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Imprimis, On Line -- March 1992
Imprimis, meaning "in the first place," is a free monthly
publication of Hillsdale College (circulation 355,000 worldwide).
Hillsdale College is a liberal arts institution known for its
defense of free market principles and Western culture and its
nearly 150-year refusal to accept federal funds. Imprimis
publishes lectures by such well-known figures as Ronald Reagan,
Jeane Kirkpatrick, Tom Wolfe, Charlton Heston, and many more.
Permission to reprint is hereby granted, provided credit is given
to Hillsdale College. Copyright 1992. For more information on
free print subscriptions or back issues, call 1-800-437-2268, or
1-517-439-1524, ext. 2319.
"Inner City Kids: Why Choice Is Their Only Hope"
by A. Polly Williams, State Representative, Wisconsin
"Private Vouchers: A New Idea in Education Reform"
by J. Patrick Rooney, Chairman, Golden Rule Insurance Company
Volume 21, Number 3
Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan 49242
March 1992
Preview: Education is the nation's top growth industry. Annual
spending on education has increased over 300 percent in less than
twenty years. And we are spending five times more on each student
than we did fifty years ago. Why, then, are America's schools in
crisis? Why have education task forces failed to achieve
significant reform?
Polly Williams and J. Patrick Rooney say it's time to stop
relying on more money, more task forces, more experts, and more
bureaucrats: genuine reform can only be brought about by creating
incentives for schools - and therefore students - to succeed,
i.e., by introducing competition. Williams and Rooney addressed
350 St. Louis community leaders and educators during the Shavano
Institute for National Leadership seminar, "Public/Private
Education: Should Parents Be Free to Choose?" on October 16-17,
1991
---------------
"Inner City Kids: Why Choice Is Their Only Hope"
by A. Polly Williams, State Representative, Wisconsin
Since 1976, Milwaukee has been under court order to "racially
balance" its public schools. Now, there are about one hundred
thousand school-age children in this city. Approximately 70
percent are black or belong to other minorities. How do you
"racially balance" a system in which 70 percent of the population
is made up of minorities and only thirty percent is white? How do
you justify the millions of dollars that the federal and state
government are paying the schools to achieve this impossible
goal?
The same court order mandates that only 30 percent of the
teachers can be black. "Racial balance" is the goal once again.
But if the city is 70 percent minority, where are the non-black
teachers supposed to be coming from? And why are black teachers
who want to work in the inner city prevented from teaching?
Below are some maps that will show what happens when the
government and the courts try to force "racial balance." In the
middle of the first map, the small circle is an inner city
school, and every one of the round black dots represents one of
the other schools in Milwaukee. Under the "racial balance" plan,
black children who would ordinarily attend the inner city school
in question are bussed all over the district - to a hundred and
four different schools.
[Editor's note: the maps are not included
in the electronic version of Imprimis]
Historically, blacks have demanded equal opportunity
education; what they've gotten instead is forced desegregation.
What do blacks want? We want the same thing whites want. We want
our kids educated in their own communities. Yet look at the
second map, showing the bus routes for just three schools.
(Imagine a map showing the bus routes for over one hundred
schools!)
Better than anything, these bus routes show the chaos and
confusion caused by forced "racial balance." They also show
corruption: the government pays the educrats an extra thousand
dollars in desegregation funds for every new route. For the last
decade and a half, forced busing in Milwaukee has cost taxpayers
$335 million.
Public Schools: 90 Percent Failure Rate
In the meantime, the public schools are failing to educate our
children. Sixty percent of all Milwaukee ninth graders do not
complete high school, and of the 40 percent who stay in the
school and walk across the stage to receive their diplomas, only
10 percent can read. For what amounts to a 90 percent failure
rate, we pay $600 million a year to support the Milwaukee public
schools - that averages out to about $6000 per student. The
educrats keep saying, "You've got to give us more money, because
it's tough to educate these inner city kids. They are poor, and
they are raised by single mothers; we can't expect them to learn.
. . ."
That's the stereotype: poor black children are slow
learners, difficult and expensive to educate. Well, my children
were raised in a single parent home. My husband and I divorced
when the eldest was thirteen and the youngest was five. After the
divorce, five of us had to live on my salary, which was only
$8000 a year. And we did live on it, though we were certainly
living below the poverty level. According to the educrats and all
the experts defining who we were, my children were simply not
supposed to make it. I am happy to tell you that the educrats
were wrong, because my children did make it and they were not
stereotypes.
But poor black children do share a major disadvantage.
Unlike those whose parents can vote with their feet and enroll in
good private schools, poor black children are forced to go to the
school the government selects for them. That's not right. We're
supposed to educate all children, because if we don't educate
them we're going to incarcerate them - Wisconsin, for example,
has eight new prisons on the drawing board, but no new schools.
The state should be encouraging the establishment of more private
and public schools and more private businesses - giving children
basic academic skills and putting adults to work instead of
giving them endless social programs. Blacks want to learn and to
earn their way just like everybody else. We don't want welfare
that just puts us back on the plantation - this time the
government plantation.
And blacks don't want their children to be forced to attend
public schools if there are better alternatives. In the Milwaukee
public school system, 62 percent of the teachers and
administrators refuse to send their kids to the public schools.
This flight from the system has had ironic results. When 23
suburban public schools were recently in danger of closing due to
low enrollment, black children were simply bussed in, and the
state gave the schools an extra $12,000 for each. So, the failing
suburban public schools received a guaranteed source of students
and more than $22 million a year in additional government
funding.
Private Schools and Parental Empowerment
I opposed forced desegregation from the start. I wanted what most
parents want: for my children to be educated in their own
community. At the time, there were about a dozen private schools
in the inner city of Milwaukee. They were previously Catholic
institutions that had been reorganized as private nonsectarian
academies, and they were a wonderful alternative for low-income
and minority students - predominantly blacks, but also Hispanics,
Asians and whites. They allowed students to get a good education
in their own neighborhoods with teachers who really believed in
them, rather than the educrats' stereotypes. What's really
impressive is that these private schools had a 98 percent
graduation rate.
But they couldn't get by on the tuition they charged, and
although successful, they were in danger of closing their doors.
Meanwhile, the public schools were getting millions of our tax
dollars whether they did a good job or not. So a few years ago, a
small group banded together and approached the state legislature.
We said: "Why not allow tax dollars to go to the schools that are
working?" We didn't know that vouchers had already been defeated
in every other state where they'd been proposed, We didn't even
call our proposal a voucher plan; we called it "parental
empowerment" or "choice." Meetings were organized to discuss our
proposal. We hoped to attract a few dozen people, but hundreds of
enthusiastic parents began showing up and staying for sessions
that ran on for hours. This shocked public school officials,
especially since they couldn't get more than a few parents to any
of their meetings.
People often fall into the habit of saying, "How do you get
the poor involved in the education of their children? They just
don't care, or they don't know enough to make 'intelligent'
choices." But, in reality, if you give them a sense that they can
make a difference in the lives of their children, if you give
them some power, you'll find out that poor parents can care more
than anyone. They don't take education for granted. They know
that education is the only way out of poverty. And when you em-
power people and give them a sense of ownership, they be-come
responsible, and they learn how to make decisions. And when they
are treated with dignity and respect, they respond to it.
Choice empowers parents. It allows them to choose the best
school for their children. It doesn't say, as the educrats do,
that poor people are too dumb (they use the word "uniformed") to
make choices. Poor people are the same as rich people. They may
not have much money, but they have the same desires and the same
needs. And poor people make decisions all the time. They decide
where they are going to live, what grocery store to buy from,
where to shop for clothes - they decide everything, but all of a
sudden, the educrats claim that they don't have enough sense to
make a decision about the education of their children.
But the teachers' unions, the NAACP, the bureaucracy, and
the educational establishment didn't agree. In the name of
protecting the poor, they all opposed choice. We didn't try to
beat them - they were too powerful. Instead, we went directly to
the parents, and we organized the community from the grassroots
level, from the bottom up. And they kept coming to our meetings
by the hundreds - even the Joe Six-Packs and the Archie Bunkers.
Republicans, Democrats, Jews, Catholics, Protestants and Muslims
publicly spoke up in favor of the plan, even when it had nothing
to do with their agendas.
When we proposed choice, the parents in the audience said,
"Are you serious? You mean we can take our children out of public
schools?" They began showing up and sitting in the galleries at
the state capitol and watching the legislators, who, for their
part, were shocked that the parents were there. Like the
educrats, they also believed that the poor didn't care.
And to everyone's surprise, the parental empowerment bill -
the first in the U.S. - passed into law. Starting in the 1990-91
school year, up to 1000 students could claim $2500 worth of
tuition vouchers (a fraction, of course, of the per-student
expense at public schools). This year, one private school had 600
applicants for 100 openings. Every private school in the inner
city has a waiting list. Hundreds of low-income families want out
of the public school system. Those who have succeeded in getting
out are spreading the word: Their children, two to three grade
levels behind in the public school, are now working at their
grade levels. Once always absent, they are even refusing to stay
home sick! A typical response is, "Please don't make me stay home
- my teacher is expecting me." There are no gang problems and
only a two percent drop out rate.
Sure it's only one thousand in a city that has one hundred
thousand students, and the educrats are fighting the bill in the
state supreme court, but I think it's a real victory - and we've
only just begun. If the poor people of Milwaukee can achieve
something no other group in the nation has been able to do, then
anything is possible.
---------------
"Private Vouchers: A New Idea in Education Reform"
by J. Patrick Rooney, Chairman, Golden Rule Insurance Company
Advocates of choice in Indiana have worked hard to achieve
meaningful education reform, but we just can't get an educational
choice bill through the state legislature. (If you have ever
worked with any government branch, you know that it is a lot
easier to prevent something from happening than it is to get
anything innovative done.)
The odds are clearly on the side of the bureaucrats, even
though there is considerable evidence that choice, where it has
been tried in states such as Minnesota and districts such as East
Harlem, is a phenomenal success. We know that educational choice
in Indiana might be realized someday, but, in the meantime, we
are abandoning another generation of children who are not getting
a decent education.
Private Vouchers: No Red Tape, No Bureaucrats, No Strings
Recently, we at the Golden Rule Insurance Company decided to do
something about education reform right now. In 1991, we created
private vouchers; that is, as a company in the private sector, we
offered to pay half of the tuition of any student who wanted to
leave the public system and go to a private school. (Most of the
non-public schools in Indianopolis charge $1600 or less - our cap
was, therefore, $800.) This voucher program is for grade school
children. We would have loved to extend it to the high school
level, but we have limited resources, so it was a matter of
priority.
The only criterion is financial need. If students qualify
for the free or reduced cost lunch program in the public schools,
then they qualify for our educational grant. This is purposely a
very generous criterion. We do not impose academic requirements
of any kind, and there is a "first come, first served" basis for
awarding the vouchers. (When we began, we tried elaborate
questionnaire forms but quickly abandoned them. We are a society
that is accustomed to filling out too many forms that are of
dubious value.) We make no attempt to decide which private
schools are eligible. We are about the business of helping
parents and students, hence they are free to choose any school
that meets their needs.
The beauty of private vouchers is that they are so simple -
no red tape, no need to depend on bureaucrats to administer them,
no worries that the vouchers will be used later as a way for the
government to claim that private schools are accepting federal or
state subsidies. And they start working right away.
Unexpected Success
Golden Rule's private vouchers are a great success, much greater
than we expected, in fact. We called a press conference to
announce the start of the program only three weeks before the
commencement of the 1991-92 school year. We stated very
cautiously that we anticipated that only 100-200 students would
want to be involved in this program. Well, within the first three
days, Golden Rule had 621 requests for applications, and at the
present time, we have distributed more than 2,000 applications.
A temporary obstacle is that most of the private schools
already have full or near-full enrollments. But the response to
our private voucher plan will inevitably lead to expansion, as it
has created a whole new supply of potential students for private
schools. In the first school term of this year, 705 students were
awarded vouchers and there were 199 on the waiting list. (This
list would have been larger, but many parents knew that the
private schools were full.)
Why Support Private Education?
Why do we support private education through vouchers? There are
three reasons. The first reason is that Golden Rule is interested
in helping the disadvantaged, particularly the minority citizens
of our country. Our vouchers are not awarded on the basis of race
or ethnic background - they are colorblind - but since they go to
mainly inner city residents, the natural effect is to help
blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.
Sources such as the Hudson Institute's report, Workforce
2000, estimate that over the next decade, the work force will be
very slowly growing older, more female, more minority, and more
disadvantaged. Only 15 percent of the new entrants to the labor
force during that period will be white males compared with 30
percent today. The demographic opportunity of the 1990s will be
missed unless something is done now - the problems of minority
unemployment, crime and dependency could be far worse than they
are today.
The second reason for Golden Rule's interest in vouchers is
very practical. New jobs in service industries will demand much
higher skill levels than the jobs of today. Many companies are
already forced to run remedial education programs for their
employees. We can't put off educating people until the time they
apply for work - that is the wrong time to fix the problem. But
according to their own standardized tests, Indiana public schools
are failing to teach adequate basic skills and are far behind the
private schools in terms of overall student achievement. If for
no other reason that this, competition is needed at the
elementary and secondary school levels where the monopoly
position of the public school has stifled innovation.
The third reason is linked to the second: It is vital to the
public interest that students work hard and learn basic habits
like punctuality and diligence. Yet, the Committee for Economic
Development published a study several years ago arguing that one
of the most important failures of the public schools is that they
have failed to teach even a basic "work ethic."
Add drug abuse and violence to the list: Public schools have
failed there too, resorting to metal detectors, locker searches
and security guards. And despite all such efforts, many students
do not learn to respect or heed authority. Lastly, there is the
dropout rate in public institutions. In one Indianapolis high
school, 80 percent of the student body typically does not
graduate.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National
Education Association (NEA) have recently begun a new media
campaign to convince Americans that the public schools are doing
every bit as well as the private schools. I don't think Americans
will be convinced, simply because there is too much evidence to
the contrary. Who, for example, has ever heard of a private
school with metal detectors or with an 80 percent drop out rate?
A Call to Act - Now
In summary, with private vouchers, we have made a real and
practical investment in the future of our own business as well as
our society. Every business and charitable organization should
start its own voucher program, for one or one thousand students,
it doesn't matter. What does matter is that they will have taken
a step toward helping others as well as themselves.
For more information on private vouchers, write:
Timothy Ehrgott Executive Director
Educational CHOICE Charitable Trust
Golden Rule Insurance Company
7440 Woodland Drive
Indianapolis, IN 46278-1719
---------------
Polly Williams is America's leading advocate of parental choice
in education. Time, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, and "60
Minutes" have reported on her successful efforts to secure
private school vouchers - the first in the nation - for inner
city students in Milwaukee. To millions of American parents who
want the freedom to decide what education is best for their
children, Polly Williams has become a national symbol of hope,
courage and determination. A six-term state representative in the
Wisconsin legislature, she holds the record for the highest
number of votes for reelection - in 1986, the figure was 94
percent.
---------------
J. Patrick Rooney has been in the health insurance industry for
over three decades. He is chairman of the board of the Golden
Rule Insurance Company, which is licensed in 49 states and which
earns a premium income of almost $600 million annually. The
company is generally considered the nation's largest writer of
individual medical insurance and is marketed by over 70,000
independent brokers. Mr. Rooney has gained national attention in
the last year for establishing a $1.2 million fund for private
education vouchers which enable hundreds of low-income parents in
Indiana to send their children to the private schools of their
choice. In two recent headline editorials, the Wall Street
Journal hailed Mr. Rooney's efforts as a real "breakthrough in
corporate support for educational choice."
###
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End of this issue of Imprimis, On Line; Information
about the electronic publisher, Applied Foresight,
Inc., is in the file, IMPR_BY.TXT
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