By Daniel Pryzbyla

Whether or not all participants in the private voucher, charter and religious school movement realize it - their path is not only educational, but profoundly political. To deny this is hypocritical. "But it's for the children!" Yeah, like popsicles.

At the onset, they thought they could succeed on the pure merits of their "marketplace" privatization scheme originally put forth by private voucher guru Milton Friedman, the renowned economics professor at University of Chicago . However, the movers and shakers pushing private vouchers and charter schools realized the inherent difficulties playing real competitive capitalism. It ain't as easy as Business 101 implies. Soon, they could hear the groans on the front lines in the Milwaukee and Cleveland central-city impoverished areas populated by mostly families of color, the original voucher program startups. "Hey! This costs money to start a private school." Two significant ingredients had to be included to their privatizing education recipe - private funding and religion. "Religion"?

What better way to dampen the opponents' spirits against education privatization than including the religious trump card? Adversaries would be scorned as being heathens! But that would also mean new legal challenges because of long-standing political acceptance of "separation of church and state" laws. And not all religions would be jumping for joy either - fearing intrusion of government rules and regulations that could come with it. This would prove politically risky. Sure, but their privatization efforts in Milwaukee and Cleveland were seen as helping poor inner-city families of color have a "choice" in education. It was also significant that inner-city church leaders wouldn't likely protest religious inclusion. Nor would complaints come from the larger denominations that included members in the metropolitan areas whose schools in the inner-cities were also in financial need and repair. Religious voucher inclusion would at least neutralize these constituencies - and it did. Seeing this bulk of political support, many white liberal public education advocates also became tongue-tied. Politicians, not immune from their religiosity, began squirming uneasily. "Well, the program was restricted, and it didn't personally affect other state public school districts," they rationalized. Private voucher think tank political strategists and their lieutenants had reason to celebrate.

Voucher proponents in both cities were later successful in court challenges, including their state Supreme Courts' decisions to allow religious inclusion in the private voucher programs. In February 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the Cleveland private religious school voucher case. By now, pro-voucher supporter Republican George W. Bush had been elected president. With private vouchers originally included in the new No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Title 1 education bill, Democrats and a handful of Republicans fought to exclude private vouchers from the education law and finally succeeded. Thinking they had weathered the storm, few educators had bothered to study the details of NCLB draconian high-stakes testing and adequate yearly progress (AYP) timeline consequences aimed at the nation's poverty-laden, large central city public school districts. State superintendents that did their homework and objected were chastised by the new Secretary of Education Roderick Paige, an African American. Because a vast majority of public school students affected by NCLB were students of color and poor, opponents were also tagged with being accomplices of "soft bigotry" in any alleged "failing" city public schools. "Poverty is no excuse!" screamed its wealthy white, privatization think tank gurus. With the racial card being played and new NCLB high stakes testing pedagogy used to dismantle "failing" socioeconomic distressed public schools, it silenced public education staffs and their supporters, including unions. "You live by the test, prepare to die by the test," became the anti-public education crowd's NCLB Golden Rule.

The pro-voucher political movement did not employ protest demonstrations in the streets to garner support, but instead relied on strategizing behind closed doors of conservative "think tanks." Founded in 1973, the highly-touted Heritage Foundation's initial funding came from Joseph Coors of the Beer Empire, and Richard Mellon Scaife, heir of the Mellon industrial and banking fortune. According to its mission statement, "The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institute - a think tank - whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense." The "conservative public policies based on free enterprise," meant, of course, dismantling public education in favor of tax financed private voucher schools instead. According to public sources, between 1985 and 2001 the foundation received $42.5 million from10 other conservative foundation supporters - including 3 separate Scaife Foundations, John M. Olin Foundation, Inc. and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee .

"These visionaries are among the great conservatives of our time," wrote Adam Meyerson, editor of the Heritage Policy Review, in its Jan. - Feb. 1999 issue, titled "A Model of Cultural Leadership - The achievements of privately funded vouchers." He was heralding J. Patrick Rooney, Educational Choice Charitable Trust in 1991 in Indianapolis , IN ; James R. Leininger, Children's Education Opportunity Foundation in 1992 in San Antonio, TX; Ted Forstmann, co-founder of the investment firm Forstmann Little & Co and John Walton, a Wal-Mart heir; co-founded the Children's Scholarship Fund in 1998; and Michael S. Joyce, president of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; financing Partners Advancing Values in Education (PAVE) scholarship program in Milwaukee, WI.

"The privately-funded voucher movement they have built is a model of strategic philanthropy," wrote Meyerson, also vice president for educational affairs at Heritage Foundation at the time. "It is also one of this decade's most dramatic examples of effective political and cultural leadership.You do not have to wait for the politicians to advance a conservative reform agenda. You can take leadership into your own hands.

You can create the institutions that will reshape the political and cultural landscape; the politicians will respond."

Praising Michael Joyce's 15 years of leadership at the Bradley Foundation, Meyerson wrote "he has achieved the greatest public policy success of any of the private voucher philanthropies." Milwaukee 's privately-funded voucher movement "is building a powerful constituency for school choice; black and Hispanic parents.Privately-funded voucher programs are focusing public attention on the merits of Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Muslim, Jewish, and other religious schools." Praising its broad-based appeal, Meyerson stated, "A broad multiracial, bipartisan coalition including Gov. Tommy Thompson, Mayor John Norquist, former Milwaukee public schools superintendent Howard Fuller, Messmer (Catholic) high school principal Brother Bob Smith, talk show host (Charlie) Sykes, and Milwaukee Community Journal (African American weekly newspaper) editor Mikel Holt, kept up the drumbeat for school choice." That, they did. Charlie Sykes's popular Milwaukee right-wing radio talk show echoes the same themes as his hero Rush Limbaugh's national radio conservative bombardments.

Heritage also has a web site, Townhall.com. It boasts being "the premier online conservative forum with over 90 member groups and over 60 conservative columnists." Some of the familiar writers include Linda Chavez, Ward Connerly, Ann Coulter, Thomas Sowell, Robert Novak and Charles Krauthammer. Another member of the Heritage team is John Stossel, the writer and producer of "Stupid in America ," the biased, anti-public school documentary on ABC News "20-20" in January this year.

Listing Michael Joyce as one of its 5 notable foundation "visionaries" was not surprising. (He recently died February 24, 2006 at age 63 after a long battle of liver disease.) Joyce had been the former head of the conservative Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee , WI for 15 years before his early retirement in June 2001. Before coming to Bradley, he was chief of the conservative John M. Olin Foundation from 1979 - 1985. His style could be gruff at times. Originally quoted in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, his brief explanation of approach was repeated by reporter Alan J. Borsuk in his obit essay February 26, 2006. "My style was the style of the toddler and the adolescent: fight, fight, fight, rest, get up, fight, fight, fight. No one ever accused me of being pleasant. I made a difference. It was acknowledged by friend and foe." But Joyce was also known by personal friends to be a heavy drinker. Maybe he needed it to assert this type self-aggrandizing bravado.

"If there was a Hall of Fame for right-wing philanthropists and their facilitators - and who knows, the Heritage Foundation just might establish such an institution some day - one of its first inductees would undoubtedly be Michael Joyce," wrote Bill Berkowitz for Mediatransparency.com March 3, 2006. "He was the pioneering force behind the privatization of welfare - funding initiatives that led to the Wisconsin Works program in Wisconsin - and private school vouchers - which is experiencing a rebirth through the Bush administration's recently proposed budget." From 1985 until 2003 ( 2 years after he left the foundation) Bradley spread its money liberally - handing out $500 million, noted Berkowitz. The top 5 recipients were Partners Advancing Values in Education, Inc., (PAVE) Milwaukee - $17,536,419; American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research - $15,892,797; The Heritage Foundation - $13,283,602; Milwaukee School of Engineering - $10,794,119; and Marquette University in Milwaukee - $10,102,100.

True to past grants for PAVE, in its most recent report of grants in 2004, Bradley Foundation awarded a $2,932,500 grant to Partners Advancing Values in Education, Inc "to support development of a loan program for community schools." It also made 2 grants to Marquette University - one to the Institute for the Transformation of Learning located at Marquette for $250,000 "to support general operations." The Institute is still under the direction of Howard Fuller, who received his PhD at Marquette , to help facilitate Milwaukee private voucher and charter programs. Fuller also recently created his own foundation, The Dr. Howard L. Fuller Education Foundation. Bradley awarded it $25,000 "to support a neighborhood outreach project." The Fuller Foundation has received similar $25,000 grants from Bradley the previous 2 years. Messmer Catholic high school in Milwaukee , a voucher school with a predominantly African American student population, was awarded a $250,000 grant "to support general operations." Brother Bob Smith, its former principal, now is on the Bradley Foundation Board of Directors in capacity as Director of Educational and Formational Services for the central offices of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

Political influence with these Bradley Foundation connections proved useful in the recent state legislative agreement to increase the number of private and religious students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) from about 15,000 students to 22,500 students. Because the current program had no required oversight for "choice school accreditation," a new system was applied. MPCP schools would need (a) "accreditation by the Wisconsin North Central Association, the Wisconsin Religious and Independent Schools Accreditation, Independent Schools Association of the Central States, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University, or any other organization recognized by the National Council for Private School Accreditation; or (b) be approved for scholarship funding by Partners Advancing Values in Education (PAVE)." Still again, political opportunism knows no boundaries.

Democrat Representative Annette "Polly" Williams, the architect of the original MPCP in 1990 to enable poor children to attend private school, voted against the bill. According to an AP story in the March 3, 2006 Waukesha Freeman newspaper, Williams was upset with eliminating the residency requirement and increasing the federal poverty level requirement from 175 percent to 220 percent. Currently, a family of 4 making up to $29,025 can qualify. The new legislation boosts it to $42,570. "This was not designed for middle-income families," said Williams. True.

But there are new players in the voucher marketplace now - including money-grubbers.