Key case in future of school choice

Even if it means working a third job, Anisa Brown-Whitby isn't about to let her son, Brandon, set foot in a Cleveland public school - no matter what the US Supreme Court decides on the school voucher case it is hearing tomorrow. "I know adults who graduated from Cleveland public schools who can't spell 'seven,' " she says. "That's not going to happen to Brandon."

If the court rules that Cleveland's pilot voucher program is unconstitutional, Brandon loses the $2,250 "scholarship" (or voucher) that is covering most of his tuition at Saint Vitus, a parochial school that fills 3 of 4 seats with voucher students.

A favorable ruling by the high court would encourage voucher initiatives across the country. Critics say it could also undermine public school systems at a time when other education reforms are just beginning to take hold in many cities, especially in Cleveland.

This troubled school system in the nation's heartland offers one of the clearest looks yet at how a voucher system impacts education in a major American city.

For years, voucher critics have argued that allowing students to use taxpayers' dollars to attend any school they wanted would end up hollowing out public schools. As the best students fled to private schools, the most troubled would stay in public schools.

Supporters of vouchers envisioned something nearly as utopian as the critics were apocalyptic: They saw choice acting as a goad to public schools to improve their academic standards.

As the Cleveland experiment shows, neither extreme has really come about. Moreover, some unintended consequences have surfaced, principally the overwhelming use of vouchers at private religious schools instead of at secular private schools or other public schools. This has helped sharpen the church-state debate that underlies the case the high court court will hear tomorrow.

Cleveland's voucher system arose after years of education decline, fueled in part by litigation over desegregation. Forced busing prompted white flight, then the exit of many middle-class black families from inner-city neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the public schools only seemed to get worse.

Achievement in Cleveland public schools sank so low that the courts ordered a state takeover in 1995. As part of their overhaul, the Ohio legislature enacted the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program to give poor families the option of sending children to other schools.

While the program was designed to allow students to attend alternative public schools as well as private and religious schools, public schools in districts just outside the city refused to accept voucher students. The voucher money, up to $2,500, wasn't enough to sustain new private schools. As a result, more than 99 percent of Cleveland's voucher students attend religious schools, according to a study by Policy Matters Ohio, a public policy research institute.

"What these numbers show is that there is not really a nonreligious option in the program," says Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio - a point that could prove decisive in the legal case, experts say.

Parents of voucher students at Saint Vitus, many of whom are nonCatholic, don't seem to mind. "People are not shopping for Catholicism," says Fannie Lewis, a Cleveland city councilwoman and strong supporter of vouchers. "They are looking where they can send their child that is safe and where there is a smaller classroom and they can get the attention they need for their child."

Back in the 1970s, African-American students didn't attend Saint Vitus, which was started in 1902 by the largest Slovenian parish in the country. Even crossing over Superior Avenue to this East Cleveland neighborhood was often an invitation for a fight.

But most of the Slovenian community left the neighborhood in the 1970s and '80s, and for a time it looked like the parish school would have to be closed. It was saved by proceed from Friday night Bingo and from vouchers. Of 200 children in this K-8 school, 175 are on vouchers.

Classrooms are tidy and energetic. Students wear uniforms, and quiet to a whisper when told to be quiet. Third graders pump their hands in the air for a chance to answer questions.

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