School Vouchers A Private Education For Everyone, Or A Drain On Public School System?

Taxpayers would pay for private school tuition under a controversial plan to create the nation’s first statewide voucher system.

Washington voters will decide Nov. 5 if parents should receive vouchers to send their children to private, nonreligious schools.

Two Midwestern cities have voucher programs, but nowhere is there a statewide system.

Initiative 173’s main backer is Ron Taber, a conservative candidate for state superintendent of public instruction, who says vouchers will spark much-needed competition in public schools.

Education leaders like the idea about as much as they like Taber, who they say is out to dismantle a system they’ve spent decades creating.

Back-to-school clothes and back-to-school supplies, sure. But back-to-school vouchers?

Next fall, parents could get them at a rate of about $3,400 per child. They could redeem the vouchers at any private, secular school with at least 25 students that agrees to accept them.

“Vouchers are making it possible for the first time for the average person to have their children in private school,” said Taber, a Republican landlord who lives on a small ranch near Olympia.

“It gives a person at Kaiser Aluminum the same opportunity that Bill Clinton has.”

Opponents bristle at the Clinton comparison and say Taber paints a rosier picture than vouchers would create.

Voucher schools would skim the best students and leave the rest to public schools floundering under severe financial loss, critics say.

They pop off a litany of objections: Voucher schools could discriminate based on gender. They’d swipe children - and money - from public schools.

They worry about a section in the initiative that would force school districts to lease to voucher schools space that hasn’t been used for six months. The lease would have a three-year minimum.

One thing both sides can agree on is that new, small schools would spring up specifically to serve voucher students.

“It allows anyone who can get together 25 students to start their own privately-run schools,” said Michelle Ackermann, spokeswoman for the “No Committee” opposing the initiative.

“What we’d basically have are new, privately-run schools that have no standards or accountability and are taking money away from public schools.”

Ellen Craswell, Republican candidate for governor, backs the initiative, but worries it gives the government too much involvement.

But she and Taber face formidable opposition, including the Washington Education Association, the Association of Washington School Principals, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Washington State League of Women Voters.

The Spokane School Board plans to announce its opposition tonight.

Six years’ experience in Milwaukee, Wis., shows vouchers don’t necessarily give all residents the same options as someone like President Clinton.

Some elite private schools there simply opted out of the program, shutting their doors to students with vouchers.

But the program, which places about 1,650 students in 17 schools, also has many schools catering to low-income kids.

A “random selection” rule ensures top-achievers aren’t always first to leave Milwaukee’s public schools, said Doug Haselow, the district’s chief lobbyist.

“If you have openings for 100 kids and 200 apply, you don’t take the top 100,” he said. “It gives roughly the same achievement mix at every school.”

The Washington initiative has no such clause.

A plan to allow religious schools to participate is bogged down in court after a lawsuit by groups such as the teachers union, Milwaukee’s public school district and the ACLU.

Skeptics look for evidence of true success or failure in academic achievement at voucher schools. How are children doing on tests?

So far, research produces conflicting reports.

A recent study by Harvard University and the University of Houston showed elementary students in Milwaukee’s voucher program scored higher on math and reading tests after four years.

But in a separate study, a University of Wisconsin political science professor found no increase in achievement.

Voucher supporters say it’s common sense that children who aren’t achieving in public schools will do better with more attention in smaller schools.

They’ll succeed in part because private schools have natural accountability, said Taber, arguing they don’t have unions protecting unfit teachers.

“In private schools, there’s no such protection. When schools fail and people quit writing checks, the private schools die.”

Jim Hutsinpiller, a Spokane Republican who endorses vouchers, agrees. “It will sharpen them up. They’ll be more responsive to students’ needs.”

True accountability should involve the local school board when public money comes into play, said Gary Livingston, Spokane schools superintendent.

“You take public monies out from under that kind of democratic control. That’s been part of the makeup of public education since the beginning of public schools.”

Spokane officials haven’t estimated the financial impact a voucher program would have on the district.

In Milwaukee, the district is looking at possibly cutting staff to make up for the loss of voucher students.

“We’re going to have to reduce our budget, something in the vicinity of about $10 million,” Haselow said. “We’re losing money on every kid.”

The Washington initiative calls for vouchers equaling at least 55 percent of the state and district money spent on the average full-time student. For 1997, that’s estimated at $3,400.

Private schools can educate children for much less, because they have less overhead and administration costs.

The program would be phased in over 10 years, beginning with the youngest children and adding one grade per year.

Participating schools would have to accept vouchers as full payment for children in kindergarten through sixth grade. For grades seven to nine, schools could charge up to 10 percent more. Schools could add a fee of 20 percent in high school, where more is spent on education.

Private schools looking forward to that kind of money rallied in support of vouchers in other states where they were proposed.

The Washington Federation of Independent Schools, however, has taken a neutral position on Initiative 173, in part because voucher money wouldn’t go to religious schools.

At least for now.

According to the group’s position statement, Taber described the initiative as a “prerequisite to changing our Constitution to eliminate this anti-religious bias.”

A voucher program in Cleveland this year allows children to attend religious schools. Although the case is tied up in appeals court, schools from Muslim to Lutheran are accepting vouchers.

The head of the nation’s second largest teacher’s union isn’t just worried about public money going to religious schools.

American Federation of Teachers president Albert Shanker worries about the re-emergence of segregation, with private schools springing up that cater to Hispanics, for instance, or to Catholics.

At worst, he said, “Schools could be opened by the Ku Klux Klan or (Nation of Ilsam leader) Louis Farrakhan.”

Jane Joseph, who has three children in Spokane schools, said she plans to vote against the voucher initiative for fear her children would lose out - perhaps ending up with smaller budgets or larger classes.

“I just see it as breaking down the public school system which we’ve had for so many years.”

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: I-173 Initiative 173 would create school vouchers that allow parents to use public money to pay for tuition at private, nonreligious schools.