Vouchers that win

On the face of it, school vouchers are a polarizing issue this election year, with George W. Bush and free-market conservatives backing them and Al Gore and supporters of public education vehemently opposed. But voucher proposals don't have to lead to partisan deadlock. Limited, moderate voucher plans have shown they can build powerful and unusual alliances.

Because limited plans offer vouchers only to children in low-income families or failing schools, they can be less controversial than universal plans, which would let all students — rich and poor, in good schools and bad — use public funds to enroll in private schools. Despite strong conservative backing, universal proposals have repeatedly lost political battles.

Limited plans, however, attract support not only from those whose major concern is introducing market forces into education, but from others motivated primarily by concern for underprivileged children. Indeed, because serious academic gaps between white and minority students remain, even many reluctant liberals are moving to support limited vouchers as a way to save inner-city kids.

The first two voucher plans to gain approval, in Milwaukee and Cleveland, were limited to low-income families and passed with the allied support of white Republicans and African-American Democrats concerned about education in poor neighborhoods. In 1999 in Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush campaigned with a pro-voucher message designed to attract black votes; eventually, the State Legislature passed a voucher program. It was a major selling point that vouchers would go only to students in the most beleaguered schools.

The pattern continues this election season. In Michigan, a limited voucher proposal backed by business people and prominent African-Americans is attracting narrow approval in polls.

Michigan's voucher effort may lose, but it is likely to do better than California's universal initiative, which is currently down nearly 15 points. The leadership of the California movement has clearly not learned from the past. The initiative, the brainchild of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper, would offer vouchers to all students. Voters seem to recognize its huge potential price tag: allotting every student in California $4,000 would cost an estimated $2.6 billion annually.

Moreover, California's initiative — like other universal proposals — lacks critical black and Hispanic support.

Although black and Hispanic opinion on vouchers remains split nationally, surveys show that larger percentages back them among both these groups than among whites.

Backers like Polly Williams, a Democratic state lawmaker who led the voucher movement in Milwaukee in 1990, and Fannie Lewis, a Democratic city councilwoman who did the same five years later in Cleveland, say vouchers appeal to people of color not because families want tickets into suburban schools, but because they want to revitalize blighted urban communities by giving children a good education close to home.

Whether vouchers actually improve academic achievement for poor children of color remains an open question. But politically, the data are clear. Wide support is needed to create voucher programs, and it will only be forthcoming if vouchers are limited to the children who need them most.

Felicia Wong worked on education issues as a White House fellow in 1998 and 1999.