Last Friday, I participated in a panel discussion in South Florida on the challenges facing public school administrators, and I was joined by Karen Aronowitz, the president of the United Teachers of Dade. I always enjoy talking with Karen, but we have divergent definitions of public education which lead us to disagree about how parental empowerment impacts public education.
Karen thinks public education includes only schools that are owned and operated by school boards and covered by collective bargaining agreements, whereas I believe public education includes all publicly funded education programs, including charter schools, virtual schools, special education vouchers, and tax credit scholarships for low-income children. Karen’s more narrow definition leads her to conclude that empowering parents to match their children with the learning options that best meet their needs undermines public education when parents choose learning options not owned by school boards. Under my more inclusive definition, public education is strengthened when all parents have access to the learning options their children need, especially if these options are provided through well managed public-private partnerships that extend the purchasing power of our tax dollars.
The size of Karen’s bargaining unit is tied to the number of people the Dade County school board employs; consequently she wants her school board to have as many employees as possible. Parents, especially low-income parents, have other concerns. They want their children to have the best education possible, and they don’t care about a school’s corporate governance. These divergent interests are why Karen and I disagree about how broadly we should define public education. Her union is enhanced by a narrower definition, while the interests of the parents, students and taxpayers are best met with a broader definition.
Teacher unions were once important allies in the struggle for greater social justice and equal opportunity, but they’ve de-emphasized these values as they’ve increasingly put the power of school boards over the interests of families. (In Florida, the lawyer for the state's teachers union also works for Florida's school boards association.) Nonetheless, I’m convinced teachers unions will eventually return to their progressive roots and embrace a definition of public education that includes full parental empowerment. Karen’s generation may not be capable of leading this transition, but there is a younger generation of extraordinary teachers in Dade County and elsewhere who will.
In today's Wall Street Journal, John O. Norquist, a former Democratic mayor of Milwaukee, defends an effort from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to eliminate the income threshold regulating entry to the Milwaukee voucher program, which currently is open only to low-income students. The threshold has had the effect, Norquist writes, "of isolating low-income students from other more affluent students." By contrast, most Western nations have a much greater enhanced form of parental school choice, and their urban centers are economically and racially diverse as a result.
People with children and money don't cluster outside European or Canadian cities to avoid sending their kids to school with the poor. And the poor who live in cities have the opportunity to attend public, private and parochial schools that are appreciated by a large cross section of parents.
American liberals have been reluctant to embrace school choice, fearing it will drain resources from government-operated schools. Yet isn't it even worse to support a system that rewards concentration of the rich in exclusive suburbs segregated from the poor? Of course there are affluent people (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama come to mind) who enroll their children in urban private schools like D.C.'s Sidwell Friends, which still has some children enrolled from the choice program. Many more, including middle-class parents, would live in economically and racially diverse cities once school choice was universally available.
If expanded, Milwaukee's choice program will demonstrate this to the whole country.
Opposition to Walker's plan to expand the program has come in recent weeks from a stalwart defender of the school choice movement, Howard Fuller. While Fuller has supported raising the income limit of the Milwaukee voucher to include more moderate-income people, he said making the program universally accessible to students in all income levels "essentially provides a subsidy for rich people."
