One of the biggest issues on the ballot this November is the California voucher initiative. If this initiative passes, it could start a landslide of similar legislation all over the country. And if it fails, it would be a major setback for supporters of vouchers. Proposition 174, as the voucher initiative is called, would divert roughly 10 percent of the money now spent for public schools into vouchers for youngsters already attending private school. In addition, youngsters moving from public to private schools would get vouchers worth $2,600, which would also come out of funds for public education.
When the California voucher initiative was written, its advocates were confident about getting the support of business. Business people and business organizations seemed a natural constituency for legislation promising to bring market competition to education. But instead of rallying to support Proposition 174, many business people have come out against it.
Some of their questions are the hard-headed ones you would expect from business people. Is it smart to give away billions of dollars of taxpayers' money without any accountability? You couldn't run a business that way. And what about the financial implications? If Proposition 174 passes, won't California be facing a terrible choice? Either raise taxes so private schools will not be financed at the expense of public schools. Or accept funding cuts that would put California's public schools in the cellar and make it difficult to train and attract the skilled workers that California needs.
But business concerns about the voucher initiative don't stop with fears about more taxes or poorly trained workers. Many business people and companies also reject Prop 174 because they have a broad vision of education. For example, the Hewlett-Packard company does not favor any legislation that "allows public funding for private schools," and it states its opposition to Prop 174 in terms of the importance of public schools to our society:
Public schools do more than prepare young people for the working world .... They serve as an important unifying force by attracting students from many cultural, ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds. One of the most eloquent appeals to business in business terms was made by Robert Nelson, CEO of Nelson and Lucas Communications, when he urged the California Chamber of Commerce to come out against the voucher initiative. (A majority was convinced, but the chamber requires a two-thirds majority to take a position so it remains neutral.)
Voucher supporters claim that the initiative will return accountability to education, but as Nelson points out, Prop 174 will set up schools that are much less accountable than public schools:
[It] provides for no oversight whatsoever about how [public] money is spent. ... I can point out a lot of abuses in the public schools. They do occur, just as they occur in other institutions. But one of the reasons we know about the abuses ... is because the records are public .... With Proposition 174, we will never know how one cent is spent.
We don't have to guess about the kinds of abuses that will go on: We've already seen billions of dollars lost on student loans as a result of fly-by- night trade schools. And parents will be under the same disadvantage in choosing a good school as trade school customers. Since schools will not be required to report things like test scores and graduation rates, there will be no reliable basis on which to choose.
Nelson worries about the majority of California's future workers, who will be educated in California's public schools whether or not the voucher initiative passes:
Are these students going to be better educated if they are in schools that have 10 percent less funding? If they have fewer teachers, fewer teachers' aides, fewer computers, fewer supplies? Does that help give you a better quality work force?
And those of you who look to other states to attract quality employees ... how anxious are they going to be to move to a state that. .. [will be] forty-first in terms of how much money we spend per pupil, right below Louisiana.
Nelson also worries about the effect of Prop 174 on California's communities:
Will you have a better place to work in, and live in, if this proposition passes? ... [Do] things go better in your company when everyone says, "Well, I'm going to go do my thing .... " Or do you accomplish more when people sit down and take off their coats and say, "Look, we've got problems and we've got differences; let's work these things out together."
The people who support Prop 174 realize that schools won't improve without incentives, but they are pushing the wrong kind of incentive. As any good business person would tell you, attracting customers, which is what Prop 174 is about, is not enough. You need to improve your product, and Prop 174 will do nothing to achieve that.