Vouchers and choice

Vouchers in Black and White November 8, 2006; Page A22

One frequent, and nasty, argument against school vouchers is that they will end up resegregating public schools. It's all the nastier because the truth is the opposite, as some new evidence shows.

The liberal Urban League has charged that school vouchers -- which go mostly to minority families -- would "subsidize segregation." And the theme has been picked up by no less than Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who according to Newsday explained her opposition to school choice this way to liberal activists in the Bronx earlier this year: "First family that comes and says 'I want to send my daughter to St. Peter's Roman Catholic School,' and you say, 'Great, wonderful school, here's your voucher.' Next parent that comes and says, 'I want to send my child to the school of the Church of the White Supremacist . . .'"

Yes, she really said that. We doubt many inner-city black and Latino families that benefit from vouchers are demanding that their kids attend white supremacy schools, even if there were such schools. Come to think of it, what specific schools is Mrs. Clinton referring to? She and her husband of course sent their daughter to one of Washington, D.C.'s most elite, and mostly white, private schools.

She can't mean the schools in Milwaukee and Cleveland, where a new study by Greg Foster of the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation finds that vouchers have allowed students to move to more racially integrated private schools. The Friedman Foundation favors school choice, but its data here seem unassailable and the Foundation is challenging anyone to refute it. The study finds that in 2003 private voucher schools in Milwaukee were 13% more racially diverse, and the Cleveland voucher schools 18% more diverse, than their public school counterparts.

America's inner-city public schools remain highly segregated primarily because the neighborhoods and school districts are themselves divided by race or ethnicity. The public urban schools, Mr. Foster finds, tend to "reproduce the segregation that arises from housing patterns." Vouchers increase racial mixing in schools, the study concludes, because "they break down geographic barriers, drawing together students across neighborhood boundaries in a way the government school monopoly cannot match even when it tries to do so."

In the 50 years since Brown v. Board of Education, educators have thought that if they could integrate the schools, even using such detested strategies as forced busing, school quality would improve. It hasn't. School vouchers give inner-city and other kids a chance to escape failing public schools, and it's a nice bonus to know that this choice will produce classrooms that, to borrow a famous phrase, look like America.

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