SCHOOL CHOICE BEGINNINGS
Two recent national meetings brought back some old memories of the early days of the school choice beginnings in America. The American Federation for Children and the Children’s Scholarship Fund both held gatherings earlier this month in Washington, DC and New York City, respectively. Both had their beginnings in organizations that I started nearly 30 years ago.
When Dr. Jim Leininger and I launched the Texas Public Policy Foundation in San Antonio, Texas in 1989 we made school choice one of our signature issues. Jeanne Allen, the founder of the Center for Education Reform, had formerly been with the Heritage Foundation. She had written a paper on the concept which I had read and thought was a great idea. We began to promote the idea of publicly funded vouchers with the Texas Legislature, the media, and opinion leaders.
After several unsuccessful attempts to pass legislation in Austin, Dr. Leininger read about Pat Rooney, the Chairman of the Golden Rule Insurance Co. in Indianapolis, Indiana. The op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal explained how Rooney had established a privately funded voucher program whereby low income parents could apply for financial assistance to go to the school of their choice. With an overwhelming response from inner city parents, Rooney figured he could get the legislature’s attention and secure publicly funded legislation. At the same time, under the leadership of Mike Joyce, the Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had funded a similar effort known as PAVE or Parents Advancing Values in Education.
Leininger agreed to do the same and we launched the Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation, or CEO, in 1991. It was a way for business leaders to “put their money where their mouths were”! The response in San Antonio was overwhelming with nearly 5000 parents applying for only 1000 scholarships! Soon, other cities in Texas were asking us to help them do the same thing. It wasn’t long before the Wall Street Journal again had run an opinion piece by John Fund touting the parental demand for choice through these privately run programs.
In 1993, John Walton called me from California and asked for my help in launching a private voucher program in Los Angeles! Walton, whose father I had worked for at Walmart in the early 1980’s in Bentonville, Arkansas, was intrigued with the idea. It wasn’t long after that in the Spring of 1994 that John asked me to meet him and his brother, Jim, in Bentonville to discuss a national rollout of the privately funded model. With a $2M grant, we launched CEO America, which later became Children First America. During the 90’s we recruited a stellar board of leading business leaders, included Walton, Jimmy Mansour, Steve Schuck, Virginia Gilder, Peter Flanigan, Betsy Devos, Rick Sharp, John Kirtley, and many other’s. Under their leadership, nearly 80 private voucher programs were launched throughout the country and various attempts to pass legislation were undertaken, including the Washington Scholarship Fund and the DC Opportunity Scholarship bill.
Children First America was eventually merged with the American Education Reform Foundation, started by Kevin Teasley in Indianapolis, Indiana (and later run by Susan Mitchell in Milwaukee) to become the Alliance for School Choice headed by Clint Bolick. That organization would then be renamed the American Federation for Children in 2009.
In 1998, John Walton contacted me and indicated that Ted Fortsmann wanted to start a separate organization dedicated solely to matching grants for the existing scholarship organizations that we had already established. Since Children First America efforts were also aimed at bringing about publicly funded legislation, we agreed that a separate organization was needed to expand our efforts. John pledged $150M and Ted chipped in $50M to start the Children’s Scholarship Fund.
Today, several hundred thousand children have received a quality education and were given a better opportunity than staying in a failing public school as a result of these private and public efforts. Thanks to the early involvement by politicians like Senator Joe Lieberman(D-CT), Congressman Floyd Flake(D-NY), Sec of Education Rod Paige, Governor Jeb Bush(R-FL), and Assemblywoman Polly Williams (D-WI); businessmen and women like Rooney, Leininger, DeVos, Walton, Dave Brennan, Bill Obendorph, and Forstmann, along with activists includingTim Erghott, Brother Bob Smith, Susan Mitchell, Dan McKinley, Clint Bolick, Zack Dawes, Howard Fuller, John Danielson, Kevin Teasley, Robert Auguire, Jeanne Allen, Greg Brock, John Schilling, Darla Romfro, and Virginia Walden-Fowler, the school choice movement is blessed and continues to make great strides in bringing about real education reform and providing parents with true parental choice in education.