Is school choice really the dangerous, untried experiment that detractors
claim it is? Not in Vermont, which introduced school choice over a century ago.
The Vermont program, called "tuitioning," is limited to secondary students
living in areas that are too thinly populated to support their own public high schools.
Vermont students from such districts are free to use their share of public education funds
to pay for tuition at the private high school of their choice, even out-of-state boarding
schools if the family so desires. Almost 25 percent of Vermont’s high-school students
are eligible for this eminently sensible voucher program, which has proven enormously
popular with Vermont families, schools, and taxpayers.
Vermont’s experience with school choice offers inspiration to Florida. The
fundamental insight of the Vermont program (along with school choice programs already
underway in Maine, Wisconsin, and Ohio) is this: Assuring all children of an education at
public expense does not require that they receive instruction at schools operated by the
government. A school voucher program gives parents control over public money already set
aside for their children’s education.
School vouchers simply follow the model implemented in other government-subsidized
programs, such as Medicare and college-level education. Government provides for the
service, but each individual citizen decides how and where he will be served.
The freedom to choose works in other states and other government programs, and it can
work in Florida’s schools too. Here’s how.
Where to Begin
Proponents of school choice look forward to the day when all Florida parents
will have the opportunity to choose the best education for their children, whether it be
public or private, secular or religiously affiliated.
This, however, is a long-term goal that cannot -- and ought not -- be sought overnight.
It must be achieved in a way that makes the educational interests of our children primary,
while balancing the interests of the other key parties: the families, the schools, and the
taxpayers. Gradual, orderly, and fair must be the bywords of any plan to implement school
choice in Florida.
So if all children cannot be given state scholarships at once, where do we begin? The
following are some of the suggested criteria for determining which children should get the
first vouchers:
- children from low-income families
- children with exceptional needs
- children in overcrowded schools
- children whose parents enroll them in a voluntary scholarship lottery
- children in underperforming schools
The last category -- children in underperforming schools -- is the plan of
implementation most likely to become the reality in Florida, because it is the one on
which Gov. Jeb Bush and Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan campaigned. It certainly shines brightly
from the perspective of justice. How can the state justify obligating parents to send
their children to schools that the state itself has identified as inadequate?
Under the Bush-Brogan plan these children would be given the opportunity to leave any
school the state deems critically low performing for two consecutive years. We don’t
know how many children would be eligible for scholarships if the program went into effect
today, but let’s suppose 2 percent of Florida’s public-school students, about
50,000 children, become eligible for scholarships in just a few years’ time.
Opponents of the idea criticize the plan because there is not enough space in the
state’s private schools to accommodate such an influx.
Indeed 50,000 extra students represents a 20-percent increase in current enrollment in
Florida’s private schools, religious and otherwise. There’s not much of a chance
that the private schools are currently operating at 20 percent below capacity. But the
number we need to consider is not how many are eligible but how many are likely to leave
for non-government schools. We can look to Albany, New York, for guidance.
Two years ago a New York philanthropist, Virginia Gilder, asked educators to identify
the worst school in Albany, New York. When told that Giffen Elementary met her criterion,
she offered to pay the tuition for the next five years of every child who wanted to leave
Giffen to attend any private school in Albany.
Giffen Elementary did not suffer a full-scale evacuation, but 30 percent of the
students did take Gilder up on her offer. Those who chose to stay were promptly rewarded
with a significant reduction in class size and the predicted response of a school that,
for the first time, had to face the normal pressures of competition. The district removed
the school’s ineffective principal and assistant principal, and nine teachers were
replaced.
Based on the Giffen experience, the proposed scholarship plan could result in the
transfer of about 15,000 children (30 percent of 50,000), mainly from low-income families,
to private schools. This influx of new students should be manageable for the private
sector because it will be dispersed across the state and will be coming primarily from
schools in urban areas where the supply of non-government schools is greatest. And because
15,000 students represent less than 1 percent of Florida’s public-school population,
the public schools would not be facing a mass exodus.
But what then? Will we stop there or will more children become eligible? Won’t the
public schools improve rapidly when their monopoly over the instruction of children from
middle and low-income families is threatened? The expectation is that the number of
children eligible for state scholarships will increase, even as inferior schools respond
to the pressure of competition.
Last year Florida instituted new, tougher standards to measure the performance of
public schools. As these standards come into effect, many marginal schools will for the
first time be unmasked. The new standards not only raise the bar of reasonable
expectations, they raise the veil of obscurity under which poor performance has been
hidden. Just consider one recently revealed statistic about Florida schools: only 53
percent of the students who enter the state’s public high schools are still there for
graduation four years later.
With an almost guaranteed increase in the demand created by students with vouchers,
will the private sector respond with a growing supply? Proponents of school choice answer
with a confident yes. Why wouldn’t the education industry react to economic
incentives just as any other industry would?
By freeing the flow of dollars, school choice will also stimulate two other important
sectors supporting education: inner city churches and local businesses
Education, Community, and Religion
Florida’s current policy of withdrawing all public support when families select
private schools for their children has devastated the supply of private (mainly
church-based) schools in those neighborhoods where most of Florida’s underperforming
public schools are to be found.
As inner city public schools have declined, so have neighborhoods that were once mixed
racially and economically. In the interests of their children, any family with the means
to leave these neighborhoods did so, in search of better schools. The remaining families
could not afford the tuition necessary to keep the doors of their local church schools
open. Across the state dozens of such schools that used to serve inner city neighborhoods
have closed, and new ones are almost totally prevented from forming.
In other words, the current government policy of "no school choice" has
prevented the neighborhood agencies that are most respected and trusted by the local
families -- their own church congregations -- from playing any significant role in
education.
School choice should fix this dilemma quickly and dramatically. Congregations will have
the opportunity to mobilize to meet the new demand with a new or renewed supply of
classrooms. Churches and synagogues already provide 85 percent of Florida’s
non-government schools. Study after study has proven that church schools are particularly
effective educators of low-income, minority students. Data from inner city Catholic
schools show that students achieve higher test scores and graduation rates even though the
schools have smaller, lower-paid staff and spend less on each student.
Neighborhood congregations also enjoy an existing and significant relationship with
families who trust them and look to them for support in the upbringing of children. And
local congregations have the advantages of location, facilities, volunteers, and a desire
to work with their members that is typically a mandate of their theology. School choice
will let this faith-based river flow and raise the level of life in communities that have
long been denied its force and energy. It is in keeping with the growing belief and
practice that the way to confront urban problems is to support those who are familiar with
those problems and are already addressing them.
Tomorrow’s Employees
Florida’s business people should thrill at the prospect of competition coming at
last to our system of elementary and secondary education. When middle and low-income
parents are able to join the prosperous in choosing the schools they consider best for
their children, all schools will have to improve to meet customer expectations. Instead of
our current system, where frustrated parents must beg politicians to reform our schools,
the schools will have to beg the parents for the opportunity to teach their children.
Anyone who has ever run a business will agree that this is exactly
as it should be.
Business will also be galvanized by school choice in another fundamental way. Support
for public education is now equated with support for public schools. Many businesses have
steered clear of providing aid to private schools generally, and to religious schools in
particular, in order to avoid offending customers and stockholders by appearing to endorse
one creed over another. While business has poured more and more support into public
schools with little effect, struggling church and other community schools with a clear
record of success have been off limits.
School choice changes all that. It makes plain that all schools that are serving the
public purpose of preparing our children to become productive and responsible adults are
part of public education.
The children at those schools -- whether public or private, religious or not -- are
deserving, not only of public support from the state of Florida but of private support
from Florida’s business community.
That support may come in many forms. Some children from low-income families may need
help with transportation to their non-government schools for example. The sensible
solution is for local businesses to include aid to those children in the dollars they
budget for educational philanthropy.
In short, both government and the private sector will be liberated and energized by the
new reality that their support is going not to institutions but to children. The new
paradigm is this: Assuring every child in Florida of an education at public expense does
not require that every child attend a public school.
In the words of former U.S. assistant secretary for education Chester Finn, "There
is no greater evil than to confine a child, against his and his family’s will, in a
bad school when there is good alternative available in the next block, the next town, or
even the next state."
Florida can declare an end to this shame. Let the families choose the schools. Let the
dollars follow the child. That’s how school choice will work in Florida.
Patrick J. Heffernan, Ph.D., is president of Floridians
for School Choice, a not-for profit organization committed to the ideal that all families
be able to choose their children’s schools.
Floridians for School Choice
Ten Principles Of Fair And Effective School Choice Legislation Floridians
for School Choice
is a friend and supporter of both public and private schools.
School choice is not about one type of school being better than another.
It is about enabling
as many families as possible to choose among them for the sake of their children.
For school choice legislation to be fair and effective if must conform to the following
principles:
1. It must not disturb families who are happy with their children’s current
placements at a public or private school.
2. It must not reduce per-pupil spending in the public increase total public spending
on education except for those increases that would naturally occur student numbers or a
growing commitment to education on the part of Florida’s citizens.
3. It must ensure that participation in the system of tax-funded scholarships for both
the families and the schools. No person or educational institution will be mandated to do
anything.
4. It must include all schools -- public, private, and religiously affiliated -- that
wish to participate and are prepared to accept reasonable measures of accountability.
5. It must introduce no new regulations on private schools that would threaten their
mission, identity, or autonomy; and it must offer a similar and prompt deregulation to
those public schools that wish it.
6. It must include provisions to assure that children from low-income families have
fair access to the schools their families prefer.
7. It must safeguard the interests of the families and the taxpayers by ensuring that
no school that advocates unlawful behavior; that teaches hatred of any person or group on
the basis of race, ethnicity, color, national origin, religion, or gender; or that
deliberately provides false or misleading information shall be eligible to redeem
tax-funded scholarships.
8. Its implementation must be gradual, orderly, and fair, protecting individual schools
from abrupt large-scale reductions or unwanted increases in their numbers of students.
9. It must phase in scholarships for children who are already outside the public-school
system, including those who are home-schooled.
10. It must be compliant with federal and state constitutional provisions, readily
understood by ordinary citizens, and able to be implemented without excessive
administration.
March/April 1999 -- Florida Business Insight, PO Box 784, Tallahassee, Fla.
32302
(850)224-7173, insight@aif.com
