Somebody came up to me after last night’s "school choice" forum saying he’d like to get together and discuss the subject, perhaps over a lunch, from the Club for Growth perspective.
I did NOT hit him, and I’m very proud of that. In fact, he and I conducted a very civil chat, from the auditorium aisle out into the Richland Northeast High School parking lot, for almost another hour. We were joined by a nice lady from SCRG who had always wanted to meet me and ask a few questions.
So, that brings my tally to this in the last couple of weeks: Two-and-a-half hours with my bishop over dinner, with me talking almost the whole time (and aware each moment how rude that was on my part, as his guest); three hours and 20 minutes with three representatives from SCRG on Wednesday, and three hours last night.
All on the same subject: Vouchers and tax credits for private education. And how many hours have I spent in intense debate over substantive education reform ideas, such as funding parity, consolidating districts, greater leeway for principals and superintendents in hiring and firing teachers, merit pay for teachers, and the like?
None.
I am a microcosm. My wasted time represents the time and political energy that South Carolina has wasted on this useless debate over a very bad idea. There is so much we need to do about improving educational opportunity in South Carolina. But we’re not even talking about the real issues.
As for what was said (in vain) at the forum last night — well, it’s hard for me to take a lot of notes when I’m participating like that. Suffice to say that you’ve pretty much heard it all before. What I can do is share with you the notes from which I spoke. I learned at the last minute that I had to have a five-minute opening statement, so I wrote the following, pretty much stream-of-consciousness:
choice talk notes
2/22/07
What are we talking about here? Choice? I’m always suspicious of that word. In politics, it ends to be used to dress up the otherwise indefensible. I could elaborate on that, but that would probably make for more controversy than those who invited me were counting on.
What do you mean, school choice? Want to talk the merits and demerits of open enrollment? Fine. But it’s certainly not the most important thing to be talking about – much less sucking up all the political oxygen available for the discussion of education reform. I’d put something like revamping our whole system of taxing and spending in order to provide some parity of education opportunity between rural and suburban kids an awful lot higher on the list.
But we’re talking school “choice.”
Well, we’ve got choice, as proponents of vouchers and tax credits keep saying – for the affluent. Their point is that the same choices available to the wealthy should be made available to everyone else – with the government paying for it.
They don’t call it that. They say, “We’re just giving people back their own money.” They’re talking about the tax credits, which would only be fully available to the middle class, because they’re the only ones who pay enough in taxes to get it. But even if that didn’t leave out the poor, it is indefensible.
It’s not their money. It comes from the taxes they paid – mandated by a duly elected representative government – for the funding of the essential infrastructure of a civilized, secure society (the sort of society without which wealth and personal security are impossible to maintain). Like roads and public safety, public schools are an essential part of that infrastructure – in South Carolina, education is actually a mandated part of that infrastructure.
Now, to vouchers – that would clearly be an expenditure from the public purse, and a singularly irresponsible one. Critics of the public system often complain about throwing money at schools. Taking the money out of our accountability system and handing it to folks and saying spend this wherever it strikes you to spend it, without any controls to protect the taxpayers’ interest in this vital function for which the taxes were raised in the first place – now that’s throwing money.
Back to infrastructure: Say that we committed ourselves to providing a fully effective, comprehensive system of public transportation. We’ve done nothing of the kind, of course, but say we did. There would still be well-off people who would prefer to drive a Lexus or a Mercedes or a Hummer (assuming that government actually kept the roads up), and would have the means to do so. Should we then provide tax credits to folks who could only afford a Chevy to buy something pricier? Of course not. That would be crazy. So is this.
Unlike with public transit, we HAVE supposedly committed ourselves to providing education. We’ve just never followed through to the point that fulfills the promise – particularly in rural areas. To divert a single dime from the legitimate governmental purpose of funding public education – the only kind of education that can possibly be held accountable to taxpayers – is unconscionable, as long as we have such severely underfunded schools in our rural areas.
You’re not satisfied with the quality of public education we’re providing in those rural schools, or in some of our inner-city schools? Neither am I. So let’s fix them. We CAN fix them, because they belong to us. We can do whatever we have the political will to do with them.
Taking finite resources out of that system and throwing it at anybody who comes in and says they’ll start a private school in order to take that money makes no sense at all. And there’s no reason for us to do it.
$1.1 billion in new
But Giuliani is a useful opponent for McCain. The good news of the senator’s season is that another rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, has so far failed to unite the Right behind him. In a McCain-Romney race, Romney would have most conservatives and portions of the party establishment behind him — and might win the nomination.
