Magna charter? A report card on school reform in 1995

Policy Review, Fall 1995 by Finn, Chester E Jr, Ravitch, Diane

Our hunch, however, is that these are birthing and growing pains associated with a feisty, infant reform strategy that will, in time, turn into a strapping youth. We doubt that opponents will be able to halt its growth. In England, where "grant-maintained" schools have been in place for several years--and where almost a fifth of all secondary schools have "opted out" into this independent status--even the Labor Party is having to come to terms with their continued existence. Indeed, party leader Tony Blair now sends his own child to a grant-maintained school.

GAINS FOR SCHOOL CHOICE

There was major progress on the choice front in 199e 95, centering on Milwaukee and Cleveland. In Wisconsin, Governor Tommy Thompson succeeded in persuading the legislature to pass his proposal to expand Milwaukee's voucher experiment to include many more children and to permit attendance at church-affiliated schools. As revised, and assuming the courts eventually assent, up to 15,000 low-income Milwaukee children (nearly all of them minority) will be able to attend any school within the city limits.

In Ohio, the legislature agreed to a proposal by Governor George Voinovich to initiate a voucher "pilot" in 1996 for children in Cleveland. That city's catastrophically bad school system was "taken over" by the state under a federal court order in early 1995. Here, too, church-affiliated schools will be eligible recipients of voucher-bearing youngsters--up to 2,000 of them. And here, too, the primary beneficiaries of this reform will be low-income minority youngsters.

Court battles have already begun, and we do not doubt that choice's foes, having lost two significant political battles, will now throw vast resources into the effort to get vouchers thrown out as a violation of the "Establishment Clause" of the First Amendment. In August, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction against the Milwaukee plan. But the governors and legislators of Wisconsin and Ohio deserve hearty applause from those who believe, as we do, that no child should be forced to attend a bad public school against his and his parents' will when a better school--public, private, or hybrid--is available close by. Because the families of poor children often lack the wherewithal to exercise such a choice on their own, it is the obligation of elected officials to make it possible for them, as they have historically done in higher education. That this will now happen in two major U.S. cities is a development of immense significance to American education.

A number of other states stepped up to the "choice" date in 1995 but struck out. In Texas. Pennsylvania. Connecticut, Illinois, and Arizona, variations on the voucher theme failed to pass, and New Jersey delayed consideration of Mayor Bret Schundler's Jersey City plan until at least autumn of this year. The original Ohio choice bill, to encompass a broader area than Cleveland, was chopped down by the legislature. Another setback was the ruling by Puerto Rico's Supreme Court that the voucher program there violated the commonwealth's constitution.