-By Israel Teitelbaum
Parents seeking improved educational options have launched a national grass roots drive timed to coincide with the coming presidential primary. This affords us our best opportunity in decades to leverage our votes in exchange for legislation that will provide equal educational opportunity for every child. A nation founded on individual liberty should not be financially coercing parents to send their children to government-run schools.
Leading the grass roots drive is Larry Cirignano, a leading community activist on issues of importance to families, such as life, liberty and equal educational opportunity for all children. He was recently the target of trumped up charges of assault for preventing an ACLU activist from disrupting an anti-gay marriage rally in Worcester, Massachusetts. After a week long trial Cirignano was found NOT guilty by a jury of his peers.
Major organizations lending support to this effort include National Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education, Torah Communications, Sephardic Voters League, Family Research Council, Center for Equal Opportunity, New Jersey Family Policy Council, American for Tax Reform, CatholicVote.org, SchoolChoiceVoter.org, and the list is growing.
This effort was further inspired by statements made by four of the leading contenders for the presidential spot. In the final Republican presidential debate Fred Thomson said, “…every time someone wants to inject a little choice into the equation for the benefit of the kids, inject a little freedom, inject a little competition…the National Education Association is there to oppose it, and bring in millions and millions of dollars to go on television and work and scare people and misrepresent the situation on the ground. I think that just goes against everything that we know, that can make progress in this country.”
Mitt Romney followed this with, “I agree with Senator Thompson on that. Boy, they’ve been the biggest obstacle to change in education and choice.”
John McCain had led off with, “We don’t have a choice and competition. We need it in K through 12.”
Rudy Giuliani agreed, “Parents should choose the school that their child goes to, the same way people choose higher education.”
Finally, after 52 years, we have four presidential candidates who have come to talk about the most equitable and practical system for the running of our schools. In the words of the late, great economist Milton Friedman, in his 1955 article The Role of Government in Education: “…the imposition of a minimum required level of education and the financing of education by the state can be justified by the ‘neighborhood effects’ of education. It is more difficult to justify…the actual administration of educational institutions by the government, the ‘nationalization,’ as it were, of the bulk of the ‘education industry.’ … Yet the two steps could readily be separated. Governments could require a minimum level of education which they could finance by giving parents vouchers redeemable for a specified maximum sum per child per year if spent on ‘approved’ educational services. Parents would then be free to spend this sum and any additional sum on purchasing educational services from an ‘approved’ institution of their own choice. The educational services could be rendered by private enterprises operated for profit, or by non-profit institutions of various kinds. The role of the government would be limited to assuring that the schools met certain minimum standards such as the inclusion of a minimum common content in their programs, much as it now inspects restaurants to assure that they maintain minimum sanitary standards. An excellent example of a program of this sort is the United States educational program for veterans after World War II. Each veteran who qualified was given a maximum sum per year that could be spent at any institution of his choice, provided it met certain minimum standards.”
The objective of this grass roots drive is to have Friedman’s proposal actualized in the form of proposed legislation that would provide for equal educational opportunity for every child, meaning equitable funding for all children, including those attending private and religious schools – while respecting the liberty of schools in hiring and provision of services. This proposed legislation has been dubbed “The Civil Rights Act for Equal Educational Opportunity.” Voters are simply asking candidates to demonstrate their concern for the children by having this legislation sponsored.
Although many political pundits have expressed concern that the present Congress would never pass such legislation, voters have the opportunity on November 4, 2008 to vote in 435 new Congressmen and 35 new Senators who favor this legislation. This would also afford the citizenry the wonderful opportunity to begin with a new, fresh Congress. Happy New Year!
Further information on equal educational opportunity is available at SchoolChoiceVoter.org.
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Israel Teitelbaum is currently creating a new school choice organization to help further the efforts to improve our public schools. His blog will soon be up and running at SchoolChoiceVoter.org. Mr. Teitelbaum can be reached at israel@schoolchoicenj.org.