The Unknown Candidate: Who Will Vouch for Tierney?

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Who Will Vouch for Tierney?

John Tierney really ought to get a new profession.

Here he goes again looking at important issues through simplistic black and white blinders.

The educational voucher issue is not a simple one, despite Tierney's attempts to make it so. His condemnation of Wisconsin democrats for opposing the program is based on flawed, biased and unfair reasoning. Using pro voucher commercials--yup, ads--as evidence that Blacks support the program is laughable and certainly not good journalism.

It's tough to find even a hint of understanding, much less analysis, of the pros and cons of educational vouchers in his New York Times column. That's one way to make sure no one can refute your facts: don't give any.

The educational problems in this country must be attacked on multiple levels and cannot be solved by fascile, short-sighted solutions. Nor can they be solved with a band-aide voucher program which hurts public schools and those left out of the program as much as it may help private schools and those lucky enough to attend them.

I don't pretend to understand, without a great deal more research and first-hand testimony from experts, educators and students, how to begin to meaningfully solve the education crisis confronting us.

I do know enough to know that John Tierney doesn't have a clue. Too bad he decided to anoint himself "Instant Expert" and write about it anyway.

FIND OUT MORE--

Links to sources which attempt to get at both sides of the issue are here:

• SchoolChoices.org
• RethinkingSchools.org

Tierney's recommended reading on the subject (see end of post) is just about as biased as his article.

Let Your People Stay
By John Tierney
The New York Times

MILWAUKEE

If you were a Democrat watching Coretta Scott King's funeral, you could congratulate yourself on the party's role in past civil rights struggles. But if you saw what's been on television in Milwaukee in the past month, you'd wonder what's become of your party.

Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, looks like public enemy No. 1 for African-American schoolchildren. "He's throwing away my dream," one Milwaukee student says in a TV commercial supporting the city's school voucher program for low-income families. Another commercial shows a black father on the verge of tears saying: "School choice is good enough for the governor's family. I ought to be able to have it, too."

Radio audiences have been hearing an ad calling the voucher battle "one of the greatest social justice issues we have in the country." The speaker is Ken Johnson, an African-American who leads Milwaukee's school board.

You read that correctly: the head of the public school board supports giving students in his system a chance to escape public schools. That would be unthinkable in most cities, but Milwaukee's voucher program has been so successful over the past 15 years that it's won a wide array of converts — except among the Democrats terrified of teachers' unions.

The governor repeatedly vetoed bills passed by Republican legislators who were trying to head off a problem that became official yesterday: there aren't enough vouchers for all the students who want them. The original law limited the number of vouchers to 15 percent of the city's public school enrollment — which works out to almost 15,000 vouchers — but the program has grown beyond that limit.

So the state announced a rationing plan yesterday that would deny vouchers next year to thousands of students, many of them already using vouchers to attend private schools. These students and their parents have been appearing in television commercials, paid for by a pro-voucher group, and showing up at the State Capitol carrying signs reading, "Governor Doyle, Don't Cap My Future."

The pressure has worked. The governor and the Republicans have negotiated a last-minute deal — expected to be enacted shortly — to stave off the rationing plan by allotting extra vouchers. That would spare the Democrats from the immediate prospect of kicking black children out of private schools.

But it still leaves the party in Wisconsin and elsewhere with long-term problems. How long will blacks vote for a party that opposes the voucher programs they strongly favor? And how can Democratic leaders keep preaching their devotion to public schools while sending their own children to private schools, as Governor Doyle does? He's what I call a Lypsy, an acronym for Let Your People Stay.

Doyle told me that he wasn't bothered by the personal attacks, and that he had compromised only to avoid disrupting students' education. He said he was still philosophically opposed to vouchers and didn't fear reprisals from black voters. "I don't think this is an issue that moves voters," he said, arguing that blacks distrust Republicans on too many other issues.

He may be right — for now. Howard Fuller, a prominent advocate for vouchers as well as a former superintendent of Milwaukee's public schools, told me he hadn't seen the popularity of the voucher program translate into much affection for Republicans among his fellow African-Americans, especially his civil rights comrades.

"Those people you saw at Coretta Scott King's funeral are not going to change," he said. "My generation pushed for social change through government solutions, but younger blacks are much more interested in private initiatives. They understand that the public school system cannot by itself be the solution to educating low-income children."

One of those younger blacks is Jason Fields, a first-term state legislator who has defied his fellow Democrats by supporting vouchers. "If the Democratic Party is supposed to be the party of the little guy, where do we get off opposing a chance to help those with the least of all?" he asked. The answer he's heard from his party is that supporting vouchers can end your career if the teachers' union supports a candidate against you in the Democratic primary.

But Fields, who represents a predominantly black district in Milwaukee, is that rare Democrat who will stand up for his constituents against the union. "If they run someone against me, so be it," Fields said. "I'm willing to leave it up to the voters to decide who really cares about African-Americans, and who's just spitting out rhetoric."

Photo credit: John Tierney. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Tierney's (Biased) Reading List:

Read more about the Milwaukee voucher program at School Choice Wisconsin

Read more about school choice at the Alliance for School Choice

"School Voucher Deal Goes to the Legislature" by Alan J. Borsuk and Sarah Carr. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 18, 2006.

"Changing City Puts School Choice in New Light" by Patrick McIlheran. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jan. 3, 2006.