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Voucher Plan Will Help Public Education
Governor Rowland has proposed an education reform plan that offers 500 private school vouchers, worth $4,000 each, to children in the state's worst performing schools. The best way to understand why it makes so much sense to target Connecticut's failing schools with some form of school choice is to look across the border to Albany, New York.
In 1996, Virginia Manheimer, a wealthy philanthropist, wanted to see just how powerful vouchers could be in improving the quality of education, especially for the poor and minorities. Working with Thomas Carroll, president of the Empire Foundation for Policy Research, she was able to identify Albany's Giffen Memorial Elementary School as one of the least effective schools in the entire Capitol Region (Albany, Schenectady, and Troy). The reading scores at Giffen, as measured by statewide testing of third graders, were the worst of any elementary school in the area, while the rate of violent incidences was one of the highest. In 1995, a 12-year-old sixth grader had been caught bringing a semiautomatic handgun to class.
In December of 1996, the Empire Foundation announced what was then called the "ABCS-Giffen" plan. Every child entering the first through sixth grades at Giffen Memorial Elementary School was offered a scholarship that would pay 90 percent of tuition up to $2,000 at any private school of his or her parents' choosing.
Prior to the ABCS-Giffen plan, the Albany public education bureaucracy had written off any hope of ever helping the pupils at Giffen Elementary. Their litany reasons for excusing the poor quality of education would be depressingly familiar to anyone concerned about Connecticut's own failing schools: Giffen Elementary's children came from broken homes, 91 percent of their families received welfare, their parents didn't read to them, their parents were poor role models, their parents didn't care and didn't want to get involved.
In other words, the problem was the children, not the school. Nothing could be done.
Within months of the scholarship announcement, some reforms that had once been considered "impossible" at an inner city public school were quickly instituted. The Albany City School Superintendent, Lonnie Palmer, interviewed each teacher at Giffen, subsequently transferring or otherwise replacing 20 percent of them. The principal was also replaced; and two new assistant principals were hired, one of whom completely scrapped the old language arts program and replaced it with the highly regarded Reading Recovery / Success for All curriculum.
Anne Pope, head of the Albany Branch of the NAACP, was quoted in the New York Times as crediting Virginia Manheimer's scholarships with turning Giffen Elementary around, forcing the bureaucracy to take actions they would not otherwise have taken. Even Lonnie Palmer finally had to admit that Giffen Elementary had been helped by a choice program that targeted Albany's worst school.
Coming back to Connecticut, there is no reason to believe that the effect of offering school choice to disadvantaged children in Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven is going to be any different than it was in Albany.
Some critics will raise the issue of special education, suggesting that only the parents of bright students will take the Governor's proposed vouchers, leaving failing schools even worse off. What these naysayers won't tell you is that this so-called "creaming" effect has never been observed anywhere a well-designed school choice plan been tried. Indeed, Denmark, which has the world's oldest school choice program (dating back to the mid-1850's), also ranks highest on international comparisons of education for the learning disabled.
Other critics suggest that the Governor's proposal would lead to political pressure for more choices that will precipitate a massive flight from public schools. Again, if we look at what has actually happened where broad-based voucher programs have recently been implemented, both in the United States (Milwaukee, Cleveland, Florida) and in foreign countries (Sweden, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Australia), the average shift from public to private is relatively small. The real change is within failing public schools, which finally start to improve.
The most prominent critic of the governor's voucher plan proposal, Connecticut Education Association president Rosemary Coyle, has asked "Why would we want to divert public dollars to private schools that are not accountable to Connecticut's citizens?" The answer is very simple: to make the state's worst performing public schools accountable to Connecticut's citizens.
Dr. Lewis M. Andrews is Executive Director of the Yankee Institute for Public Policy Inc. at Trinity College, a Connecticut research and educational institute.
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The Yankee Institute for Public Policy, Inc. is a nonpartisan educational and research organization founded more than two decades ago. Today, the Yankee Institute's mission is to "promote economic opportunity through lower taxes and new ideas for better government in Connecticut." The Yankee Institute for Public Policy, Inc. is classified by the IRS as a 501 (c) (3) public charity. Contributions are deductible to the extent allowed by law.
