Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 21, 1993 TAG: 9312030384
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A19 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ray L. Garland
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Republican gubernatorial candidate George Allen has advanced three main ideas in the campaign: holding tuition increases at state colleges to no more than the rate of inflation; an outside management study of all operations of state government; and ending Virginia's "lenient, liberal" parole system. The first is sensible; the second is badly needed; the third is so fraught with complexity as to cause him to admit, in the merest aside, that it will take 12 years to fully implement.
Democrat Mary Sue Terry had hoped that her newfound enthusiasm for gun control would stampede urban voters into her column, but it hasn't seemed to work magic. Even Gov. Douglas Wilder has criticized her for putting all her bullets in one basket.
The only fresh initiative she has brought front and center is a promise to find an extra $100 million in state funds to reduce class size in the primary grades in the poorest schools. It is a sensible priority, but the state would get a bigger bang for its buck by funding teacher aides. That, of course, would be union-busting in the eyes of one of Terry's chief patrons, the Virginia Education Association.
When Terry was comfortably ahead in the polls, her campaign pitch could be boiled down to "I've been there and know; trust me to maintain a steady course. P.S. I don't like Clinton any more than you do." When she started sinking, it became "My opponent is the lap dog of the radical right; he will take away a woman's right to choose and harm the public schools by handing out vouchers good for instruction in private academies."
Maybe Terry's new strategy isn't working because Allen seems so relentlessly a pleasant and unthreatening fellow. He has been quick, perhaps too quick, to change the subject whenever school vouchers are mentioned. Vouchers, if properly explained, could be the one item in the conservative catechism having the greatest appeal to the unmoneyed.
When Terry presses the attack on vouchers, as she did in their televised debates, Allen puts it away softly, offering no real defense nor ringing endorsement. I'm not gung-ho on this, he seems to say, if local school boards want to experiment with vouchers, they should be allowed to do so. But expecting school boards to do any favors for private education is fantastic. Vouchers will become a reality only when the state sets aside funding.
Californians will decide this question in a referendum Nov. 2. Proposition 174, if passed, will require the state to provide parents sending their children to private schools with an annual voucher worth $2,600, applied to the cost of tuition in the same way Virginia supplies vouchers to residents attending the state's private colleges.
President Clinton's education secretary, Richard Riley, called Prop. 174 "disturbing and troubling." Perhaps he's unfamiliar with the great American mix of public and private colleges which has made our system of higher education the envy of the world, while the virtual state monopoly of secondary education has produced results putting America near the bottom among industrialized nations.
But polls consistently show Virginia parents satisfied with the public schools their children attend.
So, it's a tough call and a difficult question.
Critics say it will take scarce resources away from the public schools and mainly benefit those who already contemplate sending their children to private schools. But the resources devoted to public education are hardly paltry. In fact, they have grown far faster than inflation over many years. Even a voucher of $2,600 a year would represent a real bargain for Virginia taxpayers because they're generally putting up more than twice as much to have the student in the public schools.
And state education planners tell us that public-school enrollment will grow by 160,000 in the next six years. That might require some 8,000 new classrooms at a cost of roughly $375 million. If there ever was a time to encourage competition in secondary education, it would be now, when a growing enrollment will require many new schools to be built.
Let me make a few things clear. I am a product of the public schools, as are my two brothers and their seven children. I see no marked deficiency between what we got and what our contemporaries obtained in private schools. During my years in politics, I was often in the public schools. While the students were often appalling in their smug indifference, the teachers were almost universally appealing in their desire to educate.
But all institutions are benefitted by competition; and society is benefitted by the widest range of choice. We understand that very clearly when it comes to higher education, where there is an astonishing range of choice, and vouchers in one form or another are universally available.
From the perspective of inner-city youth, where the grapes of wrath are said to be stored, public schools may now be particularly unsuitable. They don't cost anything; they've got to take you in; and attendance is compulsory by law. But spending your own money (or voucher) to voluntarily attend a private school creates an entirely different psychology; and one, in this instance, which study after study has shown to produce superior results.
The main problem with public schools today is they're forced to conform to the orthodoxy of the secular state and the mass media. But the aim of real education through the centuries has been exactly the opposite: to inspire individuals to think objectively for themselves.
With the seemingly insurmountable odds he faced at the outset of this campaign, Allen can't be blamed for leaving the crusader's role to editorialists safe in their nooks. But a Gov. Allen will bear the burden to think and act anew.
\ Ray L. Garland is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
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