A pessimistic philosopher once gloomily opined that life was but a long
march through hostile territory. Surely this week both the children of the
District of Columbia and conservative Republican congressmen must agree.
The hostility of the D.C. school system to safety, learning, and opportunity
will continue because of the hostility of a handful of liberal Republican
Senators to the idea of school choice.
Working with District officials, Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Steve Gundersen
(R-Wisc.) passed in the House a plan that allows $3,000 scholarships to
help low-income D.C. children attend the school -- public or private, religious
or not -- of their choice. The Senate, which has spent most of 1995 showing
it did not hear the verdict of the 1994 elections, did not include the scholarship
provisions in its D.C. appropriations legislation. The House-Senate conference
to reconcile the differing legislation decided at the insistence of Sen.
James Jeffords (R- Vt.) to strip the voucher plan (along with other education
reforms) from the legislation.
The D.C. school voucher argument presents a plateful of ironies. Sen. Jeffords,
the leading opponent of individualized education, represents the only state
in the nation with a school voucher plan. Vermont has had one for 125 years.
Sen. Jeffords "fully supports" the Vermont program, but cannot
support the same opportunity for low-income kids in Washington.
A second irony is that members of Congress, Clinton cabinet secretaries
and D.C. teachers have the financial wherewithal to send their children
to the school of their choice, yet a few Republican moderates (and likely
Senate Democrats as well) want to deny the same opportunity to the parents
of D.C. kids.
The House debate on vouchers provided the American people with a striking
contrast between the conservative members of Congress who thought of education
in terms of children, and liberals who think of the teachers union, the
school administrators, and the D.C. bureaucrats whose lives would be disrupted
by school choice.
Congressional liberals dusted off the old anti-choice bromides. They said
vouchers that would allow some students to attend religious schools would
be a violation of our constitutional separation of church and state. Never
mind the fact that the state would be giving the money notto schools, but
to parents and students, (Question: Does a Social Security check donated
to a church violate the separation?) allowing them to exercise their own
free choice as to where they would like to attend school. The G.I. Bill
is perhaps the best example of a voucher plan that helped ten million young
Americans gain a college education at the higher education institution of
their choice, religious or not.
The liberals argued that allowing certain students to escape -- an odd choice
of words to describe a choice of schools -- from the dismal D.C. public
schools would be unfair to the children who chose to stay. But the current
system is cheating all students. What better place to push for student choice
than in the schools of Washington, D.C., a system that graduates but 60%
of its students, consistently scores at the bottom of the nation in student
proficiency tests, and achieves this low performance while spending more
per pupil (around $9,000) than all but two states.
Some members of Congress called for more debate before changes were made.
Never mind the fact that the children in the District's failed public schools
are sitting in those schools now, suffering today from an education that
is the worst in the nation, dooming many students to a lifetime of lost
opportunities. Five years after the state of New Jersey took over the Jersey
City schools, educational performance was still deemed "unacceptable."
The Congress, by failing to enact school choice vouchers, has extended to
D.C. children the same opportunity for continued school failure and lack
of a sound education. So what is there to debate?
Finally, those on the liberal side of this debate raised the issue of money.
But if money were the solution, the children of the District would be sitting
today in the best schools in the nation.
In the end, choice in education will prevail, for the individualization
of opportunity created by the information age is sweeping the globe. Meanwhile,
the question remains whether the forces of change unleashed in Washington
will prevail in their struggle to free D.C.'s children from a life of missed
opportunity. And will moderate Senate Republicans continue to ignore mandate
of the 1994 election, and walk away from vouchers -- and the children they
are intended to save? Stay tuned.
The National Center for Policy Analysis is a public policy research institute
founded in 1983 and internationally known for its studies on public policy
issues. The NCPA is headquarters in Dallas, Texas, with an office in Washington,
D.C.