Terry Moe Discussing Schools, Vouchers and the American Public

Transcript

MR. LOVELESS: Good morning. My name is Tom Loveless. Let me welcome you to the Brookings Institution.

We're here to hear from Terry Moe on the publication of his latest book, "Schools, Vouchers and the American Public." It was about a decade ago that Terry and John Chubb published a book that is now considered a classic in American education, "Politics, Markets and America's Schools," and that was while they were senior fellows here at Brookings. That book, which remains still controversial, unleashed a movement — a national movement in support of vouchers that is still rippling today. It is still, as you know, debated in Congress, in state legislatures, and occasionally shows up on public ballots in the form of initiatives — last year in California and Michigan.

This is a very different book. In Terry's new book, he analyzes, really, the structure of public opinion on the voucher issue, and it's a fascinating bit of research that he has done and makes a wonderful contribution, not only to education, but to political science as well.

Terry Moe is senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of political science at Stanford University. And with that, I introduce Terry Moe. (Applause.)

MR. TERRY MOE: Okay, thank you. Thank you, Tom, and thank you all for coming.

Well, as I'm sure you know, the voucher issue is, I think, far and away the most controversial issue in American education today. The movement has made great strides over the last 10 years or so. It has achieved important victories. But the crucial question now is where is all this headed? Now, is this movement going to transform this education system or is it just going to die out? Or maybe are we going to get something in between, some kind of a mixed system?

There are people around now, especially some of the critics of vouchers, who are saying that this thing is about to die out. The movement has peaked and it's essentially yesterday's news. And the evidence for that is the results of the initiative campaigns in Michigan and California where vouchers went down to resounding and humiliating defeat.

Now my own interpretation of these events is a little bit different, and I'll talk about that later on. But I do think that these people have started at the right place because they are starting with public opinion. Now this is a thoroughly Democratic nation and public opinion really matters. You know, it has an important effect on what policymakers do and on the kinds of policies that ultimately get adopted. And so I think the key to understanding the politics of this movement and where it's going is to understand — is public opinion. And that's what I try to do in this book.

Now, the evidence is — well, for the most part, based upon a survey that I carried out of 4700 American adults. They were asked an array of questions on public and private schools and on vouchers. And what I tried to do here was to go well beyond the kinds of survey that you normally come across. The typical survey on vouchers — and there are a lot of them out there — ask one question, and it's a question about — basically, do you support vouchers or not? And what you get is a brief statement of the findings, or maybe a brief report and that's it. So I want to emphasize that what I've tried to do here is to carry out an analysis of public opinion, and I'm not just interested in describing it. If I wanted to describe it, I would have issued my own brief report in 1995, which is when this survey was actually carried out. But what I wanted to do was to get beneath the surface and to understand why people think what they think about vouchers, to try to understand the more fundamental determinants of public opinion on the issue.

Now there's a risk in doing this, and the risk is obviously is that things could have changed since 1995. But if you look at other surveys, it appears that things really haven't changed much, if at all, surprisingly — at least as far as the mass public is concerned. And, what I'm looking at are these underlying determinants like, say, the role of school performance or religion or equity in shaping the way people think about vouchers. And these sorts of things are, I think almost surely, more much more enduring than sort of the surface level public opinion, and therefore those things have changed even less. So I'm quite confident that what I'm providing here is an understanding of public opinion that is just as valid today as it would have been a few years ago.

All right, finally I want to emphasize — and I do emphasize this in the book — that I support vouchers. Normally in my own work — I'm a political scientist — I wouldn't say where I stand on these issues, I would just do my work, you know. But in the voucher issue, it's important, I think, to know where the author is coming from because so much of this literature, unfortunately, is infused by ideology and is slanted and is not particularly well done and is not particularly scientific. I think that's really a bad thing and something that we need to get away from.

So I expect people to be skeptical — I want them to be. But I want to underline that I am, first and foremost, a social scientist, and my concern here is not to be a cheerleader for vouchers and not to convince people that vouchers are a good thing. My goal in this book is to be right, to set out the facts, to provide an explanation, and to move toward an understanding of future politics that is correct so that years from now students and scholars and educators can look back and say, "This guy was right." I'm not going to be right all the time, but I want to be, all right? (Laughter.) And so that what this book is, you know? It's not an attempt to convince people that vouchers are good.

All right, so let me turn to the basic findings and, you know, it's hard for me to take a book that's over 400 pages long and chop it down to about 15 minutes of pithy sound bites. I'm terrible at that anyway, and it's — it just seems to violate everything I tried to do in the book which, I think, I've tried to make very?to set out a very carefully developed and thoughtful analysis. It's not always easy. These are complex issues. And so, please, take a look at the book if you get a chance, take a look the details. I'm just going to summarize a few of the highlights here.

All right. So, the place to start is with a simple point that couldn't be more profound in its importance for politics of this issue, and that is that Americans like the public schools. In the first place, they are reasonably satisfied with the performance of the public schools. They think their local schools, as a system, are doing pretty well. They're not ecstatic, but they think they're doing pretty well. They are even more positive about the schools that their own kids go to. Their direct experiences with the public schools are quite good — surprisingly good.

Secondly, many Americans embrace what I call "the public school ideology" which means that they have a set of values that lead them to think that having a public education system is a good thing. They believe in the ideals of this system. They like having a public school system. They want to support this kind of a system, quite aside from specific performance issues. So this is a really fundamental thing that voucher leaders have to face, because it's obviously not optimal from their standpoint to have a population that's reasonably satisfied and normatively committed in this way.

All right. So if this were the end of it, voucher leaders could pretty much pack their bags and go home. But this isn't the end of it. And the rest of the story is more positive by quite a bit. Number one, Americans think, on the average, that private schools are better than public schools. And it's really in their minds a matter of relative performance. They think the public schools are pretty good, but they think private schools are better, and when they are making choices about going private and about vouchers, that's what they are thinking about — they are thinking about relative performance, not the fact that the public schools are pretty good.

Okay, secondly, there are a number of very specific issues that are important to them on which they're not satisfied. For instance, they think that this education system is inequitable. They think that parents don't have enough influence. They think that the schools are too big. They think that the schools do a bad job of teaching moral values. They think that competition and other elements of markets would be a healthy thing, basically, for schools. They think that voluntary prayer is a good thing. These are precisely the kinds of arguments that voucher leaders make. So there is a constituency for what the voucher movement is offering.

So the voucher movement faces fundamental challenge here. Their challenge is how to make progress with a public that tends to like its ideas but is really not interested in radical change because it also likes the current system.

Okay. Now, that's a key part of the background for understanding vouchers. Another key part of the background has to do with the attraction that private schools have for parents. It's obviously crucial for the voucher movement that enough parents want to go private. So the first point to make here is that lots of parents do want to go private. Parents who are now in the public sector — 52 percent say that if money weren't a problem, they would be interested in seeking out a private school for their child. So, here again, there's a constituency for what the voucher movement is offering.

The next question is, well, why do they want to go private, and what kinds of people want to go private? Well, there is a big debate about these kinds of things. Critics of vouchers are concerned that people want to go private basically for pernicious reasons, right — because they are elitist, because they want to separate themselves off from minorities and from the lower classes. Basically they see vouchers as having greatest appeal to the affluent and to people who are advantaged, and they think that if vouchers were adopted, you would get an exodus of these kinds of people from the public system which would exacerbate existing social biases.

Voucher leaders, of course, claim the opposite and claim that parents are basically interested in performance, not in elitism and race and these other sorts of things, and that the people who would be especially interested in vouchers would be the people who have the lowest performing schools and who have no choice now — I mean, like people who are disadvantaged.

All right, so what do the evidence — what does the evidence have to say? First, performance is far and away the most important influence on the decision of parents to go private. So the public parents who are interested in possibly seeking out a private school are thinking first and foremost about finding a good school for their kids, and not about race, not about elitism and so on.

Number two, choice has greatest appeal to parents who are low in income, minority — especially blacks — and from disadvantaged, typically low-performing school districts. These are the people who are in the worst school districts, in general, and the people who have no choice now.

Number three, all of the basic factors that sort of represent the arguments that voucher leaders make about parent influence, about moral values, about school prayer, and so on — all of those things show up in the way parents actually think about going private, and all of those things have exactly the impact that you would expect. So again, there is a structure to their thinking, and that structure reflects the kinds of arguments that voucher leaders are making, the kinds of appeals that they're making. This is not due to the influence of voucher leaders on them, it's simply that when voucher leaders make these kinds of appeals, they are appealing to people who actually think that way about why private schools would be appealing to them.

Of all these attitudes, the one that stands out is equity. The notion that this system is inequitable has a big influence on the desire of people to go private. And it has an especially big influence on low-income people. For them, equity is this huge consideration.

Okay, and finally, I should say that, here and elsewhere, race, attitudes toward diversity — toward busing, let's say — have very little to do with the desire of people to go choice — to go private. I'm not sure what to make of this. I think it's a very sensitive social issue. I don't want to arrive at any definitive conclusion on this. It is the one factor that consistently shows no impact throughout my analysis. I think that the critics of choice would be skeptical of this, and all I can say is it may well be that, with better measures, race would show a bigger impact. I mean, historically, race has been an important thing. I mean, in the '60s and '70s, certainly there were whites avoiding blacks, right? And this is one reason that the NAACP and other groups are skeptical about choice.

But things have changed, you know, over the past 20, 30 years, and Americans have changed. And that may be what I'm picking up here, but I can find no evidence that race plays a significant role in the thinking of parents, and I just need to point that out. It does, however, play a significant role in the thinking of low-income, white parents in the inner city, and these parents are precisely the ones who are most affected by choice programs because that's where most of the choice programs are.

And so this is a red flag for voucher leaders. It appears that, at least for some white people, race does play a role, and it plays exactly the role you could expect. Whites who are opposed to diversity are the ones who seek out private schools. So choice people need to beware on that and need to design their choice programs with that in mind, if, in fact, this is a valid conclusion.

Okay. So, basically, once we characterize who wants to go private in this way, it's possible to construct a model that predicts who the people are that are the most interested in going private, and if we predict, just for purposes of simulation — let's say, 25 — the top 25 percent actually do go private — it is interesting to see what would happen, what the new private sector would like as they shift from public to private, and what the new public sector would look like after they leave. And how does that affect the social biases that now characterize the system? Well, now the system is biased in the ways you would expect because choice is costly. Only people with more money can go private, and so basically the people who tend to go private tend to be higher in income, higher in education, and they tend to be white, right? So, what happens? Well, if you carry out this simulation, it turns out — and again this is purely hypothetical, but it's a very interesting thing to do since it simply reflects the underlying demand that's being expressed here — what we find is that the new private sector is substantially moderated compared to the existing private sector. The gap between public and private goes way down, so now, in the new private sector, the parents are only a little more educated than the new public parents. They are only very slightly higher in income, and in the private sector, there are now, percentage-wise, more minorities than in the public sector. The new private sector, in fact, would be 33 percent minority, whereas the new public sector would only be 22 percent minority. And, in fact, of the people who switch from public to private in this top group, 45 percent of those people are either black or Hispanic. So what you're getting is a big movement of low-income, minority, low-educated people from public to private, and that completely changes that character of the private sector, and really undermines whatever elitist character it has today and brings about not an exacerbation of social biases, but a substantial moderation of social biases.

Now, is this inevitable? No, because there's a supply-side here, and what critics would point out — and I think this is totally valid — is that, well, what if private schools discriminate against poor kids and don't let them in? You know, what about the fact that a lot of these families aren't well-connected, aren't well-informed, and so on, might not take advantage of their opportunities and might not act on their demand? All of that is of perfectly valid concern.

So the results I've set out here are simulations that try to simulate the effect of demand, ignoring any supply issues like that. And I think the supply issues are valid, so that's a caveat.

All right, now let's turn to public policy and think about vouchers. All right, it might seem like we just sort of continue with the same kind of analysis, but in fact, things are different once you start talking about public policy, because when people think about going private, and when they think about evaluating the schools, they are thinking about things that they know about, you know, that are close to home, whereas when it comes to public policy, they are thinking about issues, typically, that are complicated, abstract, and often require — and they often require theoretical thinking, they are remote from their lives, they have no experience with them. And so it is difficult for them to know much about these things, or, in many cases, to care that much about them.

Furthermore, they often have little incentive to know about these things, and the reason is that public policies are decided democratically through collective decision processes, and no single person can have much impact on what policies are going to result. And so as a result, since getting information is a costly act, individuals don't have incentives to make that investment to get informed. And so, as a result, people tend to be rationally ignorant, and that's still one of the basic findings of political science. People don't know much about public policy, and it's rational for them not to know much about public policy, that's why they do it. So we've got a problem here. We would expect that whatever people think about private schools, whatever they think about the public schools, they're not going to know much about the voucher issue. And what the findings suggest is two-thirds of the people are uninformed. They say that they haven't really heard much of anything about vouchers or anything about vouchers. And four years later, Public Agenda asked exactly the same question on their survey, and they got exactly the same answer — about two-thirds of the people say they're just uninformed about the issue.

Okay. So this raises a very interesting problem because in a book about vouchers you would think that the most important question is, "What percentage of the people support vouchers?" That's what everybody wants to know, right? Well, what is it — you know, is it 45 percent, is it 50 percent, is it 60 percent? What is it? You know — but the prior question is, if people are basically uninformed, how can they have any opinions at all? You know, what do their opinions mean? Maybe nothing. So why would you want to focus on 45 percent or 60 percent if it doesn't mean anything? That's a problem. Okay, and that's what I try to deal with in this chapter. This is not a chapter that's about saying, "Hey, look at the percentage I got." It's about trying to deal with this conceptual problem.

All right, now, political scientists have been dealing with this for a long time. It's a central issue in the study of public opinion and voting. The early work in the 1960s basically argued that people are out of it, you know, that basically people don't have real attitudes, and they are sort of responding, you know, in random fashion to surveys, and survey results really didn't mean much.

The more recent work is more generous to voters — not by a lot, but still more generous. So it is widely recognized that people tend to be uninformed about most issues, they do not have well-thought-out positions on issues. However, the — sort of the dominant view now among political scientists is that the way people express their opinions on surveys is that there are certain considerations that come to their mind when they are thinking about a particular issue. And on the voucher issue, you know, when it is asked on a survey, they might be thinking at that moment, "Oh! Well, vouchers might hurt the public schools." Or they might be thinking at that moment, "Well, this would give parents more influence." Or they might be thinking at that moment, "Hey, I could send my kid to a religious school." But more than likely they are not thinking all of these things at the same time. They're not thinking in sort of an integrated, coherent way about it. Now there is a stratum of the population that thinks that way, but most people don't. So it's not as though nothing is going on in their brains. Things are going on, but if — they all turn on which considerations come to the top of the head during the interview, and these will be different — for any given person they might be different if you ask them tomorrow, or two weeks from now, or next month, and whatever considerations come to mind will influence what they say.

The main hues that influence what considerations pop into their minds tend to come from the survey itself, and from the wording of the questions, and from the surrounding questions. And so, as a result, we have to be very careful in interpreting how people respond. And in particular, we have to recognize that when people give a response, they are not giving a reflection of their true position on the issue. It's best to think of them as not having a true position on the issue. They can be for it, they can be against it, they can be here, they can be there. It all depends upon what considerations they are thinking of.

Is this meaningless or frivolous? No, because it's all connected to things that they care about, and that's the key to it.

So, what I try to argue here is don't focus on the numbers, you know? The fact is that my survey shows 60 percent of the people support vouchers; about 32 percent, I believe, oppose vouchers. I don't make a big deal of that. It doesn't mean to me, well, this is a clean sweep, right? Americans are really strongly in favor of that. That's not what it means at all. If I asked them the same question a month later, I would've gotten different results; if I had slightly varied the wording, I would have gotten different results; if I'd had different questions proceeding it, I would've gotten different results. And so if you look at different surveys like the PDK — Phi Delta Kappa surveys, Gallup surveys — there was one carried out by the National Catholic Education Association — you compare those results, they vary all over the map. They vary from, like, 24 percent support for vouchers to 70 percent support for vouchers. And in some sense, they are all right because they are all reflecting considerations that people care about.

So the key is what are those considerations? What is going on in their brains? What matters to them? That's what I try to figure out here.

Okay. All right, what do I find out? First, there is a structure to the way they think about these things. There are a set of things that matter to them. What are those things? Well, among parents, the most important consideration is do they want to use a voucher. If they want to use a voucher, they are much more likely to support vouchers. I mean, do they want to go private? If they think they might be able to use a voucher, that has a big impact on their thinking. Performance, again, has an important influence on their thinking. So they are able to connect these things in a systematic way to the voucher issue.

Now, beyond that who are the people who tend to support vouchers? The people who are far and away the strongest supporters of vouchers are people who are low in income, minority — especially black — and from disadvantaged school districts. And, although all the different issues that I mentioned earlier — parent influence, school prayer, moral values, et cetera — all of those things are connected to the voucher issue in their minds in just the way you would expect. All of these arguments that tend to be made by voucher leaders, in fact, are used by people as they think about the voucher issue and they are connected in just the way you expect it. But, the one that really stands out, again, is equity, and it is especially influential for low-income people.

Okay, now, it so happens that race, at the end of the analysis, emerges as a consideration that people are taking into account. And the way it comes into account is that the people who support diversity are supportive of vouchers. Now again, I don't know whether this is a crucial fact about the world or not, or how — but it does fit in with everything else. So the syndrome of characteristics is, you have low-income, minority people from low-performing school districts who put a lot of emphasis on equity and who support diversity. That's the constellation of characteristics. These are basically democratic, liberal characteristics, and I think that is a fundamental point to be made. The constituency for vouchers that is the strongest in its support for vouchers is a democratic liberal constituency.

Okay, now, let me dig a little bit deeper. How long have I been talking? Okay, I don't want to drag on too long. A lot of the debate at the elite level is about the consequences of a voucher system. What would vouchers do to segregation?to racial balance? Would they really help poor people? Would private schools discriminate against the poor? Would competition help the schools or harm the schools? — and so on. All right, these are social consequences. What do people think about those things? There are also personal consequences that have to do with how a voucher would help you or not in sending your own kids to a private school. Would it give you more control over your own kids' education? Would it make schools more responsive to you? And would it allow you to seek out better values? Those kinds of things, all right? So some of these are social, some of them are very personal. And so, the results basically show that people are pretty positive about these things and the way they evaluate the consequences of vouchers.

On the social side, the main point to be made, though, I think, is not just that people are positive, because I think if they are worried about that — because these are really complex issues — you know, people are not social theorists and these are complicated issues and they might be persuaded otherwise — the main thing is the downside component, which is people are afraid of the risk. And the number one influence — social influence when they are evaluating the social consequences of vouchers on their support for vouchers is risk. And this applies for parents and non-parents alike. And this goes back to their basic support for the public schools. This is a result of, I think, profound political significance.

Okay. Now, in sort of putting these two together, it's really interesting to ask, "Well, are people basically thinking about the voucher issue in social terms, like how would it affect society?" In other words, how would it affect other people — the nature of society beyond me — or are they mainly thinking about themselves? Are they thinking about their self-interest, about the fact that, you know, they want to use a voucher and, you know, who cares what happens to the rest of society? Are they thinking as citizens or are they thinking as consumers? All right, well, it's possible to carry out a statistical analysis where you basically force the social factors to compete with the self-interest factors to see what the balance is. And the results, overall, for parents — since parents are the ones who are really faced with this tension — are that parents think about both. They are self-interested because their own desire to use a voucher has a big impact on their support for vouchers, but the social considerations are quite important for them. And, in fact, my results show that the social considerations are a little bit more important than self-interest when the have to compete with one another.

Now, if you take that a step further and say, well, how did that vary across population groups, it turns out that low-income people — parents — who are in disadvantaged districts are very, very self-interested. They support vouchers because they want them for themselves, for obvious reasons. But if you move down to talk about people who have more money and who are not located in bad districts, their motivations are very largely social. They're thinking mainly in terms of, sort of, public interest kinds of reasons for supporting vouchers. And the fact that they might want to use a voucher plays much less role in their own calculations. And this means that there are really two very different constituencies out there that are differently motivated. And this is important for the way voucher leaders have to, sort of, frame their appeals, because they can, in principle, provide vouchers to low-income constituencies because they want them for themselves, and at the same time justify what they are doing as being good for society, good for the worst schools in society on public interest grounds. And public interest arguments will resonate with the rest of the population because they are not, first and foremost, self-interested. The fact that they don't get the vouchers is not crucial to them.

All right, now, finally, all of this has been about a voucher system, you know, and in fact, almost all questions that are asked on surveys are always about a voucher system. The fact of the matter is that there are all sorts of different ways of designing a voucher system. And voucher systems can be so different that people can have very different preferences across the different kinds of voucher systems. For instance, should religious schools be included or not? You can have a system that has no religious schools, just non-religious. That's totally different. Or, should we regulate private schools so that they have to follow certain rules with regard to curriculum, teacher qualifications, how they spend their money, testing students? Should private schools be allowed to admit any students they want, or should they have to admit everyone? Should religious schools be allowed to admit only students of their own religion or should they be required to admit student of all religions? Basic regulatory issues. Milton Friedman would like a system with no regulations. But what do the American people want? And finally, do they think everybody should get a voucher — if we're going to have a voucher system — or do they think just low-income kids, needy kids should get a voucher?

All right, very different kinds of systems, and this obviously is crucial in determining what voucher leaders should propose if they are going to try to maximize their appeal.

All right, so what do the findings say? One, overwhelmingly, Americans think religious schools should be included. Americans are very, very sympathetic toward religion. The opponents of vouchers, who are very strident in asserting the separation of church and state, and very strident in saying that religious schools should be excluded, are totally out of step of the American public on this issue.

When it comes to the regulation issue, it's many of the voucher supporters that are out of step. The fact is, Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of regulations. They love regulations. They think that there should be rules for curriculum, for teacher qualifications, for student testing and so on, and they believe, by a big margin, that private schools should not be able to set their own admissions criteria. They should have to admit everybody. And they want to force religious schools to admit students of any religion. You want to play the voucher game, you've got to play by the rules. They want a system that is accountable and equitable, and regulations help guarantee that. Voucher leaders might not like it, but that's what people want. And it's truly overwhelming — we're talking about 85 percent approval on these things. You don't get that on anything.

Finally, universalism vs. targeting. This is more subtle. Americans are basically universalists at heart, right? Basically, what they would prefer — if we're going to have a voucher system — is a system in which everybody gets one. That seems fair to them. However, they are also very sympathetic to giving vouchers to poor kids in the inner city. They favor that kind of a program, all by itself, by a big margin, and they are really risk-averse about going immediately to the kind of universal system that, in their hearts, they would really like. And so, their preference is to start small, to start incrementally, and to then move, perhaps, toward a broader system.

So, what does all this mean for the politics of vouchers? Okay, we have to go back to the basic fact of life here, which is Americans like the public schools. They are attached to the public schools. They don't want anything bad to happen to the public schools. On the other hand, they think private schools are better. They are very open to the ideas behind the voucher movement — from the idea of vouchers to the basic arguments that are being made. So that's the basic frame in which this is taking place. So the voucher leaders have to try to make progress in a context in which people are basically pretty satisfied and afraid of upsetting an apple cart that they like.

Okay, so what can they do within this framework to maximize their support? First, I think they have to do everything they can to minimize risk to the system, and that means adopting an incremental approach.

It also means targeting the obvious constituency that needs vouchers the most — low-income kids, kids in failing school districts. This, it so happens, is their strongest constituency anyway — far and away.

Third, they should emphasize equity. This is an argument that resonates very strongly with that constituency and with everyone else. And while they are emphasizing equity, they will emphasize more generally public interest arguments to all the people who aren't getting vouchers because those are the arguments they respond to. They have to accept regulation. The free marketers are — you know, they're going to have a nervous breakdown over this, or they might not even do it. But if they don't do it, they're not going to win. They need to be willing to hold private schools accountable, and they need to be willing to take concrete steps to ensure equity. Now, this doesn't mean burying them in a 7000-page education code, as we have in California for public schools, but it does mean having a framework of rules that ensures the public that markets will work as they want them to work.

And finally, voucher leaders have to refrain from attacking the public schools, and have to promote voucher programs that are intended to improve the public schools and to coexist with the public schools.

All right, now, what lies ahead? And I'll just briefly do this and then wind it up, and you can ask questions.

All right, if they do these things, that doesn't mean they're going to win. It just, I think, maximizes their chances. So what can they actually do to try to make these things happen more practically? Well, they can either go the initiative route, or they can go the more normal political route which is to seek new legislation.

Okay, what happens if they go the initiative route? Well, it seems attractive. You know, you go for the Hail Mary, right? If the thing passes, all of a sudden you have a voucher program. And if you think that people basically support vouchers — and I think basically they are very open to the idea — it seems like you ought to be able to win.

The problem is that this is wrong. I used to think that it was right, actually — and I'm sort of embarrassed by this, because as a political scientist I should have known better, but I didn't — I thought that if voucher leaders designed low-income voucher programs of the kind I just talked about, and put them out here for people to vote on, that they would vote yes. And I think other things being equal that they would. But other things are not equal, or we have the initiative campaign in between. So there's a certain logic to initiative campaigns that applies not just for vouchers but for all issues. There is a literature on this, and it was this literature that I had never read. I am embarrassed to say so, but I had never read it. Now I've read it. And this is what it says, basically: there are some issues on which people are basically pretty well informed because these issues are familiar to them and pretty simple — issues like the death penalty or immigration or maybe bilingual education or taxes. But they know where they stand coming in. And so the campaign is not going to have a huge influence on them.

But many issues are not like that. The voucher issue is not like that, but many others are not, either. These issues are not familiar to them, and they're pretty complicated in terms of the variety of social consequences they might have. And so these consequences can be subject to dispute. And so, if there is a strong opponent, then all that opponent has to do is to raise a doubt, and that is an easy thing to do with these kinds of issues. And, in these situations, the maximum voters — maxim of voters is when in doubt, vote no. And if you talk to any professional in initiative campaigns, that's what they'll tell you — when in doubt, voters vote no. And so, on the opposition side, you don't have to convince people that you're right. What you have to do is convince people that there is doubt, that there is uncertainty, that there is risk. And given what people feel about the public school system and their fears about upsetting the apple cart, this is a piece of cake.

So in any initiative campaign where you have the unions willing to spend money to barrage people with these kinds of arguments, they win. And it doesn't matter how much the voucher side spends. This would be true for any other kind of issue in this kind of political structure. The issue loses. And it doesn't matter how popular it was coming in, there is a certain bizarre initiative politics that takes over that guarantees that the issue will lose. So I think the basic lesson that comes out of this is not, oh, people don't want vouchers. The basic question is, don't do this, you know, voucher leaders should not do this. It's a loser. They can't ever win these kinds of battles.

What it does tell them, I think, is that the unions are not creating this opposition out of nothing. Again, go back to the considerations. People, in their heads, have certain considerations that are very pro-voucher, but they have some that are anti-voucher, too. And one of the anti-voucher things is, oh my God, what if something went wrong and hurt the public schools? The unions are just playing on that. It's real, and that's what comes out during the campaign.

So the only way that they can succeed is through legislative politics. And they already have succeeded though legislative — this is the normal way in which we make policy in this country.

Okay, now, this is no cakewalk because we have the separation power system in which policies are made by having legislation passed through subcommittees and committees and floor votes in two houses, then they have to be reconciled by conference committee, they have to be voted on in identical form by both houses, and the executive has to sign them, but he can veto them. If he does sign it, the courts can get in the way and overturn them. All of these steps are veto points. And so, if you want to get something passed like a new voucher program, you have to get it passed through every single veto point. But if you want to block — which is all the unions want to do, all the opponents want to do — you just have to block at one point, anywhere, it doesn't matter. And then you can get it all the way through the House of Representatives, all the way through the Senate, and then Clinton will veto it. At just one veto point, that's all you need.

Okay, so, it's very difficult to win here, and yet, they've managed to win a number of important victories. They've come very close in a number of states, like in Texas and Pennsylvania and others. And I think over the long haul this is likely to pay off for a couple of reasons, and let me point these out.

Okay, number one — the number one reason — the voucher movement is incredibly fragmented and decentralized, and while most people would say, whoa, this is really unfortunate for the voucher movement, you know, they're not really organized. But the upside of that is these people are everywhere, you know? Okay, so every now and then somebody like Tim Draper will go off half-cocked and will lose a big one in California because he decided to spend $30 million of his own money. But there are thousands and thousands and thousands of voucher activists in 50 states, and there are hundreds of cities, there are 15,000 school districts, and things are happening everywhere. And even though the probability of victory is small, you multiply a small probability times a lot of different efforts, you get some victories. And that's how they got Milwaukee and Cleveland and Florida, and there will be more. And these things are going to mount up. The law of large numbers works to their advantage over the long haul. That's number one.

Number two, the key opponents on the liberal side — some of them — are going to defect, I think, in the coming years. We are already seeing this among certain liberal intellectuals. The Washington Post, the New Republic, Robert Reich, Joe Califano, Martin Luther King III, Andrew Young — all of these people have come out for low-income vouchers in recent years. This is really just the beginning. I think that the opponents are beginning to sort of lose the intellectual battle here. It's hardly over, but this is a tide that is beginning. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the constituency for these vouchers is a democratic liberal constituency, and there's no denying that.

The big event, I think, is going to be that someday — and it may happen soon, but probably it won't, probably it will take a little while — maybe 10 years, maybe longer — the civil rights groups are going to change sides. Right now the civil rights groups are out of step with their constituents. Their constituents are the single strongest supporters of vouchers in the country. Blacks want vouchers, big-time. Why? They are stuck in bad schools. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Well, the NAACP is opposed to vouchers, and their opposition goes back to the experiences that its leaders had during their formative times in the '50s and '60s, seeing that choice had been used by whites to avoid blacks and promote segregation. These are very real and legitimate feelings on their part. It's pretty obvious why they opposed choice — but those things were frozen, and today, decades later, they still oppose choice.

Well, younger blacks, in many cases, don't. There is a lot of support among younger blacks, and among parents — black parents — for choice. And there are new groups springing up — like the Black Alliance for Educational Options — to do what the NAACP is refusing to do. Now the NAACP is engaged in an attempt to convince its own constituents that they are wrong in their perception of their own interests. That is not going to work.

So, over the long haul, either these leaders will eventually see the light and change so that they are congruent with their own constituents, or these leaders will simply be replaced in the natural order of things as they move out and younger leaders move in, and those leaders will be more inclined to support choice. So that's why it may take a long time, but when it happens, this is big because that is going to shift the entire balance of power. They're going to be in the driver's seat. I mean, it's not like they're going to move over and support choice and then Milton Friedman is going to be designing the voucher program. It doesn't work that way. If they move over to support choice, they hold the balance of power, they are designing the voucher system, they are not going to get voucher systems they don't want. Milton Friedman is not going to get the programs he wants. He's going to — basically what's happening is the libertarians are going to lose control of their own movement to these people in the center — the liberals who are moving over, over time. And so then the problem will be how are these libertarians going to expand the voucher system, given that these people in the middle don't want to, and can renege in the future?

So, at any rate, once the civil rights groups shift — and I think they will — I think the ball game is over. I think a lot of Democrats will then find strong political reason for shifting over as well and getting in line with their own constituents, because now they find it very difficult and embarrassing to look poor people in the eye and say, "Yes, I know you're in bad schools. Yes, I know you want vouchers, but we are opposed to that. Of course, we support you in every other social policy. Every other program that benefits you we are on your side, but in this particular one, we are opposing you." That's got to go. I think that will go. It's an untenable position, I think, over the long haul, and especially once the civil rights groups and their power move over, the Democrats will move.

And now, again, this is not going to happen overnight. It could take 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. It could take 50 years, and we have this wild card of the Supreme Court decision. We can talk about that, but I think even if that is a wholly negative decision — and I don't think it will be — even if it's negative, I think it will be mildly negative with some flexibility. But I think even that is not very likely. But whatever they do, I think that these events that I've described will basically happen. They will just take a little bit longer if the decision is negative, and they will lead, over the long haul, not to some sort of voucher nirvana, you know, in which we have a fully privatized system, or a system that offers vouchers to everyone, or that looks anything like a free market. I think what we're looking at is a system that integrates vouchers into the system that we have now and that, over the long haul, simply provides more choice and more competition within a basic framework of governmental control that is a mixed system of markets and government that looks very much like our economy looks today.

So that's the basic overview of the book, and I'd be happy to entertain any questions you might have.

Yes.

Q: How will public experience with charter schools affect public views about vouchers?

MR. MOE: Well, my own view is that as people become more and more familiar with choice?they have choice in almost every other area of their lives?and as they become more and more used to having choice in education, I think it becomes easier and easier to think that they ought to have the choice to be able to go to private schools, too. And so I think the people who are hoping that by supporting charter schools they can head off vouchers are wrong.

Yes.

Q: I was wondering about the two-thirds that you said were uninformed about vouchers, and what percentage of those were actually parents or had kids in the school — like, if a high percentage of parents are informed but a lot of the people in the country don't have kids in the school —

MR. MOE: Yes.

Q: — how does that affect your analysis?

MR. MOE: It's a fascinating thing, you know? I mean, off the top you'd think, well, the people who have the most incentive to know about vouchers would be the ones who are pretty well informed, and it's the other people, like the non-parents, you know, who wouldn't know about vouchers. In fact, that's not true. Ignorance is pervasive and widespread and seems to have nothing to do, basically, with the incentives to know about vouchers. And I think the reason for that is, again, this rational ignorance argument that everyone is involved in a collective decision process in which everyone knows that their own vote doesn't count for all that much, and they're not going to be pivotal, and that it costs something to become informed. And so, basically, most people tend to be uninformed about most issues. So it turns out that parents are no better informed than non-parents. And the parents who say they want to go private, they are no better informed than other parents are. It's really quite remarkable.

Yes.

Q: What sense do you have, as far as voters and the public viewing politicians — well, on the one hand, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, or Jesse Jackson, who have adamantly opposed vouchers, yet, you know, send their own children to private schools? Is that just their right and privilege and wisdom, or is there resentment and they are seen as hypocritical? And on the other hand, someone like a Jimmy Carter, who sends his daughter to a public school — was that noble and selfless or, I mean, was that foolish and weakness on his part?

MR. MOE: Well, I didn't ask people specific questions about these things, but I think, very obviously, it's an embarrassment for liberal politicians to have to admit that they went to private schools, their kids go to private schools, most of the people that they know go to private schools — send their kids to private schools — yet they want to prevent poor people from exercising the same options. I think that's a very difficult position to take, given that your own constituents are poor. I think Al Gore was squirming a lot during the last campaign. You know, in fact, in one setting, he actually told a poor woman in the audience, "Look, if I were in your shoes, I would probably support vouchers, too." Now, how does that sound? (Laughter.)

So, you know, I can't say definitively how this plays out, but that's my sense on how it plays out — and another reason why I think Democrats ultimately will have to resolve this tension with their own constituents by actually representing them.

Yes, in the back.

Q: How do you explain or reconcile what appears to be some kind of contradiction in that public schools are good, but private schools are better in people's mind; and then, if you get a voucher, you regulate the private schools to look like public schools? So how do you unprivatize the public — the private schools with this voucher and still think of them as private schools?

MR. MOE: Well, people are not masters of resolving contradictions, right? So it never occurs to them that there is a contradiction. I don't think that, in their own minds, they think that the rules and regulations that, say, require teacher qualifications or curriculum standards or whatever, are imposing any burden on the public schools. They think those things are good, and if they're good for the public schools, they are good for the private schools. Now, I think it's for program designers to try to take those things into account, and I would hope that program designers, in imposing basic regulations on the private schools — which I think will probably be necessary — will keep them basic. I think the problem in the public schools is not that they have some standards that they have to meet, and not that they are held accountable, but that the rules and regulations are onerous and downright ridiculous. I mean, it really is true that in California we have a 7000-page education code. And we have something like 50, 60, 70 categorical programs that impose so many rules and regulations on the schools you can't even count them all. That's what burdens the schools. It's not having a few basic curriculum requirements.

Yes.

Q: You mentioned that the public supports competition. Can you identify what they think competition might be, and how might a system of for-profit schools — if there were a sufficient quantity of for-profit schools, how might that change the voucher — hope for the voucher?

MR. MOE: Again, I don't think people — I didn't quiz them in-depth about what they think competition means. And I think if you did, you would be deeply disappointed. And people are not social theorists. I think they have a sense that competition has something to do with the fact that people are allowed to go somewhere else if they don't like what they're getting. And, you know, really, that is sort of what competition comes down to, that schools are not allowed to take kids and money for granted, as they do today. And parents basically think that's a good idea, to get away from that and to have schools have to perform in order to keep kids and resources. They like that idea.

But there are obviously aspects of competition, for example, that have to do with advertising and that sort of thing, or cut-throat competition, you know, like in the economic marketplace, that turn people off. So, again, there are considerations having to do with competition that sort of weigh on both sides of the issue. But I think basically people are positive about competition.

All right, was the last part of your — oh, privatization.

Q: [Inaudible.]

MR. MOE: Well, I mean, this is not a public opinion question that you are asking, this is just sort of a question about for-profit schools, and that could work out in a variety of ways. I mean, basically, now, for-profit schools are being brought in on contract with districts to run regular district schools, and most of the time these are not even schools of choice. They are just seeing if these companies can do a better job than the district can of running those schools. But I do think that ultimately — many of these for-profit schools want to run charter schools, right? So they want to set up schools of choice, and some of them would like to set up private schools, as well. So I think as these organizations proliferate, then what you get in society are more and more centers of knowledge and capacity that allow for the creation of all kinds of different schools. And in a choice system, where you have not only charter schools but also vouchers, that's going to lead to the proliferation of all sorts of different schools that would populate the system. So, I think, basically, this is a very good thing.

However, when it comes to public opinion, I think public opinion on for-profit schools is dicey, because the idea of profits and education is not something that people are entirely comfortable with. And so I've seen some polls that suggest that people are, you know, not wild about this idea, so it's something that people would have to become familiar with as they see actual schools — say, schools run by Edison, doing a good job in serving deserving clienteles, which is happening now, I think.

Yes.

Q: I was wondering where educators and administrators fall in this public opinion. I've heard a lot of opposition coming from teachers for the voucher systems, and I wondered if you could just briefly speak to that and, you know, maybe it's different between public and private, and how do their opinions affect the public opinion?

MR. MOE: Well, teachers are, of course, against vouchers on the whole — not every teacher, but most teachers. Teachers, I think, as a group, are highly risk averse. They like job security or they wouldn't be in jobs that give them lifetime tenure. And so — and they believe strongly in the public schools and that what they are doing is right and good ,and many Americans believe the same thing about the public schools. So teachers are very much, on the whole, against vouchers. And this is a very important thing for the politics of it — people like teachers, you know. Ordinary Americans like teachers. And teachers are, then, important activists in political campaigns. So when teachers go around and tell parents that vouchers are a bad thing, parents tend to listen. Also, the unions and school administrations do systematically use the schools to send out information to parents and to try to convince the political electorate that vouchers are bad. So the role of teachers is really crucial in this and it makes a very difficult for the voucher movement.

Yes, way in the back.

Q: I think you — this is a political question that you raise. I think, clearly, that the disconnect you describe between the political leadership and the constituency, obviously that's an unnatural disconnect and just can't last.

Would you see a parallel between that — the current situation and maybe the 1950s, 1960s civil rights movement where a younger generation of black leaders — their strategy was the one that prevailed as opposed to the more establishment strategy, and that — and the takeover, if you will, of the leadership was a lot quicker than maybe the out years you've talked about — the 20, 30, 40, or 50 years — but that was really in a relatively short period of time that the southern strategy, if you will, prevailed over the establishment — northern strategy. Would that provide an historical precedent that might inform predictions about the current political situation?

MR. MOE: Well, it's quite possible that something like that could happen. I mean, as I said, there are organizations like Black Alliance for Educational Options that are emerging, and there are very dynamic, smart, active leaders in these organizations who are committed to choice, and they have a big following in the big black community, and I think they are a fearsome presence for the NAACP and these other established groups. And I think that these groups are going to suffer from competition and they're going to have to respond to it, right?

On the other hand, I think you really have to respect the powers that organizational leaders have in their own organizations, and how effective they can be in maintaining their positions. And so I never underestimate the ability of leaders to stay in power. And so many times you have to rely on leaders simply getting old and moving out of the organization and being replaced by younger people. So I actually couldn't say which of these is likely to work out over the long haul. If your scenario is right, it's going to happen sooner rather than later, but it's possible that it could happen later. The important conclusion, I think, is that it's going to happen, one way or the other. I think that these groups are going to come into alignment with their own constituents.

Yes.

The guy right behind you.

Q: I was wondering. Well, it seems like a lot of people in the private school community are , or I think at least some people are a little bit suspicious of vouchers because they are afraid of more government regulation of private schools that go with this money. I was wondering if you could talk about any possible dangers, or what you see as some risks in that area?

MR. MOE: Okay, again, this is a practical question about what a voucher system might look like, and this is a book about public opinion. So let me link it to public opinion. I mean, I think these are clear concerns that many in the private school community have, but there is a basis for your concerns — or I should say, and there is a basis for your concerns because people really do strongly support regulating private schools to some extent. So the trick will have to be how to actually regulate private schools and have some standards for accountability and equity, and not bury the private schools in the way that the public schools have been buried.

Now, I think there will be many private schools who think that these basics rules will be okay for them, but there will be many others who think that they are not okay and who won't want to participate in the system, and I think that's okay. So schools who want to stay out should stay out, but I think there'll be many private schools and many new private schools that will go along with this sort of basic set of regulations.

I should also point out that the private schools' own parents are very strongly in favor of these kinds of regulations. So there is a very broad constituency for this kind of thing, and I think that it's the job of designers to keep it minimal so that the private schools can do what they do best and not be stifled.

Yes.

Q: Florida just passed a dramatic expansion of the McKay scholarship program — I think 340,000 kids with IEPs will be eligible to take all of their public money to private schools with minimal opposition from the Democrats or from the teachers unions. I was wondering if you could maybe discuss any opinions that you tracked regarding disadvantaged children in terms of learning disabilities and the types of aspects of that program that may have fit into some of the questions that you asked the people that you talked to.

MR. MOE: Well, to tell you the truth, I didn't follow the politics of that particular expansion, which are recent, right?

Q: Yes, very.

MR. MOE: Very. (Chuckles.) Okay, but I do think that this is exactly the kind of thing that we should expect to happen. These are kids who are really, really deserving, and everybody agrees they are deserving. And so, when they are not being served in the public schools, and it's only natural, whatever your ideology, to say let's help these kids.

Now, who typically is a champion of those kids? Democrats and liberals. There are many Republicans who are on board when it comes to special education, but still, I think it's the Democrats and liberals who think of those kids as their constituents. So, I think it's very hard for them to resist the idea of vouchers. They have been, but this is such a compelling constituency that I think you would expect movement along those lines. And, given that this has happened, I would expect that it will happen elsewhere, right, in other states. And that's why this thing is just going to, sort of, snowball. It's not going to happen all once, it's not going to be big jumps. These are going to be incremental steps, but they add up over time. You can imagine what this is going to look like 10 years from now or 20 years from now.

Mike.

Q: Q: You refer to public accountability, and you have used the phrase — I had one definitional question. What you think they mean — and what do you mean by accountability? And the other question is this: it's very critical to what you are saying that the opinions of the public are not easily changed. In other words — and yet, I'm just wondering, how valid is that because, I mean, even in your own comment here this morning, you referred to a change in the last 30 years, for example, a major change. As you know, public opinion itself was a change in public opinion — (chuckles) — back in the — and so forth and so on. So, I'd like to have you address — I mean, you have the end balance between the resources over the long period of time devoted to protecting public education. So I'd like to have a little more discussion, if you can, of how immutable or unchangeable these points of view are that you say are the parameters of the choice movement.

MR. MOE: That's a good question. I don't think public opinion is unchangeable.

Q: No, I know that.

MR. MOE: I think it moves glacially. And I think people who think that they can put a few ads on TV and change public opinion are wrong. I think what political scientists have found is most people just aren't paying attention. If they are paying attention, it goes in one ear and out the other, you know, and most people just don't have their attitudes changed very easily, right? Now, over long period of time, things can change their attitudes — salient events can change their attitudes. But I think the most important thing for changing public attitudes are things that change in their lives. And so someone back here asked a question about charter schools. The more charter schools there are, the more people get used to having choice as an integral, natural, normal part of the education system will have their attitudes about choice and about vouchers change.

Also, the private voucher movement in this country has now offered some 60,000 kids — all of them low income, most of them in urban areas — vouchers. These kids are out there using vouchers every day. Their parents are ecstatic about being able to do so. There are number of studies about this now — you know, 10, 15 different studies showing all of them exactly the same things — parents are ecstatic, they love it. Well, they are talking to other people. They are talking to other parents, they are talking to local community leaders. This is affecting the lives of lots of people — way more than 60,000 people, right? And so, over time, people get experience with choice and with vouchers. And I think these experiences are going to have a lot to do with attitudinal change over the long haul. But in the short run, I think public opinion pretty much is what it is.

Yes.

Q: Thank you. Hi — really a thoughtful presentation, thank you very much

MR. MOE: Well, thank you.

Q: I have two survey questions. One, in your survey, did you tend to ask questions about schools or did you distinguish elementary, secondary, early preschool, whatever — just generic schools?

MR. MOE: We didn't make those kinds of distinctions.

Q: It was just schools.

And then, a related question, I didn't know if you asked anything about supply issues in your survey of it, based on your own experience, you have some thoughts about the supply question, which you said you did not talk too much about in the book.

MR. MOE: Okay. A couple of supply issues. One is, will private schools discriminate against low income and minority kids? Most people, as I recall, think not. However, the percentage of people who think yes is not trivial — it's, you know, like 40 percent or 45 percent or something like that. So, Americans worry that there may be a problem over on the supply side with low-income kids actually getting into these schools. And that's one reason — the big reason — that they want to have a few rules. You know, for instance, they overwhelmingly favored a set-aside, you know, where schools that participate in the voucher program — let's say everybody got a voucher — would have to reserve a certain percentage of their slots for poor kids. And behind that is this worry those kids might not be able to get in. And they firmly believe in equity.

Now, the other interesting supply issue is that people really don't know very much about private schools, you know? They don't know of particular private schools that they would want to go to. They don't necessarily know how many private schools are in their local area. And this is, like, built in to the way things are now because these parents go to public schools, right? They have no reason to know about the private schools. What they know is they can't go there, you know, they can't afford it. And so they know what they know which is their own schools.

So, a lot of their opinions about private schools is based on reputational information that they get. Now, what an economist would say is that reputational information is usually pretty good information — sometimes as the best information you can get. However, it's not first-hand information, and they are not making decisions about private school choice in the abstract, or about vouchers in the abstract, based on a detailed knowledge of their true alternatives in the private sector.

Yes.

Q: I just was curious, were there any studies done of our leaders here in United States in different sectors of the society and whether they came from private schools or public schools? I know that we are getting more — our leaders are more often now coming from the public schools, but I think most of our leadership do come from the private schools.

MR. MOE: This wasn't part of my study, of course, but a number of other people have carried out studies. I think there was a recent one carried out by Heritage, actually Nina Rees. And, you know, what they show is what has been recognized for a long time, that, say, members of Congress, a pretty large percentage of them, send their kids to private schools, right? I mean, President Clinton sent Chelsea to private school in Washington D.C. He wouldn't want her to go to the public schools there, even though he vetoed the voucher bill for low-income kids. Al Gore sent his kids to private schools and he went to private schools, you know, and this is a pretty standard story. Elites, whether they are Democrats or Republicans, if they have money, and even, you know, people who are not in politics, just people who have enough money, will not send their kids to bad schools. Money is choice. And that is why, in this country, low-income kids always wind up in the bad schools, because anybody with money doesn't go there. And that is the real travesty of our education system, and it's something that I think vouchers can do something about. And I think it's not an accident that the big supporters of vouchers are low-income people.

Yes.

Q: I was curious if you see a — the regulation coming in affecting religious liberty in private schools. And I'm wondering too, as far as America's historic anti-Catholicism, do you think that is just — is that gone now? And a school like Bob Jones University that has policies towards interracial mixing and anti-Catholicism, I mean, that is something that the general public really is in opposition to, would you say?

MR. MOE: Well, I didn't study this as part of my book. My impression, based upon my own reading, is that anti-Catholicism has certainly declined significantly over the years. And I think that the real threat, when it comes to the way a voucher system might be set up and might actually be run, is that there would be court decisions that would, possibly, require a very strict separation of church and state, which would either prohibit those schools from participating at all or, if they do participate, require that they keep religion totally out of their curriculum. And so it's possible, if that happens, that many of those schools would prefer not to participate in the voucher system, and therefore they and their students wouldn't benefit from it. My own view is that that would be unfortunate. The overwhelming majority of Americans agree with me, but ultimately it will be the courts that decide that.

Yes.

Q: Could you follow up by answering a question on accountability? What did accountability mean in surveys and what is your definition of it?

MR. MOE: Okay. Well, in the survey it simply referred to basic rules about curriculum, about teacher

So accountability basically has to do with public goals that the government determines are important through a democratic process, and efforts by the government, through rules and enforcement, to see to it that those goals are being adequately pursued. My own view is that, of course, that's what government does today and it's a nightmare. So I think we have to be, you know, public opinion aside, I think it's very important to be very careful about how this is done. And I hope that program designers will be very careful. On the other hand, I think anyone who thinks that we're going to have voucher systems in this country without basic regulations to ensure accountability and equity is wrong. And so, we have to come to some agreement on how we're going to do this and do it well.

Yes.

Q: Okay, I have a question about the ignorance of Americans about vouchers. And I was wondering if you found a difference along racial lines as far as blacks and whites? And I will say that I am not as optimistic that the black leaders will see the light or that they will be replaced, not as long as you have blacks dealing with lousy public services in general, as long as they are dealing with crime. So I'm not sure that that will be a priority. But I was wondering, where would that push come from to motivate those leaders?

MR. MOE: Okay, I'll try to remember the different parts of what you are saying. The first part of it was what?

Q: Okay, so was there a difference —

MR. MOE: Oh, yes. Yes, there is a difference, but the difference is due to education. On the average, blacks are not as well educated as whites. And education and income — they are lower in income on average — are very highly correlated with knowledge on this issue — with information about it, right? So yes, they are much less informed. On the other hand, most people are uninformed, and people are able to make sense of the issue. It's simple enough, just in terms of its basic concept, that they can get a sense for how they feel. That doesn't mean it's a hard and fast position that they are adopting. But blacks are certainly able to take a position that is consistent with their own interests, as many of them are in low-performing schools.

Now, your position about what black leaders are likely to do? You know, you could be right, but I think that black leaders are, in fact, very concerned about representing their constituents. They know that their constituents are in the worst schools in our country. They know that those schools aren't getting any better. It's been decades and decades and decades of promises that have not been realized. In the meantime, whole generations of kids are being lost. A lot of black males wind up in prison; you know, the percentages are huge. I think they are very deeply concerned about this. And while the older generation has an abiding faith in the government to help solve their problems, government has not solved this problem. And I think it's a short step to recognition that, in this case, choice plans that are controlled by them, essentially, because they would get to play the central roles in designing these programs and therefore that would contain the kinds of protections that they want, would provide their constituents with new educational options. And if existing leaders won't do that, I think the new younger leaders will.

And the one continuing fact is that this is a socioeconomic reality that hasn't changed for a long time and isn't going to change in the future. Blacks are stuck in bad schools, disproportionately. They are. And they are demanding — many of them — some kind of immediate change so that they don't lose future generations. Vouchers are a response to that in a way that all of these other, sort of, mainstream, "let's fix the public schools" reforms are not responsive. They don't want to wait 10 or 20 years for things to happen. You can lose a couple of generations of kids that way. So, I think there will be movement among them. You could be right, but I hope not.

Pat.

Q: A related question. To what extent do you think that exposure to, and the success of, public housing vouchers might transform both public opinion and elite opinion about school vouchers? I mean, as more low-income, inner-city families use public housing vouchers to choose their residence, you know, might they make a connection between school vouchers? And then, what kind of position does it place the NAACP and other elites if these housing vouchers are working, redounding to the benefit of their constituency? Does it make it more difficult for them to oppose school vouchers?

MR. MOE: Well, I think every little bit helps because it gets back to this point about the actual everyday experiences of people and how it shapes their perceptions of choice and vouchers. But the fact is that we've had food stamps for a long time, you know, and food stamps are vouchers. Medicare is essentially a voucher program. There are many ways that vouchers play roles in our lives. There is a program for low-income child care where they can get child care vouchers and go to, say, a Catholic day-care program if they want. Pell grants — that's a voucher program. They can take it to any school they want, right? And it doesn't seem to have sunk in, you know, that all these things are voucher programs. It's like this K-12 voucher thing, you know, that's just completely different from everything else in people's minds. And while everything else is okay, somehow this is, like, unconstitutional and some horrible thing — the end of civilization as we know it. And I think, over time, that is likely to break down. And housing vouchers may help, but it's just, sort of, one more chink in the armor, you know?

Tom.

Q: Terry, you mentioned the public's deep attachment to this idea of the public schools. Voucher advocates often argue that one of the virtues of vouchers is that it would force bad public schools to compete with private schools and so they would then become more successful; they would have an incentive to become successful. Isn't one of the implications of your study, though, that we may come up with a voucher system where really no one can fail because that would be a risky thing? We don't — the public doesn't went to see public schools fail. And I'm wondering if, really, what you see out — looking out to the future — are these sort of "fangless" markets that we're going to be creating where bad public schools really don't fail at all?

MR. MOE: I actually don't think that's likely to happen. I think a more likely scenario is like the kind of thing that happened in Florida with these two schools — interesting that in the whole state of Florida only two schools were failing. It seems to me — in California we have 8500 schools, you'd think — I would guess, you know, there would be hundreds and hundreds of failing schools — in Florida they had two. But okay, so in Florida they had, like, 58 kids who took vouchers. Well, that was enough to cause all hell to break loose in those schools, and they started scrambling. There was an article in Education Week a while ago, a month ago, about one of the schools. And in that school things changed, heads were rolling. And, as they put it, "We're focusing like a laser on reading and math." Well, you know, why weren't they focusing like a laser before, you know? Why not? Well, they had no incentive to do it before. And that is what this is all about. It's really just about — it's not about destroying the schools or eliminating the schools somehow, it's about giving them different incentives. And one of the things they did is in the mornings is everyone, from the music teacher to the P.E teacher, taught reading. What an idea. And those kids darn well learned to read. And now it's not a failing school anymore. That's the kind of thing that happens, and there are other examples as well.

Now — so I think what you get is not an emphasis on failure or a weeding out of the bad schools, but the incentives for schools to take action. However, the districts would also have incentives. I mean, districts are not sitting there thinking, "Oh, it's all right if kids go out on vouchers." They don't want to lose kids to the private sector. They want the money and they want the kids. So districts are going to be sitting back saying, "All right, we're giving you this chance to improve and we will help you try to improve. But if you don't, we're going to reconstitute you, or do whatever's necessary." And that doesn't mean they blow up the building, you know. What it means is they just move the teachers out and move the principal out because they have done a bad job, and they replace them with new teachers and a new principal, presumably who will do a better job. And they know that if they don't, they are out, too.

Well, that's a different world than the world have today. So I think schools have incentives, districts have incentives, and I think that's the way it will work. I don't think it's a matter of, like, schools somehow falling by the wayside or kids being thrown out on the sidewalk.

Mike, well, let's do somebody in the back here since Mike has already talked twice, although his questions, of course, are extremely good. (Laughter.) All right, in the back.

Q: How are you doing? First, I wanted to comment on the gentleman's question around whether or not the black leadership will eventually come around. And I think the things that you pointed out are correct. The only other thing that I would add to that is that a lot of our black leaders, behind closed doors, actually believe that vouchers can make a difference. It's just because of their political realities that they are not willing to come out publicly in favor of vouchers. And I know, in close conversations, a number of leaders, particularly people in the congressional black caucuses said, "Yeah, but I can't do this; they'll kill me politically."

MR. MOE: Who is "they?"

Q: Teachers' union, other supporters that, you know, give campaign contributions and keep their coffers filled and ensure their reelection. That's a political reality that they have.

MR. MOE: I think that is an excellent point, and it is what keeps the system the way it is right now. But I think this is a system that's on its way out of equilibrium because you have a constituency that is over here and a leadership that is out of whack with its constituency and that wants to represent it. And I think what's going to happen over time is that they are going to move. It's just going to take a while. And I think it's the teacher's unions that are going to be isolated on that. And once they move — once these black leaders move and the civil rights groups move, I really do think that they are going to be in the driver's seat on this. It takes a while for them, I think, to sort of realize how much control they can have over what happens and how much power they would have in serving their own constituency. So, I think what we're seeing is a short-term sort of, "Gosh, how are we going to get out of this bind?" —

Q: Right.

MR. MOE: — when, over the long haul — and it may take 10 years.

Q: No, I think that a number of them are having internal struggles that will eventually prevail in terms of what they sincerely believe and know is right versus what their political realities are, and they will figure out a way to work through that because of the external pressure that they are receiving, but also based on what they truly believe from within.

MR. MOE: Right. I think a key part of this is that the voucher issue ought to be a liberal democratic issue. The only reason it isn't is the teachers' unions. I think that's true. Otherwise liberal Democrats would say, "Hey, these are our constituents. We provide programs for them in all these different policy areas, and what, on this one issue we're not going to do that? We can do this and not harm the public schools. We can have a better public school system and help these kids now by using vouchers." And it is only the unions who draw the line and say, "Don't you ever support vouchers — ever," because it's a survival issue for the unions. They are the only group in society really — the only powerful group — for whom that's true. All the other groups are much more pragmatic about this: "Let's help these poor kids." And ultimately I think they are going to be alone on this.

Q: The other thing that I would be curious to know your thoughts on, as it relates to where the black community is versus the black establishment and our traditional civil rights organizations, is if and when they do come around and there is this massive coalition of both black constituents and black leadership who are supportive of vouchers, how then do you think the dynamic — the disconnect, essentially, that is present between current black supporters of vouchers and the Milton Friedman's of the world in terms of — currently, I think we have a situation where there is a co-dependency. And organizations like the Black Alliance for Educational Options understand that they should be in coalition with some of our white organizations and leaders that support vouchers because we need it to exist. Likewise, I think Milton Friedman understands that he should be in coalition with organizations like the Black Alliance for Educational Options because our survival depends on it, essentially, because if you don't have that extensive level of support then the opposition can come in on either side. The black establishment can come in and crumble the movement or white liberals who are not supportive of vouchers could come in and crumble the movement. So the survival of the movement, in general, depends on it. But when there is — when this mass I guess, coalition of black representation emerges, then the more specific agenda, I think, will be pushed in terms of the support for vouchers that are limited in the sense in that they are intended for low income children in failing schools.

MR. MOE: Ok, this is a very interesting phenomenon that is now occurring in the movement, and will continue to occur in the future, and I talk about it in the book, and what I expect will happen. Right now, you do have this coalition of conservatives and libertarians and the urban poor. They do not have identical interests. I mean, what Milton Freeman has said is, "A program for the poor is a poor program." However, he supports these programs because they're a step along the way to where he wants to go. That is not where a lot of these liberal urban activists want to go, right? They want to provide vouchers for their constituents and that's it.

Ok, now they're in coalition. What's going to happen in the future? What I think has happened is that the voucher movement, which was begun by conservatives and libertarians, is basically a victim of its own success. What's happened is that it has found that by targeting vouchers at needy, low income kids, it can be successful. Because of its success, it has attracted all kinds of people who support low-income vouchers, and are liberal, in many cases. So now the voucher movement contains all those people, and it's getting much bigger, and much more diverse, and the libertarians are sort of like the odd men out in this. So now they've got a movement that they really don't control anymore, and as time goes on it gets worse from their standpoint because they're less and less in control. And I think that if the civil rights groups move over, then the urban representatives of minorities and the poor are in the driver's seat, and they will be the ones designing these programs. And if they decide that say, an extension of the program is not something they want — an expansion to include middle-class kids or whatever — it's not gonna happen, because they hold the balance of power. Also, people in suburban communities have a very weak demand for vouchers. The strong demand comes from the people who have bad schools, and so there is not going to be this huge groundswell among suburbanites to get vouchers. I think that some people might say, "Well those people get them, we think we should get them," but I don't think it's going to happen. I think that the balance of power is going to be held by the activists — the urban activists — and if they don't want it to happen, they're going to block it. So I think they're really in the driver's seat. I think they should see that, I think they should be aggressive about it, and they should go for it.

Yes.

Q: Your survey found that people think it's unfair to trap kids in bad schools, and that people would like more competition and more choice, but that they also like the public schools. That would lead one to conclude they want more public school choice. Could you articulate what it is a voucher system would add beyond what a public school choice system would do?

MR. MOE: Well, allowing children to go private gives them access to the entire private sector. The private sector contains a lot of schools! Like in Milwaukee, there are more than a hundred private schools that these kids now have access to, of all different types. So there's much more diversity, much more choice when you take advantage of the private sector. Also, there's much more dynamism and innovation in the private sector. They can just like, set up a new school. No, not the public schools. No, they have to spend $40 million building buildings that can withstand a nuclear holocaust or something, and it takes forever, right? All this planning and everything, and in the private sector you can get lots of schools being set up, giving kids much more in the way of choice and the kinds of programs they have. You know, there's just a lot more diversity. I think it's very important to include the private schools, and also very important not to see this as some sort of subversion of public education. I think we should think of it as an integral part of public education and that the public's job is to see to it that its money is used to educate kids. And if that's our fundamental goal, it doesn't matter where they get educated, just that they get educated. And the idea that they have to be educated in government-run schools, I think is an old idea, that doesn't make much sense. If we really think about the kids, they don't have to be educated there.

Yes.

Q: The — I'm not sure, I think they're called the Blain Amendments, from the 19th century, is that correct? Do you think that they're gonna — if I understand correctly, these amendments were sort of anti-Catholic — ok, blatant maybe, I don't know much about them but — well I guess they were trying to keep — trying to prevent Catholic schools from spreading too much. And I'm wondering if these really old amendments can have, can provide really strong obstacles to school choice.

MR. MOE: Yes.

Q: And does it differ across states?

MR. MOE: Yes, so some states have very serious restrictions on the flow of public money to private schools. They started out as anti-Catholic amendments, but really, some of them just say, "You can't spend any money on private schools," some of them say, "you can't spend any money on religiously affiliated schools." But it really does vary by state. Some of them are very strict, some of them are not that strict at all, and many of them don't have Blain Amendments at all. So obviously this is a limit on the kinds of voucher systems you can have in some states, unless they change their constitutions. Now there are ways of changing constitutions, so one would think it would simply be harder in those states, but over the long haul they'll make the changes, presumably, that need to be made. It might take thirty years for them to do that, but I think it's likely to happen if people want it to happen.

[Applause and end of event]