The price of liberty is vigilance

Wendell Phillips. Source: Wikimedia.

“External vigilance is the price of liberty, power is ever stealing from the many to the few,” said American abolitionist Wendell Phillips in a speech in 1852.

Sadly, at least when it comes to school choice, my fellow libertarians and conservatives appear to have misplaced their priorities while standing vigilantly against the encroachment of bad government.

Lindsey Burke, a policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, worries that “furthering federal entanglement in the funding of education through new federal programs would be unsound and would come at the expense of state, local, and parent decision-making.”

Max Eden, a scholar from the Manhattan Institute, worries that a federal program would prohibit scholarship organizations from setting aside funds for specific schools or groups. “This restriction would not only limit donor interest to well under $20 billion a year,” he wrote. “It would also exert pressure on existing state programs to drop their moral mission and conform.”

Free-market conservatives and libertarians have retreated on school choice, leaving Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and President Trump alone holding the banner for a federal program.

Their worries would make sense if the Trump Administration were still contemplating a $20 billion voucher initiative. But there’s good news. Recent headlines suggest the more likely path to federal school choice would a tax credit scholarship program. This is an approach to school choice that relies on private, voluntary contributions rather than direct government subsidies.

Fear of big government intrusion.

Photo credit: Dispair Inc.

As a libertarian (a political minority at Step Up For Students, the publisher of this blog), I know that our federal government does many things poorly. But I also recognize that local or state control isn’t always the best answer. Take civil rights for instance. After the federal government retreated from state interventions following Reconstruction, states began to swiftly withdraw the hard-won rights of freedmen and women.

Floridians re-wrote the state constitution in 1885, instituting a poll tax, banning inter-racial marriage, segregating the races in education and disenfranchising freed blacks from all the power of state and local politics. What was gained was suddenly lost. It would be another 80 years before the federal government took decisive action against the 400 year-old history of state-sanctioned bigotry and racism.

Likewise, federal school choice program has the potential to break through the strangleholds in states where legislators and special-interest groups alike remain hostile to the idea of educational freedom.

A right way and a wrong way

A federal school choice program can be a benefit, if written correctly, without jeopardizing the freedom and ingenuity of local private schools. After all, both the Cato Institute and EdChoice note that tax-credit scholarships reduce the risk of government regulation compared to school voucher programs.

If tax credit scholarships reduce the risk of regulatory overreach at the state level, why do many of the same advocates suddenly worry about intrusion at the federal level?

The risk posed by hostile, regulation-happy policymakers at the state level shouldn’t be treated differently than the same risk of a future hostile, regulation-happy federal administration. Unless, of course, we’re simply content with only creating opportunities in red states where the risk is low, because the legislators are simply more friendly to the idea.

Donor choice or parental choice?

Edchoice, Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and the Manhattan Institute have all taken stands in favor of allowing donors the freedom to give based on their own moral convictions. This is not only a misplaced priority, but bad policy in a world of limited resources.

Rather than the government or donors directing parents to schools, parents should be given the money (and as much information about their choices as possible) and be allowed to select any eligible participating school.

Focusing on parental choices, rather than donors, doesn’t appear to have any meaningful impact on fundraising, either. The largest tax credit scholarship program in the nation is in Florida, a state where donors are prohibited from singling out any one student, school or group of schools. This year, Florida raised more than $550 million toward scholarships for more than 98,000 students. No other state comes close.

Slumber not, sleep not

Conservative and libertarian opposition to federal school choice makes the perfect the enemy of the good.

A federal scholarship program, even one scheduled to sunset in a few years or made optional for states with existing programs, can add new scale to the network of parents advocating for their children. The parents have the potential to form a coalition powerful enough to battle the entrenched special interests that have captured politicians across the partisan spectrum, from urban Democrats in California to the rural Republicans in Texas.

A strong enough coalition of empowered parents makes it difficult for hostile opponents to strip parents of their educational freedoms — whether by dismantling programs outright or by imposing burdensome rules.

We’ve seen this in Florida as the scholarship program continues to expand. Last year, more than 10,000 parents, students and advocates joined Martin Luther King III and marched against the Florida Education Association’s lawsuit against the scholarship program. A year later, the Florida House of Representatives voted 117-0 to improve the program, including increasing the scholarship amounts for middle and high school students.

In 1833, the Virginia Free Press wrote that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Let the sentinels on the watch-tower sleep not, and slumber not.”

Bad governance happens when we are no longer alert to the threats against our liberty. But there is also a risk of bad governance if we never take action at all.

A federal school choice bill can be worthy of our support if we can get the rules right. Let’s invite a debate about how to set up such a program, rather than retreat from it. And let’s join forces with the parents who will fight to keep their newfound educational freedoms. Eternal vigilance will always be our price.


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BY Patrick R. Gibbons

Patrick Gibbons is public affairs manager at Step Up for Students and a research fellow for the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. A former teacher, he lived in Las Vegas, Nev., for five years, where he worked as an education writer and researcher. He can be reached at (813) 498.1991 or emailed at pgibbons@stepupforstudents.org. Follow Patrick on Twitter: at @PatrickRGibbons and @redefinEDonline.