The fight for school choice lives on

In May of 2010, the Illinois House of Representatives voted down the 2010 voucher bill. My hopes had been high for this bill, because I knew what school choice would mean for Illinois families. Vouchers mean freedom from failing schools; the possibility of students and families choosing their own path instead of being stuck with...

In May of 2010, the Illinois House of Representatives voted down the 2010 voucher bill. My hopes had been high for this bill, because I knew what school choice would mean for Illinois families.

Vouchers mean freedom from failing schools; the possibility of students and families choosing their own path instead of being stuck with the failing status quo. I knew this bill would provide hope and possibilities for thousands of Illinois students, and at the Illinois Policy Institute we worked tirelessly to pass this voucher bill.

But in the end, the Illinois General Assembly failed to make choice a reality. I relived this heartbreak during a recent vacation when I re-read a piece I had published in the Chicago Tribune shortly after the 2010 vote (see below).

The emotions I felt after re-reading this article reminded of something an acquaintance once said about an amazing speech he had heard. He said, “I don’t remember exactly what was said, but I will never forget how it made me feel.” For me, that feeling was raw emotion, the emotion of inspiration that originally motivated me into action on school choice.

The irony here is that remembering the specific words and phrases did not matter – it was the depth and sustained feelings that mattered. And yet it was the words, and the skill of their delivery, that created the emotional connectivity that created action.

We need the words – the policy – but we need the emotional storytelling that sticks most of all.

I will never forget how struggling moms and dads made me feel in their desperate search for a pathway out of violent cities with school cultures that indoctrinated failure and hopelessness rather than aspiration and achievement.

That’s why the fight for educational freedom remains even more important today. The odds are long and the foes are strong. Unions such as the Chicago Teachers Union, or CTU, have become more radicalized and militant.

Yet among the more than 20,000 teachers at Chicago Public Schools, or CPS, are golden apples who are changing kids’ lives for the better. In their classrooms are children who will one day become adults; some of them will have aspired to high standards and will have achieved great things. And when they think back on their CPS days, they will not think of the failures, they will not think of the violence, they will not think of CTU President Karen Lewis and they won’t remember a lot of specific things they heard in class.

Instead, they will think of the feelings, the hopes, the dreams, and their desire to aspire and achieve that some miraculous golden apple of a teacher laboring in the CPS system made happen for him or her.

Part of teaching and part of all classrooms must be to face the truth. The truth in Chicago and around too many schools in Illinois is that there are not enough golden apples who are changing kids’ lives for the better. Sometimes it is because the people who are teaching should not be teaching – the challenge of Chicago and all the dysfunction are just too much for some. And sometimes great teachers are subsumed by the dysfunction of the broken educational bureaucracy and they become broken themselves.

In the end, it doesn’t matter why this happens. What matters is that we cannot sentence another generation of students to failing schools and difficult futures.

We cannot wait for the fairness and justice due to Illinois’ children. We must empower the children and their parents with the freedom to seek the best teachers and educational opportunities, wherever they may be.

Educational freedom, which can only be accomplished with parental choice and empowerment, is one of the great moral causes of our time.

We have the moral high ground and we must carry the fight forward to set the children free. To learn more about what we are doing to get closer to this goal, please visit illinoispolicy.org/schoolchoice.

And next time you drive by a school in your neighborhood – you can see it in your mind’s eye now – think about the teachers there. Then think about the schools kids who are entering every day on the south and west sides, in Decatur, in East St. Louis, in Rockford – all around this state. Would you send your kids there instead of the school you drive by every day?

If the answer is no, then this is a cause you should take up today.

Voting in favor of bad schools
Originally published on May 12, 2010, in the Chicago Tribune

She was a quiet, dignified African-American, perhaps early 40s. Her eyes had spark and she seemed determined, both good signs. But the desperation in her voice was overpowering.

“I need money to move.”

I was just 23 years old then, a rookie management trainee learning how to interview prospective sales people for the call center where I worked.

“Why do you want to move?” I innocently asked.

After all, no one wakes up in the morning seeking a call-center career. They choose to work in call centers because they can make good money quickly — if they can sell. I knew that desperation turns many quiet people, like this woman, into tenacious salespeople.

“I need to move to get my kids away from the gangs,” she answered.

It was 1982 and I was sitting in an office just north of Eight Mile Road, the border between Detroit and Southfield, Mich., made famous by the rapper Eminem. I knew a bit about what the woman meant; I lived in a marginal neighborhood near Wayne State University. Bad things happened regularly. Looking at her address, I knew her neighborhood was much worse.

“Have you ever sold anything before?”

“No, but I can learn.”

I don’t remember much more about her. I don’t even remember if I hired her.

But this is how I first learned about school choice. The memory of that woman came flooding back to me last Wednesday as I listened to the Illinois House debate the fate of 30,000 children languishing in some of Chicago’s worst performing schools. Senate Bill 2494 would have established a pilot school-voucher program in Chicago to provide poor students with “opportunity scholarships” to attend better private schools.

The bill had passed the Illinois Senate with bipartisan support.

This should have been a layup for Democrats and Republicans in the House.

It wasn’t. It wouldn’t have cost suburban schools money, it would have held Chicago Public Schools accountable for the failure of its schools and it would have given parents a fighting chance to give their children a better education.

I sat stunned when it became evident that the bill would fail. I thought of that quiet, determined woman from 1982. It was a heartbreaking moment.

Illinois parents were pleading for a chance to send their children to better schools.

“You can’t have it,” said the Illinois House of Representatives. The bottom line is this: The Illinois Education Association opposed this bill, as did the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Chicago Teachers Union.

Keep in mind who said yes to kids, and who said yes to union lobbyists. November is not too far off.