In California, Proposition 38, a ballot proposal, seeks to create the nation's largest school voucher program. It calls for providing parents of the state's 6.5 million public- and private-school students with $4,000 per pupil to be used to pay tuition at any private or religious school.

A proposal to be voted on in Michigan would offer a voucher of about $3,300 to each student in a school district in which fewer than two-thirds of all high school students graduate within four years. Supporters of this plan euphemistically call themselves "Kids First! Yes!"

In Arizona, voters will be asked to decide whether to end bilingual education in that state. A similar measure passed in California two years ago.

In early October, an appeals court in Florida upheld that state's voucher plan, after a lower court seven months earlier had ruled that the program violated the state constitution. Teachers' unions have announced plans to appeal this to the Florida Supreme Court.

The California initiative is being promoted and largely funded by Silicon Valley capitalist Timothy Draper, who has put close to $20 million of his own money into backing this proposal. Among those supporting the initiative is former Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Both Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush and Democratic candidate Albert Gore have shied away from taking a specific public position on the California initiative.

The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have been spearheading the fight against this initiative, explaining that vouchers siphon money from public schools. Draper and his supporters claim that vouchers will save the public money and provide parents with "freedom of choice."

This is the first time that vouchers have been on the ballot in California since 1993, when a similar measure that would have given parents a $2,600 voucher was defeated by a large margin. Similar initiatives in Colorado and Washington had also previously gone down to defeat. Last year nearly 12,000 children in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Florida attended private schools using vouchers.

Through his election campaign Bush advocates a federal voucher program that he describes as "opportunity scholarships." He promises to take federal aid from poorly performing public schools and instead give $1,500 per child to parents with low incomes to apply toward private-school tuition or tutoring. In the first presidential debate, he demagogically argued, "I believe that if we find poor children trapped in schools that won't teach, we need to free the parents."

Gore countered by hailing the "great role" played by private schools "in our society." He then added, "But I don't think private schools should have the right to take taxpayer money away from public schools." The Democratic presidential candidate, however, has been a vigorous supporter of the drive by the Clinton administration to cut the social wage, which has meant less resources available to the public school system, increasing class sizes, and deteriorating working conditions for teachers. Currently the federal government provides an average of only 7 cents of every dollar spent for schools, with 48 cents coming from the states and 45 cents from localities.

While Bush and Gore express differences over vouchers and some other aspects having to do with the funding of education, neither of them, nor any other capitalist politicians, approach this issue from the point of view of education being a vital social question--one in which every human being regardless of their income level or social status should be guaranteed the right to the highest quality public education over the course of a lifetime. Instead they approach this issue with proposals directed toward families finding individual solutions to this crisis, which in turn are initial steps toward undercutting the right to a public education.

Both politicians also support charter schools, which their supporters describe as public schools that have been contracted--or chartered--to individuals or organizations that want to set up their own special rules, regulations, and curriculum. Funding them comes out of money that would otherwise go to the public school system. Currently there are more than 2,000 charter schools operating in 33 states. All of them have come into being since 1992.

Last spring President William Clinton hailed the work of his administration in "investing almost half a billion dollars since 1994 to help communities start charter schools."

Those directing these schools decide for themselves what to teach and how to teach it, whom to hire, and what work rules are to be followed. The vast majority of them are nonunion, though a few organizing drives have begun to occur in some of these schools.

Both Bush and Gore are strong advocates the charter system. Bush calls for doubling the number of charter schools and investing $300 million in a "Charter School Homestead Fund," that would supposedly provide a total of $3 billion in loan guarantees to new charter schools. Gore has countered by calling for tripling the number of charter schools in existence.  
 
 
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