ANOTHER CHANCE FOR VOUCHERS
Leary, Mary Ellen
ANOTHER CHANCE FOR VOUCHERS? MARY ELLEN LEARY A new case for parental power over school purse-strings No matter how firmly President Carter uses his veto to close the door on educational tax...
...Schools unwilling to accept this proviso wou~d remain outside, as private schools apart from the public funding scheme...
...One of the gravest is ' the place of religious schools in a "choice" system...
...I I whelmed with inquiries and requests for certification forms...
...9 All schools should be able to participate if they choose, and to receive a child's "scholarship" money in payment for educational services, so long as minimal state requirements about teaching are followed and the school functions within the law, keeps books open for state inspection, and agrees to accept all applicants within its capacity...
...and though the experiment has eti~-and ,the extra money gone, Alum Rock has tetained'0pen enrollment with busing to facilitate it, while enthusiasm lingers for individuality in teaching approaches...
...Few .lawyers have enjoyed more success in che courts on educatiorml .issues and their thesis that parents, not school districts, should hold the purse strings is likely some day to confront the courts...
...California's Superintendent of Public Instruction, Dr...
...In politics, life style, social behavior and religion, the public school retards rather than encourages individuality, they hold, largely for the sake of a "safe" society and the transmission of "eli,tist" modes of behavior...
...White flight" schools under private auspices might start up in the suburbs, but if their academic standards were high and led to college-readiness, the minorities would be trekking right out, on publicly provided buses...
...including some unorthodox ventures in Eugene, Oregon, Minneapolis and Cincinnati...
...The poor would have access to the costliest for very little expenditure, the state equalizing their contribution against much higher personal contributions by the richer families...
...He wonders whether they would accept requirements for open financial accounting, admission of all applicants, and a new level of parental intervention...
...But not power...
...The Place of Catholic Schools For all this personal dedication to a value system linked, by his own preference, to the Catholic faith, Coons has been dubious about how supportive Catholic institutions might be of his voucher plan...
...But the focus of these and other bills this year was significant: they identified government educational subsidy as financial support direct to the pupil and to the family, not to an institution...
...Some voluntary "clustering" of minorities, perhaps...
...Into this reality of an American educational system in flux, an invitation is out for an even more revolutionary change...
...If an Indianethnic school had an atmosphere hostile to ~rhites, Coons and Sugarman anticipate the evaluating reports would make this known...
...Sheer cosmetics," he scoffed at the fine-line distinctions: nobody would be fooled...
...We believe it demands the child's exposure to and dialogue with issues of justice and ,personal morality...
...However, the most dramatic episode to fuel interest in private school options---and concern about how to fund them--was the very first reaction in California to the June tax-slash vote...
...Abetting this interest is a marked fluidity just now within the trattifional American school system...
...His readers, however, have often been judges who found the data convincing...
...New teachers, however, would hardly be guaranteed jobs in a marketdominated system...
...some with teachers as the power centers and managers, professionals so esteemed that parents would seek them out...
...I I some community schools managed by parents in the neighborhood and even housed in a private home...
...Their fiscal studies led Coons and Sugarman to examine the constraints and stereotypes in current public education which seem to repel many central city youngsters and yield a curriculum which does not fit the aspirations many parents have for their children...
...Their assumption is the teaching profession would come into new respectability as the administrators in education were removed or lessened in power, the educational focus centered on the school itself and on what parents perceive as progress in their children's learning ~. They assume schools directly responsive to consumer demand will be less cosily and may pay teachers more, administrators less...
...Some supervisory structure, would have to confront the problem...
...In California, for instance, Dr...
...But step by step we came to the position that parents, not school districts, ought to be deciding how to spend money for education . . . . The present public school structure is too limiting for children...
...In ,this unsettled post-13 atmosphere in California, in which all governmental institutions are under challenge, the Coons-Sugarman proposal was taken up with enthusiasm by an eclectic group, ranging from very conservative businessmen to liberal teachers and leftist activists, and including some incumbent political figures...
...Coons concedes...
...For all their sharp and varied criticisms of public schools, at one point referred to as "professional garrisons," their cen,tral charge against the present-day public system is that it inculcates "neutral" values and turns out conformists...
...Joseph McElligott, Catholic educational representative at the California legislature, argued that the explicit teaching of religion ought to be church-supported and not state-supported, and that church schools, to make that distinction clear, might accept some reduced level of public funding...
...A Russell Sage Foundation grant for studies in law and sciences provided Coons the opportunity to interest a couple of bright law students in pursuing with him problems of fairness in public school finance...
...Generously funded, the state has added team-teachers and classroom aides so that through four years' effort 62 percent of its elementary school students now have far more personal assistance in schools and some 280,000 parents are involved as classroom volunteers or on committees directly responsible for individual school policy, with latitude to set local standards...
...Further, in this vein, they write: "In actively encouraging families to express their ,cultural and ideological diversity, the nation would substitute mutual respect as the ground of a social accord that has been based too long on the acceptance by minorities of an elite model...
...As I understand the church's use of the term, it represents a kind of decentralized social order...
...We came to our ideas about parental power backwards," Sugarman points out, "We were heavily involved in those school 'tax studies...
...There, where many parents did not speak English and some did not even read, one device was a comic-book style of drawing where cartoons illustrated which schools specialized in math, in science, in music, in carpentry, etc...
...Integration and Diversity In their willingness to co.rent the practical along with theory, Coons and Sugarman range over a great many problem areas: health regulation, building standards, loans for start-up schools, labor relations, pensions and ,tenure...
...Essentially the Coons-Sugarman proposal centers on these four key points: _9 The basic responsibility for selecting and guiding a child's education lies with parents (not the ~tate) and with the children as they mature...
...Senator Daniel P. Moynihan's may have been prompted more by the political necessity for providing tax relief to the middle class .than by any edu:ational philosophy...
...I began to wonder about this . . . . " That was the start...
...But they are satisfied that truly extremist schools would be rare and represent no danger...
...Recently, though, they have transferred their children to local parochial schools...
...No bureaucracy will willingly yield up its power over the purse...
...When it is free and voluntary it works...
...There are, however, as he put it, "many camps in the alternative education movement...
...That trial run ~ound such material very useful to parents, and the communization got better with experience...
...We came to see that the present public school structure is too limiting for children...
...When he and his wife first came to Berkeley, that community had just embarked on the first voluntary city-wide busing program to meld black and white youngsters...
...Or, as Coons puts it: "We wanted ,to erase the distinctions of wealth when families choose what is best for their youngsters...
...Wilson Riles, has denounced vouchers as "a dangerous concept...
...However, a considerable variety of classroom approaches did spring up within the thirteen public schools in the Alum Rock experiment, many ,teachers did make use of new latitude in their curriculure and teaching styles, and this did prove popular with students...
...But they were piddling differences compared to the dramatic difference in total amount of money poured into schools in the suburb...
...Parents care more...
...They may have forestalled some anticipated opposition from teachers by insisting that all present, tenure contracts be honored...
...These are just as racially mixed (Catholic schools in California overall count roughly 40 percent of their students as minorities compared to a 29 percent level in California public schools statewide), but the Coons felt the Catholic schools were doing a better job at establishing congenial relations between children of the different races...
...Side by side with these multiplying private schools, Catholic schools are enjoying a resurgence...
...According to those who evaluated the Alum Rock experience as it progressed, "freedom of choice" for parents can't work as long as control over funds rests with the educational political centers...
...I don't even find consistency about its meaning among Catholic philosophers, and when I've used it before Catholic audiences I've been misunderstood...
...Its president is a black San Francisco dentist, Dr...
...And he notes: "Almost any change would be an ira29 September 1978:622 provement...
...They also contemplate the possibility of schools operating ~t about four different levels of expensiveness under public funding, from very simple to very sophisticated...
...Any creative teacher who could keep the school day interesting and productive would be blessed with government funding...
...He indicated considerable reluctance to intertwine the ,two kinds of education, secular and religious, and felt public money might be accepted for the former but not for the latter...
...San Francisco also starts full implementation of its school integration plan this fall in a pattern disturbing to many families...
...Teachers who had planned on serving in summer classes banded together to set up ad hoc schools, sometimes even renting their regular classrooms and charging fees that covered janitors, maintenance and their salaries...
...School districts all over the state promptly closed summer schools...
...some "guru"-taught...
...You will resolve problems .by working at them...
...They are not hostile to the professional in education...
...They would find it...
...Parents would know which child needed the best math teacher around, which wanted more emphasis on reading, which is going to work with his hands in life, and which with his big mouth and which with his head...
...The Coons-Sugarman Proposal What is unique about the Coons-Sugarman contribution to the voucher discussion is, first, the practicality with which they propose, step .by step, how to bring such a system into being, and, second, their insistence that parental choice must not lead to elitism and not nullify the nation's drive toward racial integration...
...Writing for the Institute of Contemporary Studies, Greeley suggested that all vouchers would do is create a totally new--and better--situation in urban schools...
...In addition, .the Serrano ruling, in combination with the Jarvis-Gann vote, has transferred total funding of education in California to the state level, leaving local school districts somewhat redundant, a sufficient disruption to encourage experimentation...
...The cost of that schooling, whether in a public school, private school, specialist art school, dance school, military school, community school, ethnic school, religious school, socialist school, or any other kind of school, would be borne ,through taxes pro-rated among all youngsters as "scholarships...
...For those children many special compensatory programs were being devised, but education was nevertheless increasingly difficult for them, frustrating, unsatisfactory and alien...
...The plan failed to catch on except in one district, Alum Rock, California, a poor, semi-rural largely MexicanAmerican community eastward of San Jose, where a four-year experience with a watered-down voucher plan is all the solid testing the idea has so far generated...
...The Office of Economic Opportunity, groping for solutions to inner-city problems, became intrigued with the "voucher" concept and in the early '70s sought school districts willing to experiment with vouchers generously endowed by OEO...
...the school so drab and dull that children (and their parents) abhor it would wither for lack of funds...
...They became persuaded that everyone using the school system needed the option to seek schooling freely, of whatever kind and at whatever place the family chose...
...They are aware many minority families resent "counseling" as currently practiced in schools, for it too often counsels the minorities into lower-level aspirations...
...Reaction against such a busing burden has prompted more than usual interest in private school alternatives, church schools being the most available...
...Schools which fell out of favor in the marketplace would lose children, of course, and might be driven to close...
...It is trying to reach consensus on several controversial points...
...It is expected out this winter, as part of a broad study of "alternative education" throughout the U.S...
...The idea had a brief popularity a decade ago and some partial testing, then faded from sight...
...Coons and Sugarman are recognized experts in educational finance, having pursued in various areas, especially Chicago, New York and California, the goal of equitably equalized funding for public schools, despite differing local district wealth...
...Initial reports by Rand's analyst Eliot Levinson emphasize that Alum Rock's program never became a true voucher system, for the competition from private schools never materialized...
...Not too many decades ago public education in California, as in many other states, was the setting for virulent an,ti-Catholic sentiment...
...It's a word I first remember from my high school religion classes and as I've read further about it, it made sense to me...
...Daniel Weiler who heads the Rand Corporation study...
...but no forzed segregation so .long as open admission in all participating schools is rigidly enforced...
...It is already being modified: for instance, the CHOICE initiative would admit to state support only non-profit schools, whereas Coons anticipates a lively interest among profit-making schools and assumes they might well be acceptable...
...They observed that middle-class parents were escaping unsatisfactory city schools .by moving out to suburbs where relatively new, amply funded and progressive schools could be responsive to their wishes...
...We use it to emphasize the volun,tary aspect of association in reordering education...
...The public school product may learn independence in economic and technological terms but not in terms of personal autonomy, they say...
...Parents know, better than school professionals, what their own children need...
...Eliminating the district administrative structure would shift supervisory responsibilitymand a lot of workmto a central state agency, but Education by Choice assumes rules would be far simpler than they are today and standards clear and minimal, since the marketplace demand would be the deciding force between acceptable and unacceptable schools...
...That other areas of institutional sensitivity might impede Catholic enthusiasm for the idea of state funding for Catholic schools was clear from some of the CHOICE sessions...
...As one close observer of Alum Rock said...
...The poor and the minority families would thus get the same freedom of choice the wealthy now enjoy...
...There were none in the area and innovators couldn't muster financing to start one...
...Charles A. Vanick's plan and in the Senate for U.S...
...But step by step we came to the position that parents, not school districts, ought to be deciding how to spend money for education...
...However, the public school structure may not be as vulnerable as Coons and Sugarman assume...
...The nation, they think, hungers for the chance to provide direction and a sense of purpose to children as an integral part of their education, reinforcing family values...
...29 September 1978:616 In response to the diversity of tastes, interests, culture and talents which characterize today's school population, the Coons-Sugarman proposal recommends complete freedom on the family's part to choose any school in reasonable distance (bus service may be the limiting factor) which meets minimal state standards...
...The initiative does project a gradual phasing in of Che plan over several years and "a sunset clause" specifying when the whole thing might be dumped if not pop...
...Choice' is seen as a legitima, te way to reach for this...
...This seems to indicate a conflict brewing...
...I.t has simmered along in numerous education publications and now is provoking a new burst of interest amidst a public disillusioned about the adequacy of many governmental institutions, public schools among them...
...Disliking tests, the authors nevertheless figure some measurements must be available to advise parents about progress earlier children have made or satisfaction earlier parents have registered...
...This is an important element in their confidence that "'White flight" schools might start up in the suburbs, but ii their academic standards were high, minorities would be trekking right out, on publicly provided buses...
...It would list and evaluate reasonably available schools for f~milies, identify their curricula and teacher qualifications, their classroom style and the performance results of past children...
...No one knows how many of these first-time private schools will continue this fall but some of the phenomenon is expected to survive as new year-round private schools...
...Today, the educational climate in the U.S...
...A slim, highly readable volume by two Universi, ty of California law professors at Berkeley, John E. Coons and Stephen B. Sugarman, is the newest text seriously advancing the thesis that parents should be the decision-makers in allocating public edu=ational funds by the simple choice they make of schools for their children...
...For many children the Los Angeles sprawl necessitates extremely long morning and afternoon rides...
...Communication with paxents was greatly improved...
...Each is deeply convinced that the values of their respective faiths should be incorporated in,to schools available for parents who favor education permeated with religious content, and available at public cost...
...This has dissipated, but the politieaUy experienced fear its revival, a danger the two authors may have dismissed too lightly...
...But Education by Choice flatly rejects the Friedman proposal that the rich might enhance participating private schools by' adding on benefits...
...Parents have been given a voice...
...Beyond these points the authors confront many of the specific problems that may arise in school policy, teacher relations, state regulation and family informational adequacy...
...That choice should be aided by an independent professional advisory service, funded by public money and designed (a) to provide objective data ~bout ,the available array of participating schools and (b) to consult with families about the most appropriate choice for each child's talents and for parents' goals for the child's life...
...The expectation is that public money would include "enrichment" funds and "compensatory" programs to meet special needs...
...Coons has been dubious about how supportive Catholic institutions might be of his voucher plan...
...But it has not died away...
...Wealthy parents escaped by sending their offspring to private schools...
...Pension rights are assumed to be nezessary and the authors think collective bargaining could be adapted to their scheme...
...No fee...
...Why not just be up front about the idea that a variety of values is acceptable and appropriately inculca4ed in schooling and that religion is one of them7 Then let the state trust the parents to choose what they want...
...Two other factors threaten the traditional public school structure...
...What occurred then was a mushrooming of private summer schools...
...In the ferment over desegregation, decentralization, community linkage, hi-lingual emphasis, compensatory classes, programs for ,the disadvantaged, the handicapped and the very talented, school districts have developed a wide spectrum of special classes and special schools...
...Together he, Sugarman and Wisconsin law professor William W. Clune --all good friends who go back-packing together in the summerEhave produced three books, a score of articles, drafts of some model statutes and initiative measures to implement their ideas...
...An additional catalyst, has been the conservative San Francisco-based Institute for Contemporary Studies, which has published studies and reports dealing with the voucher idea (including a recent paper-bound compilation, Parents, Teachers & Children with essays from Coons and Sugarman, James Coleman, Nathan Glazer, Andrew M. Greeley and Michael Novak, among others...
...Education by Choice---the Case [or Family Control (University of California Press, $10.95, 223 pp...
...shows greater interest in vouchers--than existed in 1970, says Dr...
...Some might be heavily academic, college-oriented "headmaster"-run schools...
...in contrast to that available in any city district...
...Coons's own family decisions best illustrate his personal commitment to racial integration in American schools...
...The group quickly attracted interest in minority communities, revealing the extent of discontent with the present system...
...Sugarman, father of a 15month daughter, has not yet confronted parental responsibilities about schooling, Like Coons and Sugarman, Andrew Greeley does not think "choice" would exacerbate racial discrimination...
...law professors have been the focal point for discussion and certainly triggered the initial postelection coming together...
...Many schools with unique character, such as a Buddhist school, a strict military school, or a school stressing native Indian or African culture, might naturally attract a limited cluster of especially attuned clients, but ,they could not bar any deviant applicant who comes to the door, nor discriminate against him once inside---and still receive public funds...
...I found some...
...advocates abandonment of traditional reliance on neighborhood clustering as the logical basis for school assignment and an end to tradi,tional uniformity in curriculum, pace and classroom style...
...educational grant, is usable anywhere in the appropriate marketplace...
...But in focusing upon parents as the most responsible deciders about education, they were guided as well by a sense that society has become engulfed in big, distant, impersonal organizations and needs to snatch back some power nearer, to the individual...
...This concept, winning majority favor in both houses, provokes a fresh interest in "voucher" funding for education...
...Beyond issues of organizational structure, or the plethora of knotty problems which Coons and Sugarman insist, lawyer-like, are subject to solution by reasonable people, or even the use of public money in private (and religious) schools, what may prove most sensitive is their concept that all views and all values may be taught in any of these publicly-funded schools...
...Freedom itself is the safety valve, they say, as the Constitution means it to be...
...some focused on environmental issues or ethnic identity...
...Some Catholic schools might elect to remain outside the program, but they might find it difficult to attract parents willing to pay tuition when other Catholic schools were available with state support...
...There is a great variety inviting choice, but we have come up against the problem of limited resources, the abrupt new desire for economy in government expressed in the California vote...
...From those he knows he has met enthusiasm beyond expec.tation...
...Just what Alum Rock proves is still under debate, for the government-funded analysis by Rand Corporation has not yet been published...
...They have one main peg for their retorts to the usual objections about vouchers: insistence that state and federal laws must be obeyed, books must be open to inspection, basic data about school functions must be a matter of public record...
...Whether the Coons-Sugarman concept will survive the difficult drafting debate is not clear...
...Much of their work has been technical: the painstaking detail of model laws, bar journal studies, complex analyses of mathematical inequities lodged in the formulas by which ,tax money is allocated to school districts...
...It's a fairly fuzzy word," Coons concedes...
...This all seems to place extraordinary demands on parents, already overburdened in this harried, bothparentsworking era...
...Rather, ~hey wi~h it in a _9 \ "choice" system to be primarily a counsehng tool for parents, sensitive to their goals and values...
...They realize others have quite different values which they, too, want imparted to their children...
...Started before Jarvis-Gann, it didn't get enough signatures to qualify...
...Conceding that no one can be sure, they advocate experiments leading to court t~ts...
...But an absolutely essential element in this stru:ture would be the professional analytCommonweal: 621 ical apparatus created to advise and guide parents...
...In the public schools of Alum Rock, which did set up competition for students, consumer selection was never wholly free of direction at the district superintendent's level...
...In fact, as sociologist James Coleman has argued, court-imposed programs for school integration may be hurrying along the white flight to the suburbs and aggravating inner-city school poverty...
...Wilson Riles, state superintendent of instruction, has greatly expanded the concept of "compensatory" schools to a systemwide involvement of parents and far more individual attention to each child...
...But CHOXC~ sessions also disclosed other serious doubts about the inclusion of church schools...
...Priva4e endowments from rich 29 September 1978:618 families to improve schools their children attend would frustrate the aim of opening to the poor the same options available to others...
...Do they sincerely believe consumer expectations-even subject to whim and fadmwould improve the system...
...His education should draw him into that human exchange about the nature of the good life which in large measure is the central exchange of the permanent debate among democratic people . . _9 Those promoting autonomy should seek an arrangement that will foster the child's personal engagement with good and evil and with the issue of his own role in the pursuit of a just order . . . . " This, in their opinion, is what all parents seek for their children, whatever the cultural orientation, economic level, or degree of sophistication...
...It turns out to be easier to start a private school in California than to get a driver's license: just file an affidavit with the school's name and address, names of officers and address where records are kept...
...What the authors of Education by Choice prefer is an education aimed at developing autonomy in a child-"the full development of the child's latent capacities for independent reflection and for judgment on issues of personal morality and social justice...
...Very boring stuff...
...Every child, of course "should have command of an adequate verbal and mathematical language...
...How numerous they are was attested by the State Department of Education consultant on private education, Robert McCarthy, who said his office was over"'We came to our ideas backwoods...
...No minimum requirement for teachers other than they be "capable of teaching...
...This nucleus group of some" thirty people formed two weeks after the election have met several times subsequently, interest seems to be growing among them toward preparing an initiative for the 1980 California .ballot...
...He also needs to know something of history, philosophy, culture and science...
...It is not clear how many Americans share their disillusionment about the public school structure...
...But, admonishing always, "Experiment...
...hood and community awareness or of creative teachers...
...But while the book argues for experimentation, it pays no respects to the degree of experimentation now underway within the system...
...it is not assumed that all children at all schools will get identical scholarships...
...The material was printed .in Spanish as well as English...
...He is convinced that "choice" would open up opportunities for far more extensive Catholic education than is presently available...
...Coons and Sugarman do propose, however, that all families, graded according to income, pay some reasonable "user fee" towards the education cost, however modestthat fee might be for the poor...
...MARY ELLEN LEARY A new case for parental power over school purse-strings No matter how firmly President Carter uses his veto to close the door on educational tax credits for parents whose children are in private schools--as he repeatedly has said he will--the high degree of concern Congress has expressed for parents coping with private educational costs suggests that the horse may be out of the barn, never again to be corralled...
...One of the most recent and far-reaching is the Serrano decision in California, in which the State Supreme Court supported their argument that the wealth of the entire state, not merely that in dissimilar districts, must stand behind the educaional opportunity available to each child...
...They want the best for each child...
...In the Alum Rock experiment it was found that data about school styles, curriculum emphasis and teaching environment could be communicated to parents through pamphlets or catalogue-type data, supplemented by personal advice if the .parent wished...
...An open-door policy wotrld mean that even a school designed by Chinese, teaching Mandarin and focused on Oriental culture must, under the "choice" plan, be open to anyone who comes 4o the threshhold...
...The five Coons children were sent to these integrating schools, both parefits becoming active in PTA work and school projects...
...In developing their theories about the place of parents in the educational system, they have used the term "subsidiarity" to suggest that "responsibility for dependent individuals should belong to the smaller and more intimate rather .than the larger and more anonymous communities...
...Such elements are not grossly different from the minimum about which there is societal consensus now . . . . But autonomy requires 'more than minimums...
...I was teaching law at Northwestern University," John Coons recalls, "and in the summer of 1962 the Commonweal: 617 Chicago school system asked me ,to examine differences in ,funding available to various neighborhoods within the city...
...9 Open eligibility for all comers is pivotal in order to prevent segregationist schools, though such free access might conflict with some religious communities' desire to serve members of .their own faiths exclusively...
...These pursuits led them to their current position on vouchers...
...Another development is that the Los Angeles school district, one of the nation's largest, will start busing this fall under a court order for integration purposes...
...But he has never been dubious about Catholic parent response...
...How closely it will be modeled on the CoonsSugarman formula is still uncertain, but the views of these two U.C...
...Alum Rock still retains from its experiment far more advice to parents about individual school differences than is usually available elsewhere...
...One is the troubling fact that all these "special ed" efforts are not allaying the dispari:y in school funding and school program between inner cities and suburbs...
...Try it" the two professors think such a system can be practically achieved...
...They insist socialism, Communism and, if someone chooses, even Nazism can be taught within a publiclyfunded school, as long as laws of the country are obeyed, the school is open to public examination, parents opt for it freely and anyone may be admitted...
...The voucher, like a food stamp or the G.I...
...But they think the public school system caters too much to the structure and not enough to the child: professionals should be keyed in to parents, not to district boards, county superintendents, legislators or the state educational hierarchy...
...But the general goal of resting financial control and responsibility for school selection with parents rather than a politically structured school administration has caught the favor of many...
...They go further: "We believe that cultural and ideo!ogical diversity is a potential strength of our .society and consider it perverse to apologize for its encouragement by government: we predict that such a policy would be a healing experience for the nation...
...A vote in California would put this to the test...
...Coons and Sugarman predict that this empowerment of the consumer would encourage new schools to spring up, would provide students with a variety of programs to suit their special needs, and would consequenr quicken their response...
...A number of persons presently in public office voiced personal opposition to sharing public money with religious schools or called the idea politically unattainable...
...He wonders whether diocesan or religious-order schools would accept, along with per-capita state funds, requirements for open financial accounting, for compulsory admission of all applicants (the authors assume special provision must be made by the state ,for recalcitrant or unteachable pupils), and especially for a new and decisive level of parental intervention...
...The bestowal of choice implies trust and trust can beget trust, even among those of strongly different persuasions . . . . The message that society respects the values and tastes of the non-rich in the formal training of their children could be a stride toward a more stable civil order...
...The idea that public support for education should follow all pupils wherever they might choose to study, and not just within the confines of the neighborhood public schoolhouse, was publicized in the '60s by economist Milton Friedman and then, strongly advocated by sociologist Christopher Jencks, at the Center for the Study of Public Policy at Harvard...
...Coons considers "choice" the only device that can create a bridge between suburbs and inner cities...
...The range of schools they are willing to see oreated may, to some, seem threatening...
...Some want "back-to-basics" education, some want community-based schools, some want ethnicfocused schools, some want religious schools...
...Those for whom there was no escape were poor families, minori,ty families, immigrant families...
...But they often fall back on the suggestion: "Experiment with it...
...The second factor is the emergence of many new private schools, often su~cessful,ly designed for profit, which are luring a considerable number of children away from the public system...
...work it out...
...The group has adopted a name, CHOICe, standing for "Californians Helping to Organize for Individual Control of Education...
...In this effort they have won significant legal victories...
...The votes in the House for Rep...
...The two law professors came to feel that parental dissatisfaction with the system is widespread especially among those who cannot leave it...
...There ,is also confidence that parents, if adequately supplied with information, can and will make sound choices to suit individual children...
...Out of long experience in the courts dealing with educational issues and study of the church-state separation issue, the two authors write: "A general scholarship ptan intended to assist the purposes of [amilies and individuals (children) and not the interests of institutions-sectarian or other--might well survive constitutional challenges, even if famil.ies were permitted to choose religious schools...
...We were heavily involved in school tax studies...
...9 Participating schools must operate within the state's financial allotment, without receiving outside funds...
...While about 10 percent of the state's 4 million school children ~ were in private schools last year (over 80 percent of them in Catholic schools) California anticipates a notable jump in that figure this fall...
...Many parents faced with summer-idled youngsters or those needing "make-up" classes gladly paid the fees though obviously the poor did not...
...Barely a few months off the press, Education by Choice has fallen onto remarkably hospitable soil in the tax-wary, anti-establishment mood prevailing in California...
...Coons was not persuaded...
...Ill I the system would not lead to racial segregation...
...Such oversight might seem intrusive to many private schools and deter their joining the plan and one can anticipate challenges arising to the advisory interpretations or to ratings of curriculum and student progress...
...Yes, remarkable participation, Sugarman concedes...
...If one school is inundated with applicants, the assumption is ,that new schools patterned after it will appear...
...The material Coons and Sugarman contemplate would be on a more sophisticated scale...
...But ,there is a tension between these two...
...They anticipate the possibility of midterm shifts from one school to another, for whatever reason, with the pro-rata share of the year's school money following the child...
...Henry Lucas...
...A true voucher test won't occur until it is mandated by political forces outside the school district...
...Some schools, they expect, would be completely run by parent councils, some by decisions shared between parents and teachers...
...Some of the change has been mandated by the courts, some of it contrived to engage the minds of children from minority cultures, some of it the product of neighborI I I I MARY ELLEN LEARY i$ a Cali]ornia-based writer whose work has appeared in Atlantic, The Nation and other journals...
...ular...
...Their confidence is not to be underestimated...
...He sees "an increasing tendency to embrace the notion that alternatives in educational opportunity represent a desirable development...
...Parents, he said, would no longer be "completely at the mercy of the impersonal dynamics of urban change...
...Religious values, he argued, are transmitted all through a school's environment, not just 29 September 1978:620 in classes labeled "religion...
...We use it to draw attention to the idea that individualism and collectivism are inseparable and collectivism is the chosen link among free human beings...
...On the other hand, as the church's official political representative in educational matters in California, McEHigott has been generally supportive of the voucher .principle, including an earlier initiative try by a Sou,them California group to get a voucher plan onto the ballot...
...Commonweal: 619 Coons is Catholic, Sugarman Jewish...
Vol. 105 • September 1978 • No. 19
