Education is one area where awareness of the need for freedom from government control has penetrated black attitudes. The chronic failure of public schools to notably improve dismal test scores and high dropout rates of black children has made it clear to many black citizens of good will that there has got to be a better way.
Polls show strong black support for school choice. For example, in a poll done last year in New Jersey by the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University, 54 percent of blacks expressed support for school vouchers compared with 36 percent of whites.
Growing grassroots support among blacks for education alternatives surely influenced the Obama administration’s agreement, this past week, for ongoing support for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. The administration opposes the program and would have been perfectly happy to see its funding disappear.
This is a modest program, with federal funds available now for 1,615 scholarships for kids in D.C. public schools to attend private schools. Its existence and potential for growth was at stake, with House Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Joseph Lieberman carrying the ball for it. The new agreement will allow it to continue, with a small provision for 85 new scholarships.
But this makes even more perplexing recent incidents where Republican state legislators have turned their backs on blacks’ education hopes.
Republicans in Pennsylvania could change the political landscape of their state by helping black aspirations for educational freedom. But in a state that some analysts see as conceivably swinging into the Republican column, Republicans are blowing it.
The Pennsylvania state Senate passed a bill last year that would make vouchers available to kids in the worst 5 percent of public schools.
The public schools serving black kids in cities like Philadelphia are disasters. I know from my own survey of pastors in local churches there that hopes for this voucher initiative have been high. Yet, by all indication, it’s not going to happen. The state House, controlled by Republicans, has been sitting on the bill. With no action before the end of the session on June 30, it will be dead.
There is talk of an alternative scholarship bill financed through tax credits. But the most optimistic estimate I have heard is that the scholarship would be worth less than half of what the voucher would pay, and therefore would be insufficient on its own to pay full tuition in a private church school.
Courageous leadership by Republicans could have captured black hearts and minds in Pennsylvania’s cities, which might have paved a path to a new black relationship with Republicans.
But sadly, fear of union power seems to be motivating these legislators, rather than leadership and courage.
In 2010, a similar disappointment occurred in Illinois. In a genuine breakthrough, a black Democrat in the Illinois state Senate, Rev. James Meeks — who happens to also be the pastor of Chicago’s largest Baptist congregation — introduced a school voucher bill. The bill passed the Illinois Senate and then died in the state House, with only 25 of 48 Republicans supporting it. It fell 12 votes short of the 60 it needed to pass.
This is not an across-the-board indictment of Republicans. Two Republican governors — Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Bobby Jindal in Louisiana — have spearheaded passage of school voucher programs in their states.
The Republican Party is supposed to be the party of freedom and limited government. No where are these principles more needed than in education, and no community needs it more than blacks.
In a new Gallup poll, only 29 percent, an all-time low, express “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in our public schools. Given this, and at a time when our country and our poor communities are hurting so badly, any failure of leadership by those in the party of Lincoln is inexcusable.
Star Parker is an author and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. She can be reached at urbancure.org.
