Jay Greene and James D. Paul gathered data for a new study for the American Enterprise Institute released Sept. 22 demonstrating that Democrats in state legislative chambers have only rarely made the difference in passing original private choice legislation nationwide.
The authors make the case that choice supporters have erred in seeking constrained and overly regulated programs in search of Democratic support which failed to meaningfully materialize. While they note that the choice movement needs all the support it can get, they fear Republican votes are being taken for granted. Ultimately, Greene and Paul call for private choice bills with universal eligibility and moderate levels of regulation.
My preferences also run toward universal programs with moderate levels of regulation. I think the Greene-Paul case deserves consideration, debate and reflection.
Whether or not one agrees with Greene and Paul’s conclusions, I believe there is an alternate case to make: Constrained and overly regulated private choice programs have only a limited ability to achieve policy goals that liberals, libertarians and conservatives tend to share.
Americans want public schools to teach necessary academic knowledge and to prepare students to exercise the responsibilities of citizenship as adults. Americans also want public schools to serve as engines of social mobility. They’ve been getting too little of any of that for decades. The unions want to max out the number of district employees to expand their membership, money, influence and power. There has been plenty of that going on for decades and too little to show for it.
K-12 choice is a tool which can give the public more of what they want from the education system. It also is respectful of pluralism. Once you get past the broad academic and civic goals, agreement about education quickly falls apart in the abstract. Individual children vary wildly in their interests and needs and thus can benefit from access to a diverse and specialized set of schools.
Ohio Republicans have passed multiple choice programs since 1995 and focused their efforts on the areas of greatest academic need: Cleveland students, students in failing schools, students with special needs, charter schools with geographic limits. Each of these were entirely worthy efforts.
This year, however, they embraced a number of more inclusive measures, in part, I believe, because the Fordham Institute found and documented the fact that students in every major urban district in Ohio find themselves surrounded, or nearly surrounded, by suburban districts that will not accept open enrollment transfers.
Whether you are a conservative, a liberal, a libertarian or a vegetarian, this map should disgust you as an American.
It apparently disgusted Ohio lawmakers, who took away geographic limits on charter schools, passed a new universal choice program, and improved existing choice programs. If suburban districts want to continue to deny open enrollment opportunities, they will have to do it with fewer students in the future.
K-12 choice deserves bipartisan support, and as Greene and Paul demonstrate, has received too little of it. We should include suburban and rural students in choice programs. They pay their taxes, they have unmet needs.
Our egalitarian desire to give advantage to the poor should be reflected in funding levels rather than in eligibility. No one would ever dream of denying a student access to a university because his or her parents paid too much in taxes. Levels of financial aid routinely vary, however. We should be worried about the sustainability of Republican support if our programs do not include their communities. Those communities pay for the programs; they should have the opportunity to participate.
We should most of all seek inclusive and diverse programs because (ironically) those are the programs that can best serve the interests of the poor. If you want to serve the interests of poor and urban students, yes, give them charter schools. Yes, give them education savings accounts, vouchers and/or education tax credits. It ultimately is untenable to ask suburban and rural voters to pay for such programs and then have them find themselves excluded from participation.
You also, however, want to create incentives necessary to give them access to suburban public schools. Limited, targeted programs won’t be equal to such a task.
The school choice programs that have passed to date usually did not need bipartisan support. A much stronger, impactful, inclusive movement can, however, achieve this and much more.
