Bal Harbour, FL
In 1995, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill, H.R. 2546, that is still in conference. The bill would impose a school voucher scheme on the District of Columbia and funnel federal money to support low-income public school students who switch to private schools.
The federal proposal follows state initiatives that brought voucher plans (both being challenged in court) to Cleveland, Ohio and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The labor movement has long championed universal, free public education as a foundation of an egalitarian society. Today, nine out of ten Americans attend public schools. Achieving that access marks a success for working families, organized labor and our country.
But school vouchers drain public dollars from public education to fund private schools that do not answer to the public. Unfortunately, funding for public education has all too stringent limits -- and diverting that funding to private schools is not likely to improve the public system.
Proponents of school vouchers invoke free-market ideology. They argue that funding private schools to compete with public schools will cause the public schools to improve. No other advanced industrial country whose students outperform ours has this kind of competition. And unlike public schools, private schools choose their students. Most students and parents would get no choice. That's a bad choice.
After three years of vouchers in Milwaukee, researchers found a move to private schooling by parents who had been active in the public system, and no academic improvement by the students. School vouchers didn't deliver the better education their proponents promised. Instead, they undercut the common good that public schools serve, caused the exit of many public school activists and brought greater fragmentation.
We recognize that in many communities, public education needs our urgent attention and support. Safe, orderly and drugfree schools, clear discipline codes with fair and consistently enforced consequences, rigorous academic standards, grades that stand for high achievement, and high school diplomas that mean a real readiness for good jobs or college are constructive measures for every community.
School voucher schemes, however, take the resources that constructive measures require. They undermine the system of public education that working families have fought so hard to obtain.
The AFL-CIO and its affiliates opposed Proposition 174 in California in 1993. We renew our opposition to school vouchers today. We urge states and communities to reject the diversion from constructive action that vouchers represent and ask that Congress reject the voucher scheme in H.R. 2546.