School Choice is Here to Stay

The glass is half full – how do we fill it up?                                                        -Click Here to download-

November 9, 2009, was a good day for school choice. The American Center for School Choice (ACSC) held its inaugural conference, launching its effort to make arguments for school choice that will inform and inspire citizens who have been left uninformed and uninspired. As Paul R. Dimond, ACSC board member and former Special Assistant to President Clinton, put it in summing up for the crowd the prospects ahead, “Whether you view the glass of public support for family choice of school as half-full and rising, or capped at half-empty or less -- school choice is here to stay. Empowering families to choose the school that each decides will best educate their children is the right place to make our stand.”

ACSC made its stand by inviting participants and attendees from across a wide spectrum of opinion to come to the National Press Club in Washington, DC, to hear it make the case for “School Choice as a Moral and Civic Imperative.” Well-known advocates of school choice sat side by side with outspoken opponents. Attendees and participants associated with the National Education Association, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State were there, along with representatives from the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute, Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and the Journal of School Choice. The governing board of the National Assessment of Educational Progress was represented, as was the U.S. Department of Education, as well as such groups as the Council for American Private Education, the National Association of Independent Schools, the National Catholic Educational Association, the Mid-Atlantic Catholic Schools Consortium, and the Department of Schools of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC. Affiliates of research groups and think tanks were in attendance, and professors and practitioners of law were thick on the ground. It was a notably diverse and experienced group.

The daylong conference was divided into four sessions. The two morning sessions, said ACSC Executive Director Michael J. Guerra in welcoming the audience, “explore the ‘why’ of school choice; the two afternoon sessions investigate the ‘how.’” (Click here for the complete program of the day.)

The principal speakers for the sessions on ‘why’ were John E. Coons on the “Moral Imperative” and Stephen D. Sugarman on the “Civic Imperative.” Coons invited the audience to face squarely the fundamental fact that on behalf of each child some adult must make decisions about education: “Whether I am a libertarian or the teachers’ union, I must ask first who it is that shall select the school experience for the child.” Coons made a powerful case for parents as the best deciders, noting the empirical fact that parents do decide. as wealth allows them, and arguing that the vocation of the parents and the vocation of the child are best fulfilled when parental responsibility is supported by public policy. Sugarman then made the case that family choice in education is an example of the kind of civic engagement that our public policies should encourage; he sketched the history of the “fast wave” of parental choice options and noted the evolution of “choice” from being feared as a tool of division to being welcomed as an instrument of social progress.

The afternoon sessions on ‘how’ featured Jesse H. Choper on “The Law: Precedents and Prospects” and Paul R. Dimond on “Politics: Precedents and Prospects.” Choper analyzed the state of the law relating to school choice, and Dimond looked back at the political history and forward to the political possibilities. Choper said that the Supreme Court’s 2002 Zelman decision, which found no bar in the federal constitution to the school voucher program in Cleveland, featured judicial opinions so broadly written as to constitute an invitation to further school choice programs; he noted, however, that many state constitutions contain language that can be interpreted more restrictively, and he evaluated the tendencies of the Supreme Court as currently composed. Dimond galvanized the audience with his personal history of involvement in what he called “missed opportunities for the expansion of school choice” – from his work with the NAACP on the Milliken case in Detroit to his experience in the Clinton White House and The Monica Lewinsky Effect on the school choice movement. Having sketched the precedents, Dimond concluded by analyzing the prospects, and suggested political strategies for getting the level in the “glass of public support for family choice” much higher than its current half-way mark.

Each speaker’s presentation was subjected to criticism by a panel of discussants, and questions from the audience were fielded at the end of each session as well. There were some spirited colloquies and pointed remarks. (A fuller summary of the daylong conversation is available here.
The full texts of both the opening and closing addresses by John E. Coons are available here.Other papers deriving from the Conference will be posted on this web site at intervals in the weeks to come.

To summarize the day’s findings regarding the expansion of family choice in education: The political prospects are mixed but hold promise, particularly if new coalitions can be built. The legal obstacles are genuine, particularly at the state level, but mechanisms for school choice that are constitutionally acceptable do exist, and more and better mechanisms are possible. As a matter of civic practice, school choice in various modes is becoming more widespread and its benefits are more widely recognized. And as to the moral imperative, Coons’s deft reminder of the great obvious -- that parents are the best deciders – showed once again the power of this simple fact, a power confirmed by the assiduousness with which critics avoided confronting it: no opponent on this day offered to take it on directly.

This conference “School Choice and the American Family: A Moral and Civic Imperative” is just the first contribution of the American Center for School Choice to establishing school choice as axiomatic for the American public. ACSC will continue to make the case that all parents should have effective choice in their children’s education, and that disenfranchisement of our citizens in the area of school choice is as unacceptable as any other systemic disenfranchisement. ACSC will work to persuade the public that family choice in education is a matter of justice and freedom, and that effective parental choice will contribute substantially to the child’s good, the family’s good, and the common good.

About the American Center for School Choice
The American Center for School Choice was founded in 2008 in response to the political fact that the empowerment of ordinary families to exercise effective choice in the education of their children will come only as the fruit of a credible coalition of recognized centrists. ACSC seeks to speak to those of whatever party affiliation who resonate to arguments about the family and related communitarian values. ACSC believes that every family needs choice - for the child's good, the family's good, and the common good. For more information go to www.amcsc.org