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School Vouchers: Policy And Polemics
Nathan J. Diament
The New York Jewish Week --
Dec. 28, 2001
In his recent sermon to the biennial convention of the Reform movement, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, spoke out against government-funded school voucher programs. This is not surprising, given the longstanding position of the UAHC and the fact that this is a critical year for this debate — for the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of such programs by June.
What was surprising, and disappointing, was Rabbi Yoffie’s decision to deny voucher proponents any possible sincerity of motivation in the side of the debate we take. Rather, Rabbi Yoffie stated that he believes voucher supporters to be “disingenuous” when we suggest that one key goal of voucher programs is to help the poor and improve public education by creating competition in the education system. More troubling, Rabbi Yoffie states he is “embarrassed and ashamed” when he hears “such arguments coming from Jews.” And, when taken with the fact that voucher plans might benefit not only the American poor generally, but also lead to allowing low-income Jews to provide their children with a Jewish education, our support for voucher plans is “nothing more than naked self-interest dressed up as caring.”
There are serious legal and policy debates to be had over school vouchers, but these debates cannot be held in a civilized manner if each side refuses to ascribe sincerity of motivation and conviction to one another. Because many people and institutions have such a personal stake in this particular debate, scorch-and-burn tactics have been common. They’ve been deployed wherever voucher proposals have been proposed, tested and litigated, and by both sides. But the Jewish community should do better. While it is not always the case, there have been times when we’ve managed to disagree without being disagreeable. Perhaps here, on the subject of education about which Judaism has taught the world so much, we can educate America by conducting a debate in a civilized and respectful fashion.
Toward this end, some brief, substantive responses, to several points raised against voucher plans by Rabbi Yoffie are as follows:
“You don’t assist public schools by taking their funding and putting it elsewhere,” says Rabbi Yoffie. True, but like many institutions, we believe that public schools need to be accountable and results-oriented. Thus, voucher plans don’t put the funding “elsewhere” randomly; they place control of the funds in the hands of parents — the people to whom schools must be most responsive. If a public school is doing a fine job of educating its students, it will attract and retain students and will, as a result, receive greater funding. If a public school is failing, why should it be sustained and why should the children be trapped therein?
“You don’t help inner cities by creating a program that will mostly benefit the middle class and wealthy.” True, but if Rabbi Yoffie would examine the way current voucher programs (including the one from Cleveland currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court) are structured, he would see that they are carefully targeted through means-testing to lower-income families. The well off may not apply.
“The people who engineer voucher proposals are almost always those with no interest in maintaining the public schools and whose real aim is to secure funding for their own schools.” We all have an interest in not merely maintaining, but improving America’s public schools; we disagree about how to achieve that common goal. One cannot help but note that the converse of Rabbi Yoffie’s statement seems true as well — those who always oppose voucher proposals are always those with great personal interest in maintaining the status quo, such as the teachers’ unions, and one might ask, what is their real aim?
“We must not ask the government to do for our community what our community is unwilling to do for itself.” Yes, and the challenge for Rabbi Yoffie and all those who extol the virtues of Jewish education while opposing public support, is to join with us to press for increasing the community’s support for Jewish education, and then to increase it even more — until every Jewish parent can educate her or her children in our faith and heritage.
As much as I think the arguments set forth by Rabbi Yoffie in his sermon are incorrect, I will not question his sincere commitment to them.
While he, and the Reform movement, may have a particular view about how to best achieve social justice through education policy, one hopes they would not assert that they have the monopoly on a commitment to tikkun olam nor on the best methods to achieve that noble goal — a goal that we all share.
Nathan Diament is director of the Institute for Public Affairs of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.
Courtesy of The
Jewish Week
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