Voucher Momentum

"I predict that we will one day look back on the 1.25 million who applied for educational emancipation   -   for the chance to seek the light and oxygen of a nourishing education   -   not as victims, but as unwitting heroes with whom a great awakening was begun." — Andrew Young, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, board of the Children's Scholarship Fund.

MUCH OF WHAT PASSES for principled conviction is base rationalization for some primal emotion like fear. As Jackie Robinson poised to integrate baseball in 1947, a number of national league baseball players threatened to strike in protest. With some exceptions, the elite players in major league baseball were, if not sympathetic, at least acquiescent to the introduction of black baseball players. By contrast, mediocre ballplayers correctly saw these black athletes as competitors who could displace their positions. No doubt, if blacks were not allowed to play baseball today, there are many present-day struggling minor league white players who would play in the major leagues. There is also is no doubt that the quality of baseball would be far poorer. Reduced competition would also bridle the excellence summoned by strong competition even for the elite players.

One can sense the desperate and palpable fear in teachers' unions as the country lurches toward choice in K-12 education. Like the mediocre ball players of Jackie Robinson's era, substandard and incompetently managed schools rightly perceive the threat to their monopoly protection. The Wisconsin Supreme Court cleared the way for the expansion of education vouchers to religiously-affiliated schools in Milwaukee by ruling that such vouchers do not violate First Amendment protections. The US Supreme Court then allowed the decision to stand. With potential legal obstacles leveled, the only constraint to voucher expansion was the willingness of Milwaukee citizens.

Teachers' unions looked at a recent Milwaukee Public School Board election as an opportunity to halt voucher progress. Hoping to squash the incipient struggle of the poor to escape the bondage of crumbling inner city school systems, they poured funds into anti-voucher television ads. Under the facade that the ads were "issue" ads, not intended to defeat or endorse any particular candidate, anti-choice groups refused to detail how much money was spent on the ads and whether the funds came from out-of-state. Defeating school vouchers in the city where they were first significantly deployed would be an important symbolic victory and arrest the momentum of those in favor of school choice.

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