[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 9 (Tuesday, January 17, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E107-E109]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                             SCHOOL CHOICE

                                 ______


                          HON. MARTIN R. HOKE

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, January 17, 1995
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, we all know that a quality education is the 
greatest investment we can make in our children as well as in our 
Nation's future. It is often remarked that a Nation's most valuable 
asset is its youth, and as the father of three young children, I know 
full well the truth of that observation.
  School choice is an innovative and overdue idea. At present, the 
public schools have a monopoly in education because their consumers, 
students, and their parents, are forbidden to choose which school to 
attend unless they can afford private or parochial schools. Not 
surprisingly, this Government monopoly has failed to provide a quality 
service to its captive consumers.
  School choice would allow parents to take the money they already 
spend on taxes for education and invest that money in the school they 
believe will best educate their child. Essentially, the funds go where 
the child goes. The child would be able to go to a public or private 
school, including a religious one. By putting power in the hands of 
parents, schools would be forced to compete for students. Competition, 
in turn, will force school administrators to make much needed reforms 
in order to attract even more customers.
  Father Anthony Pilla of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland has 
undertaken an insightful study of the issue and has written a report 
which I believe will be of great interest to you, which I will submit 
to the Record.
                        It's Good Public Policy

      (By Bishop Anthony M. Pilla, Catholic Diocese of Cleveland)

       In recent years at the local and national level discussion 
     and debate about educational vouchers have become more and 
     more prevalent in many and varied circles of society. As 
     discussions occur and subsequently are covered by the media, 
     misconceptions about nonpublic schools are frequently 
     presented as factual (especially by those opposed to 
     vouchers). Clearly the promulgation of misinformation is a 
     disservice as committed citizens, parents, educators, and 
     civic, church and business leaders seek to consider issues 
     and reach valid, just and informed decisions to benefit all 
     children of the United States.
       [[Page E108]] Through this paper I would like to address 
     the imperative that policy makers understand who would 
     benefit most from public policies which would create and 
     finance a system of education vouchers. This statement speaks 
     to the possible ways in which education reform could truly 
     enhance the lives and future of the children whose parents 
     would like to send them to nonpublic schools. I invite 
     citizens, parents, legislators, and leaders who desire to 
     consider with integrity the issue of vouchers to read and 
     refer to the information provided as future discussions take 
     place.


                           who will benefit?

       There can be no mistaking the fact that it is truly the 
     poor who will gain from such legislation. To assume that 
     education vouchers will benefit only the wealthy is 
     unfounded, based on little fact and much speculation. The 
     people for whom an education voucher will really mean 
     something are the people for whom these dollars will enable 
     them to make choices about the education of their children. 
     This, of course, is the basic economic principle of marginal 
     economic utility. Therefore, to measure the true value of 
     education vouchers, legislators must not only consider the 
     dollar amount, but the value of those dollars in terms of 
     what they can accomplish and for which people.
       The assessment of who will benefit in the case of education 
     vouchers is clear and substantiated by hard evidence. In a 
     report titled ``Public and Private Schools,'' issued a decade 
     ago, James Coleman and others, specifically addressed the 
     issue of the impact of public policy changes which would 
     facilitate nonpublic school enrollment. The researchers 
     developed the hypothetical situation of increasing family 
     income and analyzed the effect of such an increase. The 
     report clearly indicates that few students would shift from 
     the public to the private sector, but of those that would a 
     significant number would be minorities and/or from families 
     with incomes at or below the national average. To be more 
     specific such a policy change would mean the following:
       1. Only a small proportion of public school students would 
     shift to nonpublic schools;
       2. The greatest shift would be among minorities, 
     particularly Hispanics; and
       3. The racial and ethnic composition of the groups that 
     would shift to nonpublic schools includes more minorities 
     that are currently in these schools.
       To quote the Coleman study itself, ``Because a tuition tax 
     credit or a school voucher would even more greatly facilitate 
     private school enrollment for students from lower income 
     families relative to students from higher income families, we 
     can expect that either of those policies would increase the 
     proportion of blacks or students from low-income backgrounds 
     in the private sector.''
       Nowhere has such a detailed and comprehensive analysis been 
     done to see specifically who would benefit most from public 
     policies such as education vouchers or tuition tax credits. 
     Although exact outcomes are impossible to predict, the 
     analysis contained in the Coleman study should allay the 
     fears that such policies would destroy the public schools by 
     encouraging the wealthiest students to move to the private 
     sector. In effect, both the private and public sector should 
     benefit through the equalization of the numbers of poor and 
     minority students in both sectors.
       The results of the Coleman study were confirmed in a survey 
     done in 1982 by the Office of Educational Research and 
     Improvement (OERI) at the U.S. Department of Education. This 
     study, ``Private Elementary and Secondary Education: 
     Congressionally Mandated Study of School Finance,'' estimated 
     that over 50% of public school parents would not even 
     consider leaving the public school system even if all tuition 
     costs were covered. The study also reported that Black and 
     Hispanic families were much more likely than White families 
     to switch their children to a nonpublic school if they were 
     given some financial assistance. For instance, under a $500 
     tuition tax credit 53.0% of Hispanic and 47.2% of Black 
     parents with children in the public schools said that they 
     were ``likely or somewhat likely'' to switch their children 
     to nonpublic schools, while only 26.8% of White parents with 
     children in public school said they were ``likely or somewhat 
     likely'' to switch their children to nonpublic schools.
       More recently, there has been a great deal of research on 
     the impact of public policy changes on nonpublic school 
     enrollment which has even more strongly supported the 
     validity of Coleman's claims. According to the Carnegie 
     Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching only 19% of public 
     school parents would consider sending their children to a 
     nonpublic school. The Carnegie Foundation study also shows 
     that most parents--87 percent--are satisfied with their 
     children's public school. Furthermore, in those places where 
     local governments have experimented with education vouchers, 
     their has not been a mass exodus from the public schools. The 
     full-scale voucher program recently implemented in Puerto 
     Rico demonstrates that such a fear is unwarranted. During the 
     two years of the operation of the Puerto Rican education 
     voucher program, more school children in Puerto Rico chose to 
     leave nonpublic schools to go to public schools than chose to 
     leave public schools for nonpublic schools.
                     Are nonpublic schools elitist?

       So the evidence, both theoretical and empirical, is clear: 
     an education voucher system will not leave the public schools 
     empty; and, of those students whose families will use 
     vouchers to choose nonpublic schools a disproportionate 
     number will be minorities or from poor families. But what 
     about these people who would use education vouchers to go to 
     a nonpublic school? Will education vouchers really benefit 
     participating students educationally? There are several 
     misconceptions about the parents who choose to send their 
     children to nonpublic schools and about the quality of 
     nonpublic education. These misconceptions have been used by 
     opponents of education vouchers to argue that nonpublic 
     schools do not serve children from families who need 
     financial assistance in order to continue to afford their 
     school's tuition, and to argue that it is not good public 
     policy to help parents have a choice about what kind of 
     school their children are going to attend.
       First, some people picture nonpublic schools as being 
     white, wealthy and highly selective. These generalizations 
     about nonpublic schools are highly inaccurate. Several recent 
     studies published by the U.S. Department of Education 
     demonstrate that nonpublic schools are not predominately 
     attended by the wealthy. The National Center for Education 
     Statistics recently issued a report which estimated that in 
     1985, 47% of students in church-related schools and 32% of 
     students in nonsectarian schools were from families with 
     incomes of between $15,000 and $35,000, while 42% of the 
     students in public schools were from families within that 
     income range.
       According to research produced by the National Catholic 
     Educational Association (NCEA), there are not significant 
     differences between the income levels of public and Catholic 
     school families. NCEA estimates that in 1992, 6% of Catholic 
     high school families had an income level of under $15,000; 
     17% had an income level of between $15,000 and $25,000; 26% 
     had an income level of between $25,001 and $35,000; 28% had 
     an income level of between $35,001 and $50,000; and 23% had 
     an income level of over $50,000. Using 1990 Census Data, the 
     percentages nationwide for families of four were not 
     significantly different: 17% of families had an income level 
     of under $15,000; 16% had an income level of between $15,000 
     and $25,000; 18% had an income level of between $25,001 and 
     $35,000; 20% had an income level between $35,001 and $50,000; 
     and 30% had an income level of over $50,000.
       To quote NCEA, ``These data provide additional evidence to 
     refute persistent and pernicious stereotypes of Catholic 
     schools as a refuge for the wealthy. Clearly, many families 
     who choose Catholic high schools for their children must 
     strain to find money for tuition within limited budgets.
       Research on elementary schools is even more telling in this 
     regard. For the 1992-93 school year, NCEA estimates that 
     11.6% of Catholic elementary school families had an income of 
     less than $15,000; 21.5% had an income of between $15,001 and 
     $25,000; 25.1% had an income of between $25,001 and $35,000; 
     23.4% had an income of between $35,001 and $50,000; and, 
     18.3% had an income of more than $50,000. What may be more 
     significant than this, is the fact that over 92% of all 
     Catholic elementary school families had dual incomes in 1992-
     93. These statistics demonstrate that many Catholic school 
     parents make significant sacrifices to send their children to 
     a nonpublic school. In light of this evidence it is difficult 
     to understand how anyone could claim that nonpublic school 
     parents are wealthy, and therefore, not deserving of a share 
     of the tax funds to which they contribute in order to assist 
     them in the educational choice they are making for their 
     children.
       Inner-city nonpublic schools, in particular, demonstrate a 
     remarkable willingness and ability to serve the needs of 
     urban students from disadvantaged families. Research 
     indicates that these schools draw from the same populations 
     as the local public schools. According to data from the 1990 
     Census, there are over one million families living in our 
     country's inner-cities--13.4% of all inner-city families with 
     school age children--who send their children to nonpublic 
     schools. These figures indicate that there are many parents 
     in our cities and urban areas who are in desperate need of a 
     public policy which says to them, ``You may educate your 
     children in the schools of your choice as guaranteed by the 
     Constitution. And furthermore, you will be able to do so even 
     though you may be poor or disadvantaged--whether or not you 
     live in the cities or the suburbs or the rural areas of this 
     country.''
       Consistent with the results of the Coleman study, the U.S. 
     Department of Education's 1985-86 study on Private Schools 
     demonstrates that the nonpublic school community has indeed 
     been able to achieve a higher degree of integration relative 
     to the racial backgrounds of their students than the public 
     sector. It is also important to note that the percentage of 
     minorities enrolled in all nonpublic schools has 
     significantly increased over the last decade. Catholic 
     schools, in particular, have performed particularly well in 
     this regard. According to the National Catholic Educational 
     Association, the percentage of minorities in Catholic schools 
     has more than doubled since 1970-71. In 1993-94, the 
     percentage of Black, Hispanic and Asian students made up 
     22.5% of students in Catholic schools. In light of these 
     figures and of the trends indicated in the Coleman report, 
     can anyone reasonably suggest that nonpublic schools do not 
     serve children from a wide range of economic, racial and 
     ethnic backgrounds?
       [[Page E109]] All of this raises a simple point. Any public 
     policy precluding or denying freedom of choice in education 
     on the assumption that nonpublic schools are racist or 
     elitist is public policy based on misconception. If anything, 
     the facts indicate that a statement of public policy in the 
     form of education vouchers would serve to further improve the 
     racial and economic mix in both nonpublic and public schools.
       The second general misconception about nonpublic schools 
     concerns the quality of nonpublic schools and, in particular, 
     as it relates to selectivity. Opponents of education vouchers 
     often argue that nonpublic schools do a better job of 
     educating children because they can be more selective in whom 
     they accept and are free to expel the children they don't 
     want. This viewpoint is quite simply not based on the facts.
       Once again, let us consider this misconception in the case 
     of the performance and policies of Catholic schools which, of 
     course, educate over 50 percent of all nonpublic school 
     children in the United States. The Catholic League for 
     Religious and Civil Rights conducted a study on inner-city 
     nonpublic schools based on an analysis of randomly selected 
     schools in eight major cities around the country. The data 
     from this study indicates that after giving preference for 
     admission to parishioners, approximately 90 percent of these 
     schools exercise open admission policies and rarely expel 
     students. This data is further supported by research done by 
     Dr. Vitullo-Martin. He states, ``No researcher has found any 
     extensive use of expulsion sufficient to explain the 
     statistical differences in achievement rates between public 
     and Catholic schools.'' This is not to say that nonpublic 
     schools never expel nor dismiss students for various reasons, 
     but that such action is not taken lightly, nor is done very 
     often, as some opponents on nonpublic education would have us 
     believe.
                          What about quality?

       The misconceptions about the selectivity of nonpublic 
     schools should not prevent the provision of education choice 
     to parents and neither should misconceptions about the 
     quality of nonpublic schools. In fact, the quality of 
     nonpublic schools is at least as good as that found in the 
     public sector and in many instances better. Once again, the 
     Coleman data provides conclusive evidence:
       1. Given the same kinds of students, nonpublic schools 
     create more contact for students with academic activities. 
     For example, attendance is higher, students do more homework 
     and they take on average more vigorous subjects;
       2. There is greater scholastic achievement in nonpublic 
     schools than in public schools, brought about by a more 
     ordered environment;
       3. The growth rates in achievement between the public and 
     nonpublic schools differ, with strong evidence that average 
     achievement among nonpublic school students is 
     ``considerably'' greater than in the public sector; and
       4. In discussing Catholic schools, in particular, the 
     Coleman report concludes that Catholic schools most closely 
     resemble the ideal of the ``common school.'' That is, they 
     educate children from different backgrounds and obtain 
     greater homogeneity of student achievement.
       These conclusions have been supported by more recent 
     examinations of the relative achievement levels in nonpublic 
     and public schools. In his above mentioned book on Catholic 
     schools, Anthony Bryk reported that in 1988, 64% of Catholic 
     school students in grade 10 compared with 45% of public 
     schools students in grade 10 stated that they had plans to 
     attend college. More importantly, Bryk's research showed 
     conclusively that the distribution of academic achievement is 
     more equalized across class, race and ethnic lines in 
     Catholic schools than in the public schools. In other words, 
     the average level of achievement in mathematics, for example, 
     is not only higher in Catholic high schools, it is less 
     strongly related to social class and racial and ethnic 
     background.
       The impact of an education in Catholic school clearly has 
     long term benefits as well. For example, the U.S. Department 
     of Education reported that by the spring of 1986, 36% of 
     White Catholic high school graduates, 25% of Black graduates 
     and 25% of Hispanic graduates went on to receive a BA, BS or 
     MA, while only 19% of White Public Schools graduates, 9% of 
     Black graduates and 9% of Hispanic graduates had received one 
     of those degrees.
       I do not point out these things to accentuate the 
     differences between public and nonpublic education. More than 
     two-thirds of Catholic school-age children in this country 
     attend public schools, and I remain committed to and 
     supportive of the public schools in this nation.
       For too long the nonpublic schools in this country have 
     been accused of being racist, elitist and of inferior 
     quality. Past attempts to establish a public policy which 
     would truly give parents educational freedom of choice have 
     been defeated using these misconceptions as reasons against 
     granting equity to parents, especially the poor parents of 
     our nation. Hard evidence is now available and it reveals 
     these misconceptions for what they are. The evidence tells us 
     that poor parents will benefit most from a system of 
     education vouchers and that the schools to which they would 
     send their child can no longer be considered a priori to be 
     racist or elitist. The evidence also tells us that the 
     quality of nonpublic school education is certainly not 
     inferior. None of the misconceptions which have been 
     attributed to nonpublic schools in the past should stand in 
     the way of the establishment of an education voucher system 
     as a matter of public policy. There should be no doubt that 
     justice and equity demand such public policy, for to be poor 
     without educational choices is in itself a greater poverty. 
     Policy makers have an opportunity to provide that justice and 
     equity, by providing educational choices to minorities and 
     poor of this country. The time to act on education vouchers 
     is certainly at hand. I urge you to support a system of 
     education vouchers--a policy which will bring educational 
     justice and freedom to the people of this country.
     

                          ____________________