School Choice Is Civil Rights Fight of Today

Here’s the bad news: It’s the devastating lead paragraph of The Times’ review of a national report card on educators: “California ranks near the bottom of states in the quality of its public school teaching force, having some of the highest proportions of uncertified or undertrained teachers, particularly in math and science. . . . “

This study from the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future found that more than one-third of the teachers in California did not meet a standard of “well-qualified” (with full certification and a major in their assigned field)--making it the fourth-worst state in the country. Citing requirements for class size reduction, the head of California’s teacher credentialing commission made the nonetheless appalling statement that “We have to put people into the classroom even if they are not prepared.”

That’s reassuring.

The bad news continues. Gregory Rodriguez, a research fellow at Pepperdine’s Institute for Public Policy, reports that “the California Assn. of Bilingual Educators . . . concedes that perhaps 10% or fewer of the state’s bilingual programs are well implemented.” Rodriguez writes that despite this costly failure, there has been a “prolonged suppression of any meaningful debate about the efficacy of bilingual education”--one of the reasons that the “English for the Children” initiative headed for California’s June ballot “has found a large, receptive audience.”

Here’s the good news: Education is the political “issue du jour,” and good things may come from its central role in the 1998 campaign dialogue. We know this because Bill Clinton and Capitol Hill Republicans are already testing competing school reform measures; the news media (witness Time magazine’s recent 25-page special report) are placing teaching in the forefront; and officeholders--especially Republicans--are looking to the classroom for election-year impact.

Indeed, education was reported to be the focus of the recent three-day Republican Governors Conference, where South Carolina’s Gov. David Beasley pronounced: “Education will be a centerpiece of campaigns all across America.” The GOP governors eschewed federal solutions and advocated block grants maximizing state and local control. Yet, the Associated Press also reported them to have little enthusiasm for some of the leading proposed congressional reforms--observing, by example, “tepid support for proposals to give [school choice] vouchers to low-income children.”

When the issue of school choice is joined, one might forgive Republicans their reticence given the track record of ugly retribution by extremist teachers unions. The unions and their educrat toadies enjoy gorging themselves at the table of coarse political tactics. During the 1993 school choice initiative campaign in California, the opposition suggested, among other concocted horribles, that witches’ covens would be among those seeking public funds for private schools. Even scarier, it was averred that a science course in a choice school “could be teaching kids how to make Molotov cocktails.”

But school choice and scholarships to rescue children in under-performing environments are no longer exotic ideas; they are woven into the national conversation on school reform and will not go away. The steady rumble of parental discontent will never be beaten back to quiescence. By this century’s end, the rumble will be a roar, and political aspirants are well-advised to lead this trend, not fear it.

Ironically, it is the left that fears the ascendancy of the school choice debate. Jonathan Rauch, in a November essay in the liberal New Republic magazine, complains: “I’ve always found it a little odd that liberals hand over the voucher idea to Republicans . . . rather than grabbing it for themselves.”

Rauch argues the case with a clarity of logic that choice advocates should envy: “Vouchers are also a classic opportunity to equalize opportunity. Why should the poor be denied more control over their most important means of social advancement, when soccer moms and latte-drinkers take for granted that they can buy their way out of a school (or a school district) that abuses or annoys them?”

Trepidant Republicans and Democrats alike should realize that the cause of choice is as inevitable as the civil rights movement was in the ‘50s and ‘60s. In place of demagogues standing at the schoolhouse door blocking entry, today’s demagogues are inside the schoolhouse blocking escape. They occupy a steadily discredited ground that will be washed over by the most powerful of American forces--freedom and hope.

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Kenneth L. Khachigian is a former White House speech writer who practices law in Orange County. He was principal strategist for Proposition 174, the school choice campaign. His column appears here every other week.