Funding benefits Judaism, advances multiculturalism

Many years ago as headmaster of the Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Philadelphia, I was invited to participate in a Jewish Community Relations Council-sponsored debate on school vouchers. Naive lamb that I was, I agreed without realizing that my audience would be made up of very liberal Jews almost unanimously opposed to my pro-voucher position.

What hurt the most was that in most other things I, too, consider myself a liberal-thinking individual. A quality education for all children in America is the single best way to ensure a progressive society with equal opportunity for our increasingly diverse population. Indeed, the sea change in American culture and national self-understanding at the end of the 20th century is a recognition of the rights, aspirations and sense of self expressed by the multicultural rainbow of our ever-changing citizenry.

So, I am a firm believer in the voucher concept not only to support Jewish day school education, but to reshape and reinvent American education as well. The current public school system is a product of the industrial age based on a factory model, with highly structured and hierarchical management approaches. Its goal was cultural, ethnic and religious homogenization. At the end of the 20th century that factory system is incapable of meeting changing social, economic and interpersonal structures and needs. The great rallying cry heard across America is "school-based management." That's another way of saying, "let's make the public schools more like independent schools" -- each controlling its own destiny and run by its own faculty, administration and parent body.

Charter school legislation is the next logical step in that march toward more competition, independence and constituency-based school structures. So as the American educational structure retools itself to a more entrepreneurial, learner-centered enterprise, allowing parents to choose the kind of education they want for their children doesn't injure the American dream, it furthers it.

The ability of intensive Jewish day school education to produce committed and knowledgeable Jews is no longer a subject of debate in any segment of the organized Jewish movements. Day schools have mushroomed in growth and enrollment. More and more families who a decade or so ago would never have considered Jewish "parochial" schools are drawn to a form of education that seeks to embrace the whole child, integrating secular and religious learning as part of a complete educational package. A religious education integrated with a strong general education is not unAmerican, but stems from a realization that the people most comfortable in the American salad bowl of multiculturalism are those most rooted in their own origins.

The unexpected tragedy of this revolutionary readiness of liberal Jews to send their children to Jewish day schools is the growing exclusion of many families because of escalating costs. High-quality independent schools are expensive to run, though they are generally cheaper than equivalent public schools. It is not within the realm of possibility for the Jewish community to raise the resources necessary to make day school education accessible to all. In addition to tuition, which averages close to $5,500 per year in Jewish elementary day schools, there are enormous capital costs for building new schools as well as funds needed to improve the quality of existing schools. And at least 30 percent of families currently require one-third to one-half tuition assistance per child. Funding won't come easily from existing Jewish philanthropic structures that are strapped to replace reduced federal allocations to health and welfare services, and must also contribute to synagogue schools, while still maintaining historic commitments to Israel and world Jewry.

At a time when many Jewish parents are heartbroken at their inability to handle day school tuition, inner urban minorities grow more and more frustrated with the failure of school reform to make a substantial difference in their children's lives. According to the Center for Educational Reform, public school expenditures in 1996-97 were $265 billion. If we conservatively estimate 5 percent of the total as designated for various reform projects, the cost is in the billions of dollars. With public school per capita expenditures averaging $6,500 and private school $4,000, a voucher system offering several thousand dollars per child could substantially enhance the ability of minority cultures to survive in our society of competing values. (Very shortly, if not already, there will be more Muslims than Jews in the United States, so we will become even more of a minority.) We should endorse a policy that permits parents to make choices for their children. For urban minorities, that might mean charter or church-sponsored schools paid for with vouchers. For Jews, it means having the same resources to offset rising costs of quality day school education.

The argument that American values and democracy will topple with state funding of vouchers is not convincing. The fact is, substantial state monies already go to private education. During my 16-year tenure as head of a Pennsylvania day school, we received tens of thousands of dollars per year for instructional materials in general studies and "cultural" materials in Jewish studies.

Americans are also coming to realize the problems created by a public school system afraid to teach particular values to children lest someone's values be offended. Independent schools can teach the values for living that will strengthen our children's commitment to justice, equality and fairness, not weaken them. If we are successful in Jewish education, our students learn that all people are created in God's image, and that Jews must take personal responsibility for all humanity.

The billions of dollars spent trying to reform and re-reform the old industrial school model have largely resulted in a waste of money. So why not let parents decide what works? Those who wish to create strong, robust, effective independent schools modeled on the traditional public school may spend their vouchers to do so, and those who wish alternative models of education based on religious heritage or ethnic culture will have the resources to do that as well.