Sauce for Goose, Sauce for Gander
June 14, 2001

Given their six-figure salaries--and the fact that more than 100 lawmakers are worth at least $1 million--it's doubtful that any member of Congress whose child was in a bad school would be stuck there long. Legislators have the financial wherewithal to enroll their kids in better private schools. Yet when presented an opportunity to spread that kind of choice around to folks less well off, Congress turned thumbs-down. Lawmakers who beat back vouchers said they did it out of concern for those trapped in substandard schools. With friends like these ...

A key platform in George W. Bush's run for the White House was school vouchers, which would allow parents of modest means the same kind of educational mobility to move their kids out of failing public schools as wealthier Americans enjoy by virtue of their ability to pay private tuition or move to suburbs with better public schools. Using government dollars, parents would be able to enroll in schools run by private or religious groups. Some education ''experts'' say it takes time to bring poor public schools up to snuff. That may be fine for academics, but here on Earth parents know that their child's window of opportunity is short. Yet a modest pilot voucher program limited to 10 school districts in three states was defeated in the Senate this week, 58-41.

The Bush education reform initiative still has some great components: increased funding, more accountability for schools, annual testing. And while vouchers were excised, don't expect this to be the last gasp for choice. Among those voting for the plan was Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), whose foray into national politics as the vice presidential running mate to Al Gore may not be his last. And polls indicate that a growing number of Americans, particularly minorities suffering on the front lines of inferior public education, want vouchers. Paternalism be damned.

The Senate debate included the tired old argument that vouchers would eat away at scarce dollars allocated to public schools, thereby harming the public institutions. Yet a recent Harvard study that looked at one of the nation's oldest voucher efforts--in Milwaukee-- found scholastic improvement not only for students who used vouchers, but for the public schools they fled, too. Why? Because these failing educational institutions now had some much-needed competitive pressures placed upon them.