This is the fourth post in our series on the Voucher Left.
The hope to secure school choice for lower-income parents has invoked many justifications beside free market theory. These broader conceptions of choice, however, have failed to secure serious consideration in political discourse about choice.
Devout marketeers often forego, or even oppose, reliance upon these would-be friendly pictures of the effects of choice. They are seen as obscuring, even corrupting, free-market dogma: let individual taste determine what is the good. Personal preference itself becomes the goal: the market is the end instead of the instrument. Those who would argue in the name of more particular outcomes are “voucher left.”
I will pursue this hurtful confusion about goals, but I will also recall that its mischief has been aggravated by sheer bad luck — surprises that have undermined and long delayed what was in the 1970’s a promising political career for choice for all families. I will describe some of these odd events and their part in the long frustration of that cause. Note that I am myself a veteran centrist (“left”?) in this cause and critics on either side are welcome to correct my description of the philosophical clashes. My personal recollections of bad luck, however, seem beyond such attack (except as whining, which of course they are).
Subsidized parental school choice, a concept from the 18th and 19th centuries, was revived in the 1950s as what seemed to Milton Friedman an obvious instance of economic libertarianism. A full school market with vouchers for all would be an extension of freedom for both provider and consumer, allowing the parent an instrument with which to define the good life. That freedom should be virtually plenary; this is simply good economics, hence public policy. To say more in its justification (test scores perhaps excepted) would stray from school choice’s image as itself determining the good. Do I exaggerate? Not much in respect of the hard-core “voucher right;” choice justifies itself. To say much more risks government defining its limits for you. So, at least, was the libertarian mood music that gained volume beginning in the ‘70s. Marketeers had yet to appreciate that full freedom for the school provider might not be the same liberating experience for the consumer.
Friedman and company added to the ideological confusion, seeming never to note that subsidized school choice is quite unlike other markets in respect to the value of freedom itself. Indeed, it could be deemed freedom’s opposite. For the assignment of the child to the school — if an act of freedom in any sense — is the “freedom” of the adult authority, whether parent or state. It is the freedom of one person holding office to tell another person what he will or will not do. Thus, would-be champions of “choice” are, more accurately, champions of a particular locus of power. We begin to see that, while there are many justifications for parental authority — and market talk helps to a point — this is not a pure case of liberty. The debate rather is about which of two masters will pick Mary’s teacher to act both in her “best interest” and that of society. And, all claims about who is the best decider must face up to both aspects of parental choice — freedom and power.
A second sort of bogeyman began gradually to make his appearance.
In 1970 and 1971, Steve Sugarman and I had written two books suggesting that any system of subsidies to parents would need to assure access to participating schools for lower-income families. The second of these books was a complete text of such a model legislated system; it included what would now be called “charter” schools. As I scan it 45 years later, my author’s regret at its unnecessarily awkward form is tempered by its recognition of the domestic conflict already brewing among school choice folk. How can we free the poor to have reasonable access to those participating schools that prefer to serve only the gifted or the rich? The “right” was only beginning to appreciate that pure freedom of choice for the school might not be the same liberating experience for the family. Can we – with government money — allow the school to favor the more attractive applicants?
Steve and I addressed the full span of such questions in a third book — “Education by Choice” — which appeared in spring 1978, just as California voters put Prop 13 into their constitution. This book did achieve some notice, most notably from a Democratic congressman who, in September 1978, invited me to dinner with his top staff, concluding the evening with the following compact: He would do the foundational political work and fund raising for a statewide ballot initiative; his assistant — now Congresswoman Jackie Speier — would manage the campaign office; his right-hand man would organize the ground politics that would begin immediately after the November ’78 election – and a certain brief trip the congressman had to make; Steve and I would design the text of the constitutional initiative for the 1979-80 signature process and the 1980 ballot. Dawn seemed to have broken; the only problem was that our congressman, Leo Ryan, would never return from his visit to Jonestown.
Politically and financially gutted, we decided to carry on; there seemed other possibilities. Most promising was Milton Friedman whom I had known well in Chicago in the ‘60s. Milton knew the haunts of money, and, over dinner with Rose and ourselves, encouraged us. We filed our initiative. The L.A. Times gave it enormous space and its ace reporter, Jack McCurdy. The legislature held hearings. We hired an apparently sophisticated manager and awaited the checks from Milton’s friends. They never came; he had decided we were “left” and that our device too restrictive of providers. We thrashed about for the necessary signatures. I solicited the support of the Farm Workers. After three hours of praise and encouragement, Cesar Chavez lamented he couldn’t join us because Albert Shanker buoyed the union with 200K per year.
The signature drive fell short. At considerable personal cost I was beginning to get the drift. Or was I?
In July 1980, I accepted an invitation to meet with the cardinal archbishop of Los Angeles. After a long conversation, he offered in writing to help start a new campaign with $2 million to come from him and fellow bishops. Steve and I (now “seasoned”) began to scour the state for other supporters. After our securing many a promise from diverse interests — other religious leaders, pre-schools, day schools, individuals — the bishops invited me to their October meeting. Closeted down the hall from their assembly, four bishops completed my political education with the news that I was wonderful, but “our people are not ready.” Ah, those people!
The late ‘80s brought a call from Joe Alibrandi, president of the Whittaker Corp. and chairman of the state business round table. We had known him in the course of prior failed efforts to get agreement on terms of an initiative. He spent an afternoon in Berkeley enlisting us to do it again — but, it was agreed — this time on our terms. Steve and I would decide the wording of the initiative; Joe would do the rest. We produced a final draft beclaimed satisfactory by all parties. Sadly we missed a final follow-up meeting in L.A. in which all protections for the poor were gutted. We opposed the initiative; it lost 70-30.
This initiative was among roughly 13 such “right” efforts around the country. None got 35 percent. No popular initiative for vouchers has been attempted in this century despite convincing research showing a healthy public majority for choice. One day, the people of California may yet be given the chance to vote on a realistic reform serving all families.
My own assessment of the left-right confusion — and the element of luck — might be further illustrated by the story of Kansas City, Mo. Circa 1990, the school district had long been under a court order to desegregate, but it enrolled too few whites to do the job. The adjoining whitish suburbs declined to make space. A St. Louis businessman agreed to pay the costs of an intervention in the litigation. The interveners were black parents and students armed with guarantees from dozens of private schools in the area to make integrated space for them. Their tuitions were to be significantly less than the per-pupil expenditure by the district. The school district rejected the offer. We made every effort to enlist the ACLU to join this winner for the poor. No such luck; these were mostly Catholic schools, and — well — you know. This, of course, was before Zelman v. Harris (2002), and the judge denied intervention. There was to be no appeal; our benefactor had meanwhile gone bankrupt. I almost felt responsible.
Around 2000, I was engaged by the Christian Brothers to co-author (with educator/friend Tom Brady) a historical comment on the Brothers’ two centuries of serving the poor through free schooling. This project gradually turned up a cadre of interested choiceniks and doubters; the Brothers encouraged the debate by offering to host a hundred private and public school people — supporters and doubters of choice — in a five-day assembly at their Napa center. When the affair threatened to become too costly I called John Walton, whom I knew. He regretted a calendar conflict with the date of the meeting but sent us a personal check for $50K. The morning the affair began we got the news of John’s death. The meeting proceeded, producing relationships that in due course assured initial funding for the American Center for School Choice (emphasis on “center”.) Under the initial leadership of Michael Guerra — long a leader in private education — the center managed to ignite the interest of leaders who were not necessarily committed to systems leaving the school free to exclude all whom it willed. Guerra’s experience and imagination brought to reality The National Commission on Faith-based Schools. But, again for those of us in the political center (“left,” if you prefer) financial survival remained a challenge. The center apparently has solved that problem now by accepting fiscal protection from the “right.” Cui bono?
Maybe parental school choice in its fullest conception will still get lucky. More than a few of the states — most recently Nevada — have adopted tax-credit programs that give aid only to lower-income families. Unfortunately, it still asks little of the schools themselves regarding admission. And, as with other tax credit systems, state caps on total credited dollars can well leave many children out — and charity itself has its natural limits.
The principal hope for rescuing the poor from their impotence may be judicial recognition that charter schools are essentially private and may teach religion without offending the Establishment Clause. Of course, no one is quitting this game simply because it is so difficult to pull together. Choice may get lucky — and the right may be having second thoughts.
If this story has seemed a bit of a ramble, that is exactly what was intended — and what authentic history here required. I fear school choice may remain such a vagrant tale until the full import of family empowerment for both individual and social goals manages to take its place in the great debate.
