On the Vouchers Decision

Two opinion pieces on Townhall.com today underscore the victory achieved for the pro-vouchers crowd with the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.

Bill Murchison writes:

The [education] bureaucracy is terrified that competition between public and private schools would undermine that reflexive, unthinking support to which the publics believe themselves entitled. Accordingly, that competition must be suppressed. There can't even be pilot programs. Such programs might get the customers to comparing value, as in a supermarket or department store.

He then addresses the two main critiques of vouchers: that they drain funding from public schools and breach the line of separation between church and state. On the first point, he argues that it is actually a good thing that public schools will have their resources drained, as that will force them to raise their standards. Likewise, he dismisses the concerns about “put[ting] innocent schoolchildren in the way of proselytization” because, simply, vouchers “offer them better educational alternatives.”

In the other commentary, famed economist (for some) Thomas Sowell explicitly adresses the concern about “creaming”:

The truly ugly aspect of the case against vouchers is the objection that vouchers will allow private schools to "skim off" the best students from the public schools. Students are not inert objects being skimmed off by others. These students and their parents choose what they want to do -- for the first time, as a result of vouchers setting them free from the public school monopoly.

When these voucher critics send their own children off to upscale private schools, do they say that Phillips Academy or Sidwell Friends School are "skimming" the best students out of the public schools? Affluent parents are simply doing what any responsible parents would do -- choosing the best education they can get for their children.

Only when low-income parents are now able to do the same thing is it suddenly a question of these students being "skimmed" by other institutions. But whenever any group rises from poverty to prosperity, whether by education or otherwise, some do so before others. Why should low-income families be told that either all of them rise at the same time or none of them can rise?

Over at NRO, Peter Ferrara warns his fellow conservatives that “despite the appalling weakness of the dissents, choice reformers need to recognize that the retro Left never concedes defeat. They will fight to undermine this decision until they win, or until it becomes clear even to them that there is no way they can. If school-choice reformers are going to maintain this win, they must understand this decision and the issues it involves, and stand ready to counterattack in its defense.”

To all that, Rethinking Schools responds: “While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that school vouchers may be legal, they remain bad public policy. There are three key reasons: private schools lack accountability, private schools do not have to serve all students, and private school vouchers divert attention and resources from proven reforms that can improve our public schools.” They urge readers to check out their resource page on vouchers.

Tommy Ates in Online Journal writes:

The problems of the public system comes from the lack of adequate teacher salaries and plummeting tax-base of inner cities, as the ravages of white and black flight take their toll on funds for school infrastructure and special education. The solution of school vouchers, now approved by the Supreme Court, is the implicit notion that the American public school system is a failure and should be abandoned.

If this notion is true, what is the fate of those youth unable to leave? No one wishes to discuss that question. Not conservative activists, not parochial schools, not middle-class parents who can afford to leave.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson grapples with the support for vouchers amongst African Americans (a point much lauded by pro-vouchers folk), concluding that:

Civil rights leaders will continue to plead with black parents that tax dollars for vouchers subsidize religious schools, leave the poorest of poor students behind in even poorer and more racially isolated schools which further perpetuate the cycle of educational neglect, and are a scheme by conservatives to torpedo public education. Their plea will fall on deaf ears until public schools educate poor black kids the same way they educate kids in the suburbs.

And, finally, Paul Street and Dennis Kaas lay out a good summary for “The Case Against School Vouchers.”