Reprinted from the NJEA Reporter, March 2004
(Seventh of a Series)
The “voucher movement” has never enjoyed majority support, despite the claims of E3
Gertrude Stein once remarked of Oakland: “There is no there there.”
The same could be said of the national voucher movement, if you define a movement in terms of majority popular support. The voucher “movement” has never enjoyed such support, despite attempts by its inventors to suggest otherwise.
Now, the right-wing think tanks, individuals, and foundations bankrolling the “movement” are using compliant legislatures, courts, and elected officials to implement vouchers over the objections of the public. (This strategy actually unfolded in Milwaukee (1990), Cleveland (1995), and Florida (1999), where state legislatures enacted voucher programs.)
Since 1972, there have been 12 attempts to pass voucher or tuition tax credit referenda in eight states. All were overwhelmingly rejected, by an average margin of 68 to 32 percent. And, where data are available, opposition was even higher among African-American and Latino voters, two of the primary target groups of the voucher movement.
The referendum strategy hit rock-bottom in November 2000, when proposals in California and Michigan were rejected by 71-29 and 69-31 percent, respectively. Sponsors and opponents of the California initiative each spent $30 million, while the sponsors of the Michigan initiative spent $13 million – more than twice the opposition. (John Walton – heir to the Wal-Mart fortune – contributed $2 million to the Michigan campaign. He also contributes $500,000 a year to Excellent Education for Everyone (“E3”), the Newark-based pro-voucher movement in New Jersey.)
After those two crushing defeats, voucher backers decided to “end-run” the electorate, a decision facilitated by the June 2002 U.S. Supreme Court upholding the Cleveland voucher program.
E3’s flawed polling
E3 is peddling specious “polling data” in support of vouchers in New Jersey. On two occasions, it bought a question in an Eagleton Institute/Rutgers University poll (November 2001 and again last year) claiming to “prove” that vouchers enjoy the support of two-thirds of New Jersey voters. But even the Eagleton pollster agreed the wording of the question – “Would you vote for or against a system of giving parents the option of using government-funded school vouchers to pay for tuition at the public, private, or religious school of their choice?” – is fatally flawed, by including the word “public” (see sidebar).
Ask the general public – and African-Americans and Latinos in particular – and they’ll tell you vouchers aren’t their choice:
- The 2003 annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools found that Americans oppose vouchers by a 60-38 percent margin – an increase of 8 points from 2002.
- A 2002 National School Boards Association/Zogby International Poll of voters in the District of Columbia found that 76 percent – and 85 percent of African-Americans – opposed vouchers. That didn’t stop the Bush Administration and its pro-voucher allies in Congress from imposing a voucher program on the District early in 2004. Interestingly, that same poll found 80 percent of D.C. voters expected any private school accepting vouchers to be publicly accountable. Yet the D.C. voucher legislation doesn’t even require teachers in voucher schools to possess a college.
- The National Urban League’s “State of Black America” poll in 2001 found 58 percent of African-Americans believe tax dollars should be spent only on public schools.
- Exit polls in the November 2000 voucher initiatives found that 68 percent of African-American and 77 percent of Latino voters opposed the California initiative; 77 percent of African-American voters opposed the Michigan initiative.
Public opinion is solidly against vouchers, but that doesn’t deter the people pushing the “movement.” That’s why stopping them will require more than a majority of public support.
NEXT MONTH: – The Myth of the “Milwaukee Miracle” – voucher proponents in New Jersey are flying parents to Milwaukee to witness the success of that city’s voucher program, but they don’t get the full story.