Scholarships Add Competition to Education

By Roger Staubach

Last week, 900 low-income Dallas children were given a shot at success that they may never have otherwise had. They were among the 40,000 kindergarteners through ninth-graders nationally to receive a partial, four-year scholarship from the Children’s Scholarship Fund to use at the school of their choice. Because of this massive effort, led by the fund’s founder and co-chairman, Ted Forstmann, 40,000 have drawn not just a lucky number but new odds, better odds: at graduating, at going on to college, at transcending poverty, at avoiding incarceration, at surviving childhood to grow up into happy and productive adults.

Yet despite the fact that this was the largest number of scholarships ever given tripling the number of children currently being served by such programs the demand for this opportunity simply broke the bounds of all expectation. The parents of 1.25 million children applied for scholarships 30 times the number of scholarships available. Applicants came from 22,000 communities across America in 90 percent of all counties. A whopping 17,761 families in Dallas County applied.

And while these scholarships were offered nationally, in many urban school districts the organization received applications from a quarter to well over a third of the eligible population: in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., we received applications from 33 percent of the eligible populations; in New York from 29 percent; in Chicago from 26 percent, and in Baltimore, Md., an astonishing 44 percent of the eligible population applied for scholarships.

Perhaps most astounding of all is the fact that this massive response was not from families seeking a handout but from families that had to be low-income to qualify for the program, and that had to contribute $ 1,000 on average, per year, over four years, to take advantage of the partial scholarship. Consider: $ 1,000 per year, for four years, from the parents of 1.25 million children is $ 5 billion. Five billion dollars from families that have next to nothing save the love and courage to seek a decent education and a better future for their child.

I’m proud that the Children’s Scholarship Fund will do what it can to provide more families with similar opportunities. And it was this appeal of making an immediate difference in the lives of children most in need that led me along with many others such as Andrew Young, Martin Luther King III, and Colin Powell to join the organization’s board. But even if we were somehow able to help another round of 40,000 families that would be only a fraction of those who applied, and an even more minuscule fraction of those families who suffer in similar circumstances. Do we simply tell those families to wait? For how long? If it were your child in an overcrowded, understaffed school, how long would you be willing to wait for reforms to “fix the system”?

It is morally grotesque to require poor families to send their children to schools affluent families would never stand for while saying that giving the poor children more choices would “destroy public education.” I am amazed to find that I have more confidence in the institution than some of its professed defenders: Public education will not be destroyed by competition, it will be strengthened.

I have had the privilege in my adult life of observing the effects of competition in two arenas on the football field and in the business world. I have seen firsthand how competitive environments foster progress, innovation and success. Throughout this century, competition has brought our nation huge advances in almost every area of human endeavor in technology, in business, in athletics.

It is time to shout it from the tallest mountain: Dallas children, indeed America’s children, deserve better education through competition. We must help parents all parents obtain quality education for their children wherever they can find it.

Former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach founded the Staubach Co. He is a member of the board of advisers of the Children’s Scholarship Fund.