by Salim Muwakkil, Jul 14, 1998

School vouchers have become a central issue for African Americans when it comes to education.

Nobel laureate Milton Friedman invented the concept in a 1955 academic article. The idea was embraced by libertarians as well as many white parents fleeing the compulsory integration of public schools. Now an unlikely alliance of black nationalists and Republican legislators is championing experimental voucher programs in several states.

The idea of vouchers resonates in black communities across the country. A poll taken last March found that 57.3 percent of African Americans support the idea of school vouchers, a jump of 10 percentage points in just one year. The poll also revealed stark divisions within the African-American community. While 86.5 percent of those from age 26 to 35 supported vouchers, only 19 percent of those older than 65 did.

"All across the country, black parents are saying that they are not going to tolerate their children being miseducated anymore, and that they are the ones who are ultimately responsible for what happens to their children," says Annette "Polly" Williams, an African-American state legislator from Wisconsin. Williams is one of the prime architects of a Milwaukee school-voucher program that currently serves about 1,600 students.

Williams argues that vouchers would improve the educational prospects of poor blacks by putting more power into the hands of parents. Schools would have to improve and become more responsive to parents, she says, or go out of business.

Even some black liberals have taken up the issue. While the Congressional Black Caucus is officially opposed to vouchers, six black Democratic congressmen support a Republican nationwide school-voucher program. Rep. Floyd Flake, D-NY, co-sponsored the American Community Renewal Act, which contains the school voucher proposal.

Still, most of Flake's colleagues on the left wing of the Democratic Party oppose vouchers. So do the major civil-rights groups.

They argue that voucher programs, as they are usually designed, siphon crucial resources from the public schools, making those left behind sink even deeper into a pit of educational neglect. Critics also complain that private schools receiving public money are not always held accountable. They are concerned that vouchers could lead to the re-segregation of schools, as white families take advantage of the voucher program to enroll their children in private schools. Many opponents contend that any program providing public money for parochial education is unconstitutional.

Black progressives also oppose vouchers because they violate the spirit of cultural democracy. The grudging progress the United States has made toward providing mainstream access to various minority groups is due, in large part, to the socializing function of the public education system.

To help stem the growing popularity of school vouchers, the NAACP and People for the American Way (PFAW) have organized Partners for Public Education, a national anti-voucher lobbying group. Carole Shields, PFAW's president, says vouchers "are about taking resources from our public schools and they are about politics -- a naked grab for money."

The issue of school vouchers is a divisive one. It's difficult to argue against the concept when the staus quo leaves black parents chronically beleaguered by public schools lacking the wherewithal to protect their children, let alone educate them. But vouchers may, in the end, prove to be a diversion from solving our educational problems. Inner-city public schools are under-funded because their predominantly black and Latino student bodies are undervalued. It's not certain how vouchers will change that.

A better alternative would be a democratic reform of public school systems that decentralize boards of education to allow for more parent and community input into educational decisions. Charter schools offer another option.

But it is vouchers that currently captivate much of the black community. "Vouchers would give us a better economic base from which to build the kind of independent educational institutions many of us have long dreamed of," says Naimah Latif, whose daughter had to leave a nurturing private school with an Afrocentric curriculum because of tuition costs.

Such visions may quicken the pulse of black nationalists and religious conservatives, but those citizens who see public education as a conrnerstone of American democracy may be excused for begging to differ.