President Bush announced last week that his administration filed briefs in two Supreme Court cases opposing the University of Michigan's race-based admissions guidelines. Bush's move was a bold one coming on the heels of the Trent Lott debacle; with his opponents eager to play the race card, Bush gambled politically by speaking out personally against affirmative action. His decision was not just brave, it was also principled and fair and ought to give education reformers hope.
The nod from the Bush administration will probably cement a Supreme Court majority against the type of unfair, arbitrary and domineering racial preferences used by the University of Michigan. But this isn't a blow to civil rights, as supporters of affirmative action fret. Instead, it is a tremendous opportunity to reexamine America's education system from top to bottom and to institute real reforms to help disadvantaged students close the educational gap.
University-level fixes should only be a starting point for education reform. One of the reasons that 25 years of Michigan-style affirmative action has done little more than gloss over the educational gap is that preferences ignore the root problems in K-12 education that perpetuate inequality. Public schools in urban centers -- the schools that service concentrated poor, minority populations -- also need a major overhaul.
One of the best -- worst -- examples is in the government's backyard: Washington, D.C. The 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress paints a grim picture of the District of Columbia Public Schools. Only six percent of DCPS eighth graders perform math at grade level; only 10 percent of fourth graders read at grade level. More than 40 percent never finish high school. And funding is hardly the problem: DCPS has approximately 11,000 employees and spends more than $10,400 per pupil (compared to a national average of around $7,500).
Given the circumstances, it's time to take another look at school vouchers. Public schools are failing those children most in need of a good education. Money and federal micromanagement have not remedied the situation. So give parents a choice: you can continue to send your child to public school or the state can give you a voucher of $2,000 to $5,000 to pay private school tuition. Kurt Schmoke, a former Democratic mayor of Balitmore and self-described convert to vouchers after wrestling with his city's failing schools, described the argument for vouchers succinctly: "My years of experience in education have led me to be in favor of school choice: quite simply, I believe in giving parents more choice about where to educate their children. My support of school choice is founded in the common sense premise that no parent should be forced to send a child to a poorly performing school."
Several cities and states have already experimented with voucher programs, and the results are encouraging. Again, Washington D.C. serves as a good example. A Harvard University study between 1998 and 2001 of a privately-funded voucher program in Washington showed that vouchers of only $1,700 were enough to help students escape the DCPS. The study concluded that voucher parents "are much more satisfied with their child's school." Better yet: "After two years in private schools, African-American students outperformed their public-school peers by nine percentile points in combined math and reading, a statistically significant difference." No wonder a Stanford University survey, conducted at the same time as the Harvard study and reported in The New Republic, found that 85 percent of poor, inner-city residents favor a voucher plan.
Then why did President Clinton veto a 1998 bill to create a publicly-funded voucher program in Washington? Indeed, why do vouchers continue to meet reflexive opposition from teachers unions and Democratic legislators? The arguments offered against vouchers fall apart under scrutiny. The most frequent criticism is that vouchers will drain money from poor public schools. Schmoke responds that "choice can only strengthen public education by introducing competition and accountability into the mix. If exercising this option leads to a mass exodus from certain underachieving schools, schools will learn this painful lesson: schools will either improve or close due to declining enrollments."
But then doesn't giving vouchers to private religious schools violate the separation of church and state? The G.I. Bill did the same thing and is heralded as a great education law. Besides, it isn't the state that gives money to religious schools -- the choice (and the voucher) comes from parents. But what if some families still can't afford private school tuition? With thousands of parents waiving $2,500 vouchers, schools will appear to take the vouchers and provide a good education for $2,500. Supply will emerge to meet demand. Competition between new schools for vouchers will also keep the quality of education high -- competition protects the consumer. But don't vouchers mainly benefit the elite? No -- they do the exact opposite. Upper and middle-class parents have long practiced school choice by pulling their children out from poor schools. Vouchers simply give poor parents the resources to do what their well-off peers have done for years.
The Bush administration, as a logical extension of its recent commitment to fairness in higher education, ought to announce a plan for a nationwide voucher experiment. Such a program should contribute funds to cities and states with voucher systems and offer tax breaks for the creation of more private voucher programs. The disadvantaged students currently trapped in crumbling public schools have little to lose and deserve a shot at a good education. It's time to make this genuine effort to close the educational gap.
