Colorado Is Battleground for School Voucher System : Education: Both sides are bringing in their big guns over a ballot initiative that would provide tax dollars for parents who want to choose non-public institutions.

In a major test of a widely debated school reform concept, Colorado voters next week will decide on a ballot initiative that would provide tax dollars for sending youngsters to private and parochial schools or for teaching them at home.

Similar to a hard-fought measure headed for the California ballot in 1994, the Colorado initiative would allow parents to receive vouchers for up to half the annual per-pupil cost of educating a child in the public system and choose the alternative they deem best.

The initiative would make Colorado the first to implement a statewide, publicly financed “parental choice” system that goes far beyond public schools, pushing the state to the forefront of the nationwide battle over the concept.

“Colorado has been earmarked as the trial state this November, and both sides are bringing in a lot of big guns from out of the state,” said Chris Pipho, research director for the Education Commission of the States, a nonpartisan advisory group based in Denver.

Advocates of vouchers--including the Bush Administration--say they would infuse a much-needed competitive spirit into American education by forcing schools to shape up or risk losing students and funds. They say the tax dollars would make the education system more democratic by helping more poor and middle-class families make tuition payments if they do not like public schools.

But critics say a voucher system would destroy public schools, long the backbone of the nation’s democratic ideals and society’s major socialization vehicle. They say it is wrong to siphon funds from public schools and expect taxpayers to subsidize private, religious and home schools, which can choose applicants and are subject to little or no academic regulation in most states.

Choice programs have been debated--and tried on a limited basis--as part of the latest movement to improve American education. Initially, the focus was almost entirely on giving parents wider latitude in deciding among public schools, and several states have adopted districtwide or statewide programs.

Increasingly, however, the notion of providing some form of public subsidy for parents who opt for private or parochial schools has gathered steam. It has been advanced not only by President Bush as a key part of his wide-ranging education reform proposal but also by some business leaders and scholars who believe that market forces--competition for students--will provide better, and possibly less expensive, schools while giving parents more options. Many, but not all, private and religion-affiliated school groups also are pushing for voucher systems--so long as they would not have to surrender their autonomy and near-freedom from government regulation.

But the results of a yearlong study released today by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching provided little encouragement to choice proponents. The report from the Princeton-based foundation found that in states with public school choice systems, fewer than 2% of parents participate. Further, the study found, most parents who choose another school do so mostly for reasons other than academic quality, such as convenience to jobs or home.

Nor did the parents surveyed by the foundation exhibit much enthusiasm for choice as a vehicle for school reform--only 15% of those responding said encouraging competition among schools was the best way to strengthen them. And in a departure from most other public opinion surveys, 62% rejected private school vouchers, while 32% favored them and 6% were undecided.

In Milwaukee, home to the nation’s only publicly subsidized private school choice program, the system is limited to the city’s poorest children and includes only non-sectarian schools. Although parents and students participating in the 2-year-old program gave it high marks, the Carnegie researchers found no evidence that it has significantly improved academic achievement.

Minnesota, which has the nation’s broadest public school choice program, has a limited system of allowing parents to claim income tax deductions for educational expenses.

Various efforts to get voucher systems in several states, either by legislation or voter initiative, have been unsuccessful. Two years ago, Oregon voters soundly rejected a measure that would have provided income tax credits for parents who send their children to private or parochial schools. Backers of a private-school voucher system for California narrowly missed qualifying their measure for the Nov. 3 ballot and will likely have to wait until the next statewide election--June, 1994--to put it before voters.

Therefore Colorado has become center stage in the fight over vouchers, drawing national interest, money and strategy advice.

“Opponents are trying hard to prevent a breakthrough,” said John Andrews, president of the Denver-based Independence Institute, part of a national coalition of free-market think tanks and policy institutes pushing for vouchers.

Lined up against the measure are most of the local and national public school Establishment groups and such organizations as the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU plans to sue if the measure passes, contending that it would violate state and federal prohibitions against using public monies to support religious institutions.

The measure, a proposed constitutional amendment that requires a simple majority vote for approval, would allow parents to take up to half of the per-child amount spent on a student in their local district and spend it on tuition or the expenses of educating their children at home. The average voucher would be worth about $2,100.

About 36,000 of Colorado’s 635,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade are enrolled in private or parochial schools, and 3,300 are being taught at home. All would be eligible for state reimbursement if the measure passes.

The Colorado Department of Education estimates that providing vouchers for those students would cost $84 million, lending fuel to opponents’ arguments that the measure would significantly cut into funds for public schools.

“Our opponents are mounting a campaign of fear,” said Ron Pierce, chairman of Coloradans for School Choice and a parent of three children in the Jefferson County public school system, west of Denver. “They’re saying it will cost more and ruin the public schools, and they’re telling teachers they’ll lose their jobs or have their pay cut. . . . The real issue is that parents today don’t have as much variety (among schools) as they would like, and they feel the public schools don’t really listen to what parents want.”

“How is taking $84 million from the public schools going to help us improve?” asked Lewis W. Finch, Jefferson County school superintendent and a high-profile opponent of vouchers.

“Proponents have been very clever in dressing this up as egalitarian . . . but private schools are not required to take everyone, and often they won’t unless the child is in the ‘right’ socioeconomic class or ethnic group or religion or has the ‘right’ behavior or intellectual abilities,” Finch said. Nor are they required to follow the same regulations or same level of public scrutiny as public schools, he added.

Sue Windels, a parent of two sons in public school in the Denver suburb of Arvada, agreed with Finch: “This is an open passport to take taxpayers’ money (for private schools), and I am sure they will leave the most expensive-to-educate children in the public schools without any accountability.”

But another Arvada public school parent, Roseann Ramos, who has spent 13 years as a school volunteer, said she supports the voucher initiative, even though she may not take advantage of it. She is very happy with her daughter’s junior high, and wants to see what happens at her son’s high school after the principal leaves this year.

“But I don’t feel we as parents have as much of a voice as we should in the public schools now,” Ramos said, citing the district’s refusal to expand two popular alternative school programs despite long waiting lists.

“A voucher system would expand our choices, maybe force the public schools to listen more to parents,” she said. “I don’t think being in favor of vouchers means being against public schools. I just want to have options.”