The “surveys” arrived
like toxin-tainted envelopes on the desks of 191 school district
superintendents across New Jersey. The Wal-Mart family-funded
school vouchers outfit E-3 – Excellence
in Education for Everybody – demanded to be sent “the master
collective bargaining agreement for your teaching personnel,
and any and all public records that affect their terms and conditions
of employment.” Further, “the term ‘records’ is construed as
broadly as possible under the statutory definition of the New
Jersey Open
Public Records Act.” You’ve got seven days, warned the
signer, E-3 Deputy Director Derrell Bradford, who made sure
that Bush
Education chief and voucher champion Rod Paige got a copy.
Alarmed
educators soon learned that failure to respond satisfactorily
to E-3’s fishing
expedition could result in hefty fines. But the “survey” is more
than petty harassment by the voucher crowd, the sworn enemies
of teachers unions. The national voucher offensive has entered
a new phase, a strategic shift calculated to expand the popular “base” for
privatization of education. Having spent tens of millions of
dollars to convince the public that school vouchers is an authentic “Black” issue,
the wealthy financiers of the “movement” now seek support from
white suburbanites, whose kids already attend the best schools.
To move this bloc of voters, E-3 and its rich benefactors are
preparing a campaign of fear: If voucher programs are not soon
established in the inner cities, the line goes, minority students
will spill into the suburbs, while taxes soar to pay the growing
costs of urban education. Vouchers are the brainchild of the
Hard Right, accomplished fear-mongers who specialize in racial
manipulation. It was only a matter of time before they returned
to their accustomed themes.
The
E-3 “survey” was
a propaganda stunt, guerilla theater in the voucher proponents’ war
on the very concept of public education – to be followed by a
race-based legislative strategy targeting the suburban bloc of
the New Jersey state legislature. First, the public schools must
be depicted as a waste of taxpayers’ money.
"There are hundreds
of millions of dollars wasted in public education that has nothing
to do with the education in the classroom," said businessman
and E-3 co-founder Peter Denton, explaining the survey. "I
think people will be shocked what's in those contracts."
What Denton really means
is: the 180,000-member New Jersey Education Association (NJEA)
and the smaller United Federation of Teachers (UFT) are robbing
suburban taxpayers by defending a system that wastes money on
inner city schools, which should be turned over to privateers.
This
not so subtle shift of emphasis from the previous privatization
line – that vouchers
are a special remedy for ghetto schools – signals the onset of
a new and brutish campaign. Voucher supporters have nearly exhausted
the political potential of their Black- and Latino-centered propaganda
machine. After all, if decades of authentic, community-wide African
American demands for quality urban public schools have fallen
on largely deaf suburban ears, how could rightwing-financed minority
front groups expect to be any more effective in advancing their
perverse agenda – especially when suburbanites have no intention
of abandoning their own public schools. To broaden the appeal
to the suburban political majority, E-3 and its rich masters
now offer vouchers as a safety valve to contain minorities in
the inner cities, and as a means to avoid higher taxes to pay
for equalization of public education opportunities. They are
about to play their race cards, big-time.
Rich, white
roots
Vouchers
proponents have won few victories at the ballot box, and vouchers
have never
been the preferred educational “choice” of the most intensely
targeted group, African Americans. (The NJEA web page, “Where
is the public support for vouchers?” provides a concise overview
of the most compelling research. For additional data, see , November
21, 2002, under “Vouchers: Hypothetical numbers for a phony
issue.”) In no jurisdiction have Black majorities initiated voucher
programs through the ballot. Rather, vouchers have been bullied
into the Black political conversation on the strength of multi-million
dollar advertising campaigns, solicitous corporate media coverage
of Right-financed voucher front organizations, the methodical
purchase of Black media loyalty, and the wholesale enticement
of Black preachers, many of whom hope to operate schools of their
own.
The
voucher “movement” owes
its existence to two far-right financiers: the Bradley Foundation,
of Milwaukee (where it established the nation’s first voucher
program) and the Walton Foundation, of Bentonville, Arkansas,
the political plaything of the Wal-Mart clan. The two foundations
jointly invented the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO),
the face they present to the African American community.
The real political muscle
behind vouchers is the Republican Party. The Bush men are determined
to impose voucher regimes in every Black population center where
the opportunity presents itself. The goal is to create the conditions
for the rise of an alternative, compliant Black political leadership opposed
to organized labor, particularly the teachers unions.
In January, the Republican
Congress delivered Washington DC to the voucher forces with the
help of a Black Mayor who ignored the repeatedly expressed anti-voucher
sentiments of the citizenry. (See , “DC
Voucher Passage is Huge Defeat.”) Bush now has his long sought
national voucher showcase. However, the capture of the federal
enclave, while providing an important propaganda platform, does
not change the central problem with vouchers: they are not popular
with Blacks or whites, and suburbanites have no use for them.
The
GOP’s solution is
to circumvent democratic processes entirely and, with utter contempt
for the intentions of Congress, convert No Child Left Behind
(NCLB) legislation into a school privatization machine. As we
wrote in our Cover Story, “Bush’s
Phony Grassroots Voucher Movement,” on December 4, “Bush’s
Education Department, infested with rightwing ideologues, now
serves as headquarters and paymaster for the public schools’ fiercest
enemies.”
New
Jersey is also unique, in that its Supreme Court ordered
the state to spend all the money that is necessary to bring
to 30 urban, so-called Abbott districts, encompassing an
overwhelming majority of the state’s minority population,
the quality of education that exists in the suburbs. About
$6 billion has so far been earmarked to comply with the court’s
order, following two decades of massive delays and resistance
by the suburb-dominated legislature. Although the teachers’ unions
say the schools are adjusting well to Abbott, there can be
no doubt that some white suburbanites feel the ruling has
caused them to be overtaxed. Such is the nature of the privileged
worldview.
The
rightwinger’s nature – including Black voucher advocates
in the pay of the Right – is to exploit these resentments.
The intimidating “survey” of teachers’ records by E-3, the
Newark-based voucher group, is the setup for a bogus “study” (doubtless
already written) that sends a barely-coded message to the
suburbs: public education is wasteful – which will be received
as, public money is wasted on Black and brown students.
There
is a one-two to this punch. No Child Left Behind, says E-3’s
Ivy League-educated Derrell Bradford, “is essentially pro-school-choice.'' Bradford elaborated
to a reporter for The
Record, in January of last year:
There
lays the landmine buried in the legislation by the Bush voucher
advocates. When schools fall short in testing, parents can
request a transfer to a better school. But there may be no
such school in the district. Stan Karp, a teacher and opponent
of vouchers, understands why E-3’s Bradford is smiling. "Unless they're going to start letting kids in [mostly
non-white] Paterson go to school in [mostly white] Wayne
and Ridgewood, I see this as an attempt to create pressure
for vouchers.”'
“Pressures” is
an understatement. Bradford and his crew can be expected
to roam the halls of the legislature, effectively raising
the specter of a Black and brown student exodus from city
to suburb – unless these students can be diverted
to private schools in their “own” areas. The case will also
be made that every urban student that leaves the public system
for a private classroom represents a smaller “burden” to
suburban taxpayers – less of a threat to white neighborhoods
and pocketbooks. Just as the Bush men anticipated.
“The
battle lines are drawn, and it will be an ugly fight," said
Cory Booker, the Black Trojan Horse candidate for mayor of
Newark, in 2002. Booker knows all about ugly. The nominal Democrat
tried his best during the campaign to hide the fact that he
had traveled to Milwaukee with fellow E-3 founder Peter Denton
to become a founding board member of the Black Alliance for
Educational Options. “Out-ed” as a voucher advocate in the
inaugural issue of The Black Commentator (see “Fruit
of the Poisoned Tree,” April 5, 2002), Booker was the unanimous
choice of New York market corporate media, and even won the
endorsement of rightwing columnist George F. Will. Millions
of dollars flowed Booker’s way from ultraconservatives across
the country. He still lost.
However,
that was before George Bush turned No Child Left Behind over
to Booker’s
friends in the voucher gang; before the U.S. Senate passed
a vouchers program for Washington, DC; and before the Bradley
Foundation’s think tanks devised a voucher strategy to appeal
to racial fears in the suburbs. Booker plans to run for mayor
again in 2006, hoping to provide the “alternative” Black leadership
that Bush, Bradley and the Wal-Mart family hunger for.
New Jersey is the
testing ground for the politics of vouchers. A similar scenario
may be coming to a city and state near you.