School Vouchers

Although Alec Gallup and Phi Delta Kappa like the 1994 question, we still consider it ambiguous and confus ing. It still combines public school choice and nonpublic school vouchers in a single question, denying poll respondents the option of approving one and opposing the other. Further, the question suggests that parental choice is all that is needed to get a child into a nonpublic school, whereas in the real world it is generally the nonpublic school that chooses which children to admit and with what criteria. We believe that a properly worded question would elicit opposition on the order of two to one, just as voters made clear in the twenty state referenda, and just as Gallup found in the poll released on August 22, 1995.

Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, writes that it is a mistake to think that using private school vouchers is equivalent to shopping at Macy's with a "big fat gift certificate." Using vouchers, Shanker says, is more analogous to applying for membership in an exclusive club.

n the most anticipated decision of its 2002 term, the Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, that the schoolvoucher program in Cleveland, Ohio , did not violate the Constitution's ban on the "establishment" of religion. Opponents of vouchers - that is, the use of public funds to help low-income families pay tuition at private schools, including religious schools - were predictably disappointed, but pledged to fight on. As Sen. Edward M. Kennedy declared, "Private school vouchers may pass constitutional muster," but they "are still bad policy for public schools."

Publicly funded school vouchers got their start in Milwaukee , Wisconsin , in 1990. Established at the urging of local black leaders and Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson (now the Secretary of Health and Human Services), the program was originally restricted to secular private schools and included fewer than a thousand needy students. To accommodate growing demand, religious schools were later allowed to participate, an arrangement declared constitutional in 1998 by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The Milwaukee program now provides a voucher worth up to $5,785 to more than 10,000 students, amounting to more than 15 percent of the school system's eligible population.

Charters have one important advantage over school vouchers: they address the supply side of the school choice equation. Although vouchers may give parents resources with which they can pay for private school, that means little unless private schools increase in number or expand in size. Yet the initial costs of starting a new school and recruiting a constituency for the school can be very large. With a charter from the state in hand, charter school operators are better placed to open a new school.

To see how school vouchers affect the fiscal resources available to public school children, the structure of public school financing needs to be briefly considered. Although the financial arrangements vary from one state to the next, on average, nationwide, 49 percent of the revenue for public elementary and secondary schools comes from state governments, while 44 percent is collected from local sources; the balance is received in grants from the federal government. Most of the revenue school districts get from state governments is distributed on a "follow the child" principle.