"Public schools are the last bastion of socialism in America." Do you believe that? If you do, Tim Draper is your man, because that's what he said on a San Francisco TV show a few weeks ago.
Draper is the big backer of Prop. 38, the voucher initiative on the November ballot. He knows that if Prop. 38 passes in California, it will be the go-ahead signal across the country, where the haters of public education are ready and waiting. The family founders of Amway Corp. are already promoting vouchers in Michigan. This November economist Milton Friedman and former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett are supporting vouchers in both Michigan and California. These voucher people mouth platitudes about kids and learning, but their agenda calls for the smashing of public education.
Draper opposes government regulation and therefore ignored advice and wrote Prop. 38 so that, if it passes, it essentially deregulates public schools. In plain English, that means that anyone at all can claim to run a school and get $4,000 from the state for every pupil suckered into enrolling. Accountability? Forget it. Your tax dollars could go to a "school" with no teaching or curriculum standards, no requirement to show how your money was spent, no degrees or credentials needed, no rules about what kids can be enrolled. I think you can safely say that if Prop. 38 passes it will lead to the most massive fraud ever in the history of the United States. Every con artist in the country will move to California and set up a "school." Prop. 38 is a con artist's dream, an educator's and taxpayer's nightmare.
Do you believe Draper wrote his proposal the way he did because he thinks it will advance education in California? What is this man really trying to do? Well, there are those who believe he is using Prop. 38 to get his name before the public for a possible 2002 run for governor. That rumor was a hot topic at the GOP convention in Philadelphia this summer; GOP State Chairman John McGraw mentioned Draper as a gubernatorial candidate after the convention. Draper is a Republican third-generation venture capitalist, a major fundraiser for George W. Bush. His father was head of the export-import bank under Ronald Reagan and ran against Congressman Pete McCloskey back in the 1960s. His grandfather helped coordinate military, political and economic policies of the Marshall Plan. Draper knows his way around the political map, and he should not be underestimated. Thus, it is not far-fetched that he would spend $40 million, as he has promised to do, to push passage of his extremist education agenda and, in the process, position himself to run for governor.
His run for political office isn't our concern right now; his run against public education certainly is. We educators aren't the only ones concerned, either. The Jarvis tax group has analyzed Prop. 38 and says it will raise taxes by billions of dollars. What it will do to our schools is even worse.
Our schools simply don't deserve the bad rap Draper and his allies have given them. American public schools are the most successful in the world. They integrate our very diverse population - they don't just talk the popular talk about how important and desirable diversity is, they make sure it is a reality for our kids, so we can have a common American culture.
We educate everyone, and I mean everyone. We graduate 86.7 percent of our high school seniors, making us No. 3 in the world. We send 65.6 percent of our graduating seniors to college, and that is No. 1 in the world. We're also No. 1 in the 31 percent of the population ages 25 to 35 who are college graduates. And we achieved those numbers despite the fact that the United States ranks only 14th among the 16 industrialized nations in K-12 school funding. California, despite having the seventh largest economy in the world last year, ranked a shameful 41st out of 50 states in K-12 school funding. If we did so well in spite of insufficient funding, just imagine what we could do if our schools were properly supported financially.
And just imagine what will happen if the little support our schools now receive is seriously diminished by the inroads of Prop. 38.
Our schools are worth fighting for, and teachers are the people who must lead the struggle against Prop. 38. That means staffing phone banks, writing letters to the editors, getting out the vote on Nov. 7, telling everyone that we must save our schools from Prop. 38. You are the ones who can do that, who can stop vouchers before they wreck public education. The 300,000 CTA members and our wonderful coalition partners can defeat this dangerous initiative if we all work hard. Draper can outspend us, but he can't out-organize or outwork us.
Make no mistake about it. We must, we can, and we will defeat Prop. 38.
