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WE SHOULD CELEBRATE SCHOOL CHOICE
AS GOOD FOR ALL STUDENTS
By David Brennan, Akron industrialist and proponent of school vouchers and charter schools.

The writer is an Akron industrialist who chaired the 1991 commission formed by Gov. George Voinovich to study school choice. He has been at the forefront of the voucher and later charter school movements in Ohio. He is a former trustee of Ohio State University and Case Western Reserve University.

By David L. Brennan

A strong, and to some a frightening, wind blew through the American educational establishment just a year ago on June 27 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Cleveland school voucher program.

School choice was legally opened to all. Failing public schools and dysfunctional systems were no longer safe from competition.

Minority children and children of the economically disadvantaged need no longer be sentenced to lives of semi-functional illiteracy.

The court's historic decision has given states and cities across the country an opportunity to change this by allowing, for the first time, competition with the established public school system for the taxpayers' dollar.

The power of the court's decision on vouchers has also forced the educational establishment to begin at least to consider educational alternatives as never before -- charter, contract, private, magnet, voucher, and home schooling, if only as a cover.

Beyond the legal decision, the high court answered the more fundamental human question of who has a greater right to decide as to where a child should go to school -- the state or the child's parents?

No one should be frightened by school choice. Everyone should be concerned with school failure.

The past and ongoing tragedy of the nation's inner-city public schools threatens America's ability to compete in an ever more challenging world.

Reformed school systems could, in fact, play a critical role in reversing the decline of our cities.

School-choice opponents contend that school options will severely damage the public school system. I have much more faith in the public school system than they do.

Armed with the court's decision, a grass-roots revolution of determined parents can force the public schools to do a better job or pay the penalty. This will raise the quality of primary and secondary education across America. Public education is not exempt from the economic reality that competition improves all competitors.

Indeed, there is a growing body of evidence that competition is already improving public schools in areas where there are alternatives to the state monopoly system.

The highly regarded Koret Task Force on K-12 Education has stated: ``Choice-based reforms have not had a fair test. Most evidence to date suggests that they can boost student learning and parental satisfaction, but constraints have kept them from being tried in full. Opponents have hamstrung school-choice programs at every turn: fighting voucher programs in legislative chambers and courtrooms; limiting per pupil funding so tightly that it's impractical for new schools to come into being, capping the number of charter schools and regulating and harassing them into near conformity with conventional schools.''

A recent well-researched report of the Heritage Foundation stated: ``New studies have added to the growing body of evidence that, when parents are empowered to choose their children's schools -- whether they choose public, public charter, private or home schools -- all students can benefit.

``This research has added to the growing recognition that competition produced by school choice improves the public system.''

To date, 10 states have put in place publicly funded voucher or tax credit programs, and 39 states and the District of Columbia have charter school laws. State legislative sessions saw the introduction of more than 40 school choice bills in 2002.

As surveys continue to show increasingly broad-based support for choice, the most obdurate opponents of school choice have decided to base their last-ditch legal opposition on the most notorious examples of government sanctioned bigotry remaining in America, the Blaine amendments, to some state constitutions.

Conceived in 1876, the Blaine amendment stated that no public money or land should be put under the control of religious sects. These amendments were added to state constitutions, especially in the West, as a prerequisite for being considered for statehood.

These laws are not only outdated, but have been subverted by choice opponents as an excuse to keep low-income students in poorly functioning public schools.

I am not accusing opponents of being bigoted, but simply of being willing to use these vestigial remnants of bigotry as their last hope in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. These amendments, once directed at Roman Catholics, now damage African-Americans and other poor minorities.

Refusing to examine alternatives to a failed system would be intellectually unacceptable in any field of endeavor. When the failed system concerns the welfare of children, it should be beyond debate.

The 1-year-old Supreme Court decision was the first salvo in what bids fair to be a long and difficult struggle. My fervent hope is that it has also signaled the beginning of an open-minded, joint effort by all those dedicated to putting kids first.

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