SCHOOL CHOICE: Fact Sheet - 5/15/92 May 15, 1992 PRESIDENT BUSH: FIGHTING TO GIVE PARENTS CHOICE Clinton Attack: o Clinton attacked the President's education plan as "raising up a few [schools] and leaving the rest behind." Clinton contends that complete school choice (choice for public, private, or religious schools) and New American Schools will improve some schools at the expense of others. Clinton now says he is "unalterably opposed to a voucher system to give people public money to take to private schools." The President's Plan to Revolutionize American Education: o The President understands that cumbersome education bureaucracies have failed. They no longer deliver the sort of flexibility and accountability that parents and students deserve in our new just-in-time, total quality management world. o The President's America 2000 strategy offers a comprehensive solution to the problems facing American education. More than anything else, though, the President's proposals will end the education establishment's stranglehold over our Nation's schools. o The President's strategy will transform American education by instilling accountability, promoting parental choice, and encouraging results-oriented thinking. It will both remove roadblocks to change and encourage implementation of meaningful reforms. o The President also understands that revolutionary reforms, not more money for the old system, represents the path to real change. Educational trends of recent decades provide a perfect example of the mismatch between spending and performance: $400 billion a year and a 40% spending increase per pupil has not yielded better test scores. The average amount of education spending per pupil has nearly doubled in the 1980s while the national verbal SAT score has fallen to an all-time low of 422. Page 2 The President Sides with Parents against Education Bureaucrats: o Despite real evidence that choice works, Democrats like Clinton continue to oppose complete choice (choice for public, private, or religious schools). School choice will motivate schools to reform and restructure. Choice empowers parents to send their children to the schools they deem best, and puts market forces to work for better schools. o Regardless of their income, parents should be able to send their children to schools that perform. Without school choice, poor parents will not have the full range of choices that are now available to rich parents. o In opposing complete choice, Clinton is helping to let discredited special interests control education reform. Because he would deny to parents the ability to hold schools accountable for results (by letting them move their children to better schools), he would enshrine as legitimate "reformers" those education elites who are most out-of-touch and impermeable to change. o If teachers unions, lobbyists for local school boards, government bureaucrats, and civil rights lawyers become institutionalized as "reformers" -- as Clinton would allow -- there will be little hope for the real agents of change: parents who want to take charge of their children's futures. Limited Choice is No Choice At All o The President wants to help public schools by exposing them to competition. By opposing complete choice and stopping the ability of public schools to reform through competition, Clinton fails his own test of encouraging "real incentives to reform." o While the President wants all schools to improve, it's clear that some private schools have found better ways to teach than public schools: students at private religious school have SAT scores 13 points above the national average SAT score; students at independent private schools have SAT scores of 100 points above the national average. Only competition can guarantee that public schools will adopt new innovations and continually improve in tandem with private schools. o Most important, limited choice will not help poor children who will be deprived of the full range of choices available to those with greater means. Parents like Shindana Cooper of Baltimore, who could no longer afford her children's parochial school, have since had to watch their grades drop in public Page 3 school; such parents, determined to see their children get a quality education, deserve the opportunity that true choice will provide. o If Clinton is really concerned about, as he says "providing real incentives" he should direct his fire against congressional Democrats, who are killing the President's education reforms, and giving money and power back to business-as-usual "educrats:" -- Both the House and Senate bills eviscerate the President's proposals on school choice. -- Both bills will stop the President's proposals to create "break-the-mold" New American Schools. Both bills will let the already-discredited education establishment decide which schools should receive federal funds; both bills also limit eligibility for funds to public schools. -- Both bills curtail the use of world class standards and voluntary national exams -- the very centerpiece of Clinton's supposed reforms. In fact, the House bill, bending to the pressure of education elites, makes no provision for world class standards or national testing. o Real reform will never be accomplished by going down the tired road of old approaches. Absent the accountability of choice, across-the-board standards by which parents can compare schools' performance, flexible financing and administration to involve parents and communities, and "break-the-mold" schools to implement innovative reforms, the minds of most American children will remain the exclusive province of bureaucrats, lobbyists, and establishment elites. Prototypes for Change: New American Schools o Clinton has charged that the President wants to build "535 new public schools." He's wrong. The President is proposing to build 535 new "break-the-mold" schools -- schools designed from the ground up to incorporate wholly new teaching techniques and ways of thinking. The whole point of New American Schools is that they not be typical public schools. o New American Schools will translate what until now have been abstract ideas into real, operating schools. Public school principals and teachers will be able to observe ideas in practice, and learn how to transform existing schools into working models of reform. In short, "break-the-mold" schools will pay for themselves many times over, as public and private schools adopt previously untried, but now proven, reforms. Page 4 o Clinton's attack on "break-the-mold" schools is ironic given his argument that school choice would drain public schools of needed funds, and would leave them unable to implement reforms. "Break-the-mold" schools will work in tandem with choice. They will demonstrate in practice the types innovative ideas that until now have been buried in education bureaucrats' morass of studies, peer reviews, oversight boards, and evaluations. # # #