Column: Voucher supporters prove turncoats

Tim Draper knew he was in for the mother of all political battles when he dared to place a voucher initiative on the California ballot.

He fully expected that the California Teachers Association and the National Education Association would combine forces in a take-no-prisoners campaign to rout the measure at the polls, thereby discouraging future ballot propositions.

But what the Silicon Valley entrepreneur did not expect was to be betrayed by supposed voucher supporters -- turncoats who have come out publicly against Draper's ballot measure, providing aid and comfort to the public teachers unions.

"It's just not good policy for public education," said state Sen. Bruce McPherson, one of a group of Republican lawmakers in Sacramento who have repudiated the party's previous support of vouchers.

"The education reforms now in place should be given a chance to work," said the California Chamber of Commerce, backing away from its previous advocacy of vouchers.

"The Draper initiative ... would create a largely unregulated school voucher scheme," wrote University of California Berkeley law professors John E. Coons and Stephen D. Sugarman, co-authors of "Making School Choice Work for All Families."

The Republican minority in the Legislature, the California business community and academic types like Coons and Sugarman, who claim to support vouchers, have completely capitulated to the teachers unions.

Indeed, their criticisms of Draper's voucher initiative, Proposition 38, have even received featured billing on the California Teacher Association's "NO on vouchers!" Web site.

Yet the arguments against Proposition 38 by these voucher turncoats are as specious as those of their new comrades-in-arms in the teachers union.

State Senator McPherson, for instance, frets that vouchers are deleterious to public education.

But what about the hundreds of thousands of California children who are mired in the state's worst public schools? These children are doomed to an inferior education because their parents (including a third of California teachers in the state's inner cities) haven't the financial means to enroll them in private or parochial schools.

The California Chamber suggests that putative education "reforms" be given a chance to work. Well, that's what voucher foes argued back in 1993, when the last voucher measure appeared on the state ballot. (It was defeated on the strength of the teachers union's $40 million blitzkrieg.)

Here it is, seven years later, and California's public schools are doing no better a job educating the state's schoolchildren. Indeed, four out of five California fourth-graders cannot even read at their grade level. Moreover, California schoolchildren rank 49th in the country in math proficiency.

Coons and Sugarman actually adopt one of Al Gore's favorite dismissive terms -- "scheme" -- to deconstruct Draper's voucher initiative.

Their problem with the measure, they say, is that it is too broad. It would offer $4,000 vouchers to every parent in California, which could be used for tuition at private or parochial schools.

"It reflects the Milton Friedman/extreme free-market approach to education," they argue. "A far better school voucher plan would focus on children from low-income families."

Well, it is true that the voucher programs that have managed to get off the ground so far -- in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Florida -- are targeted to poor children. But that doesn't mean that such a limited voucher program is optimal.

What about non-poor families who happen to be working class or hard-working middle class? Should they be denied the option of enrolling their kids in private or parochial schools if the public schools in their neighborhood do not meet their expectations?

The voucher turncoats have lost sight of principle. Let us remind them: If the public schools in California, in any state for that matter, were providing a proper education to each and every child in their charge -- white, black, yellow and brown; city and suburban; poor, working class and middle class -- there would be no demand for vouchers. There would be no voucher ballot measures.

But the fact is, public education is highly uneven. Some public schools are excellent. But far too many, usually located in blighted, minority communities, are educationally bankrupt.

Not one of the California Republican lawmakers who came out in opposition to Proposition 38, not one member of the California Chamber of Commerce, and not one law professor at Cal-Berkeley would dare send their own beloved child to a failing public school.

So why would they consign someone else's child to such a school? Why would they deny parents -- not just poor parents, but also working-class and middle-class parents who have to struggle to make ends meet -- a voucher that gives them the opportunity to enroll their children in better private or parochial schools?

Voucher turncoats in California have acquiesced to the teachers unions. In so doing, they have all but assured that yet another generation of the state's most needful schoolchildren will be cheated out of a quality education.