With a Republican-controlled House and Senate, school choice proponents have their best chance yet of getting a publicly-funded voucher program in the Lone Star State.
Whether that happens promises to be the subject of heated debate once the Legislature convenes Tuesday, making Texas the newest battleground for a controversial school reform movement that slowly has gained momentum nationwide.

First proposed in 1955 by economist Milton Friedman, voucher programs did not become a noticeable part of the educational landscape until the early 1990s. Since then, they have cropped up in, among other places, Milwaukee; Cleveland; New York City; Charlotte, N.C.; and San Antonio.

Some, including two in San Antonio, use private funds to pay for students to attend private schools. Others, such as the Parental School Choice Program in Milwaukee, use public funds.

Many of them have been meticulously studied and picked apart, and the overriding consensus is that vouchers are not an antidote to the drawbacks of public schools.

Researchers at the Santa Monica, Calif.-based RAND Corp. conducted what is considered to be one of the most objective reviews of the various studies, and they found promising signs but said there is not enough data to determine the success or failure of vouchers.

Based on the information at hand, Rand said there have been notable improvements for African Americans in small, privately funded programs, but in general, vouchers have not led to academic gains for voucher recipients or the schools they left behind.

"There is no evidence that suggests vouchers will magically solve the achievement problem for large numbers of schoolchildren," Rand researcher Brian Gill said.

But, he said, "there's no evidence that vouchers will produce the kinds of disastrous effects that some of the critics are concerned about," such as massive losses in public school enrollment and tax dollars.

Some skeptics say vouchers simply do not work.

One of those is Stanford University education professor Martin Carnoy, co-author of the book "All Else Equal," which looks at several voucher programs throughout the country.

If Texas wants to help poor, low-performing students in urban areas, it should do many things first, he said, such as address the teacher shortage.

"I'm sympathetic to the idea that something has to be done," Carnoy said.

But existing data suggest many parents who take vouchers later return to public schools, he said, and there is no guarantee private schools will do a better job of educating kids.

"If you want to try this, go ahead," Carnoy said, referring to the looming debate in Texas. "I can tell you it is not going to work. It's not going to be the solution."

Critics do, however, agree with proponents on one point ? parental satisfaction tends to be high in voucher programs.

It was the single unequivocal finding of the Rand report.

"One thing that was pretty clear," Gill said, "was that the parents who get to have these choices like their schools."

On the local front

In San Antonio, there are two private school-voucher programs, both run by the conservative CEO Foundation.

The CEO Scholarship Program, founded in 1992, targets low-income students in Bexar County and provides them with roughly half the tuition cost of a private school ? up to $1,100 for elementary and middle school and up to $1,500 for high school.

Enrollment, once reaching nearly 1,000, is now 565. The drop, according to Teresa Treat, program director for the CEO Foundation, is the result of the group's second program, the Horizon Scholarship Program.

Created in 1998, it has 1,935 students. It targets the Edgewood School District and gives children living in the Edgewood attendance zone up to $4,700 to attend a private school.

The CEO Foundation says both programs have been successes academically, but it provides no data to back up that claim. A 2001 study of the Horizon program by the CEO Foundation specifically noted declines in math and reading scores for students who had been in the program for two years.

Anecdotally, the foundation says it knows student performance has improved. Many classified as special education students are no longer considered special ed; those who made B's and C's in their old school are now making A's and B's. And those who were failing are performing at a much higher level, Treat said.

Irma Mancillas, who has three children in the Horizon program, said she doesn't know if her children have better grades now than they did in Edgewood.

But they are doing well academically, she said, and the Sendero Christian Academy her children now attend offers other benefits that are equally important.

"It's a small school," she said, "and it has more of a family atmosphere than a school atmosphere. ... They all have the same beliefs, the same standards and the same morals."

Another contented parent is Stella Dominguez, who has three children in the Horizon program. All three go to St. John Berchmans, where, she said, "they broke out of their shells."

"They are more into sports. Their grades are real good. They are very happy where they are at," she said.

But the anecdotes swing both ways.

Ritabel Garza took advantage of the Horizon program to send two of her children to the Christian Academy of San Antonio. Two months later she took them out and put them back in Edgewood public schools.

While she does not denounce vouchers, she said the private-school experience did not work for her. One of her children was bullied, she said, the schoolwork was not challenging enough, and there was a religious bent to some of the lessons that did not suit her own Catholic beliefs.

The Legislature

Despite conflicting stories from parents and academics about the effectiveness of vouchers, proponents say Texas needs, at the very least, a pilot program.

"I think it's the best way to educate those kids who are at the bottom of the barrel in the public school system," said Rep. Ron Wilson, D-Houston.

"I'm willing to try anything right now," he said. "We've lost a couple of generations of them, and we can't afford to lose another generation."

Wilson, an African American, is a good example of the odd alliances created by the voucher movement. Largely considered a conservative battle cry, vouchers also draw support from minority Democrats, particularly blacks in large urban areas.

Opponents tend to be liberal. They include vocal critics, such as teacher organizations, but also some members of the religious right who do not want public money corrupting private religious schools.

Bolstered by a Republican majority in the Legislature and a recent Supreme Court decision allowing public funds to pay tuition at private religious schools in Cleveland, advocates say they have the best chance ever of getting vouchers through the Legislature.

Previous efforts have failed. Voucher legislation was narrowly defeated in 1995 and 1997. Similar bills did not reach the floor of the House or Senate in the past two sessions.

So far, the only blueprint is a bill filed by Wilson, who wants to create a pilot program in the state's six largest school districts.

It would apply to low-income students who fail the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, and if today's trends hold true, the affected districts would be Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Cypress-Fairbanks in the Houston area and Northside.

Northside School District, with 69,000 students, is the largest in South Texas. It is not, in general, a poor district, and its schools are considered to be among the best in Bexar County.

Yet many of its students would be eligible for a voucher under Wilson's bill. Last year, 41.7 percent were economically disadvantaged, and 16.7 percent of those who took the state's standardized test did not pass.

There is no cost estimate for the bill, but Wilson said he'd be willing to cap the number of vouchers for each district.

Rep. Scott Hochberg, also a Democrat from Houston, decried Wilson's strategy.

For every child given a voucher, 10 times that many would be left behind, he said, and pegging vouchers to failing test scores could lead to a backlash.

"What do they (lawmakers) go back and tell their parents?" Hochberg said. "In order to put their child into a private school, they need to flunk the test?"

Northside Superintendent John Folks is no fan of Wilson's bill, either. He says it's unfair to put public money into private schools without making them play by the same rules.

"Let's require the private schools to give the TAKS test," he said, "and let's see how they do it."

[email protected]