The Public Policy / Choice: A Burkean Dissent

...And the institute's lawsuits are marshaling the legal strategies of liberal activists—pulverization of local control, rule by judicial fiat, and an expansive interpretation of constitutional rights—all in the name of a cause that most conservatives cherish these days: school choice...

...So ExCEL is trying to soft-pedal the inter-district language, pointing out that suburban schools wouldn't have to accept inner-city children unless there were vacant seats in suburban classrooms...

...Pointless teacher-certification rules, controversial sex-education and "multiculturalism" courses, required curricula and textbooks, hillocks of paperwork—none of this is unthinkable...

...The ballot measure forbids discrimination only on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, and national origin, leaving single-sex and religious schools alone...

...Currently, most school districts restrict enrollments to the children of the people who live inside the district and pay the taxes that support their local school system...

...A choice initiative is on the November Charlotte Allen is a Washington writer...

...If it is curriculum, then mobilize public opposition (the state of Virginia recently dropped its spacy "outcomes" requirements for graduation after parents raised a hue and cry...

...help parents make thoughtful decisions...

...C onservatives also ought to worry about increased government regulation of private schools that accept students on government vouchers...

...There were abuses, there was a public outcry, and now you have a lot of regulations...

...ballot in California...

...First and foremost is the Burkean "little platoon" of local loyalties, for most voucher plans include provisions that deliberately shift governance of school districts away from those who live in them and toward state or federal authorities...

...The California initiative (and, presumably, a successful outcome in the Institute for Justice's lawsuits against California and Illinois) would obliterate successful suburban and small-town school districts...

...The California initiative, for example, would allow children to attend not just the private school of their choice but the public school of their choice, even if it lies outside their home district...

...Surrendering local control of yet another historically local institution—and turning hitherto-independent private schools into outposts of the public system—may or may not cause a corrupt education establishment to implode...

...The Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear—in rulings upholding prohibitions on abortion counseling at federally funded family-planning clinics and compliance with affirmative-action paperwork rules at colleges whose students accept federal tuition grants—that he who takes the king's shilling must dance to the king's tune...

...Another busing activist on the rampage, right...

...Certainly, the public schools are top-heavy with bureaucracy and sclerotic with wasteful spending...

...Shouldn't Roggeveen's rhetoric of radical egalitarianism make conservatives think twice about choice-in-education...

...Rich people get to live in mansions, too...

...Once private schools begin resembling public schools—and the free money starts flowing in—teachers may agitate and perhaps even unionize for their share of the government boodle...

...Here is Joe Nathan, writing in the Wall Street Journal: "The best choice plans are accompanied by effort to equalize funding among districts...

...S chool-choice advocates like to talk about how much education money vouchers will, save states...

...Furthermore, even staunch advocates of choice concede that an inevitable consequence will be increased government regulation of private schools, not to mention the creation of another client for the welfare state: the private-school system...

...In a letter to the Heritage Foundation, David Barulich, director of research for the Los Angeles–based organization that drafted the ballot measure, Excellence through Choice in Education League (ExCEL), conceded that the initiative's "inclusion of inter-district public school choice" was its "main deficiency...

...But upper-middle-class suburbs—and small towns and even a few minority-heavy pockets of large cities, such as East Harlem's famous District 4—have actually managed to create public-school systems that work pretty well, given all the legal and union constraints that burden public schools...

...Another California provision freezes existing regulation of participating schools unless a legislative supermajority votes otherwise...

...Does that mean the government, which provides housing for the poor, has to give welfare recipients fancy estates in Beverly Hills...

...Home schooling, incidentally, would not be subsidized under the California initiative...

...If the problem is unions, then hire permanent substitutes the next time teachers strike...

...Part of the relief the suits seek is the virtual abolition of local, community-based school districts—the only way, according to the suits, to protect inner-city students' constitutional right to a "quality" education...

...And there is pressure in Michigan to set up a statewide voucher sytem now that the state has repealed school funding via the property tax...

...Uh-uh...

...C hoice plans aim to weaken local school districts because they are typically much more than a way to help parents pay private-school tuition...

...Even if the legislators and the regulators hold back, the courts (egged on by the ever-litigious ACLU) may step in to rule that accepting voucher money turns a private school into an arm of the' state, meaning that voucher students deserve all the constitutional protections—against expulsion, flunking out, feeling bad about themselves, and so forth—that public-school students now enjoy...

...How about this favorite argument of voucher enthusiasts: Rich people get to send their children to private school, so why shouldn't poor people...

...help educators create new programs so that there are choices, not just choice...

...It was that way with day care...

...I thought it was liberals, not conservatives, who argued that when the government guarantees people a right, it has an obligation to subsidize the exercise of that right...

...The nation's first full-fledged voucher plan, Wisconsin legislator Polly Williams's 1990 program for poor children in Milwaukee, forbade religious schools from participating...

...And even voucher plans that do not contain inter-district enrollment provisions often require states to equalize spending among school districts—fulfill62 The American Spectator November 1993 ing a longtime liberal-activist goal of preventing communities from taxing themselves extra dollars to provide extra amenities for their classrooms...

...and provide transportation...

...Actually it is more likely to cost states money, as taxpayers find themselves obliged to pay for a private-school system on top of a public-school system that is likely to prove not so easy to dismantle...

...A court upheld virtually all of Grover's rights rules—rules that would drastically alter the nature of most private schools, which pride themselves on holding students to higher standards of behavior and performance than is constitutionally allowed these days at public schools...

...Even school-choice advocates express fears that regulators could cripple private schools with the same bureaucratic requirements that have ruined many a public school, and gradually drain away private schools' independence...

...They're arbitrary boundaries drawn on a map that tell children where they have to go to school...

...Finally, voucher systems are likely to cost taxpayers even more money in the long run than the current system, as governments find themselves supporting private schools on top of public schools they won't be able to get rid of...

...prohibit school admissions tests...

...The public-school system is so bad that we have to do something to get rid of it," says David Boaz, vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute...

...Similarly, a failed choice proposal on the ballot last year in Florida would have barred single-sex schools from the voucher program and prevented participating religious schools from preferring students of their own religion...

...Relatively small and highly responsive to the concerns of interested parents, these school systems serve the function that public schools were originally set up to serve: educating the children of a specifically defined local community and passing along its values...

...CI The American Spectator November 1993 63...

...Nonetheless, if voucher systems should become a reality, conservatives will have to bid farewell to many notions they hold dear...

...A district could always declare that its enrollments were filled up," says Barulich...

...Even these protections may not prove impenetrable, fears Frank R. Kemmerer, a law professor at the University of North Texas who has written extensively about the possible "publicization" of private schools that accept public money...

...Jersey City's Schundler plans to ask the state legislature to foot the bill for his own choice plan in that financially strapped city...

...He was describing a pair of lawsuits his office has on file that ask courts to order sweeping changes in the way that two of the country's most populous states organize their school systems...

...But what he and other choice advocates ignore is the law of unintended consequences—consequences that can be avoided by focusing more narrowly on specific problems...

...One reason that private schools cost less to operate than public schools is that their teachers are often willing to trade off lower salaries for autonomy and better-motivated students...

...Boaz's assessment is by and large correct...

...Not surprisingly, only seven out of eighteen nonsectarian private schools in Milwaukee have chosen to participate in the Williams program...

...There appears to fie no natural limit on the level and kinds of restrictions that legislators and regulators can place upon private schools that participate in choice plans...

...This has always irritated liberals, who for decades have pressed the courts (usually unsuccessfully) to break down district lines by forcing wealthy suburban districts to accept children from poor urban districts...

...Just try to expel a kid or censor the student newspaper at a voucher school in Milwaukee...

...At the very least, the radical talk of school-choice advocates should give conservatives pause...

...The California initiative's drafters seem alert to these threats to private schools' autonomy and distinctiveness...

...The California initiative, championed by conservatives, would accomplish what years of litigation by liberal activists could not, mandating that schools withexcess enrollment capacity must open their doors to anyone who wants to attend, "regardless of residence...

...Sure, until the NAACP finds out and sues...

...Dirk Roggeveen is senior litigation attorney at the Institute for Justice, the group that spearheaded the anti–Lani Guinier campaign...

...If it turns out there are significant abuses, the public will demand that there be some sort of legislative response that will apply to all schools, even the good ones," says Kemmerer, a former private-school headmaster...

...Liberal activists (and, apparently, some conservative activists) chalk up suburban school districts' jealous guarding of their boundary lines to racism...

...And how about the lawsuits themselves, which ask courts to force public-school districts—i.e., taxpayers—in Chicago and Los Angeles to underwrite vouchers to subsidize private schools...

...But it will certainly leave us even more in thrall to a powerful central government...

...School-choice proponents do have one persuasive weapon in their arsenal: that a system that hands out vouchers to parents instead of dollars to school districts could loosen the clutch on public education that bureaucracies, ed school faddists, and teachers' unions have held for decades...

...This provision has even the initiative's backers a little nervous...

...A choice initiative in Colorado failed last year largely because it would have cost taxpayers $85 million during its first year...

...Certainly, many public schools are terrible, especially in the inner cities...

...Certainly, the teachers' unions have a chokehold over the system, so that high pay, dopey pedagogical fads, and job protection take precedence over competence and creativity...

...Brent Schundler, the new Republican mayor of Jersey City won election on a voucher platform...

...School choice—if Bill Clinton and the National Education Association oppose it, isn't it a good idea...

...Prohibit school admissions tests...

...Wrote Barulich: "This provision could cost us dearly in the suburbs...

...No sooner did the state legislature enact the program than State Superintendent of Public Instruction Herbert Grover issued a laundry list of statutory and constitutional tights that participating schools must afford their students, including "all federal and state guarantees protecting the rights and liberties of individuals including freedom of religion, expression, association, unreasonable search and seizure, equal protection, and due process...