What the Voucher Victory Means

Tuesday, February 25th, 2003

What the Voucher Victory Means, by Sol Stern, gives some background on school vouchers, including this image of Ted Kennedy, anti-voucher, and David Brennan, pro-voucher:

Kennedy never found a public school good enough for his own kids, so why was he there in the front row, signaling support for the teachers’ union lawyers trying to force Cleveland kids back into their dismal neighborhood schools? [...] The public education industry, with 5 million employees and $350 billion in annual expenditures, has become one of the key Democratic political constituencies, supporting through its powerful unions those candidates willing to keep the Wall in place and throwing its considerable weight behind other liberal policy goals such as national health insurance and affirmative action.

Sitting near Kennedy was David Brennan, the spirited, six-foot-five, Stetson-topped entrepreneur and industrialist from Akron, Ohio, who’s been the prime mover behind the Cleveland voucher experiment. Like others in the school choice movement, Brennan joined up after some painful experiences with the public schools. During the 1980s, he discovered that many of the young workers in his manufacturing firms were functionally illiterate and innumerate. To help them — and to improve his workforce’s productivity — Brennan created “learning centers” at his facilities. These company schools quickly and inexpensively boosted the employees’ math and reading skills.

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