The Vitality of School Choice

Today and yesterday, the Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) at the Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government is hosting a conference, “What Next for School Vouchers?” The two-day symposium brings an impressive cadre of educational, legal, and public policy experts to assess the future of school choice reforms in the wake of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris—the June U.S. Supreme Court case that affirmed the constitutionality of vouchers in Cleveland schools. The conference is helping to clarify the debate about school vouchers. But more importantly, it shows the vitality of the initiatives to improve education through vouchers and other choice-based reforms.

The conference is a milestone because the viability of vouchers and other school choice programs has not always been assured. “The policy landscape has changed,” notes Assistant Professor of Government William G. Howell. According to Howell, if the Supreme Court had ruled the Cleveland program unconstitutional, “vouchers would be dead.” More than a green light for school vouchers, the verdict affirms the principle of local control; whether vouchers are adopted is now for school boards and state legislatures to decide. For now, this ruling might mean little in states like Michigan and California, whose Supreme Courts have already struck down proposed voucher initiatives, but broadly considered, the ruling brings to the table educational options once stigmatized as unconstitutional. That means greater discussion of other so-called choice-based reforms, like charter schools, inter-district public school choice and tax credits—proposals formerly marginalized for lack of political will. Thus, Zelman has rescued school choice from the depths of think tank research and pushed it to the forefront of public life.

Unfortunately, the flourish of media attention obscures the complex reality of the voucher debate. Supreme Court victory or no, day-to-day hurdles continue in classrooms and legislatures. Moreover, institutional challenges escalate as communities must define the bounds of “public education” before they can move forward with reform. But most Americans are reluctant to embrace the empowerment that comes with school choice. The public is as resistant to funding parochial education as ever before because it is wary of breaching the separation of church and state. However, discussion didn’t end with Zelman—rather, it has gained a new-found importance in the context of community debate.

As the agenda of reform moves to local school districts, it has become clear that the debate there is far from polarized. Vouchers and school choice do not cut along clean party lines. Nor can we blame white suburbanites for stymieing voucher programs in order to maintain demographic hegemony of their schools. By contrast, today’s alliances are nuanced and dynamic: black leaders, for example, increasingly see vouchers as a means of integration and opportunity, displacing a longstanding fear of socioeconomic segregation. The current confusion about the effects of school choice still preclude mass political support for any one form.

Thus, Americans are in the position to accept responsibility for their schools, but they still need mediators to work out the implications of specific educational reforms. The PEPG conference implicitly acknowledges this need. As Shattuck Professor of Government Paul E. Peterson said, “The Supreme Court decision on Cleveland’s school voucher program has left many questions unanswered. This conference will do its best to supply answers to at least some of them.” The panelists promise evenhanded discussion—ushered in by a debate between a defender of school vouchers, Clint Bolick, who is vice president of the Institute of Justice, and Steve K. Green, who is counsel and director of policy for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. As legal vanguards for their respective viewpoints Bolick and Green will stimulate informed argumentation that enlightens the quest for “answers.”

We should expect as much from PEPG, whose mission is to serve as a nexus of scholarship and policymaking. But it seems we should also expect as much from Harvard as a whole. The vital school choice debate has made undergraduates more keenly aware of the educational challenges they have a chance to help meet. While students have long dedicated themselves to mentoring and tutoring, they are starting to engage with education as an issue of public policy. Weekly, members of the Harvard Initiative for School Choice discuss recent developments in educational reform, hoping to someday better public schooling. In addition, undergraduates with diverse academic interests are attending lectures at the Graduate School for Education and are speaking out at student-run debates on school vouchers.

Indeed, the issue of school choice is ripe for student reflection. An IOP discussion group, Politics for Dummies, recently identified “What is School Choice?” as a question of political salience. One of the group’s student leaders remarked that the group shared an interest in education and saw it “as a priority when thinking about candidates in the upcoming elections.” More encouraging still were the questions these students raised regarding the future of the No Child Left Behind Act, and more critical yet, the factors that foster educational success. The PEPG conference is ready, willing, and able to address these questions.

Christine A. Telyan ’04 is a social studies Concentrator in Eliot House. She is the founder of the Harvard Initiative for School Choice.