School Choice

A divided state Senate has approved the nation's broadest school "choice" bill and sent it to the House and an uncertain future. The measure would give state vouchers of as much as $900 to parents choosing to send a child to a school, public or private, other than the public school they'd normally attend. While other states have some form of "school choice," none is as generous as the Pennsylvania proposal. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Frank Salvatore, R-Philadelphia, passed yesterday, 28-22, after a day and a night of sometimes bitter debate.

A glance at some recent newspaper stories and editorials on school choice would lead one to believe the school choice movement is a Catholic conspiracy being engineered by a sinister group of red-robed figures who take their orders from the Vatican. Some in the local media apparently believe the school choice movement is some sort of papal plot to take over education in Pennsylvania. As a Protestant Philadelphian, I feel it is important to address the notion that the push for school choice is primarily a Catholic movement.

It is about time we address head-on the root cause for our social problems such as poverty, crime, drugs, etc. More money for welfare, prisons, condoms, and treatment might temporarily help those who suffer but it won't make a dent in solving the basic problems. Only education will. Then there is unemployment, partly brought on by foreign competition. If our work force were better educated, our country would be more competitive. Just like we used to be. But education is ineffective in this country.

The educational choice movement is gaining ground. Yesterday, President Bush was in Philadelphia at the Archbishop Ryan High School promoting the provision of $1,000 vouchers to low- and moderate-income parents. The administration's endorsement comes in the wake of state efforts. California's Choice in Education League has announced that it has enough signatures to put a state school voucher referendum on the ballot. In March, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the right of poor Milwaukee parents to choose private schools paid for with tax dollars.

Few organizations are as consistently liberal as the Anti-Defamation League, especially when it comes to matters of church and state. The ADL devotes an entire page on its website ( www.adl.org ) to church-state separation, and it wants the "wall" between the two to remain as high and impenetrable as possible, believing that to lower it would have a negative effect on both. Which makes it remarkable that the executive committee of the ADL's Philadelphia chapter has voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution endorsing vouchers that would allow children in underperforming schools in poor neighborhoods to escape to schools that would give them a safer environment to learn in and, thus, a better education.

Just recently, the Philadelphia Compact commissioned a poll on where Philadelphians stand on school choice and vouchers. The results were not significantly different from prior studies. In past results, offered by Temple University, Millersville State University, state Rep. Dwight Evans and the Commonwealth Foundation, the polls showed that from 60 percent to 75 percent of African- Americans and Hispanics support vouchers, particularly poor urban residents. Not until the Gallup National Poll in 1998 showed that a majority of white Americans support school choice did the issue start to get serious attention in certain professional communities.

It took one game for the new school-choice program to make an impact on Colonial Conference football. One game. What happens in a month? A season? A couple of years of "recruiting" - oops, I meant to say "attracting" - student athletes to schools outside their home district? The summer buzz in the Colonial Conference was about Sterling, since the Silver Knights had "attracted" several student athletes from other districts through its school-choice option, which is linked to its Junior Naval ROTC program.

Ed Feulner is president of the Heritage Foundation We're used to hearing bad news from the education front - poor test scores, falling literacy, slipping standards. But the new academic year brings a welcome change: School-choice programs have expanded significantly in recent months. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal has already dubbed 2011 "The Year of School Choice. " As of this month, 18 states and Washington have policies that support private-school choice. But public-school choice options also continue to grow.

The United States education system is governed by the political process. Public elections and lobbying work to establish where schools will be built, what will be taught, and which teachers will be hired. As a result, our elementary and secondary education system contains all the inefficiency and stagnation symptomatic of government bureaucracies. Low quality, high costs, a lack of innovation, and perverse incentive structures plague our education system. Thousands of reforms and billions of dollars worth of tinkering with the system have failed to improve the lot of students.

Only a few weeks remain before our lawmakers in Harrisburg adjourn for the summer. A very critical issue remains on their calendar, and each moment that a decision is delayed, the future of another child and another family is threatened. I urge everyone in our community to ask their legislators to consider and support the education reform plan now before them.For many of us, the school choice initiative proposed by Gov. Ridge offers hope for struggling school districts and a more promising future for our children and families.

There's a myth circulating in Philadelphia these days that families and neighborhoods don't want more public-school choices. A handful of activists with specific agendas use demonstrations, community forums, and City Council and School Reform Commission meetings to spread this myth. But there are a whole lot of people in Philadelphia who are too busy trying to take advantage of their educational options to stage rallies, attend meetings, or get on the phone with a reporter. Last week, I attended freshman orientation night at Central High School, a selective public school that U.S. News & World Report recently named the 10th best high school in the state.

THE FLIERS have been landing in mailboxes since last week in West Philly's 188th state House District, attacking Rep. James Roebuck for the many problems in the city's public schools. One flier gives Roebuck failing grades on school dropouts, violence, overcrowded classrooms and alleged cheating on standardized tests. Another notes that he has been in office for 25 years but "failed to fight to educate" the city's children. Roebuck calls it dirty politics and accuses a fellow West Philly politician, state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, of engineering the attacks.

  A group of well-mannered kindergarten students navigate a brightly decorated hallway of the Chester Community Charter School as principal Christine Matijasich looks on. "Don't forget: Fingers on lips, hands on hips," Matijasich says as the children file by quietly. The charter school, it seems, is an island of order in a sea of troubles, surrounded by the struggling Chester Upland School District, which remains on life support through June. Backers hold it up as the epitome of charter success, a school that outperforms the district where most of its student live.

CATHOLIC Schools Week began yesterday with a plea from Philly Archbishop Charles Chaput for Catholics to push for passage of a school-voucher bill that would let parents choose where to spend education dollars. "We need to press our lawmakers . . . to pass school choice," Chaput writes in his weekly column on the website Catholic Philly. "Vouchers . . . return the power of educational choice to parents, where it belongs. " Then why is the Archdiocese of Philadelphia taking choice from parents whose kids attend archdiocesan elementary schools slated to close in June?

David Williams said he soon hopes to narrow his growing list of prospective colleges to five or so. Higher on the star running back's current to-do list, after the recent announcement that West Catholic will shut its doors come June, is deciding where he wants to spend his final year of high school. For now, his top three schools, in no particular order, are La Salle, Imhotep Charter, and Cardinal O'Hara. The speedy junior added that Archbishop Wood and Roman Catholic are also possibilities.

ROBBINSVILLE, N.J. - Students who transfer under the school-choice program will not have to sit out 30 days to participate in varsity sports, the NJSIAA says. The decision, announced Wednesday, was a reversal of a rule the state association instituted in November, when it said that school-choice transfers would be held to the same standards as other transfers - requiring varsity athletes who do not change residence to sit out 30 days before playing for their new school. But NJSIAA officials said the state Department of Education doesn't want any impediments on students who transfer under the school-choice program.

ROBBINSVILLE, N.J. - Students who transfer under the school-choice program will not have to sit out 30 days to participate in varsity sports, the NJSIAA says. The decision, announced Wednesday, was a reversal of a rule the state association instituted in November, when it said that school-choice transfers would be held to the same standards as other transfers - requiring varsity athletes who do not change residence to sit out 30 days before playing for their new school. But NJSIAA officials said the state Department of Education doesn't want any impediments on students who transfer under the school-choice program.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput is calling on Catholics angered by plans to close schools throughout the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to direct their energies to getting their elected officials to support school vouchers instead. "Some Catholics - too many - seem to find it easier to criticize their own leaders than to face the fact that they're discriminated against every day of the year," he says in his weekly column for www.CatholicPhilly.com . "They pay once for public schools; then they pay again for the Catholic schools they rightly hold in such esteem.

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - Education activists and parents rallied Wednesday against a bill that would allow the use of taxpayer-funded vouchers for religious and private schools, calling it "a backdoor way to privatization" of public schools. Several said the program would drain resources from poorer districts and undercut initiatives aimed at improving public schools. Parent Luz Mayi, who said her seven children, ages 14 to 35, attended parochial and public schools in Jersey City, said supporters of the voucher program were disingenuous in trying to sell it as an attempt to give parents school choice.

THE CONTROVERSIAL reforms that Michelle Rhee pushed during her tumultuous tenure as public-schools leader in Washington, D.C., were hardly the last marks she'd make on U.S. public education. Since resigning last year, Rhee has pushed hard for school vouchers and merit pay for teachers, and has founded StudentsFirst, which pours money into lawmakers' coffers. Perhaps it shouldn't have come as a surprise then, that, after receiving a $905,000 buyout, Philadelphia's former schools superintendent Arlene Ackerman became a voucher proponent herself.