Pro choice: how Democrats can make vouchers their secret weapon.

• Author: Gorman, Siobhan

In early February President Bush dropped a bombshell on the education world: A $75 million proposal for a multi-city voucher program, ,and Washington, D.C, would pioneer it. "My initial reaction was, 'No,'" says District Mayor Anthony Williams, a center-leaning Democrat. "But I started thinking: Why am I against this?" In his city, around 70 percent of fourth graders can't read or work math problems at grade level. And eighth graders are just as badly off. "I couldn't think of a lot of reasons why I was against it in D.C.," he recalled. With a school system in dire condition and rising demand for change, "you have got to have a compelling reason why you shouldn't try something new." So, he came out in support of the $15 million program that would give a $7,500 voucher to about 2000 poor D.C. children.

Williams is facing a problem with which nearly every Democratic urban mayor across the country struggles. Constituents are screaming for educational alternatives, and most of the options on the table have been exhausted, except, it seems, for one: vouchers. The Democratic Party has long opposed vouchers, more on political than policy grounds, but Williams's choice should sound very loud alarm as the Democrats head into Election 2004. Democrats are on the verge of losing the rhetorical battle in the polities of hope.

Parents like Tracy Tucker of Washington, D.C., aren't supporting vouchers out of ideology but pragmatism; vouchers represent the hope for a better life for her two children. "I received a Pell Grant when I was in college," says Tucker, a black single mom who works part-time and makes about $25,000 a year. "I really see this as an extension of those programs to uplift children at an earlier age. Right now. I'm looking at the school system and what it's doing--it's like sending your child to prison."

Declared dead two years ago when Bush dropped a voucher component of his education reform bill to win its passage, vouchers are in resurgence. A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled that vouchers for private and religious schools do not violate the First Amendment. That eliminated a major hurdle for voucher advocates. Soon after, the Colorado Legislature passed a voucher proposal that goes into effect this month. Florida now has three voucher-type programs, and the decade-old Milwaukee voucher experiment is expanding.

Federal pilot programs like the one proposed for Washington, which Congress will take up as part of the budget battles this fall, offer a new route for voucher advocates. And discerning observers of the political scene can see the outlines of a key component of Bush's reelection strategy. Declaring education "the next civil right," Bush stole the education issue away from Democrats in 2000 by advocating tests as a way to measure the progress of schools and students in grades 3 through 8. Today he has pulled even with Democrats--45 percent to the Democrats' 46 percent--when voters are asked whom they trust more on education. And even as war and security dominate the headlines, come election time, education will matter "a lot," says Republican pollster David Winston. "There's been an increase in the number of issues voters are following, but I don't think there's been a decrease in concern about education." Democratic pollster Celinda Lake agrees, noting that education will follow closely behind the economy as a key issue in voters' minds. As 2004 approaches, Bush will argue that the federal government must give parents "more options," chiefly by offering vouchers for the kids who need them most. It could prove to be brilliant politics, putting the Democrats on the defensive on what used to be their strongest issue and breeding discontent among African-American voters, a key Democratic constituency.

Democrats are in this position for two reasons. First, them is a deep (and not completely unreasonable) resistance among key Democratic constituencies to the idea that private school vouchers am the real answer to underperforming urban schools. But second, those same constituencies have failed to come up with serious alternatives to vouchers (other than the perennial demand for more money). "The Democrats better have something to say in response beyond the same tired ideas we've been talking about for the last few years," warns Andrew J. Rotherham, who runs the education policy shop at the New Democrat Progressive Policy Institute. But Rotherham and others believe that there is a way out. With a couple of key policy tweaks, the Democrats could turn vouchers into their own issue in a way that would be more likely to help families like Tucker's while at the same time sowing disarray within Bush's conservative, pro-voucher base. For too long, vouchers have been a way for conservatives to shrink public...