Tag Archives | Democratic Party

What it (once) meant to be a Democrat

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On December 2, 2011 in Catholic education, Education and Public Policy, General, School Choice

This month, former Senator George McGovern frames his beau ideal of the crusading and committed progressive in his new book, What It Means to Be a Democrat. Addressing issues as varied as education, defense spending and universal healthcare, McGovern reminds the reader that “if there ever was a moment to define ourselves boldly, to stick to our ideals, it is now.” But now, McGovern’s ideal Democratic defense of public education is much narrower than it was when he ran for president 40 years ago.

“Yes, I’m sure that some private academies offer students more one-on-one attention and perhaps more intellectual stimulation than the neighborhood public school,” he writes. “But that doesn’t change my strongly held view that public funds should be invested in public education … Voucher programs that use public money to send kids to private school only divert money away from the overall goal of making U.S. public schools as robust as possible.”

When he ran for president in 1972, however, McGovern’s support for education was drawn more broadly. As Election Day neared, McGovern proposed his own tuition tax credit plan to help the parents of elementary and secondary schoolchildren offset the costs of a private or parochial education, just as advisers to Richard Nixon had done. Politically, McGovern wanted the Catholic vote, but this pretends that he was a maverick among liberal Democrats in wanting to aid families choosing a private, even faith-based, education. He was not.

Hubert Humphrey proposed his own tuition tax credit plan when he ran against Nixon in 1968. And McGovern joined 23 Democratic senators in 1978 to co-sponsor a plan championed by one of the nation’s most prominent Democrats, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, offering $500 in tax credits to families paying private school tuition.

“We cannot abandon these schools and we will not,” McGovern announced to a throng of Catholic high school students in Chicago in the fall of 1972, according to the Washington Post. Catholic schools, McGovern added, are a “keystone of American education,” and without government help, families would lose the right to give their children an education in which spiritual and moral values play an important role.

Presidential candidates were born to flip-flop, but McGovern’s newest manifesto reminds us how far Democrats have strayed from a movement they once breathed life into. Moynihan was prophetic in 1981 when he wrote that as vouchers become more and more a conservative cause, “it will, I suppose, become less and less a liberal one.”

If that happens, he added, “it will present immense problems for a person such as myself who was deeply involved in this issue long before it was either conservative or liberal. And if it prevails only as a conservative cause, it will have been a great failure of American liberalism not to have seen the essentially liberal nature of this pluralist proposition.”

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George McGovern on vouchers now — and then

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On December 1, 2011 in Catholic education, Education and Public Policy, General, School Choice

NOW: From the book, What It Means to Be a Democrat, published this month by Blue Rider Press, former Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern writes:

Yes, I’m sure that some private academies offer students more one-on-one attention and perhaps more intellectual stimulation than the neighborhood public school. But that doesn’t change my strongly held view that public funds should be invested in public education. Especially now, with a growing array of public charter schools, parents have more choice than ever if they don’t like what they see at the traditional school down the street. But voucher programs that use public money to send kids to private school only divert money away from the overall goal of making U.S. public schools as robust as possible.

THEN: From the Sept. 20, 1972, Washington Post, “McGovern Pledges Support For Aid to Private Schools”:

CHICAGO, Sept. 19 — Sen. George McGovern, calling Roman Catholic schools a keystone of American education, pledged his support today of federal tax credits to help offset tuition costs at parochial and other “bona fide” private schools.

“We cannot abandon these schools and we will not,” the Democratic presidential candidate said here this morning before a bubbling crowd of Catholic high school students.

Without government help, he told them, their parents would lose the right to give their children an education in which spiritual and moral values play an important role.

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As owners become workers, alliances shift

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On May 31, 2011 in General, Parent empowerment, Teacher empowerment

A Monday New York Times story headlined, “As Physicians’ Jobs Change, So Do Their Politics,” suggested that as doctors increasingly abandon their private practices and become employees of large health care institutions, they are no longer thinking like Republican-learning owners and instead thinking like Democratic-leaning workers. “Doctors were once overwhelmingly male and usually owned their own practices,” the article states, “but as more doctors move from business owner to shift worker, their historic alliance with the Republican Party is weakening.”

The parallels with public education are instructive. A primary rationale for government taking over public education in the mid-1800s was the need for universal access to quality education. Horace Mann and other state political leaders argued that too much decentralization was undermining quality and allowing too many children to go uneducated. Their answer was a more centralized, uniform public education system owned and managed by local governments under the guiding hand of state governments.

The industrial revolution that transformed our way of life in the 1800s also transformed how the government organized and managed public education. By the early 1900s public education had become a government-run factory with educators being assembly line workers. In the late 1950s and early 60s, teachers began organizing industrial-style unions to protect themselves from the abuses of these politically-run factories, and in doing so became a core constituency of organized labor and the Democratic Party, which is where they remain today.

According to the Times story, health care and doctors are beginning to follow a similar path. But, ironically, while doctors are abandoning their private practices to join large health care factories, teachers and parents are increasingly using charter schools, homeschooling cooperatives, dual enrollment programs, publicly-funded private school options and virtual schools to create smaller, decentralized teaching and learning options. Schools, or learning networks, with fewer than 50 students are still rare, but they’re proliferating. Perhaps in a decade or two more teachers will own private practices than doctors. Then political debates over tenure, merit pay and employee evaluations will be more common in medicine than education.

Finding the proper balance between contradictory forces is a challenge we all face in our daily lives, so it’s not surprising to see doctors and educators struggling to balance big versus small, centralized versus decentralized, and government-owned versus practitioner-owned. Despite the power of ideology, pragmatic concerns will ultimately control how these tensions are managed, although doctors should spend time in school districts talking with teachers before abandoning their medical practices and joining large health care factories. Working on an assembly line has its downsides.

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Indiana Dems revolt against a voucher plan that has liberal roots in their state party

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On February 24, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Now into their third day of a self-imposed exile in neighboring Illinois, Indiana’s House Democrats say they want another 11 Republican-backed bills soon to come up for a vote to be “killed” along with the proposed “right-to-work” legislation that initially prompted their flight from the state.

Republicans have offered to dump the latter, but are refusing to yield on any of the other bills, including a proposal to allow low- and middle-income families a public means to choose a private school for their children. House Minority Leader Patrick Bauer, a Democrat from South Bend, told reporters that the tax credit scholarship proposal and a bill that limits teachers’ collective bargaining rights are “dealbreakers.”

While it’s common for Democratic leaders to distance themselves from tax-credit and voucher programs, it’s interesting to see Indiana’s Democrats do so. After all, in Indiana, such programs had their roots in the Democratic Party, and those roots don’t go back far. Continue Reading →

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New Jersey Opportunity Scholarship plan advances

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On February 4, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

UPDATED: New Jersey’s proposed Opportunity Scholarship Act won unanimous approval Thursday in the state assembly’s Commerce and Economic Development Committee. Of the five members who approved the plan, three were Democrats, including the committee chairman, Albert Coutinho. While Coutinho acknowledged there are concerns over the measure within his party’s caucus, he said the vote was “a sign that we’re serious about education reform and considering all options.”

Newark Mayor Cory Booker testified in favor of the proposal: “This bill doesn’t remove our moral obligation to fix the failing public schools in New Jersey, nor does it relieve the crime that’s happening every day when we fail our children. [But] it’s about time we give some small sliver of immediate hope for parents who are desperate in our city.”

Before approving the plan, Coutinho said the overall size of the program would be reduced from nearly $1 billion over five years to $360 million, the Asbury Park Press reported. Proponents said they expect further amendments as the bill heads to the assembly’s Budget Committee.

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The dialogue in New Jersey is changing

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On February 1, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Two recent items from New Jersey have showcased just how the political lines separating support for either vouchers or tax credit scholarships continue to blur.

The first is commentary from Tom Byrne, who served two terms as chairman of New Jersey’s Democratic Party from 1994 to 1997, supporting New Jersey’s proposed Opportunity Scholarship Act. The politics are changing, Byrne says, because “many have come to see school choice as a civil rights issue,” and an increasing number of Democrats don’t believe it weakens traditional public schools:

Saying that it is not fair to leave some kids behind in a public school is a tacit acknowledgement of a serious problem there. If you saw ten people drowning in a lake and knew you could only rescue one or two, would you let them all drown in order to be fair to all victims?  Let’s flip the logic in another direction. Democrats almost all favor affordable housing policies with lotteries that give some people a wonderful new home while leaving others behind. This is so even though the available funds might be better spent making far more existing homes more energy-efficient and lead-free.  A housing lottery that leaves people behind is okay, but an education lottery somehow is not.

The second item is notable for a fact that might escape some readers: A news story from the Bergen Record that quotes only Democratic lawmakers — those who support, and are sponsoring, the proposed Opportunity Scholarship, and those who oppose it.

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How the Democratic Party historically defined equal opportunity in education

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On January 28, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, Private Schools, School Choice

Columbia University education professor Amy Stuart Wells is troubled by the spread of bipartisanship in education reform. “President Obama’s signature Race to the Top program, which promotes charter schools, state tests, and tough-love accountability for educators, might just as well have been proposed by a Republican president,” she writes in Education Week.

True. But professor Wells has a short memory of what she considers the “traditional goals” of the Democratic Party. Far from subverting the party’s ideals, as she claims, today’s proposals for education reform echo the proposals for school choice and equal opportunity that Democrats advanced more than 40 years ago.

Both Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and George McGovern in 1972 proposed tuition tax credits for elementary and secondary school students in their respective Democratic presidential platforms. Also, in 1978, McGovern joined 23 other Democratic senators in co-sponsoring legislation introduced by Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan that would have awarded up to $500 in tax credits to families paying private or parochial school tuition. Continue Reading →

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