People who advocate vouchers seldom try to deal with the tough questions.
A couple of years ago when I was in Aspen, Colorado, debating Jack Kemp about education issues, he asked for the floor just as he was about to leave and threw this one at me: How can President Clinton justify putting his own daughter in an expensive private school when he denies that privilege to other students? Isn't it hypocritical for him to send Chelsea to Sidwell Friends School and then not support vouchers so other kids can have the same opportunity?
You often hear this argument and variants of it, and it sounds like a zinger, but it really isn't worth much. Was Kemp implying that if every kid in D.C. got a voucher worth a thousand dollars or so, they would all be able to go to Sidwell Friends School where Chelsea Clinton goes? That would only happen if they could pass Sidwell's stiff entry requirements and if their parents could come up with $12,000 to $14,000 over and above the amount of the voucher.
Was Kemp perhaps advocating that vouchers be raised to the $8,000 or $10,000 or $12,000 level so that everybody could afford tuition to an elite school? I doubt it. Vouchers of that size would put an end to any hope of ever balancing the budget; and the "scholarship" or voucher Dole and Kemp are currently talking about is $1,000. I also doubt that Kemp was advocating that Sidwell lower its standards so that everyone who wanted to attend could. When it comes to hypocrisy, Kemp comes out on the worse end of this argument.
People who advocate vouchers always make putting together a program that works sound a lot simpler and easier than it is, and they seldom try to deal with tough questions like these:
• Can you really give a voucher to poor children and not to middle-class parents who have been struggling over the years to keep their children in private schools? What about middle-class parents who have always dreamed of private school for their kids? And if all the rest get vouchers, will you be able to deny them to well-off families that can and do send their youngsters to private schools? One of voucher supporters' favorite claims is that vouchers will save all kinds of money. If the public ends up paying tuition for the I0-plus percent of kids who are already in private school, vouchers sound more like a big new entitlement.
• Choice is a very appealing idea, but whose right to choose are we talking about? Families think they will be able to choose the school they'd like, but that is not the way it works. The schools choose the students, and not every student is going to be chosen by a school like Sidwell. Of course other schools will appear in response to the voucher money that will be available, but we don't know what they will be like. However, if our experience with the trade schools that have grown fat off federal student aid programs is any guide, many of the new schools will be much better at collecting their fees than at providing a good education for the students.
• How can we reconcile a private school's right to teach whatever it pleases and govern itself as it chooses with the public's right to maintain some sort of quality control and accountability? Will we require that private schools meet state standards for coursework and that their students pass minimum competency exams? This is not very onerous, but private schools tend to consider even modest requirements an infringement of their rights, and much voucher legislation omits any kind of accountability mechanism.
• Will vouchers really provide a high-quality education for all of our children? E.D. Hirsch's discussion about student achievement in several European countries in his excellent new book The Schools We Need (Doubleday, 1996) offers evidence to the contrary. In Holland, which has a voucher system, achievement levels of poor children are considerably lower than those of more well-to-do children. Hirsch finds that a common curriculum, which Holland does not have, leads to a greater equality of achievement. Vouchers apparently do not.
• Is it in the best interests of this country to give up the ideal of the Common School? We have always been a nation of many different ethnic groups and races. Our democracy has depended on our children's going to public schools where they have learned to work and play together -- and get used to their differences. Now, when the ties that bind us seem especially fragile, shouldn't we be working to strengthen this ideal instead of abandoning it?
It is easy to paint a pretty picture if you omit many of the salient facts. The vision of all kinds of American children, both rich and poor, attending Chelsea's school -- if vouchers became a reality - is very attractive. But it is a fraud.