From: atfurman@cup.portal.com (A T Furman)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Public schooling
Date: Thu,  8 Oct 92 02:08:00 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
  <1ast3uINNj1@armory.centerline.com>

IMPRIMIS ONLINE

Volume 21, Number 3a
Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan 49242
March, 1992


"Inner City Kids: Why Choice Is Their Only Hope"
by A. Polly Williams, State Representative, Wisconsin

-----------------------------------

PREVIEW: Education is the nation's top growth industry. Annual 
spending on education has increased over 300 percent in less than 
twenty years. And we are spending five times more on each student 
than we did fifty years ago. Why, then, are America's schools in 
crisis?  Why have education task forces failed to achieve 
significant reform?

     Polly Williams and J. Patrick Rooney (see next article) say 
it's time to stop relying on more money, more task forces, more 
experts, and more bureaucrats: genuine reform can only be brought 
about by creating incentives for schools--and therefore students-- 
to succeed, i.e., by introducing competition. Williams and Rooney 
addressed 350 St. Louis community leaders and educators during the 
Shavano Institute for National Leadership seminar, "Public/Private 
Education: Should Parents Be Free to Choose?" on October 16-17, 
1991

-------------------------------------

   Since 1976, Milwaukee has been under court order to "racially 
balance" its public schools. Now, there are about one hundred 
thousand school-age children in this city. Approximately 70 
percent are black or belong to other minorities. How do you 
"racially balance" a system in which 70 percent of the population 
is made up of minorities and only thirty percent is white? How do 
you justify the millions of dollars that the federal and state 
government are paying the schools to achieve this impossible goal?

   The same court order mandates that only 30 percent of the 
teachers can be black. "Racial balance" is the goal once again. 
But if the city is 70 percent minority, where are the non-black 
teachers supposed to be coming from? And why are black teachers 
who want to work in the inner city prevented from teaching?

   Below are some maps that will show what happens when the 
government and the courts try to force "racial balance." In the 
middle of the first map, the small circle is an inner city school, 
and every one of the round black dots represents one of the other 
schools in Milwaukee. Under the "racial balance" plan, black 
children who would ordinarily attend the inner city school in 
question are bussed all over the district--to a hundred and four 
different schools.

   Historically, blacks have demanded equal opportunity education; 
what they've gotten instead is forced desegregation. What do 
blacks want? We want the same thing whites want. We want our kids 
educated in their own communities. Yet look at the second map, 
showing the bus routes for just three schools. (Imagine a map 
showing the bus routes for over one hundred schools!)

   Better than anything, these bus routes show the chaos and 
confusion caused by forced "racial balance."  They also show 
corruption: the government pays the educrats an extra thousand 
dollars in desegregation funds for every new route. For the last 
decade and a half, forced busing in Milwaukee has cost taxpayers 
$335 million.
 

Public Schools: 90 Percent Failure Rate
 
   In the meantime, the public schools are failing to educate our 
children. Sixty percent of all Milwaukee ninth graders do not 
complete high school, and of the 40 percent who stay in the school 
and walk across the stage to receive their diplomas, only 10 
percent can read. For what amounts to a 90 percent failure rate, 
we pay $600 million a year to support the Milwaukee public schools-
that averages out to about $6000 per student. The educrats keep 
saying, "You've got to give us more money, because it's tough to 
educate these inner city kids. They are poor, and they are raised 
by single mothers; we can't expect them to learn..."

   That's the stereotype: poor black children are slow learners, 
difficult and expensive to educate. Well, my children were raised 
in a single parent home. My husband and I divorced when the eldest 
was thirteen and the youngest was five. After the divorce, five of 
us had to live on my salary, which was only $8000 a year. And we 
did live on it, though we were certainly living below the poverty 
level. According to the educrats and all the experts defining who 
we were, my children were simply not supposed to make it. I am 
happy to tell you that the educrats were wrong, because my 
children did make it and they were not stereotypes.

   But poor black children do share a major disadvantage. Unlike 
those whose parents can vote with their feet and enroll in good 
private schools, poor black children are forced to go to the 
school the government selects for them. That's not right. We're 
supposed to educate all children, because if we don't educate them 
we're going to incarcerate them--Wisconsin, for example, has eight 
new prisons on the drawing board, but no new schools. The state 
should be encouraging the establishment of more private and public 
schools and more private businesses--giving children basic 
academic skills and putting adults to work instead of giving them 
endless social programs. Blacks want to learn and to earn their 
way just like everybody else. We don't want welfare that just puts 
us back on the plantation--this time the government plantation.

   And blacks don't want their children to be forced to attend 
public schools if there are better alternatives. In the Milwaukee 
public school system, 62 percent of the teachers and administra-
tors refuse to send their kids to the public schools. This flight 
from the system has had ironic results. When 23 suburban public 
schools were recently in danger of closing due to low enrollment, 
black children were simply bussed in, and the state gave the 
schools an extra $12,000 for each. So, the failing suburban public 
schools received a guaranteed source of students and more than $22 
million a year in additional government funding.
 

Private Schools and Parental Empowerment

   I opposed forced desegregation from the start. I wanted what 
most parents want: for my children to be educated in their own 
community. At the time, there were about a dozen private schools 
in the inner city of Milwaukee. They were previously Catholic 
institutions that had been reorganized as private nonsectarian 
academies, and they were a wonderful alternative for low-income 
and minority students--predominantly blacks, but also Hispanics, 
Asians and whites. They allowed students to get a good education 
in their own neighborhoods with teachers who really believed in 
them, rather than the educrats' stereotypes. What's really 
impressive is that these private schools had a 98 percent 
graduation rate.

   But they couldn't get by on the tuition they charged, and 
although successful, they were in danger of closing their doors. 
Meanwhile, the public schools were getting millions of our tax 
dollars whether they did a good job or not. So a few years ago, a 
small group banded together and approached the state legislature. 
We said: "Why not allow tax dollars to go to the schools that are 
working?"  We didn't know that vouchers had already been defeated 
in every other state where they'd been proposed, We didn't even 
call our proposal a voucher plan; we called it "parental 
empowerment" or "choice." Meetings were organized to discuss our 
proposal. We hoped to attract a few dozen people, but hundreds of 
enthusiastic parents began showing up and staying for sessions 
that ran on for hours. This shocked public school officials, 
especially since they couldn't get more than a few parents to any 
of their meetings.

   People often fall into the habit of saying, "How do you get the 
poor involved in the education of their children? They just don't 
care, or they don't know enough to make 'intelligent' choices." 
But, in reality, if you give them a sense that they can make a 
difference in the lives of their children, if you give them some 
power, you'll find out that poor parents can care more than 
anyone. They don't take education for granted. They know that 
education is the only way out of poverty. And when you empower 
people and give them a sense of ownership, they become 
responsible, and they learn how to make decisions. And when they 
are treated with dignity and respect, they respond to it.

   Choice empowers parents. It allows them to choose the best 
school for their children. It doesn't say, as the educrats do, 
that poor people are too dumb (they use the word "uninformed") to 
make choices. Poor people are the same as rich people. They may 
not have much money, but they have the same desires and the same 
needs. And poor people make decisions all the time. They decide 
where they are going to live, what grocery store to buy from, 
where to shop for clothes--they decide everything, but all of a 
sudden, the educrats claim that they don't have enough sense to 
make a decision about the education of their children.

   But the teachers' unions, the NAACP, the bureaucracy, and the 
educational establishment didn't agree. In the name of protecting 
the poor, they all opposed choice. We didn't try to beat them-- 
they were too powerful. Instead, we went directly to the parents, 
and we organized the community from the grassroots level, from the 
bottom up. And they kept coming to our meetings by the hundreds--
even the Joe Six-Packs and the Archie Bunkers. Republicans, 
Democrats, Jews, Catholics, Protestants and Muslims publicly spoke 
up in favor of the plan, even when it had nothing to do with their 
agendas.

   When we proposed choice, the parents in the audience said, "Are 
you serious? You mean we can take our children out of public 
schools?" They began showing up and sitting in the galleries at 
the state capitol and watching the legislators, who, for their 
part, were shocked that the parents were there. Like the educrats, 
they also believed that the poor didn't care.

   And to everyone's surprise, the parental empowerment bill--the 
first in the U.S.--passed into law. Starting in the 1990-91 school 
year, up to 1000 students could claim $2500 worth of tuition 
vouchers (a fraction, of course, of the per-student expense at 
public schools). This year, one private school had 600 applicants 
for 100 openings. Every private school in the inner city has a 
waiting list. Hundreds of low-income families want out of the 
public school system. Those who have succeeded in getting out are 
spreading the word: Their children, two to three grade levels 
behind in the public school, are now working at their grade 
levels. Once always absent, they are even refusing to stay home 
sick! A typical response is, "Please don't make me stay home--my 
teacher is expecting me." There are no gang problems and only a 
two percent drop out rate.

   Sure it's only one thousand in a city that has one hundred 
thousand students, and the educrats are fighting the bill in the 
state supreme court, but I think it's a real victory--and we've 
only just begun. If the poor people of Milwaukee can achieve 
something no other group in the nation has been able to do, then 
anything is possible.
 

-----------------------------------
 

Polly Williams is America's leading advocate of parental choice in 
education. Time, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, and "60 
Minutes" have reported on her successful efforts to secure private 
school vouchers--the first in the nation--for inner city students 
in Milwaukee. To millions of American parents who want the freedom 
to decide what education is best for their children, Polly 
Williams has become a national symbol of hope, courage and deter-
mination. A six-term state representative in the Wisconsin 
legislature, she holds the record for the highest number of votes 
for reelection--in 1986, the figure was 94 percent. 

-----------------------------------

Imprimis, On Line
 
Imprimis, meaning "in the first place," is a free monthly 
publication of Hillsdale College (circulation 355,000 worldwide). 
Hillsdale College is a liberal arts institution known for its 
defense of free market principles and Western culture and its 
nearly 150-year refusal to accept federal funds. Imprimis publish-
es lectures by such well-known figures as Ronald Reagan, Jeane 
Kirkpatrick, Tom Wolfe, Charlton Heston, and many more. Permission 
to reprint is hereby granted, provided credit is given to Hills-
dale College. Copyright 1992. For more information on free print 
subscriptions or back issues, call 1-800-437-2268, or 1-517-439-
1524, ext. 2319.


    Alan T. Furman         | VOTE LIBERTARIAN!!  Marrou/Lord in 92!!
---------------------------+----------------------------------------
  atfurman@cup.portal.com  |   (800)682-1776 for more information
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.marrou,alt.politics.elections