Author

John E. Coons

John E. Coons is a professor of law, emeritus, University of California at Berkeley, and author with Stephen D. Sugarman of "Private Wealth and Public Education" and "Education by Choice."

A letter to President Joe Biden

John E. Coons July 30, 2021

John E. Coons

Dear President Biden,

I am an ancient Berkeley law professor, long absent from the classroom but still scribbling, mostly about the schooling of children. My enduring hope for this country is the ever-delayed empowerment of not-so-rich parents to be trusted – like the rest of us – to choose the school for their own children.

This is, of course, the parents’ constitutional right. Curiously, it also is their legal duty; each must get his or her child properly taught, either at home, if the parent is prepared, or at some qualified school, public or private. My late wife, Marilyn, and I chose public school for roughly half of our five children’s years, the rest parochial.

The decision wasn’t always easy, but as parents, we felt the responsibility and never regretted it.

It is a curious political reality that so many of us Democrats have, for so long, favored the systematic frustration of those lower-income parents who wish to take responsibility for their own child. Those of us who have for so long called for their empowerment have somehow been imagined by colleagues and media as seriously “conservative” in our political souls.

Think of that: We want to treat the poor parent just as we demand to be treated ourselves, hence we are conservative.

But it’s true; in my experience, most of these “liberal” folk who flourish in our universities and legislatures consider subsidized school choice for the poor to be a conservative – even right wing – ambition. It is not surprising that they seem to have serious difficulty in describing their own authentically liberal position.

I appreciate the importance of any president’s keeping loyal constituents satisfied; but for the years ahead, I would respectfully note the growing political weight of these lower income who happen to be parents and who would be ever grateful for the practical restoration of that independence and responsibility guaranteed them by the Constitution.

Sincerely yours,

John E. Coons

July 30, 2021 1 comment

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Give us your poor

John E. Coons July 23, 2021

John E. Coons

“It’s the poor wot gets the blame.”

— Anonymous

There seems a fairly common conviction among us that many, even most, of our lower-income parents, for various reasons, fall below the level of responsibility necessary to decide which school is best for their child.

That belief, though slowly receding, seems yet sufficient to allow a general survival of the 19^th Century enrollment policy by which the child is thought to be rescued from the naivete or indifference of the not-so-rich, maybe immigrant, parent. The boy or girl is thus ordered by government strangers into some nearby school called “public.”

Today, armadas of both critics and defenders of this intellectual ghetto of unprivileged children collide over its wisdom. The battle, so far, has been carried on largely over the learning efficiency of this system as measured by number scores on standardized tests.

Blizzards of these snow-report statistics come from states such as Ohio and Florida, which strongly suggests that a moderate growth in the child’s grasp of basics is achieved when choice is subsidized for him or her to attend the parents’ favored school.

Paradoxically – and distractingly – this avalanche of easy-to-report numbers has made test scores seem the essence of choice’s civic gift. In my view, this fixation on tallying scores has distracted the ready audience of choice from the broader and deeper effects to be expected of the re-empowerment of these belittled parents to act like, well … parents.

Mothers! Fathers! You are too poor to be ready to exercise your constitutional right; so, Freddie gets assigned to Lincoln Elementary for eight years.

One clear message from this to parents is hardly subtle. You are struggling to provide, hence, you are unfit to be sovereign of your own children, and, in reality, a mere servant of the state. You have completed your initial five years of duty in this role, producing and nurturing Freddie. That duty continues, but now with added responsibility to this government to deliver him to us at Location X five days a week. You may alter this responsibility only by changing residence or paying private school tuition.

From his next eight years of experience in such relationships, Fredie learns at least one thing: “I don’t want this family thing, ever, to happen to me; it’s a trap. I’m staying free.” Meanwhile, Freddie’s parent has reconceived what had briefly seemed a role of authority and responsibility, not so different from that of the rich. It had suddenly become merely an agency of those strangers who run the state.

At day’s end, if little Alice has complaints about her daily lot at school, what can a poor parent do about it? And what toll does this revelation of personal futility take on the parent’s sense of responsibility? “I can do zero, so I guess that’s what I’ll do from now on.”

If the child and parent have both learned that – unlike the rest of us – parents play only a subordinate role in the raising of the child, what effect has this upon our civil order? Does it make for the ideal of the good citizen to learn that, if you are poor, the State, not the family, will decide how and where and what this child’s mind and spirit will be served?

Could the answer be relevant to the rescue and reuniting of our society?

July 23, 2021 1 comment

Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Featured Parent Empowerment Parental Choice School Choice

Playing the prophet for choice

John E. Coons July 9, 2021

John E. Coons

“The wisest prophets make sure of the event first.”

— Letter to Thos. Walpole, Horace Walpole

Such good advice notwithstanding, let us assume that the state of Montucky adopts an across-the-board system of school choice – vouchers of substantial amount for all. Participating schools, public and private, are free to choose two-thirds of their admissions, the rest to be decided by lottery among the unchosen.

Other regulations ensure that all parents have access to relevant information, assistance in navigating the process, and the schools’ commitment to fair treatment for all those admitted, including due process for cases of dismissal for scholastic failure or misbehavior.

Schools may teach religion but without requiring affirmation by the dissenter – and so forth.

With such assumptions the question becomes: What will be the social, civic and intellectual effects of such a scheme?

Any forecast is just that and no more, but today’s parental dissatisfaction and the advent of broad state systems of choice invite our speculation regarding the effects of liberating the lower-income parent (or perhaps all parents) to choose like the rest of us.

Here, then, is my own broad and basic forecast of a few major effects.

Most middle class and wealthy parents will choose to stay with the same public school they have already chosen when deciding upon their residence.
Lower-income parents in the city will, in considerable number, shift either to a different public school or to one of a growing number of participating private schools in this neighborhood.
Most inner-city public schools will learn to compete in the new market, the bulk of these becoming sufficiently popular to survive or even to flourish.
The inner-city child will begin to experience parent and family as a center of dignity and authority which determines important matters for their children.
Lower-income parents will, at last, experience self-respect in their role as responsible citizens; gradually they and their children will take their proper place as equals in our society and will behave as such.

For three or four years, there will be occasional chaos as schools and parents learn to adjust. Some new schools will have brief lives, either for want of student applications, failure to satisfy the choosing parents, or termination by the state for violation of the rules.

America will gradually emerge as the true friend of family and freedom.

July 9, 2021 0 comment

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The powers that be

John E. Coons June 25, 2021

John E. Coons

It’s the same the whole word over,

It’s the poor wot gets the blame,

It’s the rich wot gets the pleasure,

Ain’t it all a blooming shame.

— Anonymous

Little Susie doesn’t enroll in a particular kindergarten because that is her personal choice among schools; when she is a bit older, she may influence the selection of her middle and high schools, but the legal authority to do so is never hers, so long as she remains a minor.

But who says she even has to go to school?

The parents enjoyed that authority in most societies eons before American state legislatures, in mid-19^th century, made school compulsory for every child, the term “school” entailing minimum requirements to be met by public and private providers alike. One state even tried by force to place all children into its own government schools; Oregon it was, and the Supreme Court found this to violate the constitutional right and power of the parent to choose the school.

So, the state and the parent each holds a certain range of authority. The state decides what qualifies as a school; the parent decides which one, be it public, private, religious – or home school.

So far, the picture of power seems clear enough; the state has, and employs, the authority to say, “Go!” The parent has the power to say, “Go here!” And so, off go the kids to their parent-preferred school. Such a happy democratic family story!

Yes, but be clear. This is not a case of liberty and justice for all. Justice, yes; the child and society both deserve to have, and do, the parents’ will on this, our young person, enriched by his close personal experience and affection. But “liberty”? Not so; the parents’ decision is an act of power. So must it be. The child lacks the experience to protect his or her own best interest.

Some adult human must choose – and best for the task is one who knows young Tom and cares. Who better could we nominate but that family member who has been close to and responsible for the child?

But … you know the next line. The parents, for varying reasons, may know and prefer a certain public school, but it is in an attendance zone where they can’t afford to live; or they may decide on a private religious school but can’t afford the tuition, though it is half the per-pupil cost to the taxpayers of P.S. 22.

Clearly it lies with complete strangers to Susie and Tom, with elites whose political ancestors long ago designed a system to “rescue” such children from the religious superstitions and lower-class habits of their immigrant families – Jews, Catholics and the like – thus to be redeemed by the true message of the New World.

In our own time, the legislators and governors of the states (today with hopeful exceptions) make this weathered system flourish, preserving the Victorian structure that collects and assigns children of the poor willy-nilly to their inner-city destiny. The teacher unions applaud and assure that the lawmakers don’t stray off course. All the while, the more comfortable among us here in suburbia deploy our power over Susie and Tom while voting for the very politicians who have disempowered the inner-city family.

Meanwhile, “the people,” that ultimate authority – in poll after poll – express their strong endorsement of some form of subsidized parental choice. Why doesn’t our “democratic” system reflect this political reality in an exercise of its obvious power?

Apparently, some subtle locus of prior control has it in thrall. I wonder what that obscure power could be.

June 25, 2021 0 comment

Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Customization Education and Public Policy Education Choice Featured Jack Coons Parental Choice

A campus of choices

John E. Coons June 18, 2021

John E. Coons

Multitudes in the valley of decision

Old Testament, Book of Joel

Suppose that the legislature and governor of your state agree that some legal mechanism must be adopted to empower lower-income families to exercise their constitutional right to choose the specific school – public or private – they deem best for their child.

Assume also that these public servants have agreed on the forms of parental subsidy to be made available. And now they ponder the question of the forms of school that will be appropriate for the providers, public and private; each will seek to attract a share of choosing families sufficient for its survival, and probably for more.

The realties of the real estate market have, so far, scattered them wherever room could be found for each individual school. That probably will remain the case for these early years of choice.

I would here suggest a long-term possibility that might better serve the hopes of many schools and families. Steven Sugarman and I have long viewed it as a way of maximizing the choosing skills of parents (and our use of them) while perfection the schools themselves in the market that is to be navigated.

The concept is plain and fits especially well the demographics of the big city. It proposes the creation of urban campuses that consist of both public and private schools, each with their own style and mission (within the law). There would be relatively large schools in competition offering a more or less traditional general curriculum. Others, probably smaller in clientele, would focus more on particular knowledge and skills – STEM, social sciences, history, the arts.

The student would (probably) register in one of the more general schools; these would allow a degree of coming and going to classes at neighboring providers. Billy would be enrolled at P.S. 09 but can decide to take his music instruction at Happy Garden across the yard, then to Metric High next door for math.

Each school would be rewarded by the state according to formulas sensitive to the time spent there by the student and the cost and nature of the particular instruction. Time spent in the physics lab at Einstein High might be costlier than history at Ptolemy – or not.

Religion would be available. My guess is that larger, established faiths would consider having their own brick-and-mortar sites on the campus for the teaching of a full curriculum; but there would also be less ambitious, perhaps cooperative, inter-faith options.

The deliberate mingling of believers on the same site could be a most natural opportunity to better experience and value the humanity of persons who also seek the good and true but who see our relation to God differently. The atheist family would, I assume, enjoy the same option.

Will there be inter-quarrels and misunderstandings? Yes, and – from my own experience – personal reconciliation and growth in wisdom.

The sponsorship and management of such campuses could take diverse forms. Their founding might be reserved to the State, with statutory rule and regulation (hopefully designed to maximize the freedom of both providers and families). But, in my judgment, such control might be better left to private (for profit or not) organizers of individual campuses.

The concept needs up-to-date modeling of various sorts. I don’t expect, in my own time, to witness the opening of All Schools Campus No. 1; but the device is something to consider as we ponder the variety of our options to empower not-so-well-off parents as we have long managed for ourselves.

June 18, 2021 1 comment

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In a word

John E. Coons April 23, 2021

John E. Coons

A word spoken in good season, how good it is!

— Proverbs, the Old Testament

The various forms of government subsidy for parental choice of a child’s school have been pictured by leftist media, almost without exception, as a dangerous, politically conservative device. They stress that our modern hero of choice theory, the late “free market” economist, Milton Friedman, remains the patron saint of the political right; Betsy De Vos, et al., have remained his unshaken votaries.

Friedman deserves their eclat. His name still draws deep-pocket support for “right” minded think tanks, for whom conservative political banners are thus appropriate.

But is this libertarian connection so clear? Suppose that the proverbial visitor from Mars arrives hoping for wisdom to improve his own planet’s schooling. He is given a glimpse of a working voucher plan in our mythical state of Ohiowa. There, every family is provided a tuition grant sufficient to send each of its children to whichever participating school, public or private, that the parent prefers.

How different is this from food stamps? The two seem similar in many respects, including the paper qualification for the beneficiary – shall we say, the “school stamp.”

School choice can seem a social welfare program for those families subsidized. In addition, most such programs include commitments of various sort by participating schools which are meant to assure fair treatment of the family and child.

For example, voucher schools may be asked to set aside a modest portion of their admissions for random selection – even while remaining free to teach the religious creed or ethic of its own or to use some unusual method of instruction.

The Ohiowans would suggest that our Martian visitor observe and compare the school system of neighboring Montucky, a state which still sends the children of its poor to whichever public school draws from their neighborhood. There, our Marsman witnesses the more typical urban American schools that await the poor.

Returning to Ohiowa, he sums up and compares what he has experienced in this planet’s schools. “I guess you are all socialists; your states empower different adults to decide for the child, but I suppose that is still socialism.”

The school folk try to correct him, explaining that government money to subsidize parental choice is free market capitalism at its best, even though it is a creature of government and a free ride for its beneficiaries – food stamps for the mind.

Whatever these civic-minded individuals on both sides believe, it might be helpful to their conversation to find a common and more precise vocabulary to distinguish their competing ideologies. Both “free market capitalism” and its “socialist” opponents seem semantically unprepared for clear conversation about these complex phenomena.

The consequent confusion has its costs.

A major one is the long-term effect of the old system upon both the private and civic image of the self, forged in the mind of the conscripted student. It seems to me even worse than that predicted for Oregon’s complete elimination of private choice in the 1920s; at least that mistake drew no distinction among social classes.

By contract, our message to the poor – child and parent – is their essential and unique unfitness to govern themselves. It is an insult that parent and child alike may continue to accept and to affirm in lifestyle; it becomes their identity.

Of course, the “free market” descriptions of choice by the unions, et al., are assisted by many an untrue indictment. Among these are assertions, rarely true, that the participating private school retains total control of its affairs – secret and public.

The poor family thus hears that the more popular ones will simply not admit people like us. Such fables endure even among our intellectual “liberals” whom I have often heard struggle to justify the old system’s abuse of those same poor whom these same elite claim to champion.

Perhaps we need a new vocabulary to describe more appropriately and precisely the concept of subsidized parental choice. Among available nouns, I would move consideration of the European term “subsidiarity,” invented by the Vatican in 1931 and prominent today in the various international agreements of the E.U.

Simply put, formal government should avoid preempting decisions that could be made as well or better at a level of control nearest, first, the individual affected, then the family, next voluntary associations, local government … and soon to the State.

Applied here to our schools, the State would recognize the low-income parent as the natural and proper locus of legal and practical authority to choose.

According to the doctrine of subsidiarity … social problems should be dealt with at the most immediate (or local) level consistent with their solution.

J.P. Wogaman, Christian Method of Moral Judgment (1976)

“Subsidiarity” is 12 letters and six syllables; if there be a more appropriate and simpler utterance, I have not found it. The word would a least have the advantage of clarity in our debates about school choice.

April 23, 2021 0 comment

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From where will common sense emerge?

John E. Coons April 2, 2021

John E. Coons

“Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.”

— Macbeth, Shakespeare

Our national fuddle over the role of government (public?) schools during the pandemic is yet another throwback to the days of their inception in the 1840s. Their founders saw these conscriptive institutions as a mechanism for control and enlightenment of the children of low-income families, mostly immigrants, whose social and religions caste needed redesign.

What history confirms is that, while the specific ideology of the system was to change with the cultural winds, the public school has managed always to maintain its control over the minds and bodies of the poor, both parent and child. These remain the instrument of whoever controls the state’s “free schools” and enjoy their per-pupil tax support.

From Protestant patriots to John Dewey Nationalists, the Supreme Court and, today, the teacher union bosses, our public schools for the poor have ever functioned as a paternalistic intellectual dominion. As always, they serve the comfort and purpose of a controlling elite, even though these cadres have failed either to raise test scores or to achieve the civic enthusiasm of its drafters.

The advent of a Democratic White House has brought little hope of deliverance from the teacher union for lower-income parents, whatever has been their vision of the intellectual and social future of their child. To the contrary, the president for whom I voted has specifically endorsed the enduring vision of the unions with new money to maintain the conscription of their lower-class subjects.

Some today suppose that our epic indifference to the civic hobbling of child and parent shows signs of public remorse and possible repair. Indeed, states like Ohio and West Virginia have, over union resistance, taken surprising legislative steps to empower parents at the expense of the monopoly.

Moreover, there is a growing awareness that criticism of, and resistance to, our proprietary unions of government employees is something wholly different from the classic and healthy competition and compromise between employer and union in the profit-seeking part of our private economy. Incompetence or sloth of the worker in private business is hurtful to both employer and fellow employees; each has a stake in the survival and success of their joint enterprise.

As yet, there is no guarantee of a general reform that empowers families which are unable to afford private tuition and have come up loser in the charter lotteries. The charters themselves are under constant threat from the union. The Supreme Court, though it will annihilate the “Blaine” amendments, is not about to order vouchers or other specific remedy in the offending states.

And it is from there, our 50 “sovereign” jurisdictions, that fundamental reform must come. As always, the solutions will come out of practical politics and the awakening and broad engagement of those with most at stake – the not-so-rich family and its political heroes.

It is paradox, but fact, that the final rescue of parent and child could come, in large part, as a liberal enterprise.

Milton, enjoy the irony.

April 2, 2021 0 comment

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Choice and the civic soul

John E. Coons March 19, 2021

John E. Coons

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

G.B. Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

Shaw’s wit suggests the primary harvest of our “public” school systems for children of the poor and for their parents. We have only recently learned of its relatively dim outcome as measured by standard tests of basic learning.

This monolith of 19^th century design is, at last, damned by professional media for its dimming effect upon the intellectual, economic and social prospects for these children of poverty who are collected by the state with a warrant for their presence in a certain “public” school of the city. Like criminal suspects who can’t afford bail, these kids will stay here for rehabilitation.

The evidence of student learning today consists mostly of comparative test scores and their relation to parental social types. This much is no longer in doubt: Those lucky kids whom a lottery has delivered to mom’s chosen charter school learn more of whatever is taught; and this holds true whether the parent has any particular mindset or sophistication.

I am no statistician; I merely read the conclusions of these respected scholars of numbers and their significance. What I can hope to contribute comes only as a conviction of a long observer of this scene that the civic effects at stake in our wars over parental choice count more than any puff or decline in test scores.

These social consequences would be important even were chosen schools merely equal or even trailing in their scores. Our literature on this subject wants for insight that numbers alone can’t give – a sense of the long-term effect upon the souls and minds of those humans who experience intellectual and moral exit from the dignity and civic responsibility so dear to the luckier among us.

Shaw’s ambiguous tweet make us ponder.

For 59 years, I have written and/or taught the structures of schooling here and abroad and the roles of parent and child as I and others perceive them. Yet my experience as a middle-class human with five children, plus now their descendants, is still my best claim to insight.

It is limited and often flawed, but I trust it to be as reliable as that of other patriarchs who hail from the 1920s and claim some insight from experience. And, further, I can even imagine my message as common sense for old and young.

It is essentially this: There are two profoundly corruptive symbolisms in our making the poor family be the servant of the state, as we do. The device encourages a mindset in both parent and child that is (in manner, not content) faintly suggestive of that which Beijing seeks to secure among the Uighurs. Their child is to be made happy with a life of moral and intellectual suppression.

The American child of the poor shall, by contrast, be made happy by the state with no clear moral suppression at all; they will be assured that the good life is whatever one chooses for his or herself – but, of course, just so long as you remain good.

“Good?” But you just told me to choose the way I want; now you tell me always to be good to my neighbor. Just why must I do that when it gets in the way of my own plan?

Yes, okay, I’ll obey the law; one must. Is that all you mean? Outside of that, who is there to tell me what’s “good?”

In our public school, the mind of the American child of the poor could be, but is never allowed a clear portrayal of the crucial relation between human freedom and an authentic moral good. I will not here review what I think to be the necessary structure of that relation. My bibliography is full of the particular version of it which I would trust.

The second poisonous implication, and at least as corruptive of the social order, is the unsubtle message of the school system to the non-rich parent and her child regarding the role that each is being assigned to play in this society.

“Here is your status as parent: You produce the child whom you then shall feed, clothe and care for until we call upon you to deliver him or her to a school which the state shall identify, there to learn this truth that it teaches. You shall continue to provide for the physical needs of the child until high school graduation; up to a point, the state will leave you free to express to the child your own view of the good life.”

This reality is corruptive of the civic order through its enduring effects upon the minds and hearts of both child and parent. Watching their loving but decommissioned parents, the child grasps that “Mom and Dad must surrender without alternative; being a parent is a form of intellectual and moral vassalage to some higher order called ‘the state,’ which makes P.S. 22 the vehicle for its message to me. At dinner, my folks may fret at my report of the day’s lessons or classroom events, but they can do nothing such as finding another school.”

Parenting and marriage itself gradually appear as downside experience with very little independence and authority, and lots of grief. “Who needs it? Will I ever want to lose my own freedom to such a trap? Not as long as I can hang with a gang – and probably never.”

The parents’ own experience of impotence in the shaping of their own child’s mind has its equally poisonous effect upon both their personal and civic visions. To strip them of authority is a clear invitation to reassess their own identify.

“This society wants me helpless to shape the mind of my own child in the manner so precious to the rich. Oh well, at least it has spared me responsibility for whatever happens in the streets and the civic order. It’s not all bad; I will just stop worrying about it and enjoy whatever government has to offer poor people like me.”

Shaw has his point. This corruption of the civic souls of child and parent is the poisoning of society.

March 19, 2021 0 comment