Why all the fuss over President-elect and Mrs. Clinton's decision to send their daughter to an elite private school in Washington rather than a D.C. public school?
In selecting a private school, the Clintons did what President Bush, Vice-president Quayle, Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander, former Secretary of Education William Bennett and a large number--probably most--of the senators and members of the House of Representatives and the president's cabinet have been and are doing. And that includes Democrats as well as Republicans.
Why hasn't the question been raised about them? Maybe because Clinton has spoken so much about public education. The critics say that, if the president-elect had selected a public school, he would have shown his commitment to public education. Does that mean that none of these other people has been committed to public education? Hardly. Many have excellent, lifelong records on this issue. Indeed, the selection of a public school--especially when the available public schools are clearly inferior-- might not show a commitment to public education so much as a willingness to sacrifice the interests of the child for political popularity or empty symbolism.
Another charge is that sending Chelsea to private school represents a rejection of public education. Nonsense! Given the choices they had in Little Rock, the Clintons sent their daughter to a public school. Did that represent a rejection of private education in general or just a selection among the schools that were available to them?
Those who support vouchers, which would use public money to send children to private schools, have also picked up on the Clintons' decision. They say that the President-elect has chosen an elite private school for his own child and that surely poor parents are entitled to the same choice for their children. Now, the tuition at Sidwell Friends, where Chelsea Clinton will be going, is over $10,000 a year. Are these people really advocating $10,000 vouchers when the average school district in the country spends about $6,200 per pupil? The voucher that was proposed by President Bush was $1,000, and that certainly would not help very many poor youngsters go to Sidwell. But even if the voucher were pegged at $10,000 instead of $1,000, there's no possibility that Sidwell would have places for everyone who wanted to attend. This whole business of making believe that there are thousands of Sidwells out there waiting to be chosen by students with vouchers is ridiculous.
When one of the local Washington TV stations interviewed a little African-American boy about where Chelsea should enroll, he said, "She'd better not come to our school. It's pretty rough." Undoubtedly part of the Clintons' decision had to do with what many urban schools are like, with drugs and constant fear of violence and disruptive youngsters, who are yelling and screaming and taking so much of the teachers' time that not much education goes on. Sidwell isn't like that. Unlike the public schools, it doesn't have to accept kids who are likely to cause trouble. And if the school admissions people found they had made a mistake, they would, in a short time, get rid of that youngster.
We need to take the roughness out of urban schools. We need to make sure that youngsters who are violent and disruptive can be moved to special facilities so that other children will not be afraid to come to school and those who want to learn can do so. And we need to work toward a Washington, a New York and a Los Angeles where the schools follow John Dewey's dictum: "What the best and wisest [parents want for their] own child, that must the community want for all its children." There would be no better place to start the national effort for urban schools than in the nation's capital. And no better way to do it than by bringing together the union, the school board and the parents under the sponsorship of our new president. And when we've fixed up the Washington schools so that they are great places for the kids who now go to them, maybe senators and representatives will send their children there, too.
It's true that even if public schools were all they could be, some national leaders might still choose to send their children to private schools. They might want more privacy or they might prefer that their children go to school with kids who are wealthy or socially prominent. But at least decisions would not be based on great differences in educational quality or safety, as they are now. And the little boy who advised Chelsea Clinton against his school would be able to say, "She should come to our school. It's really great!"