Suppose the government owned Jewel. And anyone could shop there “free”–but if you preferred Dominick’s or Treasure Island or Cub Foods, then you’d have to pay for your groceries. Your taxes would stay the same no matter where you shopped, and no matter how much you bought at Jewel. No doubt Jewel could cut corners and let its service slide quite a bit before many people would be willing to go elsewhere and, in effect, pay double.
Nevertheless, both Mayor Daley at his May 6 inauguration and the Tribune on its editorial page have publicly mulled the “V word.” A spate of recent publications–most notably John Chubb and Terry Moe’s Politics, Markets and America’s Schools, published by the leftish Brookings Institution, and locally the fat compendium Rebuilding America’s Schools: Vouchers, Credits, and Privatization, published by the libertarian-minded Heartland Institute–have kept up the drumbeat for change in the institutions that shape the classrooms. (Coeditor and Heartland executive director Joseph Bast takes no credit for Daley’s utterance, but notes that Rebuilding America’s Schools was in the hands of the mayoral staff a few days before the inauguration.) In his introduction to the Heartland offering, former Delaware governor and still Republican presidential candidate Pete du Pont writes, “The intellectual debate over educational choice is simply over.” But is it?
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One problem is that “educational choice” is a chameleon. Mayor Daley found that out when he first spoke favorably of vouchers and then pulled back to a more cautious stance a few days later. “Choice” can mean anything from setting up one tiny elite school within the public system (such as the Illinois Math and Science Academy in Aurora) to ending all tax support of education (a position advocated by educational consultant Myron Lieberman and considered in the Heartland papers). “Choice means many different things to its supporters,” lament Chubb and Moe. “They all claim to favor choice, but when it comes to the specifics of actual choice plans, their superficial consensus breaks down. . . . [The movement] is an extremely fragmented and conceptually shallow one.”
The political ironies are abundant: Nathan laments that the left seems poised to “give this issue away to the right wing, just like we did the family”; Joseph Bast has taken heat from fellow libertarians on his board for publishing material promoting vouchers, which they see as a “government schools” power grab. Vouchers would increase parental choice, but they might also increase government regulation of schools. And vouchers by themselves would offer no consolation to those who are morally outraged at having to contribute to the education of their neighbors’ children.
Part of the problem is philosophical: will an educational free market really help the poor? We can be sure that Saint Ignatius and Francis Parker would continue to “cream” the most promising young people from the ghetto. Across-the-board vouchers or tuition tax credits will produce fairness only if educational entrepreneurs flock into the ghetto, anxious to educate the kids with the most serious behavior and learning problems. There is little in the record of market initiatives (remember telephone deregulation?) or of voucher systems (Medicaid?) to suggest that entrepreneurs would do any such thing–though Tom Hetland, director of educational relations for TEACHAmerica, speculates that they would if the hard-to-educate kids were given larger than average vouchers, increasing the incentive to start a school in Garfield Park instead of Winnetka.
“Choice,” says Joe Nathan, “is a great deal like electricity. It’s a powerful force, and it should be used carefully. It can be quite destructive if misused.” He was sad but not surprised to find that Chicago’s magnet-school program is “one of the worst public-school choice programs in the country.” It gives the magnets extra money and the power to select students and staff, but leaves the neighborhood schools with a more difficult job–and fewer resources and less autonomy to do it with.
“The preferences of most teachers for working with high-achieving and well-behaved students and avoiding students at risk.
