Advocates of choice in Indiana have worked hard to achieve meaningful education reform, but we just can’t get an educational choice bill through the state legislature. (If you have ever worked with any government branch, you know that it is a lot easier to prevent something from happening than it is to get anything innovative done.)
The odds are clearly on the side of the bureaucrats, even though there is considerable evidence that choice, where it has been tried in states such as Minnesota and districts such as East Harlem, is a phenomenal success. We know that educational choice in Indiana might be realized someday, but, in the meantime, we are abandoning another generation of children who are not getting a decent education.
Private Vouchers: No Red Tape, No Bureaucrats, No Strings
Recently, we at the Golden Rule Insurance Company decided to do something about education reform right now. In 1991, we created private vouchers; that is, as a company in the private sector, we offered to pay half of the tuition of any student who wanted to leave the public system and go to a private school. (Most of the non-public schools in Indianapolis charge $1600 or less—our cap was, therefore, $800.) This voucher program is for grade school children. We would have loved to extend it to the high school level, but we have limited resources, so it was a matter of priority.
The only criterion is financial need. If students qualify for the free or reduced cost lunch program in the public schools, then they qualify for our educational grant. This is purposely a very generous criterion. We do not impose academic requirements of any kind, and there is a “first come, first served” basis for awarding the vouchers. (When we began, we tried elaborate questionnaire forms but quickly abandoned them. We are a society that is accustomed to filling out too many forms that are of dubious value.) We make no attempt to decide which private schools are eligible. We are about the business of helping parents and students; hence they are free to choose any school that meets their needs.
The beauty of private vouchers is that they are so simple—no red tape, no need to depend on bureaucrats to administer them, no worries that the vouchers will be used later as a way for the government to claim that private schools are accepting federal or state subsidies. And they start working right away.
Unexpected Success
Golden Rule’s private vouchers are a great success, much greater than we expected, in fact. We called a press conference to announce the start of the program only three weeks before the commencement of the 1991-92 school year. We stated very cautiously that we anticipated that only 100-200 students would want to be involved in this program. Well, within the first three days, Golden Rule had 621 requests for applications, and at the present time, we have distributed more than 2,000 applications.
A temporary obstacle is that most of the private schools already have full or near-full enrollments. But the response to our private voucher plan will inevitably lead to expansion, as it has created a whole new supply of potential students for private schools. In the first school term of this year, 705 students were awarded vouchers and there were 199 on the waiting list. (This list would have been larger, but many parents knew that the private schools were full.)
Why Support Private Education?
Why do we support private education through vouchers? There are three reasons. The first reason is that Golden Rule is interested in helping the disadvantaged, particularly the minority citizens of our country. Our vouchers are not awarded on the basis of race or ethnic background—they are colorblind—but since they go to mainly inner city residents, the natural effect is to help blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.
Sources such as the Hudson Institute’s report, Workforce 2000, estimate that over the next decade, the work force will be very slowly growing older, more female, more minority, and more disadvantaged. Only 15 percent of the new entrants to the labor force during that period will be white males compared with 30 percent today. The demographic opportunity of the 1990s will be missed unless something is done now—the problems of minority unemployment, crime and dependency could be far worse than they are today.
The second reason for Golden Rule’s interest in vouchers is very practical. New jobs in service industries will demand much higher skill levels than the jobs of today. Many companies are already forced to run remedial education programs for their employees. We can’t put off educating people until the time they apply for work—that is the wrong time to fix the problem. But according to their own standardized tests, Indiana public schools are failing to teach adequate basic skills and are far behind the private schools in terms of overall student achievement. If for no other reason that this, competition is needed at the elementary and secondary school levels where the monopoly position of the public school has stifled innovation.
The third reason is linked to the second: It is vital to the public interest that students work hard and learn basic habits like punctuality and diligence. Yet, the Committee for Economic Development published a study several years ago arguing that one of the most important failures of the public schools is that they have failed to teach even a basic “work ethic.”
Add drug abuse and violence to the list: Public schools have failed there too, resorting to metal detectors, locker searches and security guards. And despite all such efforts, many students do not learn to respect or heed authority. Lastly, there is the dropout rate in public institutions. In one Indianapolis high school, 80 percent of the student body typically does not graduate.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) have recently begun a new media campaign to convince Americans that the public schools are doing every bit as well as the private schools. I don’t think Americans will be convinced, simply because there is too much evidence to the contrary. Who, for example, has ever heard of a private school with metal detectors or with an 80 percent drop out rate?
A Call to Act—Now
In summary, with private vouchers, we have made a real and practical investment in the future of our own business as well as our society. Every business and charitable organization should start its own voucher program, for one or one thousand students, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that they will have taken a step toward helping others as well as themselves.
