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Several months ago, I found myself enthusiastically cheering out loud as I stood at my kitchen sink washing dishes. The news had just come over the radio that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that the city of Cleveland's pioneering school voucher program is, in fact, completely legal. School vouchers are, quite simply, a form of scholarship that channels the flow of tax-supported education funding directly to families rather than to public school administrations. This allows parents--rather than bureaucrats--to apply their tax dollars toward public or private schools of their own choosing based on their family's own values and educational goals. The Cleveland program provides low-income parents of children in grades K-8 with vouchers of up to $2,250 to send their children to the accredited schools of their choice, be they public, private, or parochial. Participating schools have to agree to take the amount of the voucher as payment in full for a child's tuition. Plaintiffs in the hotly contested court case had argued that Cleveland's voucher program violates the constitutional principle of separation of church and state because parents can choose to spend their vouchers at Catholic or other faith-based schools. This makes no sense, however, since government education money already flows freely to private and parochial preschools and colleges in the form of childcare tax deductions and Pell grants. The Supremes made the same point in their opinion and noted that this is a non-issue in any voucher program that offers secular school options. This closely watched opinion means that the moment school choice advocates like me have been waiting for is at hand. It's only a matter of time until school systems all over the country start sprouting voucher programs and charter schools of all shapes, sizes, and philosophies. It's about time. In the interest of full disclosure, I want to say up front that my three children--a fifth-grader, a second-grader, and a preschooler--all attend private schools. In other words, not only do I believe in school choice, I have exercised it on behalf of my own kids. Additionally, of course, I continue to pay taxes to support our generally mediocre and monolithic local public school system. In essence, I pay tuition twice for the privilege of opting out of sending my children to schools I do not believe would offer them the education I want them to have. My three kids' schooling needs are as individual as they are, and as their parent, I am best able to evaluate the right school, teacher, and educational method for each of them. For example, two of my kids do best in a Montessori classroom, while another needs extra support with math. I have never been able to understand the logic behind matching a particular child to a particular classroom based almost entirely on that child's street address. Interestingly, annual tuition at the private Montessori school attended by two of my children amounts to less than the per-pupil amount spent each year in our local public schools. This is not an isolated statistic; many private and public charter schools across the country offer parents demonstrably higher achievement, smaller class sizes, and specialized courses of study for fewer dollars per student per year than the demographically-matched public schools in the same district. One of the most frequently repeated criticisms of vouchers is that they will drain funds from the public schools. In fact, voucher programs do not change the per-pupil funding levels in the public schools. The children remaining behind still have access to the full per-pupil amount that has been budgeted for that school based on enrollment. Since no voucher programs currently allow parents to take anything near the full amount of per-pupil funds designated for each child in a public school as a voucher, this point is moot. Parents, educators, and others who favor choice and variety within the framework of a publicly financed educational system are often labeled as elitist right-wing nuts. When I--someone who generally votes Democrat, is pro-union, and holds progressive social views--share my opinions on school vouchers with friends, they often ask me whether I support public education at all. My answer is that I support equal access to education for all American children. It is my belief that our current system of public education denies that equal access to many disadvantaged families. Currently, only middle- and upper-class families are able to make meaningful educational choices for their children, either by moving into a better (and more expensive) school district, by one parent staying home to homeschool, or by shelling out the money for private school tuitions. Poor children--both rural and urban--are trapped in their government-assigned public schools. While there certainly are many terrific public schools out there, the odds are that you won't find them in blue-collar, poor, or very rural areas. Given this scenario, economist-historian Andrew Coulson has rightly said that the pertinent question is this: "Would vouchers or some other form of scholarships for low-income families reduce or enlarge the educational gap between rich and poor that exists in public schools?" As evidence from the increasing number of voucher programs around the country becomes available, it's clear that the answer to this question is that it would reduce the gap. Current voucher programs are compensatory, meaning that only poor children qualify. Suddenly, these children's parents have choices (although not as many as they will have in the future as more parents begin to demand the same access to choice). Furthermore, according to Caroline Hoxby, a Harvard University economist, families who utilize vouchers to enroll their children in private schools see both higher achievement from their children and, most telling of all, higher achievement from the public schools they left behind. It appears that market forces work among schools, just as they do in other areas of American life. When public schools lose customers, they tend to try harder, a win-win scenario for both the children whose parents have enrolled them elsewhere and the children who remain. While I've taken my share of criticism from liberal friends and acquaintances about my stance on school vouchers, I like to point out that, unlike many of the best known and most outspoken critics of school choice initiatives, at least I'm honest about where I stand. Individuals such as Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton, and thirty-three percent of the House Education and Workforce Committee, to name but a few, routinely send their own children to the most exclusive private schools in the nation. Perhaps as psychologist Alfred Adler noted, "It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them." Additionally, according to Jeff Jacoby, a columnist for the Boston Globe, many public school teachers choose private schools for their own kids. According to a report last year in the New York Daily News, most of the public officials who determine education policy in New York City send their own children to private schools, including Schools Chancellor Harold Levy, former mayor Rudy Giuliani, and a majority of the members of the city's Board of Education. In other words, they believe in the public schools in theory only; they aren't going to sacrifice their own offspring on the altar of their political platforms. Yet these same policy makers are fighting tooth and nail to protect a system in which less-affluent families are trapped inside the public schools that happen to be closest to their domiciles, no matter how decrepit or even dangerous they may be. As revealed by the growing body of research indicating that parents who have a choice in where their children go to school and how they are taught are more involved in all areas of their kids' lives, school choice will prove to be an empowering force in the lives of American families. I myself eagerly await the day when I can use some of the money I pay into the public school system to pay for the schools my children actually attend.
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