Review: Choosing Equality and the Politics of School Choice

First Quarter 2000

New York City is currently looking for its 12th public schools chancellor in 20 years. Why doesn't anyone want to keep the job? The reason, says Joseph P. Viteritti, is that something is "inherently impossible" about the system. Viteritti, a professor at New York University, was a special assistant to Chancellor Frank J. Macchiarola, who resigned from that position in 1983. Late last year, The Brookings Institution Press, in Washington, D.C., published Viteritti's Choosing Equality: School Choice, the Constitution, and Civil Society. What's the connection?

Choosing Equality is a substantial and thorough argument for school choice offered by a public education official and liberal advocate of equality who speaks for no Christian, Jewish, or Muslim community and who pitches more than simply a free-market-competition solution. Viteritti calls for nothing less than "a redefinition of public education in America." Public education "no longer needs to be defined solely in terms of schools run and operated by the government. The promise of public education can be fulfilled by providing all families with the means to select from a wide array of institutions," including private and religious schools, he argues.

Equality Requires Choice

Here is his argument in brief. The American republic is grounded in the principle of the equality of all citizens. Equality cannot be realized or maintained, however, without equal educational opportunity for all citizens. The current system does not offer equal education to the poor and to many whose convictions are in conflict with secular public education. It therefore denies them an essential key to political equality and economic opportunity. The most important contributors to healthy human development in the United States are religious communities. These seedbeds of democracy must be encouraged not discouraged in their empowerment of families who are chiefly responsible for raising children to adulthood. African-Americans and Hispanic Americans are among those most strongly tied to religious communities. If for financial reasons parents cannot take their children from failing schools and choose religious or charter schools that can better serve them, they are being denied equal treatment in American society. The current system that denies the use of public funds for parental choice of alternative schools and treats religions as a threat to, rather than as the very lifeblood of, American democracy, is radically distorted. A new system is required through which government can seek to promote equality by supporting parental choice of education from a wide variety of government-run and independent schools.

There is no evidence, says Viteritti, to support the claim "that public schools are the only effective means for political socialization in a democracy, or that the robust development of private and parochial schools is anathema to our aspirations as a free democratic society. In fact, the evidence is to the contrary. Research shows that adults who have attended parochial schools display high levels of patriotism, tolerance, and civic involvement." Political equality depends on socialization into responsible citizenship. Responsible citizenship requires trust. Trust arises from communities of trust, and the most important of these are religious communities. Given this fact, says Viterriti, "the more vigilant we are about keeping religion out of the public schools, the stronger the argument becomes for providing options to the small minority of people who want their children to be educated according to teachings of their faith."

Contrary to the opinion of secularists, who fear that government support of religious schools will foster divisiveness and the fracturing of a common American culture, the opposite is true. "It is one of the great ironies of twentieth-century civilization," write Viteritti, "that America—which was founded by European emigres in pursuit of religious liberty and which remains one of the most religious countries in the world—has taken such a preemptive view toward providing faith-based communities with an opportunity to educate their children in accord with their own values. This restrictive approach is especially counterintuitive in a society with such a diversity of religious orientations and a tradition of moderation that defines the way the great majority of Americans practice their faith."

Is There a School Choice Movement Yet?

If Viteritti's book is big news, a sign of a sea change in American liberal thought about the governance of public education, then the question that follows is this: What will it take—and how long—for our state legislatures to create a new pluralistic, non-bureaucratic, and competitive governance structure for education?

For a partial answer to this question, one will do well to turn to another 1999 book, titled The Politics of School Choice (Rowman & Littlefield), written by Hubert Morken and Jo Renee Formicola. This is indeed a book about politics. If, for example, you don't know who was behind the push for vouchers in Milwaukee or Cleveland, or if you didn't know that major legislative and constitutional movements for school choice exist in Pennsylvania and Michigan, or if you wonder who is leading African-Americans in the quest for school choice in the cities, then Morken and Formicola will tell you what you need to know. Based on questionnaire research and hundreds of personal interviews, their book describes the late 1990s battleground of education reform.

The overarching battleground of school choice is, of course, the Constitution's religion clauses, the interpretation of which will lead either to what Viteritti, Charles Glenn, and John Witte believe is constitutional (see the review of Witte's book on page four of this issue) or to what strict separationists believe is constitutional. On this front, Morken and Formicola describe the work of Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice and Kevin Hasson at the Becket Fund, both of whom are prosecuting court cases on behalf of school choice reforms that include public funding of religious schools.

Chapter Two examines the 1998 battles over a tax-credit initiative in Colorado and charter-school legislation in California. Chapter Three elucidates the Michigan movement, with attention devoted to the efforts of Paul DeWeese (a Michigan legislator) and the Mackinac Center, as well as the drama in Pennsylvania, featuring African-American legislator Dwight Evans, Catholic Cardinal Bevilacqua of Philadelphia, and Governor Tom Ridge.

Next, the authors introduce the entrepreneurial activists behind the Edison Project, Educational CHOICE, Children's Scholarship Fund, CEO America, the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, and the American Education Reform Foundation. These are the free-market reformers who can't wait for political change. They are offering private scholarships and other services now.

In Chapter Five, we tour New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Boston, with brief stops in California and Arizona to see what Catholics are doing. Then it is on to a more extended consideration of challenges faced by the evangelical Association of Christian Schools International and by James Dobson's Focus on the Family, both of which are headquartered in Colorado Springs. African-American leaders, discussed in Chapter Six, include Polly Williams in Milwaukee; the Reverend Floyd Flake in New York City; Steve Gardner, Marlon Moss, and Ann Byfield in Indianapolis; and Jackie Cissel and Howard Fuller, who work at large.

Based on their wide-ranging survey and interviews, Morken and Formicola draw several conclusions, perhaps the most important of which is that "no organization was identified or perceived as 'influential' nationally, by a majority of the school choice organizations" surveyed. Related to this are two other conclusions: "most school choice groups are not pursuing political strategies," and "no preferred type of school choice has emerged as 'the one' that can engender or ignite the movement." Our research, say the authors, has "confirmed the fact that school choice is beginning to coalesce as a topic of public debate, but not as a full-fledged political movement—yet. This is due in part to the philosophical and political fragmentation that challenges the development and maturation of any public policy, and school choice in particular."

Putting both the Viteritti and Morken/Formicola books together, it is evident that the public consensus which has supported the government-established and financed common school for more than 150 years is evaporating as a majority consensus. Yet despite the country's commitment to religious freedom, pluralism, and equal opportunity, a new consensus to support a different kind of public governance structure for education has not yet taken hold.

This is more than a school-governance question. It requires a reconceptualization of the American polity in support of equality and pluralism for all.

—The Editor