Reading, Writing, Roulette (cont.)
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That clear goal has placed Brenda Gordon in the midst of what's arguably the
largest--and most controversial--revolution of Blacks
in public schools since separate but equal was outlawed in 1954. Ten years ago,
disgusted
with Milwaukee's schools, an unlikely coalition of Black
parents and political and civic leaders and White conservatives pushed legislators
to make Wisconsin
the first state in the nation to pay for public-school
children to attend private schools on taxpayer dollars. In Milwaukee, families
of four earning
less than $30,000 a year are eligible for vouchers worth
$5,106 per child toward private-school tuition (less than the nearly $8,500 per
student per
year spent by the public schools). Under the Milwaukee
Parental School Choice Program, the voucher option is one of several forms of
school choice and
perhaps the most hotly debated (see "A Guide to the School-Choice Debate," page
158). And as this is an election year, vouchers are a hot-button presidential
issue: Democrat Gore opposes; Republican Bush supports. The theory behind
vouchers and other forms of choice is that if you apply free-market forces
to education, as in any industry, competition will force schools to improve
to get students' "business."
Vouchers--which use public funds for nonpublic and, in some cases, even religious-school expenditures--have stirred up a hornet's nest in Milwaukee. They've attracted the support and money of national interest groups, pitted some Black leaders against one another, embittered the teachers' union and turned the school board on its ear. Supporters argue that they provide poor Black parents an option that many better-off White parents have exercised for years: to put their kids in private schools or transfer them to a better public school (which affluent parents routinely have done by moving to a better neighborhood). Opponents say vouchers serve only a fraction of public-school kids, that they skirt constitutional laws on separation of church and state and that there is no way to tell if the voucher schools are educating any better than public schools.
But despite the critics, vouchers are flourishing. Since the state supreme
court let Milwaukee include religious schools two years ago, the voucher
program has grown immensely. Nearly 8,000 kids attended 91 "choice" schools
during the 1999-2000 school year, up from 341 in seven schools during 1990-91,
the first year of the program. Current cost to the state: an estimated $38.9
million. Vouchers were added to a number of public-school options started
more than 20 years ago to desegregate the system--magnet schools, charter,
Montessori and other programs. These specialty schools have been widely
praised and used, but they educate only a segment of public-school students.
And because of integration efforts--in a city that's 35 percent Black and
56 percent White, while the public-school system is 61.2 percent Black and
17.6 percent White--White students often have a better chance of getting
into the specialty schools.
Vouchers are in demand in other states as well. A national
poll conducted last year by the Joint Center for Political
and Economic Studies, a Black think tank, showed that among Black adults
with children,
71 percent support vouchers. And lawmakers have responded.
This year, voucher bills are pending in eight states, including Arkansas,