March 26, 2003

The Voucher Realignment

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB10486435107337300,00.html

Call it the other coalition of the willing. The Colorado Senate is scheduled to vote today on a voucher bill the Governor has already indicated he would sign. If it passes, it will probably be with only one Democratic vote. But the Senate split along party lines masks a much larger story: how a commitment to an accountable public education system is forging new alliances and busting up old ones.

Governor Bill Owens is a pro-voucher Republican. In a state where school-choice ballot initiatives have twice gone down in flames, that might be thought a liability. But if Colorado now looks set to become the first state after Florida to inaugurate a statewide voucher program, it's largely because of an impressive grassroots effort highlighting the unconscionable failures of the education status quo. Earlier this month, for example, the Colorado Children's Campaign released a report demonstrating how the official state figures disguise high school drop-out rates that are actually much higher than reported, with African-Americans and Latinos suffering disproportionately. And some have concluded enough is enough.

Included in the pro-voucher crowd is Colorado's highest-ranking Democrat, Attorney General Ken Salazar. In a recent statement that must have sent tremors through the teachers' unions, Mr. Salazar announced he favors "a limited, experimental, constitutionally defensible voucher program targeted at poor inner-city children." Mr. Salazar is joined by others who can't be dismissed as Republican lackeys -- from Nita Gonzales, director of the Tlatelolco Centro de Estudios and a recent demonstrator against the war in Iraq, to former NAACP leader Willie Breazell Sr., now at the Black Alliance for Educational Options.

On its own terms, the Colorado voucher bill is modest. It limits participants to underperforming children in failing districts and sets the amount of the voucher to 85% of the district's per-pupil cost. But it represents a powerful signal that Coloradans are tired of sacrificing their children to an education establishment that deprives them of what this bill hopes to help provide: a school system that actually teaches.

Updated March 26, 2003