Bludgeoning Schools

Presidential contenders haven't talked much about the philosophical underpinnings of democratic society for a few hundred years. So when Vice President Dan Quayle started talking about natural rights last week, it came as somewhat of a surprise to us.

In the vice presidential debate, Quayle invoked natural rights to support the idea that all American parents--rich or poor, Black or white--have the right to send their kids to private schools, no matter what the cost.

This so-called "right" to a private education forms the centerpiece of the Bush administration's education policy, consisting of a proposed voucher system which gives up to $1500 per child to parents to spend on any school they choose--public, private or parochial. The president also favors school choice and plans to institute a national, voluntary testing program.

We don't like President Bush's plan. We worry about the dubious relationship among tax dollars, the churches running religious schools and the corporations running private ones. Furthermore, we think that public schools should be respected as social equalizers. Bush's plan gives the rich and the middle class a financial incentive to desert these crucial institutions.

And anyway, the president's plan hasn't got a chance of becoming reality. Congress has said repeatedly that it will never pass a voucher plan, and even with perhaps 120 new members, the chances of passage remain slim. American schoolchildren, their schools worsening by the month, are desperately in need of action.

Bush's quixotic program creates million of these imaginary dollars for his reelection gift bag and gives them to much-needed voters. While $1500 may help parents interested in parochial and special-interest schools, it won't make a significant difference to those considering prep schools and will undermine the community interest in public schools so vital to their survival.

Private schools usually have some kind of financial aid program, and when they don't, $1500 won't always make the difference. Even if the money does allow some to send their kids to private schools, many would be left out--and more fundamental problems with many schools wouldn't be addressed.

Even more frightening than this shallow proposal is the cynical, elitist mentality behind it. Most Americans, especially parents and schoolchildren, favor some kind of public school system, but our president seems to have given up on the idea almost entirely.

The administration thinks that the problem isn't that public schools are falling apart, but that children still attend them. The constructed "right" to private education is actually a "right" to escape a public one. Rather than fixing America's public school system, the president wants to construct a lifeboat to get children out.

Which children? Only those whose parents already have enough, or nearly enough, to send their children our of the public schools. The public school system Bush and Quayle are dreaming of is a charity, a school by default. If your parents are destitute and you can't even afford (never mind get admitted to) the local church school, yon can always go to public school. With even less money and with few people above the poverty level attending them, no one will bother to fix the schools. Many of the wealthier people who run governments will have their children safely in a private school.

That our president thinks our schools are a place to flee is depressing indeed, and evidence enough that a radical change is decades overdue. Clinton has promised that, if elected, he will not send tax money away to private and parochial schools, claiming that public school choice, a belief he shares with Bush, will be enough to constitute reform.

Yet the idea of school choice, while not nearly as insidious as the voucher program, is almost as misguided. Underneath the well-meaning policy lies a similarly misinformed philosophy about what America's children need from those responsible for them.

Clinton and Bush propose to allow parents to choose which school their child will attend, with a lottery determining who gets to attend their favored school. The rest get assigned to the least-favored (usually the poorest) school, which then gets less money because of lower enrollment. Clinton and Bush claim this plan will provide an incentive to the school to make itself better.

On the surface, this may seem like a good plan. Per-student spending would remain the same. But Bush and Clinton ignore that for some schools, less money doesn't mean fewer outlays for student benefits--it means the roof doesn't get repaired, the floors don't get fixed, the bathrooms remain unusable. Some schools can't spend money now on student benefits. They must spend every dime on keeping their buildings functional. But Bush and Clinton believe that by cutting a few unnecessary salaries and programs, these already destitute schools, with even less money, will become more efficient.

Schools are not business. Cutting programs (books? pencils? teachers? structural upkeep?) does not create a more efficient production line. Children's education cannot be "streamlined," and neither can crippled schools. Clinton and especially Bush argue that money isn't the answer to schools, that we "throw" too much money at schools already. But once again, they disregard schools that are nearly falling apart. If no schools faced such danger, school choice would make sense.

But that's not the reality. And poor children in run-down schools are left in the crossfire. They not only have to be lucky enough to get a lottery number high enough to escape a poor school. They also have to be lucky enough to have a parent savvy enough with the school system to know which schools are good for their children.

Poor parents often have difficulty working within the school system and end up sending their kids to neighborhood schools by default--be they good or bad. Middle-class parents, who tend to know at least a minimum about their local schools, take the good ones, and the rich parents send their kids elsewhere. Poor parents tend to send their kids to the worst schools in the city. They don't always know enough to sign their kid up for Boston Latin or Beverly Hills high. The cycle continues. And with school choice programs already popping up independently across the country, it poses a greater threat than Bush's imaginary voucher program.

Clinton, Bush and the rest of us can say that school choice helps those who help themselves. But these are children. They can't help themselves. They rely on their parents--or what guardians they have--and we have a duty to make sure they at least get a decent education. While Clinton espouses bludgeoning the poorest schools until they improve and the vice president carps about a right to a private education, we're ignoring the fact that America's schoolchildren, often with nothing else to hope for, are depending on their right to a public one.