ONE OF THE ENDURING HOPES of my life is to find an issue about which the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force is right. But life, being a vale of tears, has confounded me. So it is that NGLTF has reacted to President Bush's proposals on education with error not matched since the group declared its solemn opposition to the Gulf War ten years ago.
Bush's education reform package includes two features designed to give parents greater choice about whether to send their children to private schools rather than to failing, violence-ridden public schools. One part of the package would give families vouchers in the form of coupons or checks to pay for attendance at private schools or better public schools. Similar vouchers are now available to 25,000 students in local school districts around the country, including in heavily Democratic cities like Cleveland and Milwaukee.
The other part of the reform package would allow parents to deduct up to $5,000 of their annual income to pay the educational expenses of each of their children attending private elementary or secondary schools. Some combination of tax deductions and/or tax credits for private schooling is now available in four states, including liberal-leaning Minnesota.
The basic idea behind these school-choice measures is simple. First, parents concerned about the quality of their children's education should have a meaningful opportunity to send their kids elsewhere. Second, because more parents will have more choice, schools will have to compete for students and for the dollars those students bring. Competition, the theory goes, brings excellence.
The jury is out on whether the theory meets the reality, in part because there have been so few school-choice experiments and in part because they have been on such a small scale. One concern is that vouchers and tax credits will have the effect of draining money and the best students away from the poorest school districts, making them even worse than they are now.
A second concern is that such experiments violate the principle of separation of church and state. Many parents, after all, will undoubtedly choose to send their children to private religious schools.
While the first concern about potentially harmful effects on public schools might be valid, I confess I am mystified by the second. How can it violate the Constitution to let parents use their own money to send their own children to schools of their own choice? We might as well say it offends the Constitution to let people drive to Sunday worship service on public roads or with government-subsidized ethanol in their fuel tanks.
Least compelling of all are the concerns about school choice expressed in a recent press release from NGLTF. "Funneling public tax dollars to private schools," the press release begins, "poses risks to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students and teachers as well as the children of GLBT parents." Bush's program, it hyperventilates, "threatens the safety" of gay students and gay parents and endangers the "job security" of gay teachers.
NGLTF Executive Director Elizabeth Toledo points out that vouchers will often be used to send children to religious schools that are free to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. In most states, gay students can be banned altogether from private schools and gay teachers can be fired. Toledo adds that "public schools are accountable to the public, to parents, to elected school boards and ultimately to the U.S. Constitution," whereas private schools are not.
Just where has all of this public accountability gotten us? It's true that private schools, including sectarian ones, might not be ideal for gay students, teachers, and parents. But, one always has to ask, compared to what?
Public schools in this country have not exactly been havens of tolerance and understanding for gay folks. Most public schools, even in some of the nation's largest cities, like Houston, do not forbid discrimination against gay students or openly gay teachers. Vicious taunting and teasing of kids thought to be gay are typical in public schools. Worse than that, gay kids are often pushed, hit, and spat upon. Many school districts and administrators are immune (or nearly immune) from lawsuits when they ignore anti-gay abuse, which, of course, they commonly do. A religious school that teaches the sanctity of traditional marriage but that at least guarantees the physical safety of a gay child is surely preferable to a public school where he is beaten on the way to the school library to peruse "Heather Has Two Mommies."
Private schools are accountable to a force that can be far more pervasive and powerful than government in a free society: the marketplace. Gay parents are free to withdraw their children from schools that aren't sufficiently tolerant. Parents of children being taunted or beaten for suspected homosexuality can take their money elsewhere. Schools will have to compete for the best teachers by giving them better salaries, regardless of sexual orientation. The market for private education will respond to these preferences by providing venues more hospitable to gay concerns.
It's no accident that private business has been far ahead of national, state, and local governments in barring discrimination against gays and in offering health and other benefits to gay couples. The market doesn't care much about sectarian morality. It cares about money, and money knows no sexual orientation. There's every reason to believe that a freer market for education, as Bush proposes, would provide a happier and safer environment for us all.