Voucher Veneer: The Deeper Agenda to Privatize Public Education
A report by the People For the American Way Foundation, July
2003
Executive Summary
Today, governmental responsibilities in education and the strong
connection that Americans have with their public schools are being put
to a serious test. A network of Religious Right groups, free-market
economists, ultraconservative columnists and others are using vouchers
as a vehicle to achieve their ultimate goal of privatizing education.
Their embrace of vouchers reflects their view that to be successful,
privatization must be achieved incrementally. The long-term goal is to
make all schooling an activity supplied by private sources: for-profit
management companies, religious organizations and home schools. The
movement believes that targeted voucher plans, such as those in Florida,
Milwaukee and Cleveland, give them a foot in the door en route to
achieving this goal.
While many of those who want to privatize education
choose their words very carefully, others are more candid about their
goals. The Heartland Institute’s Joseph Bast has urged others who share
his group’s extreme agenda to be patient. “The complete privatization of
schooling might be desirable, but this objective is politically
impossible for the time being. Vouchers are a type of reform that is
possible now, and would put us on the path to further privatization.”
1. Vouchers are part of a broader strategy by some to privatize public
schools.
Joel Belz, publisher of World—a Religious Right magazine—wrote a column
several years ago sympathizing with those who oppose vouchers because
they don’t want government to play any role in education. He wrote: “If
[supporting vouchers] helps bring down the statist system, which it
will, it will be worth the temporary compromise.”(emphasis added)
Supporting vouchers now, Belz argued, would help pro-privatization
groups in the long run “gain a larger strategic advantage.”
2. Voucher supporters are pushing their agenda from the highest levels.
Privatization advocates have made a serious effort to bring about
change, no longer from outside the system but from within the corridors
of power. U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., after his appointment to the
House education committee said, “I think it’s a lot easier to kill the
beast when you get in the cave.” Recently, the Bush Administration
appointed Nina Shokraii Rees, a staunch voucher advocate, to head DOE’s
Office of Innovation and Improvement.
3. Many pro-privatization groups offer two messages: one for committed
followers and another for the broader public.
For example, the Florida-based James Madison Institute has stated that
it “believes that parents should have the freedom to make decisions in
the best interests of their children.” Most Americans, including those
who strongly support public education, would likely agree with this
vague statement. These words, of course, leave unmentioned the fact that
the James Madison Institute’s education policy director has signed a
proclamation that calls for scrapping the public education system.
4. Many existing private schools are unlikely to accommodate significant
numbers of additional students in a privatized system.
Chester E. Finn, Jr., who heads the Fordham Foundation, notes that it is
generally hard to find private school leaders “who want their schools to
grow, to open additional campuses, to recruit more clients.” Finn also
recently admitted that “there aren’t enough private schools to go
around” for would-be voucher students. Indeed, a massive number of
schools would have to be built to replace all or most of the 92,000
public schools operating across America.
5. Vouchers can lead to hastily created ‘fly-by-night’ private schools
unable to provide children with a quality education.
Concerns about quality are magnified by the fact that private and
religious schools are not held accountable in the same manner as public
schools. In fact, the CATO Institute’s David Salisbury recently argued
that private schools’ ability to disregard state standards is “the very
basis for school choice.”
6. Schools may not be just another economic market.
The voucher movement largely owes its beginnings to economist Milton
Friedman’s beliefs that the private sector delivers goods and services
more efficiently than public institutions. Ironically, some of the
conditions in public schools identified by critics as problems are
rooted in the dynamics of the free market system they praise. Large
schools were inspired largely by private enterprise, which has long
encouraged “economies of scale.” Boston University professor Philip Tate
has observed that rigid class schedules, reliance on test scores and
other traits of public schools “were instituted in the name of
efficiency” and created a “factory model” of schooling.
7. A privatized system of education could leave too many children
behind.
It is likely that a privatized education system will cater to those
students who are believed to be easier or less expensive to educate. The
Heritage Foundation has expressed hope that “vouchers could limit how
much taxpayers must pay to educate the disabled and begin a movement
toward cost containment.” A survey by the U.S. Department of Education
of private schools in large inner-cities found that between 70 and 85
percent of schools would “definitely or probably” not be willing to
participate in a voucher program if they were required to accept
“students with special needs such as learning disabilities, limited
English proficiency or low achievement.” Among religious schools, 86
percent expressed this same unwillingness to participate.
8. The public supports public education.
In a national poll this year, Americans chose “reforming the existing
public school system” over “finding an alternative” to the current
system by a 69-to-27 percent margin. In last year’s annual Phi Delta
Kappa-Gallup poll on education, 71 percent of public school parents gave
a grade of A or B to the school attended by their oldest child.
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