Socialist Action /October 2000
No on School Vouchers!
By CAROLE SELIGMAN
SAN FRANCISCO-California public schools, having
sunk to the bottom in national indicators of school quality (such as student-teacher
ratio, per-pupil funding, etc.), now face another attack in a war to dismantle
public education entirely. The attack is called Proposition 38.
Because California's initiative process has been
usurped by ultra-right-wing capitalists, the proposition was placed on the
ballot by Silicon Valley millionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper. That
is, he paid out a large chunk of change to pay petitioners to gather signatures
to buy his way on the ballot. And they did.
Of course, when folks signed the initiative they
thought they were signing to improve the schools. Now, teachers unions and
other organizations representing working people and their kids are forced
to spend their hardearned resources to defeat this pernicious measure.
What would Prop. 38 do if passed? According to
the California Teachers Association, the huge teachers union with close
to 300,000 members and the main opponent of the measure, Prop. 38 will cut
funding to public schools-which means fewer textbooks, fewer teachers, and
more overcrowded classrooms.
Prop. 38 will cost at least $3 billion to California
taxpayers and not one dime will be used to improve neighborhood schools.
Prop. 38 creates unregulated private voucher schools that receive taxpayer
money but can make financial decisions in secret and are not required to
have their finances audited. These voucher school operators are not required
to have any training or experience educating children, and voucher school
teachers do not need a credential or a college degree.
Prop. 38 provides $4000 vouchers to those who claim
to "home school" their kids, but provides no means to monitor
them. It will provide $4000 vouchers for the 700,000 students who are currently
already enrolled in private schools. This alone will cost the taxpayers
nearly $3 billion.
CTA charges that "paying for these vouchers
and the new bureaucracies created by Prop. 38 will require either a tax
increase or a cut in vital services, such as public safety, child care,
or transportation."
A strong argument against the measure is that the
private schools-not the parents-will choose which students can attend. This
will allow for all kinds of discrimination not allowed in public schools
by law. Voucher schools get public money, but are allowed to reject children
for almost any reason, including gender, religion, language, ability to
pay, or academic or physical ability.
Public education has been under siege for many
years. It was one of the biggest victims of the economic recessions and
cuts in public services since the early 1970s. California is a prime example
of this. During the 1960s California was known nationally for the high quality
of public education-in particular, the huge system of public community colleges,
state colleges, and state universities.
Since the 1960s, while California war industries,
agri-business, Silicon Valley, and other large capitalist holdings prospered,
all public services sustained cutbacks. Currently, new prisons in California
are being built faster than schools.
Desperate economic conditions in Mexico and wars
in Central America caused massive waves of immigration to California and
the necessity to provide education services to large numbers of children
who spoke languages other than English. The schools needed more funding,
more expertise, more highly trained teachers, but the California and federal
governments were providing less.
During this period, wealthy California went from
a public education system near the top nationally to one that compared to
poor Southern states in education funding and class size.
Right-wing politicians blamed the situation on
the teachers, the unions, and the immigrants. Liberal politicians wooed
the teachers, the unions, and the immigrants by pretending to be their friends,
but continued the same policies of underfunding that hurt the schools.
Unfortunately, the teachers unions continued to
support Democrats and tried to substitute that support for carrying on an
independent struggle for the schools. The union even refused (except for
fine sounding resolutions) to conduct a fight for the most important school
quality issue-reducing the size of classes.
When a small measure to reduce class size in California's
kindergarten through third-grade classes was finally enacted a few years
back, the teachers unions couldn't even claim the credit. Now, there is
a crying need to reduce class size in the rest of public education, grade
5 through college. This is an issue in which teachers' and students' interests
are inseparable.
Until the teachers unions take on the campaign
for smaller classes and really carry on a serious fight to win this reform,
we will face hairbrained schemes like Prop. 38 and serious attacks on public
education over and over again. VOTE NO ON PROP. 38!
Socialist Action /October 2000 |