RE-DEFINING TIMES FOR SCHOOL CHOICE ADVOCATES?

By

John Merrifield^*

July 29, 2002

(Published in the August, 2002 GOPUSA Eagle)

On June 27, 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court said religious schools could participate in voucher programs. Certainly, the immediate effects of that ruling can only be positive. Thousands of voucher-supported users of religious schools won’t have to return to unacceptable, often dangerous public schools.

But the long-term effects of the Supreme Court decision are in doubt. Will any large share of the 47 million K-12 children ever see the benefits of a truly competitive education industry? To achieve that, policy reforms will have to eliminate the pervasive financial discrimination against users of non-public schools. The Supreme Court decision may make that less likely. What do I mean by financial ‘discrimination’? The public school system averages over $7000 per student without having to directly charge its users. Families have to pay school taxes whether their children use public schools or not. Private schools are scarce and mostly church-run because nonpublic schools are in competition with a much better funded free service. Even users of chartered public schools, best thought of as additional school districts, suffer financial discrimination. Additional districts with less money per student, even with some additional autonomy, cannot provide the genuine competition, and wide range of choices our diverse children desperately need.

The possibility that the Supreme Court would prohibit religious school participation in publicly funded school choice programs was never a legal barrier to a competitive education industry. A school choice program that limited financial discrimination to users of religious schools, though not ideal, would have been sufficient to foster genuine competition. But because religious schools dominate the existing, tiny, severely disadvantaged private share of the K-12 system, the prominent choice advocacy organizations assumed that the Supreme Court would decide the constitutionality of vouchers. They thought choice programs could never offer real choices to many families if the vast majority of current private schools were excluded. They ignored the possibility of substantial rapid growth in secular private school capacity; something nearly certain to result from Friedman-style voucher or tax credit programs. That static world thinking made the First Amendment concern into a major psychological barrier.

The Supreme Court has finally put that unnecessarily large concern to rest. Now that the government doesn’t have to discriminate against families that prefer religious schools, we can focus on the more crucial political question. Will many advocates of modest adjustments – the vast majority - redefine themselves as advocates of system transformation? Or will they use the court ruling to seek more Florida-Milwaukee-Cleveland-style limited voucher programs?

The hype about the modest gains achieved by the existing limited programs, and the static world thinking and other fallacies that led to the misperception of the Supreme Court issue, strongly favor more of the same. Other than Milton Friedman’s original proposal, every one since suggests only modest reductions in the financial discrimination against nonpublic schools. Most proposals, and all existing publicly funded choice programs, only selectively trim the financial advantages of the public school system. They don’t significantly change most people’s choices. The proposals typically allow a small share of low-income families or some victims of the worst schools to use a nonpublic alternative at taxpayer expense as long as the alternative costs half or less than what taxpayers spend per child on the public system. The ability of so many nonpublic alternatives to meet the competitive challenge with much less money per child is no excuse to propose policies that favor the least efficient schools at the expense of more efficient ones. The resounding election defeats of such system-over-children proposals refute the political calculus argument that supposedly underlies proposals that promise to provide choice without harming the existing system.

Maybe the Supreme Court decision will end the preoccupation with tinkering and selectively increasing opportunities for transfers within the existing system? There is reason for hope. After all, most prominent choice advocates will tell you that they have always sought system transformation even though the vast majority of their laudatory comments and concrete proposals say otherwise. There’s plenty of evidence to lean on, and another presidential commission (February, 2001 report on National Security) re-affirmed the 1983 Blue Ribbon Commission’s “Nation at Risk” assessment. And the public generally agrees. Until the ‘911’ attacks, K-12 problems were the #1 policy concern nearly everywhere.

The nation is at risk because very few people have good school choices. In most places, only the priciest choices on the menu produce acceptable results. That’s a reality that not enough people have accepted. Typical thinking runs something like this. The system stinks, but my kids go to great schools. Fix the system, but leave my kids’ school alone. And they won’t revise their perception of reality as long as choice advocates give their unqualified support to proposals that shuffle some children among the existing choices, but leave the key elements of the current system intact.

I’m not suggesting an all-or-nothing approach. Using existing funding to increase the range of choices for anyone anywhere helps some without harming others as long as creating some small escape hatches doesn’t distract choice advocates and the public from the system transformation imperative. It is best to keep efforts focused on system transformation, and let political compromise produce the escape hatches until the transformation becomes feasible. Offer qualified support for escape hatch approaches, and do not call them experiments. According to Webster’s dictionary, a genuine experiment tests something that is a “tentative procedure.” The effects of small escape hatch approaches can’t inform us how genuine competition would transform the K-12 system, and small escape hatches are not legitimate tentative long-term procedures when the system badly serves almost everyone.

With the legal cloud and associated psychological barrier removed, choice advocates can re-define themselves as advocates of system transformation. It won’t take long to figure out if they will. In a few states, political and legal attacks on the Blaine Amendments in their constitutions are necessary precursors to system transformation. Everywhere else, correcting misperceptions of the K-12 problem and re-definition of choice advocacy starts with the policy changes choice proponents publicly advocate. We sanctify a dysfunctional system when we offer policies that can’t significantly change it.

Though I’m glad we probably won’t have to find out what would have happened if the Supreme Court had declared that religious schools can no longer cash vouchers, such a defeat might have been a shorter route to the competitive education industry we desperately need. Since the exclusion of religious schools from voucher programs would have made small-scale programs nearly pointless, it might have shifted choice advocates’ attention to the only remaining alternative; large-scale programs with little or no financial discrimination against secular nonpublic schools. The exclusion of religious schools will only slow the growth of alternatives to public schools. We’ll find out only if a future court reverses the narrow 5-4 June 27, 2002 ruling upholding religious school participation in publicly funded choice programs. 5-4 and retirements are imminent! Hmm! We may have to go that route? It may be the only viable route for the states that cannot repeal their especially restrictive Blaine Amendments.

* Professor of Economics, University of Texas – San Antonio (78207), and author of The

School Choice Wars (Scarecrow Education Press, 2001). Office: 210-458-2519. FAX:

210-458-2515. E-mail: Jmerrifield@utsa.edu. An Abstract, Table of Contents, book

sample, and link to the publisher are at: business.utsa.edu/faculty/jmerrifi/.