk."

This past September, the Department of Education released a report that found 90 million Americans so poor in reading and computation skills that they can't fill out a Social Security form or calculate the price difference between two items in a supermarket. Education Secretary Richard Riley said the study "paints a picture of a society in which the vast majority of Americans do not know that they do not have the skills to earn a living."

Nationwide, combined average scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test fell 76 points from 1960 to 1992. This drop in student performance occurred despite an average spending increase (in constant 1990 dollars) from $2,035 per student in 1960 to $5,247 per student in 1990.

But plummeting scores don't tell the whole story. The SAT has been watered down continually and the grading system made easier in the past 30 years.

The same person taking the same test and giving the same answers would score between 18 and 30 points higher in 1992 than in 1960, according to education expert Charles Murray in a recent article in Public Interest, a policy journal.

Though public school students seem to be learning less and less, increasingly more classroom time is being absorbed by the agendas of groups from across the political spectrum. In Los Angeles, schools are distributing condoms and lecturing adolescents about AIDS. At Northridge Middle School, which the Los Angeles Unified School District calls a model school, students have taken classes in movies and mystery novels.

Such subjects have raised eyebrows beyond Los Angeles: "I remember a junior high school teacher who used to conduct seances during class, explain devil worship and discuss sex organs - everything except teach us English," a woman testified at the Statehouse in Sacramento, according to Investor's Business Daily.

Public schools are mired in bureaucracy and regulations. Those in California employ 13 nonteachers for every 10 teachers. The California Education Code, at 6,200 pages, is more than twice as long as the Internal Revenue Service tax code. Less than 54 cents out of every dollar spent on education actually reaches the classroom, according to Yes on 174 - A Better Choice, a group campaigning for the measure.

All of this is leading more parents to consider home schooling, now legal in some form in all 50 states nationwide, the number of students taught at home has surged from 10,000 in 1970 to more than 350,000 in 1991. (Some experts estimate the number may be as high as 500,000) A network of companies that supply videos and other aids to home teaching has sprung up. Home-schooled children have gained acceptance at elite private colleges such as Harvard and Mount Holyoke.

Sheldon Richman yanked his eldest daughter, Jennifer, out of a Virginia public school. She was required to sign a pledge not to sell drugs - on the first day of first grade. Later, her teacher began a lesson in "irrational environmentalism," Richman says, instead of teaching the three R's. Teachers were planning to instruct their pupils in math by showing them how to work a calculator. The last straw? "Her teacher asked Jennifer to make a collage out of trash she collected in the street," Richman says. His three children, ages 9,7 and 6, have been schooled at home for the past three years. His wife, Kathleen, handles most of the teaching. "It's an option more people will discover" as public schools worsen, says Richman, a senior editor at the Cato Institute. "More people can do it than think they can."