Voucher bill has fatal flaws

By Chris Freind

Surprisingly, Gov. Corbett's first challenge has come not from public-sector unions, trial lawyers, or gas-drilling opponents, but from within his own Republican Party. It concerns the misguided school-choice legislation introduced in Harrisburg last week.

It's ironic that this school-choice bill, which was introduced during the first nationwide School Choice Week, would neither improve schools nor offer true educational choice. And not only is it a bad bill; it's also unlikely to pass.

Senate Bill 1, sponsored by State Sens. Jeffrey Piccola (R., Dauphin) and Anthony Hardy Williams (D., Phila.), makes the mistake of attempting to win the support of the legislature's black caucus, which some school-choice advocates erroneously believe they must do to achieve even a modest victory.

The bill's greatest problem is that it's limited to low-income families - those with incomes of up to 130 percent of the federal poverty level - and that's only after a three-year phase-in. Left out of the equation is everybody else.

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Pennsylvania's students - urban, suburban, and rural - are subpar across the board. They can't compete with their U.S counterparts - ranking us 42d among the states in SAT scores, for example - and American students rank low globally in math, science, and literacy.

The days of competing with Seattle and San Francisco are over; our best can barely keep up with average students in Singapore, Stockholm, and Sydney. And we're supposed to believe that the solution is an extremely limited school-choice program for a relatively small number of inner-city students? School choice will work only if the majority of students can participate.

Senate Bill 1 will help some of Sen. Williams' constituents in Philadelphia, but the overwhelming majority of Pennsylvania families will be left out in the cold. Much of the rest of the legislature is therefore being asked to incur the wrath of the teachers' unions - who stand adamantly opposed to the accountability that school-choice legislation would bring - for legislation that won't benefit its constituents.

The teachers' unions spent millions on last year's legislative elections and claimed few victories. But they will be back with a vengeance in 2012 - a presidential election year that should be more favorable to them.

So suburban and rural legislators stand to get the worst of both worlds. Not only would some face tough, union-backed opponents in next year's elections. They would also face the anger of constituents who still won't have more choices as to where to educate their children.

The greatest irony here is that most urban Democrats will vote against the bill to avoid the unions' anger, even though their constituents would benefit from it. For Republicans, meanwhile, the legislation has so few advantages and so many disadvantages - potentially enough to cost them their seats - that even the most principled among them are unlikely to support it.

Their message to the bill's sponsors and the governor should be: Do school choice right, or don't do it at all.

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Moreover, even if the Piccola-Williams bill does pass, it faces yet another obstacle: Many private schools have closed since comprehensive school-choice legislation failed in 1995, further limiting the options for low-income families. That makes it even more likely that this legislation would squander three years without realizing significant educational gains.

Ultimately, Republicans don't need the black caucus to pass statewide school choice; they need political will. While the education of our children should never be partisan, school choice will never get done if it can't be passed with sizable Republican majorities in the House and Senate as well as a friendly governor.

Pennsylvania's schools are in precipitous decline. We can no longer afford to twiddle our thumbs and pretend they're improving while we fall farther behind.

But while the current system has failed, the good news is that school choice can work if it's expanded well beyond the scope of Senate Bill 1. It would be a tragedy to lose the best opportunity yet to turn the state's schools around.