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Part 3 - Setting the Stage for Privatization
Though pushed by the federal government under Presidents Reagan and Bush as a national strategy for school reform, the battle over privatization is taking place in the states where ultimate authority over school financing and policy making is based. Even though the Clinton administration has not embraced privatization as a reform strategy(8) , the debate proceeds with new leaders and interest groups leading the charge.
The situation in California is particularly significant due to the confluence of factors that has influenced the current debate there. A coalition calling itself The Choice in Education League, began collecting signatures in 1991 to place an initiative on the ballot for the statewide election in 1992. If approved by the voters (publisher: the intitiative went on the ballot in 1994 and failed at the polls) , the initiative would have provided parents with a scholarship or voucher of equal value for every child in any given grade, which could be redeemed at any private or public school participating in the program. The stated purpose of the initiative was to:
After years of marginalization, calls for privatization of public schools have finally entered the mainstream of public debate. Polls conducted by the Association of California Public School Superintendents have indicated support for the voucher initiative to be as high as 70% among registered voters(9) . Current conditions appear to favor the passage of a voucher initiative on a future ballot in the state of California for a number of reasons. Foremost among the reasons typically given for support of the proposal is the worsening fiscal disposition of school districts throughout the state and the decline in educational services that have occurred as a consequence. Since the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, a tax revolt ballot measure which reduced local property taxes by 50% and severely limited the ability of the State or local governments to increase property taxes, (the primary source of revenue used to finance public education) the range of services provided by public schools has steadily declined.
Reductions in financial support by state governments throughout the country have occurred at a time of dramatic increases in some regions in public school enrollment. In California, the State has barely managed to construct enough new buildings to accommodate the steady rise in student enrollment(10) . Much of the increase in California's public school enrollment is due to the immigration of large numbers of Asians and Latin Americans Nearly 45% of all documented immigrants reside in California, and 30% of these are school age children (Ed Source, Nov. 1991) As of 1991, 54.4% of California's student population was comprised of non-white ethnic minorities.(11) The fact that calls for privatization of public schools are occurring at a time of dramatic change in the ethnic make-up of California's student population may not be coincidental. As the demographics of California's student population change, the willingness of registered voters, who continue to be disproportionately white, to cover the costs of public education through tax increases may begin to wane.
School funding has failed to keep pace with inflation and the State government has been largely unable to respond to the deterioration of the physical infrastructure in older districts, the increases in the cost of living of public school employees, and the special needs of a growing number of impoverished students.(12) Even the passage of another voter initiative, Proposition 98 in 1988, which requires the state to set aside at least 40.3% of the State's General Fund Revenues or match the prior year's appropriation adjusted for enrollment or per-capita income growth for K-12 education, has failed to make up for the shortfall in funds experienced by local school districts across the state.
As a consequence of the financial crisis, school districts throughout California have been faced with the difficult task of eliminating educational programs in order to maintain a balanced budget. Intercollegiate athletics, instrumental music, foreign languages and a variety of elective courses have been reduced or eliminated in several districts. School libraries have been shut down and school nurses and psychologists have been laid off or have had the scope of their work limited to record keeping activities as local school boards have acted to cut programs and positions in order to retain fiscal solvency. In many urban districts, class size has increased dramatically and the student-teacher ratio has grown due to the inability of districts to hire new teachers commensurate with the rise in student enrollment.
Not all districts have been able to stay afloat financially in this deteriorating fiscal climate. Several large and small districts across the state have gone bankrupt and been taken over by state appointed trustees who have been brought in to administer the cost saving measures that local officials found too painful or politically dangerous to carry out themselves.
In an unprecedented move, the Richmond Unified School District was set to close its schools in 1990 six weeks before the end of the regular school year due to a lack of funds. The Richmond case was particularly important because only a few months before the discovery of a thirty million dollar budget deficit, the district and its superintendent had received national praise and recognition for the implementation of a school choice program. Richmond's school choice plan was widely praised as a model for urban school reform, and the superintendent received national acclaim as a leading "pioneer in education". Shortly after the announcement of the budget shortfall, the superintendent, Walter Marks, was fired and left Richmond for a higher paying job in Kansas City, taking with him several top administrators.
As news of the district's fiscal crisis was released, a political battle ensued over who would take the blame and suffer the consequences for the shortage of funds. The local school board came under attack from angry parents who blamed them for failing to adequately monitor the expenditures authorized by the previous superintendent. In response to a request by the district for a loan to cover the budget deficit, the Governor called for suspension of the collective bargaining agreement with the teachers' union that had been signed only a few months before the shortfall had been discovered and which guaranteed the teachers its first pay increase in several years. In keeping with the partisan nature of state politics, the State Legislature and the Controller refused to authorize the loan to cover the shortfall because they felt the Governor should assume responsibility. Finally, as the district prepared to shut down operations and close its doors to the thirty thousand students enrolled, Judge Ellen James (Superior Court of Contra Costa County) ruled that the State would have to provide the funds to allow the schools to remain open. She argued that "The law is clear that the responsibility of the State goes beyond merely providing an equal level of funding to all districts. If the district is unable to carry out the State's mandate to provide public education basically equivalent to the education being provided in the rest of the state, the burden falls back on the State to remedy the situation.". (See Ed Source, September 1991)
Richmond has not been alone.(13) For the last twelve years many school districts across throughout the state of California and the entire country have been under a constant state of austerity. To cope with the ongoing fiscal crises local school boards have engaged in annual budget cutting exercises which have brought on further decline to an already weakened educational system. In nearly all cases, the budget cutting process is extremely acrimonious, pitting communities and interest groups (ie. labor unions) against one another, and almost always resulting in the elimination of jobs since 85% of most district budgets is devoted to personnel.
Within such an atmosphere proposals for private school vouchers resonate and find willing supporters. While support for the proposal is particularly high among private school parents, there is evidence of growing support among low income people from urban areas as well. In California's urban areas, the financial crisis is most severe. Faced as they are already with high drop out rates, a deteriorated physical plant, and an increase in crime and violence on school property, the voucher initiative has been embraced by some parents as the only hope for reform. Many of these parents perceive private schools as providing a substantially better education, and view the vouchers as their means to obtain access to quality education for their children. The voucher system would enable these parents to abandon what is widely seen as a sinking ship; schools so poor in quality and in the services they provide that only those who can not escape them are presently resigned to sending their children there.
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Dr. Pedro Noguera is a professor at the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also past president of the Berkeley School Board.
This article was originally published in 1993. It is published here by In Motion Magazine because the arguments it makes are as pertinent today (1998) as they were then.. The portrait of Dr. Noguera is by freelance photographer Kathy Sloane (kataphoto@aol.com).
