Wednesday, April 28, 1999 in Kansas City Star
BY JERRY HEASTER
A couple of well-heeled American businessmen are adding a huge competitive dimension to the public education market that shows promise of evolving into a significant spur to the school-choice movement.
Their recently launched effort is creating 40,000 four-year scholarships for mostly inner-city kids from disadvantaged families to pay for educations at schools of their choice.
Ted Forstmann, a billionaire investor, and John Walton, of the Wal-Mart dynasty, contributed $ 50 million apiece of their own money and have raised $ 70 million more from other sources to finance their Children’s Scholarship Fund. The program’s initial beneficiaries are winners of what amounted to a lottery because 1.25 million families applied for scholarships. The overwhelming response occurred even though the families must supplement the grants with $ 1,000 of their own money each year.
The willingness of these parents to share the cost is seen by school-choice proponents as strong evidence of broad-based socioeconomic support for alternatives to public education. They say it counters claims that poor families are leery of school choice because it favors the privileged and affluent.
The Forstmann-Walton initiative is the most recent of several such efforts since the early ’90s. Whereas many businesses have tried to improve public education working within the established system, ventures such as the Forstmann-Walton undertaking are examples of thinking and acting outside the box.
An editorial in The Wall Street Journal recently estimated there were some 60 similar private scholarship programs in place throughout the country.
The editorial recounted recent developments in Milwaukee, where Bradley Foundation support has helped send 5,000 children to private schools. Meanwhile, a recent school board election resulted in the ouster of several strong advocates of the teachers union and the election in their place of school-choice supporters.
Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, a Democrat, was quoted as saying the choice alternative provides “the political climate that prompts the public schools to finally change.”
This, of course, is the way competition works. Education in its own way is a business like any other delivering a public good.
Whenever any enterprise has a monopoly, the result will probably be a system resistant to change and improvement.
Remember the U.S. auto industry in the late ’70s and early ’80s? Its long monopoly-induced complacency brought a quality decline that boosted the popularity of imports. The industry’s survival was in doubt for a while. Foreign competition then became the incentive for the Big Three and its union workers to build vehicles able to turn back the competitive threat.
The situation in public education is somewhat analogous because of monopoly power and the unions’ ability to preserve that power.
Change has been achieved only slowly, but increasing competition will no doubt shape the future of American education. As it does, every stakeholder will be better off for it.
Jerry Heaster’s column appears Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. To reach him, write the business desk at 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64108. To share a comment on StarTouch, call (816) 889-7827 and enter 2301. Send e-mail to jheaster@kcstar.com.