Just in time to hear Asheville's religious publisher Joel Belz speak about a home schooling conference he had attended in Boston, I  returned the evening before from Bentonville, Arkansas and a three day conference on K-12 education.  My event was  hosted by CEO AMERICA (CEO stands for "Children's Educational Opportunity").  It was  a national training workshop about privately donated vouchers or scholarships empowering parents to send their children to schools of their choice. In Bentonville the question, "who should decide where and how children are educated," was answered by two words: "their  parents."  That axiom had also been the starting point of  the Boston conference on home schooling in which Joel Belz had participated.

 In Arkansas, however, the focus was squarely on lower income parents who would  send their children to private schools, secular or faith-based, or even to another public school, if only they had the means. From a modest beginning in Indianapolis six years ago [i.e. in 1991], more than 10,000 children are now being helped by private donors to realize their parents' dream.

At the CEO AMERICA conference I was the only person present from either Asheville/Buncombe County or indeed from the state of North Carolina. But the 75 attendees, both panelists describing and evaluating existing programs and  the rest of us, represented four dozen American and Canadian cities including neighbors such as Spartanburg, Chattanooga, Memphis, Frankfort and Birmingham. By late 1997 private giving to help precollege education of needy  children has grown into a movement: smaller and younger than the home schooling movement, but nonetheless impressive, well aware of what it is about, expanding, amply funded and as committed as home schoolers to the proposition that parents are the best choosers of the
values, content and delivery systems of their children's education.

Yes, there exists a "private voucher movement" in America. It began in
Indianapolis in 1991, the brainchild of Patrick Rooney and his Golden Rule Insurance Company. Mr. Rooney aimed to provide privately funded scholarships to 500 children to attend private schools of their choice. Response was overwhelming and he helped 750  in the first year. The Wall Street JOURNAL began providing in depth coverage, and what is now called the Golden Rule model s now widely known and imitated.

In 1992 Milwaukee, San Antonio, Atlanta and Battle Creek began private voucher programs. The first public policy research into vouchers was also launched and continues. 1993 saw fresh programs in Albany, Austin, Denver, Detroit/Grand Rapids, Little Rock, Phoenix and Washington, DC. In 1994 private precollege scholarship/voucher programs came to life in Dallas, Houston, Midland (Texas), Oakland and Los Angeles.  1995 saw the movement spread to Orlando, Buffalo, Jacksonville, Knoxville and Bridgeport.

In 1992 CEO AMERICA was founded in Bentonville, Arkansas with a $2 million grant from the Walton Family Foundation.  CEO AMERICA at once began offering  matching challenge grants to new programs in new cities.  The organization also serves as a provider of training and as a national clearing house of information on the private voucher movement.  It is on the internet at http://www.ceoamerica.org.

The private voucher movement kept growing in 1996 and 1997. Not only did existing programs flourish but there was new activity in Jersey City and Elizabeth, NJ,  Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Seattle.  The October 1997 CEO AMERICA conference in Bentonville drew participants from 26 cities or states not yet offering privately funded school vouchers. Quite a few  hadbeen drawn there by a June 2, 1997 article in FORBES Magazine called "Trustbusters."

That article described  the approach of philanthropist Virginia Gilder who offered parents vouchers to pay 90% of the cost of private education. She found 153 children in Giffen Memorial Elementary public school in Albany, New York willing to to accept her two-year offer of scholarships ranging from $2,000 to $6,000 per family for three to six years on a case by case basis to attend private schools of their parents' choosing. Ms. Gilder had made her offer to the entire student body of 458 students of one public school. One-third took her up. The Giffen  school, located very close to the State House, is described  by FORBES and others as "atrocious." One happy by-product of Ms. Gilder's initiative was the all but instantaneous clean-up of Giffen, with a new principal,  new teachers and other improvements: a win-win situation for  students, parents and the public
school itself.

FORBES quoted Ms Gilder as saying, 
 

"If four or five students fade out of a public school, nobody notices and it's easier for the school to go about its business as usual; but if a big bunch leaves, the message can't be ignored." 

The impact of Virginia Gilder was both positive and, alas, limited to one public school. For at the recent Bentonville conference a participant from Albany reported that while the Giffen public school was massively and well reformed, absolutely nothing similar has been done at other Albany public schools, some nearly as bad as GIffen .

From the Bentonville conference one thing is certain both anecdotally and from serious research: parents who receive them love vouchers! Hold that thought: parents, especially parents otherwise without means to send their children to private schools, are the greatest supporters of vouchers or scholarships allowing them to pick their children's school. That school more often than not is faith-based: Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish, Baptist or other denomination; but the school can be and often is secular.

Vouchered parents are actively, selectively steering their children  to a particular school, usually for the first time in their lives. Such parents now have a tangible personal stake in K-12 education. The parents know this well.  And the generous private donors behind a private voucher movement now at work in more than 30 American cities say that this is precisely as it should be. For  parents  are uniquely qualified to choose the right schools for their own children.

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for Asheville TRIBUNE

(revisited 04/15/2005)