by Dick Morris
Hillary’s refusal to consider subsidizing parents who choose to send their children to nonpublic schools stands in glaring contrast to the decision she and Bill made about their daughter’s education. When time came to enroll Chelsea in a DC public school, they sent her to the private Sidwell Friends School rather than to a public one. Of course, she, like President Obama, was able to afford private school tuition. Those who aren’t so endowed financially have to leave their children in bad schools and settle for a bad education. Hillary will have a hard time explaining to young parents why they should be bound—shackled really—to the poorly performing public schools.
About one-fifth of charter school students are nonwhite. All over America, parents are voting with their feet to send their children to charter schools both in and outside of the public system. In Philadelphia, for example, 30% of all students go to charter schools and the system has a waiting list of tens of thousands more.13 Nationally, 6.2% of all students in America are in charter schools, up from 1.7 percent in 2000. In all, about 2.8 million children attend them.14 Another 12% of students are in private or church schools—a total of 5.3 million children.15 And 3%, or 1.5 million, were home schooled. So even though parents pay taxes to support public schools, about one child in five goes to some other kind of school (even though some of the charter schools are public).
If white parents will object fiercely to Hillary’s refusal to allow school choice, minority parents will react even more strongly. As a result of decades of housing discrimination, school choice has become the integration issue of our time. Faced with low performing schools in poor neighborhoods, parents have banded together to establish charter schools outside of the control of the teachers’ union. Some charter schools are still public, owned by the government and subsidized by state spending, while others are private schools, which may or may not receive state funding.
By insisting that parents send their children only to the public school designated for their zip code, the Democrats are consigning minority students to terrible, failing schools. We must attack Hillary’s refusal to support nonpublic charter schools by saying that she is extending housing discrimination—which leads to all-white neighborhoods—into the school system to produce all-minority schools.
How Hillary Sold Out to the Unions
Hillary wasn’t always owned lock, stock, and barrel by the teachers’ union. Indeed, she began her political career by dramatically defying teachers’ unions. After Bill lost his first bid for reelection as Arkansas governor (after serving only two years), he and Hillary fought a determined campaign to get back in office. After they succeeded, the Arkansas Supreme Court dealt the former and now future governor a severe blow: It declared Arkansas’s system of financing public education discriminated against poor school districts. The Court ordered the state to give richer districts less money, because their more wealthy homeowners could afford higher property taxes to fund schools, and give poorer districts more funding to make up for their lack of a viable property tax base.
Governor Clinton, who had been defeated for a second term because, in part, of his decision to raise taxes, now faced the need to increase them again. To meet the demands of the Supreme Court, Arkansas would have to raise its sales tax by one-half of 1%—the first such increase in many years. It was Hillary who boldly proposed that Bill reject half measures and raise taxes by a full point and reform education in the state.
She toured the state holding hearings on the quality of education and was appalled by what she uncovered. Teachers who had themselves been educated in low-quality black segregated schools were now being called upon to teach new students. Many did not master even the subject matter they were called on to teach. (One teacher was found to be teaching her class about “world war eleven”—World War II.)
Hillary demanded that all teachers in the state be tested for overall competency and knowledge in their specific area of teaching. Many states required new teachers to be tested, but Hillary was unique in calling for existing teachers to be tested. She insisted on legislation that provided that those who failed the test would be put on probationary status and have another chance to pass the test. If they failed again, they would be discharged. (And in fact, about 10% of Arkansas teachers were fired—although evidence indicated that a larger percentage should have failed.)
The teachers’ union went crazy! They battled Hillary’s proposal tooth and nail, showering the state legislature with letters, petitions, telegrams, and demonstrations. But Hillary and Bill stood firm. It was their finest hour. The teachers’ union, the bedrock of the state’s Democratic Party, refused to endorse Clinton for governor for the rest of the 1980s, each time backing his primary opponent and then sitting out the general election against the Republican—highly unusual in a Southern state.
But when Hillary moved to the national stage, she morphed into a compliant tool of the teachers’ unions. There was no daylight between them in their opposition to tenure reform, merit pay, and school choice. She went from a crusading battler for students to a tool of the unions.
Hillary’s weakness on the education issue will sit especially badly with minorities. African Americans are desperate to get their children into charter schools. A recent poll conducted by the Black Alliance for Educational Options, shows 60% of African Americans support school choice. Matt Frendewey of the American Federation for Children, the organization that sponsored the survey, says, “Too often urban families have children assigned to some of the worst schools in America. Especially those who live in an inner-city environment—where some of the worst and lowest-performing schools are found—recognize that their best option to get their child to a better school is private choice.”16
Frendewey is quick to point out the political salience of the issue to black voters. “Really,” he says, “among African American voters, education is a driving issue. It is an issue they care deeply about, that they want to know their representatives and the politicians who represent them care deeply about, and [they want to know] that they’re aligned with their views. And I think that means candidates should be aligned with school choice.”17
The school choice issue is also especially important for Latino parents. Harvard professor Caroline Hoxby found that Florida’s Hispanic public-school students underperform their white, non-Hispanic peers by 21 points in math and 22 points in reading. But fortunately, Florida has been a leader in adopting school choice. Hoxby has determined charter school students in predominantly Latino communities outperform their peers in neighboring public schools, with 7.6% more students meeting state reading standards and 4.1% more meeting mathematics standards.
Trump can make huge inroads in the Latino vote by pushing the school choice agenda. To adhere to the dictates of the teachers’ union and confine students to the bad public schools is to imprison them in a poor education and deny them a future.
Those who claim that more money for public schools is the way to solve the problem aren’t looking at the evidence. Public schools in Washington, DC, for example, spend the highest amount per student in the nation—$18,000, 50% higher than the national average—but rank last in the percentage who graduate or go on to college. Pouring more money after bad won’t work as a strategy to improve public education.
School choice creates competition and lets parents “vote” on the results of their child’s education by deciding where to send their children. If the public schools don’t measure up and parents send their children to other schools, teachers and administrators in failing schools will lose the state funding that they would normally get for each child. This trend could lead to them losing their jobs, creating a wonderful incentive to do better.
But the issue of school choice begs the ultimate question: What are Hillary’s priorities? Do they lie with parents and students or with teachers and their unions? The dilemma this poses for Democrats is well-nigh unsolvable. They need the votes of the parents and the campaign money and organization of the unions. Hillary’s enti
re public persona is based on her claim that she represents the needs of women and children. Yet, here, on the most fundamental issue facing our children, she sides with the providers of service—the teachers—not the consumers of the service—children. She follows the money, not the needs of our kids.
School Choice: A Winning Issue
Is this issue of school choice and education reform a voting issue? Is it strong enough to alter how people vote? Again, look at Wisconsin. A historically blue state that narrowly elected a Republican governor in the national GOP sweep of 2010, Wisconsin tested how effective the issue is at the ballot box.
Scott Walker was elected in a squeaker—just 52%–48%—amid the national GOP sweep of 2010, an election in which the Republicans picked up over 60 new House seats and narrowly missed taking control of the Senate. His victory was widely dismissed by pundits as a fluke in a landslide year.
But as opposition to his bold education reforms intensified and he faced new electoral tests, he rose in each one. As voters began to learn about the details of his education plan, they rallied around and gave him increasing margins of victory. In the 2012 recall election, he picked up a point, winning by 53–47. Then, when Walker ran for a second term, he triumphed by a hefty 57–43. Battling against the unions on education, Walker and the Republicans were able to make decisive inroads among Latino, black, and female voters. Among women, Walker picked up six points from 2010 to 2014. Among blacks, he picked up three. Among voters aged 18–44—mostly parents—Walker gained four points.18
Can a Republican win on the education issue? The George W. Bush campaign of 2000 proves that the answer is yes. During the Clinton presidency, voters rated the Democratic Party as best in addressing education issues. But Bush and the Republicans devoted their entire 2000 National Convention to the education issue, touting Bush’s record as governor of Texas to show his commitment to better schools. And when he took office, Bush’s first important piece of legislation—passed with overwhelming bipartisan majorities—was his No Child Left Behind Law that established national standards for America’s schools. For the first time, Republicans passed Democrats as the party most trusted on the education issue.
We can do so again as long as we switch the debate from a bidding war to see who can spend more money to an issue-based discussion of reform and choice. With parents, especially minority families, clamoring for more school choice, and Democratic politicians trying to force them into regular public schools regardless of their preference, there is a huge opening for Republicans to show that they put children ahead of the unions.
We permit people to choose their own kind of car, appliances, houses, and all manner of consumer goods. But the most important decision of all—where to educate their children—is taken out of their hands and given to bureaucrats based on a zip code. Democrats cannot decry housing discrimination on the one hand and insist that the results of that bias determine which schools one’s children should attend.
In desperation, some parents are flouting the laws that require them to send their children to failing public schools rather than quality ones nearby. They are today’s civil rights protesters as they risk jail and heavy fines by camouflaging their real residences to get into better school districts.
Kyle Spencer of the Hechinger Report describes how Philadelphia resident Hamlet Garcia and his wife, Olesia, an insurance agent, were arrested for “theft of services,” a charge usually reserved for those who skip out on restaurant checks or steal cable TV. Their crime was stealing an education for their eight-year-old daughter, Fiorella, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of seven years.19
In the 2011–2012 school year, Garcia’s wife and daughter spent nine months during a marital separation living in his wife’s father’s house in Lower Moreland, a township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. That year, Fiorella attended Lower Moreland’s much-sought-after elementary school, where, Spencer writes, “She read picture books, learned the alphabet and made friends.”20
The Moreland County prosecutor charges that the separation was a sham designed to get Fiorella into a better school in Lower Moreland. Arrested in August 2012, they had to pay more than $10,000 in restitution to the school district.21
Unfortunately, there are many other examples of prosecutors persecuting parents whose only goal is to give their child a quality education—a right rich people have no problem securing by writing a check to a private school.
• Kelley Williams-Bolar, a special education aide in Akron, Ohio, actually had to spend nine days in jail for sending her two daughters to a better school where her father lived.22
• Tanya McDowell, a homeless mother in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was arrested for sending her five-year-old son to a Norwalk, Connecticut, school.23
• In 2009, Yolanda Hill, a Rochester, New York, mom, was charged with two felonies for enrolling her children in a better suburban school district where she didn’t really live.24
• The school district in Orinda, California, a rich suburb of San Francisco, actually hired a private investigator to spy on a seven-year-old suspected of living in another town.25
• A New Jersey detective firm, VerifyResidence.com, says it works with more than 200 districts on enrollment issues and residency fraud.
Do they deserve these fines? Remember that most of these parents are already paying property taxes to support their local schools. Now, in addition, they are being asked to pay restitution to the school outside their district to which they sent their children—a form of double taxation.
It is just outrageous that parents have to lie and falsify their addresses in order to send their children to good schools just because they can’t afford private school tuition. The reason for such laws—and the prosecution that enforces them—is simply that teachers’ unions know that if they let parents choose where to educate their children, the bad public schools would lose their children.
Once Dick was speaking at a pro–education choice rally in Orlando, Florida, when a teachers’ union heckler yelled out, “Which of our public schools do you want to close?” He shouted back, “The empty ones!”
Ryan Smith, executive director of The Education Trust, made the point that “the real issue is how do we provide quality schools for all children so parents don’t have to make decisions that ultimately break the law.”26 If Trump can frame this issue properly, he can make it clear that Hillary spurns parents and children as she embraces the unions.
In addition to holding down Hillary’s margin among women, we must do the same in the Latino community.
Go for Hispanics
If Trump has a problem with female voters, pundits believe that is nothing compared to the difficulty they expect him to have among Latinos. Because Donald has threatened to deport all illegal immigrants in the United States—indeed, because he dares to call them “illegal” not “undocumented”—he is thought to be on the verge of being wiped out by Hillary among Hispanics.
The insiders feel that Trump’s advocacy of building a wall along the Mexican border is sure to turn off Latinos and lead them to vote for Hillary in numbers that will dwarf even Obama’s 2012 triumph among Latinos by 73-27.
Go beyond Immigration
Just as the mainstream media and political pundits have convinced America that abortion is the most important issue among American women, so they have sold us that immigration reform is the key to Latino attitudes in 2016.
Immigration is key for some Latinos. But polling suggests that there is a big divide between the one-quarter of Latino voters who were born abroad and the three-quarters who were born here. While immigration remains the key issue for those Latino voters who are foreign born, it has receded in importance for those who were born in the 50 states.
Since media coverage of Latino attitudes is largely shaped by the statements of ethnic group leaders who tend to represent the immigrant population more heavily, the importance of other issues among Hispanics is often obscured.
In a 2011 survey
by the McLaughlin Group, the sharp divisions between Latinos based on their place of birth became evident. Asked if they supported President Obama’s decision to grant amnesty to many of the immigrants who arrived here illegally, 83% among foreign-born Latinos supported the president’s decision. But among those born in the United States, support fell to 50%, with 40% opposing the president’s position. Asked which issues were the most important to them, American-born Latinos put immigration reform last while foreign-born Hispanic voters put immigration first.
What Is the Most Important Issue? Among US-born Latinos
Economy
40
Health
25
Education
23
Immigration
10
. . . and among non-US-Born?
Immigration
34
Health
26
Economy
23
Education
14
Source: 2013 Survey by McLaughlin and Associates, http://www.mclaughlinonline.com/lib/sitefiles/National_Hispanic_Presentation_06-21-13_-_FOR_RELEASE.pdf
Indeed, with many Latinos thrown into competition with recent arrivals for jobs and wages, a certain reserve about opening our borders further would be easy to understand.
But just as the quality of life here in the United States is important to American-born Latinos, McLaughlin’s survey found that they are very concerned that Obama is leading America to make the same mistakes as the leaders in their former countries did.
