MICHIGAN SCHOOL CHOICE PROPOSAL IS INNOVATIVE, PROMISING

Last week's column introduced the grassroots effort under way in Michigan to pass a school-choice initiative on this November's ballot.

Backed by Dick and Betsey DeVos of AmWay Corp. fame, this bold plan promises to be well-funded and differs from previous school-choice ballot propositions in a several important respects.

Proponents of the school choice/voucher plan to be voted on this November in Michigan call it the KIDS FIRST! YES! campaign. The initiative has three parts to improve education in Michigan:

1. Guaranteed Funding:

A per-pupil funding guarantee for every K-12 public school student in Michigan;

2. Teacher Testing:

A plan to regularly test all Michigan teachers on academic subjects in all public schools and those private schools that accept opportunity scholarships; and

3. Equal opportunity for all Michigan children:

This is to be guaranteed by opportunity scholarships, also known as vouchers. The scholarships are worth about $3,100 (or about one-half the average per-pupil state spending in public schools). They will be available for every Michigan parent whose child attends school in one of the state's failing districts (defined as those that fail to graduate at least 2/3 of their students), and a local option will be in place for other districts to adopt opportunity scholarships if -- and only if -- local districts so decide.

Note immediately the care that went into drafting the KIDS FIRST! YES! proposal.

Veterans of the school-choice wars, such as the losing effort to pass an initiative back in California back in 1993, have learned from the repeated defeats of proposals that initially polled well with voters. (That 1993 effort in the Golden State first polled 70 percent support before going down in the face of a 10-1 spending advantage by the opposing teachers unions, desperate to stop competition.)

Exit polling of California voters showed that the measure was defeated in conservative Republican precincts, "good" neighborhoods whose residents had already exercised their power of choice by moving to suburbs with good public schools.

(There are good reasons why every poll shows support for school choice to be far higher among Blacks and Hispanics.)

That defeated California plan would have immediately instituted a statewide choice plan overnight.

The Michigan plan, by contrast, targets those inner-city districts where, as in Missouri, our public education establishment is so self-evidently failing with high dropout rates and bloated bureaucracies.

It also features the funding guarantee and the local option for any school district to join the choice movement should they so desire.

What's not to like?

Plenty, if you're part of the vast public education establishment. The Michigan Education Association, state affiliate of the NEA, is one of the nation's most powerful. These folks are hitching up their horses and riding toward the sound of the guns. Informed citizens of all races, political parties and a myriad of backgrounds, who know we must extend the American dream to every child, and who know the way to do that is to pass school choice, had better do likewise. On the outcome of this stirring battle, in heavily unionized Michigan, a great deal is riding.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.