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To: Lane3 who wrote (16552)	7/3/2002 1:19:03 PM
From: Constant Reader	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

My point exactly. No good purpose WAS served and it is unlikely that any good purpose WILL BE served.

To: Lane3 who wrote (16552)	7/3/2002 1:20:18 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 21057

Taking School Choice to the Suburbs By James E. Ryan and Michael Heise Wednesday, July 3, 2002; Page A23 Last week's Supreme Court decision allowing the use of school vouchers was greeted by some with glee and by others with warnings of disaster. But all seem to assume that the decision is important not only for the constitutional principles it advances but also for the effect it will have on the school voucher movement. President Bush, taking an expansive view of the decision's potential effects, said this week that "the court declared that our nation will not accept one education system for those who can afford to send their children to a school of their choice" and another for those who cannot. A few facts: There are only three publicly funded voucher programs in the country, each of which provides a limited number of vouchers to poor students in failing, urban school districts, and all of which combined provide vouchers to less than one-tenth of 1 percent of public school students. Supporters and opponents of vouchers alike have long suggested that a favorable court decision would free the hands of cautious legislators and generate a torrent of new and expanded voucher programs. Our research suggests otherwise. While the court's decision does remove an important legal barrier, it does nothing to disturb existing political obstacles. Those obstacles are formidable and are created not only -- or even primarily -- by the teachers unions. Rather, the most important and least recognized opponents of widespread school choice plans are suburbanites -- especially suburban parents. People in the suburbs are generally satisfied with their neighborhood schools. They want to protect the physical and financial independence of those schools, as well as suburban property values, which are tied to local school quality (real or perceived). School choice threatens the independence of suburban schools by creating the possibility that outsiders, particularly urban students, will enter them and that local funds will exit them. When suburbanites perceive a threat to their schools, they fight back -- and they usually win. Consider school desegregation and school finance reform. Suburban districts largely succeeded in insulating their schools from the reach of desegregation decrees, which rarely went beyond the lines of urban districts or required suburban schools to participate in busing plans. Consequently, urban school districts were left to experience the costs and benefits of school desegregation, while most suburban schools remained safely on the sidelines. Suburban school districts have been equally successful in protecting their financial independence. Efforts to equalize school funding have largely failed. Even when funding schemes are reformed, wealthier, suburban districts are usually left free to devote as much of their local resources as they wish to their own schools. A similar pattern can be seen in school choice plans, almost all of which work to protect the autonomy of suburban schools. Public school choice programs, which include charter schools, rarely require suburban schools to open their doors to students from neighboring districts or to send locally raised revenues to another district. The few existing voucher plans mostly limit their reach to urban districts. The Cleveland plan itself, at issue in the Supreme Court's decision, is an example: Students in Cleveland were given a voucher that could be used in private schools within Cleveland and in any suburban public school that volunteered to accept voucher students. Perhaps not surprisingly, no schools volunteered. Meanwhile, proposals to expand voucher programs have been defeated time and again, in both legislative arenas and at the ballot box. Those proposals failed not because teachers' unions opposed them but because suburbanites did. If this pattern continues, voucher programs, as well as other school choice plans, will be limited in size and scope and will operate predominantly within urban districts. Such plans may indeed carry some benefits, as voucher supporters argue, and they may create some costs, as voucher opponents predict. But whatever happens, limited school choice plans will necessarily have a limited effect. They will not significantly improve academic achievement among disadvantaged students or current levels of racial and socioeconomic integration, and they will not inspire much competition among schools. Unless the politics change dramatically, school choice will be neither a panacea, as its supporters claim, nor a serious threat to traditional public schools, as its opponents argue. To achieve the full theoretical benefits of school choice, substantial research suggests that such policies must be broadened, especially in ways that will increase socioeconomic integration. Numerous studies confirm that one of the most effective ways to improve the academic performance of disadvantaged students is to move them into predominantly middle-class schools. Doing so would also increase racial integration in the schools. School choice has the potential to accomplish these goals by offering urban students the opportunity to choose schools outside their neighborhoods, which themselves are typically isolated by race and poverty. For choice programs to expand, however, suburbanites will have to be convinced that school choice can benefit rather than harm them. This will be a difficult argument to make to those already satisfied with their local schools, but it is the sort of conversation that needs to take place. James E. Ryan is a law professor at the University of Virginia. Michael Heise is a law professor at Case Western Reserve University. © 2002 The Washington Post Company