Four Reasons Why Voucher Plans Lose Elections

By David Barulich

A popular definition of insanity is repeating the same action and continuing to expect a different result. Voucher proponents in California and Michigan will create doubts about their political sanity as they press ahead with initiative campaigns doomed to certain defeat this November, repeating mistakes made in Washington state, Oregon, and Colorado, as well as California.

In 1993, I spent countless hours campaigning in favor of the earlier California voucher initiative, which was crushed in a 70 percent to 30 percent landslide. I debated trained opponents on television and radio and in assembly rooms. But my most difficult encounters were casual conversations in living rooms with white, middle- to upper-class conservative voters (hereinafter called skeptics ) who expressed deep reservations about vouchers. This was especially disheartening because these skeptics did not make arguments based on our opponents' messages. After several fruitless arguments with these skeptics, I realized that no voucher or tuition-tax-credit plan could win a statewide election until four major problems could be solved:

Skeptics resent the idea that private schools receiving tax dollars should be able to play by a set of rules different from that of public schools. Voucher advocates fail to make any headway arguing about the wisdom of matching students with schools sharing the same mission, reducing government regulations, and increasing competition. The skeptics assume that good parents and students will adapt to the public school system. The skeptics aren't interested in making public schools operate...