Senatorial Candidate Tom Campbell Responds to Previous Blog Post

Last evening I wrote a blog post discussing the record of Tom Campbell regarding school vouchers.

Mr. Campbell has since graciously emailed me his more fully developed position on school vouchers which is copied from the email below. I am just as shocked as you are that Campbell responded to my blog post, but in any event, here is his response.

Dear Charles,

I write to offer a bit more context regarding Prop. 174. Your blog omitted the important fact that the election date slipped, as I explained below, and deadlines that just barely made sense when Prop. 174 was initially proposed became totally impracticable the next year. I stand by what I said when we last met: the way to proceed is with scholarships for the very needy, then, if they are a success, we can expand the program up the income ladder. If they fail, for want of quality facilities or whatever, we have not made a bet on the entire school system. Here's my reply to your posting.

With cordial regards,
Tom

Scholarships to allow children from lower-income families to go to alternatives to failing public schools are the right thing. As a Member of Congress, I strongly supported this approach for the school system over which Congress had authority: the District of Columbia. Majority Leader Dick Armey will testify to my strong support of the proposal. For California, I believe in the same thing: starting with the very poorest families. If scholarships for children with the least income result in their going to a better school and getting a better education, who can oppose them? So I recommend starting with the lowest 1% of income, and, if the scholarships work, we can expand to the lowest 5% of income, and so forth.

The biggest danger in the voucher proposal is attempting to go to 100% immediately. Like many good ideas, bad implementation can cause a voucher proposal to fail. Prop. 174 had two different incarnations. The first was when it was first proposed. It had a phase-in time that was fast, but achievable. However, opponents of school vouchers succeeded in keeping it from the ballot; litigation followed, and the outcome was that it was not allowed to appear on the ballot until a subsequent election. BUT the authors had written DATES into the initiative, not time periods. So, instead of saying, for instance, that the program would be phased in over five years, the original dates in the proposition were maintained. A barely workable time line then became an impossible time line. It was not responsible to shift 100% of the California school system to a voucher system on an immediate time line. Capacity in existing private schools was woefully inadequate, and the opposition had always claimed that "fly-by-night" schools would spring up, take voucher money, and produce inferior education. By succeeding in pushing out the election date for Prop. 174, and by its drafters' failure to anticipate that move, the opponents were able to make the proposal unworkable.