Skepticism of school vouchers persists

DETROIT -- The Supreme Court has deemed publicly financed school vouchers legal, and President Bush believes they're just what poor families need to escape failing school systems.

But here in Detroit, which has more than its share of distressed schools, no one expects a new push for vouchers anytime soon. Since 1970, the Michigan constitution has banned spending public money in private schools, and two years ago voters rejected a referendum to institute vouchers by a convincing 69-31 percent.

There is also lingering wariness here that private schools -- not poor children -- will reap the benefits, and the issue of race also remains a concern, particularly among black parents who wonder why so many outsiders, many of them white, are suddenly interested in helping their children.

If Detroit's skepticism toward vouchers is echoed elsewhere, the recent court decision may provide little immediate boost to the school choice movement.

"They're going to siphon off the creme de la creme,'" said Huford Foskey, 56, president of a citywide parent-teacher organization and father of two public school children. "They aren't going to take the children that public schools have problems with or those in special education. And many families, even with vouchers, would not be able to afford private schools.

"What happens to my schools when you take the money away?" Foskey said.

The condition of the public schools here is no secret. They graduate too few children, and those who do complete high school often read and write poorly.

To clean up management problems, the system's elected board was dissolved in favor of an appointed one.

Michigan led the nation with 1,513 poor performing schools -- 181 of them in Detroit -- on a list of 8,600 schools released this month by the U.S. Department of Education.

But no matter how bad things have gotten, the state has resisted school vouchers, charter schools and tax credits for private school tuition, despite three decades of work by advocates of those measures. Fierce opposition has been led by school leaders, labor unions and residents who vehemently oppose spending public money in private schools. Exit polls taken during the 2000 voucher ballot initiative vote showed that more than 75 percent of African Americans opposed the measure.

It's partly a backlash from the 1960s, when the state provided direct subsidies to private schools, said Joseph Overton, senior vice president at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a nonpartisan think tank that has championed school choice for more than a decade.

Overton said, "I believe the better route is tax credits for both policy and politics."

In a poll conducted by the center, 43 percent of voters favored vouchers, while 50 percent opposed them. But 67 percent of those surveyed supported tax credits. The Mackinac Center is proposing a dollar-for-dollar match for individuals or corporations that pay for a child -- theirs or someone else's -- to attend a nonpublic school.

School choice advocates were energized by the Supreme Court decision that upheld the use of public funds for a program in Cleveland, where 95 percent of the vouchers are used for religious schooling.

But any change in Michigan law would have to go before the voters. Among the options being considered by those who supported the most recent voucher referendum are another referendum, some form of tax credit, and a direct assault on the constitutional ban on aid to private schools, a move that would toss the issue back to the legislature.

State lawmakers, however, have shown little eagerness to tackle the voucher issue again.

But the condition of the educational system is so dire now that poor parents need a way to opt out, said Lawrence C. Patrick Jr., a prominent lawyer and a former president of the city school board.

During his seven years on the board, which began in 1988, Patrick helped "empower" 20 public schools -- much like charter schools of today -- by largely freeing them from the dictates of the school system and allowing individual schools to make key educational decisions. But he resigned after realizing, he said, that various forces -- particularly labor unions -- were too strong to allow real change throughout the system. Now Patrick has switched sides.

"What we're saying today in Detroit is that if you're poor, tough," Patrick, 57, said from his downtown law office overlooking the Detroit River and Windsor, Ontario. "And if the system doesn't get improved while your child is a student, tough."

Patrick attended public schools and sent his children there, but now he favors vouchers, charter schools and scholarships to give poor families more choices. His son, Lawrence C. Patrick III, is president and chief executive of Black Alliance for Educational Options, which pushes school choice options around the country. From the elder Patrick's point of view, parents of the less fortunate need an immediate say in their children's schooling.

Still Patrick was not supportive of the most recent voucher effort in Michigan, which was aimed primarily at poor children. It would have required under-performing school districts to offer financial vouchers for students to use at private and parochial schools. It also would have cleared the way for local elections or school board decisions to bring vouchers to any school district in the state.

The problem, Patrick said, was that the subsidy of up to $3,300 would not have been enough to pay tuition costs at many schools. "If they're poor and you tell them you have to pay $3,000, they still can't afford to send their kids to private school,'' Patrick said. "If we're going to do it, let's do it for real."

Added Betsy DeVos, a leader of the statewide voucher drive in 2000 who now heads a group called Choices for Children: "If public schools are going to be fixed, why aren't they fixed already? Doing more of the same isn't going to fix them. Those who are opposed to change are those who have an interest in protecting the status quo."

But Lu Battaglieri, president of the Michigan Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union with 160,000 members, said schools will only improve when various factions stop trying to take money away from them. The needs, he said, include reducing class sizes, raising teacher quality and combating social ills.

"If you want to improve education, you need to fund it," Battaglieri said. "Our children are coming to us economically, physically, emotionally and psychologically disadvantaged. Vouchers are a ticket to nowhere."

Sheryl Simmons, executive director of a group called Women in Need of Guidance and Skills, acknowledges that many public schools are in poor shape.

But a voucher system would allow the primarily white private schools to discriminate against black children, she said. Detroit schools, like the city, are almost entirely black.

"Vouchers sound very appealing for the one or two who can leave, but do you have compassion for the 46 or 47 who are left behind?'' Simmons asked.

"Why don't we fix what we've got? What happens if everybody abandons the bad schools?"

But when the choice is personal, everything changes, Simmons concedes, recalling all the clients who come to her now from the city's public schools, many of whom read below the sixth-grade level.

"It's a system completely in crisis,'' she said. "Would I take my kids someplace else? Yes.'' When her own two boys were young, she sent them to private schools until they reached high school and decided they wanted to attend public schools. They are now 22 and 24, and one teaches in city schools.

State Rep. Mark Jansen, R, who supports vouchers, said he expects the legislature to continue to promote greater choice in public education. But he doesn't think vouchers are on the horizon. Right now, the legislature is considering a proposal to raise the ceiling it had placed on the number of charter schools.

"I would be very surprised if the legislature would do anything with vouchers the way vouchers were pounded in the election," Jansen said.