Hi Terrence, Agreed. and notice how the conservative have picked up the ball and ran with it? Then notice who is fighting it tooth and nail.
I say, WAY TO GO JEB BUSH!!
Alan Keyes
June 25 1999
Vouching for educational freedom
Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed legislation Monday making the state the first in the nation to offer a statewide program of vouchers to help parents of students in failing schools offset the cost of private education.
Opponents of the measure include the usual list of suspects, such as the ACLU and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People -- the NAACP. They have vigorously opposed the measure, and now say they will file lawsuits to prevent its implementation. If the ACLU is involved, of course, you can bet that the principal argument they will make is that the law violates the well-known constitutional requirement that government treat religious institutions like a smallpox epidemic, otherwise known as "the constitutional doctrine of the separation of church and state." The fact that the entire "doctrine" has been made up out of whole cloth won't slow them down any more than it ever has, although we can hope that the era of ACLU-style suppression of the free exercise of religion -- something that is actually protected by the Constitution, and not just by liberal sentiment - is drawing to a close.
Let's take a look at what is actually behind the opposition to the voucher idea by the NAACP and the educational establishment. Opponents charge that the program will siphon off "much-needed" funding, as well as the most promising students from failing schools, leaving them worse off than they had been. From our experience of voucher programs so far, it turns out that those arguments are not true. So the question remains, why is the education establishment so frantically opposed to vouchers and the entire school choice movement?
Once we put aside any lingering romantic notion that the educrats in America care about educating our children, the motive of the anti-choice politicking of the NAACP becomes clear. Fighting school choice serves the purposes of the reigning liberal establishment in the education bureaucracy - the NEA. The NEA understands that the school choice movement is a threat to their power over millions of Americans through the carefully nurtured monopoly structure of government schools.
The NAACP opposes school choice because their first interest is not the welfare of the children. Their first interest is their own political position -- and they have to play their role as part of the liberal coalition. The cost of membership in the liberal coalition is to blindly support the agenda and power plays driven by the rest of the coalition, even at the expense of people in the community they are supposed to represent. So a group like the NAACP ends up representing the NEA's organizational interests in the power game, rather than the real interests of folk at the grass roots. The NAACP can profit, in a Machiavellian way, if it helps its liberal buddies to fight battles against school choice so that they can retain their bureaucratic influence and control. This will help the NAACP organizationally, in terms of its political clout within the coalition.
For those of us thinking seriously about what will help to correct the deep and systemic damage that the government school monopoly has inflicted on our national life, different criteria will apply. The truth of the matter is that laws like the Florida voucher measure actually empower people at the grass roots to take steps to correct the failures of their children's education. This is particularly true for poorer people, in neighborhoods that are blasted by poverty, and crime, and all of the associated difficulties. Right now, such people are typically caught in a web of manipulation that makes them the helpless playthings of government, politicians, and the grinding forces of vested interests. As parents, they have very little real influence over the process that ultimately determines the education of their children.
Under a voucher system, those parents would know that if the public school is failing their child, they could come together with others in their community, perhaps with the assistance of a trusted private institution such as their church, and initiate a school program that would give their children an environment more conducive to learning. All that the educrats can see, of course, is resources "wasted" by being channeled in directions determined by parents rather than by themselves. By their definition, any resources that bureaucrats don't control are wasted. Of course, when resources follow the judgment and decisions of parents in support of a school they establish and control, it does precisely the opposite of "siphon off" critical resources for the educational task of the community. Redeployment of resources through vouchers actually empowers the most effective users of educational dollars, the parents, to create new and more effective vehicles for educating their children.
The only thing that educational choice would siphon off is power. It would take power out of the hands of politicians, educrats and bureaucrats, and put it in the hands of parents who don't have it now precisely and simply because they are not well off financially. As you may have noticed, the voucher movement is not resisted as strongly by the entrenched education interests in affluent areas as it is in poor communities. That's because in affluent areas those who decide that it is the right thing to do already can pull their kids out of failing government schools. And in large numbers, including many of the public school teachers themselves, they do pull their own children out of the failing government schools and put them into private ones.
I find it incongruous that the very same wealthy liberals who will get up in court for the ACLU and argue against voucher programs for the poor are using their own money to put their kids in quality private schools. Apparently, their view is that poorer parents shouldn't have the same opportunity that they have. Rather we should let those low-income parents continue to be the pawns and victims of a government-dominated system that is not producing the right results for their children.
A voucher program can put all parents, and especially those who now lack the financial clout to consider removing their children from public schools, in a position of strength when dealing with the existing government-dominated system. Parents who can choose to remove their children from the system can no longer be taken for granted. They can no longer be treated as simply the biological units that produce the captive clients for these schools, who must be monitored for evidence of abusive tendencies, but who can otherwise simply be ignored.
When the authorities at government schools know that the parent walking through the school door is somebody who can take their client away -- a client who is the basis for their bureaucratic power and control -- they may start treating that parent with a greater respect. They may start to remember that the customer is always right, and begin to listen more carefully to what Mom and Dad think their children need.
Under a voucher system, school authorities will be quietly aware of the fact that the parents have an alternative, and that if they feel abused, ignored, or that their needs are not being met, they can go somewhere else. For these reasons, the very existence of a voucher program will represent greater clout and greater power, even for those parents who decide to keep their children within the government dominated school system.
It is remarkable in human life how such power can help to produce a better attitude in the people with whom one is dealing. Our Founders understood that the most durable and effective human institutions would be those that were crafted from an understanding that people act from a mixture of good and bad motives -- we are all a little of the saint and the sinner. The government education industry has been set up on the basic assumption that government educational bureaucrats are saints, and they have understandably been tempted to abuse the power flowing from that assumption. Parents armed with vouchers are ideally suited to restore a little balance to the situation.
The whole approach of school choice has tremendous advantages for ALL concerned. This is what we would expect from a policy whose first principle is the capacity of the people to make the most important decisions in their lives competently without government baby-sitting. Moral conservatives should continue to work hard to make educational liberty a reality throughout the country. |
