The Devastating Effect of the Annenberg Grants; G. Lamb

THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY The Devastating Effect of the Annenberg Grants by Gary Lamb A t a White House ceremony in Decem ber 1993, retired publisher and diplo mat Walter Annenberg pledged $500 mil lion to public education over the next five years. Three national organizations will share $115 million of the grant, one of which is the newly founded Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, headed by Theodore Sizer. In addition, groups from the following four cities have secured $50 million matching grants: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadel phia. In general, the grant money is intended to support school-based renewal within the public school system. The focus of this article is not the possible effects the grant will have on public educa tion but the very real effects such a gift has on private education. Elementary and secondary private edu cation in the United States depends almost exclusively on private-sector money: indi viduals, corporations, and foundations. The public school system, of course, virtually monopolizes the tax money used for the education of children. But over the last twenty years or so public school advocates have not been satisfied with the vast depth of the public coffers. They have become increasingly effective in securing additional Mr. Lamb works at The Social Renewal Foun dation, Inc., Philmont, New York.

financial support directly from private sources. One of the techniques they use to garner this additional support is to play up how bad public schools are and then continually remind the business community that most of the future work force is educated in these failing schools. Just as the proponents of public education have zealously guarded public monies, they have now begun to view the private philan thropic dollar as their own. It has reached the point that if an individual or organiza tion publicly announces a contribution of a few thousand dollars to a privately funded voucher program to enable low-income families to send their children to a private school, public school supporters cry foul. They consider it a bad precedent that should not be duplicated because such contribu tions divert money and attention away from public education, which desperately needs all the help it can get.

Assuming no increase in philanthropic giving, when the insatiable public education system begins winning private gift money for its purposes, it takes money away from an important source of support for private education. The negative effect of Annenberg's grant on private education is not limited to the fact that he didn't award any of the $500 million to private schools. The grants are matching grants. For example, in order to 650 receive his $50 million grant, the New York City coalition must raise another $100 mil lion: $50 million from private sources and $50 million from public funds. This means that the private sector in the New York City area is going to be directly pressured to come up with an additional $50 million and taxed for yet another $50 million. One hun dred million dollars sucked out of the local community doesn't bode well for private education or any private-sector charitable cause.

Imagine for a moment-admittedly, we can only imagine this now-that Walter Annenberg decided the best thing he could do for the poor and disadvantaged children in this country was to donate $500 million to private education. Let's say that he offered supporters of private education in 20 Amer ican cities an average of $25 million each (amounts depending on population) in' matching grant money to set up privately funded programs that provide tuition-aid grants for low-income families. This is pre cisely the kind of opportunity private edu cation needs to overcome its image of elit ism and to show, if given the financial resources, it can provide the basis for ad dressing the educational needs of the poor and the rich alike where public education has failed. Just imagine what kind of media attention such a gift would have drawn, and what an opportunity it would also have been to promote parental choice and educational freedom as opposed to governmental reform programs.

I have not read or heard of any response on behalf of private education regarding the Annenberg grant. If a similar grant, even one of one-tenth the size, had been awarded to private education as a movement, every major newspaper in the country would have been filled with protests from the public education establishment. Public school advocates fear that private education might have the opportunity on a widespread basis to show it can address the needs of all types of children, including the 651 disadvantaged, in ways that the public schools cannot. They also are afraid that private education in general will gain rec ognition as a way of life. One of the reasons private education has not won over such benefactors as Annen berg is that there has been no coordinated presentation of private education as the real basis on which our nation's educational problems can be solved. While private ed ucation does not guarantee a good educa tion, it has a degree of independence and freedom from government control-charac teristics essential for good schooling.

Government funding is inefficient and in effective. This would also apply to any government-funded voucher program. It couldn't redistribute the money as effi ciently or as effectively as a foundation. Nor will government voucher programs be able to curb the government's desire to regulate and control education. Private voucher pro grams, however, are proving to be models of simplicity and efficiency. The private voucher programs have also shown it is possible in the private sector to provide money without taking away the freedom of the schools and that poor parents can make responsible decisions concerning their chil dren's education without the government's help or interference. Some say that private schools will always have to defend themselves. from state regu lation, regardless of whether they accept money from the government or not. This may be true, but in the long run the best and only defense for private education is finan cial independence from the government.

The strength of this defense will increase as the financial independence of individual schools and the size of the private school movement increases. The gradual transition from government-welfare schooling to inde pendent, private education can begin with many small endeavors. Let private sector money flow to private voucher foundations, directly to schools, or to families: by whatever means best suits the situation. D Potomac Principles Paying for Other People's Politics F or decades the federal government has been inexorably expanding its power, spending, taxing, and regulating almost at will. It was bad enough that Uncle Sam promiscuously redistributed people's in comes to meet one alleged public need or another. Even worse has been Congress' readiness to use taxpayer resources for explicitly political purposes. Washington currently provides advocacy groups with some $39 billion annually. Report Marshall Wittmann and Charles Griffin of the Heri tage Foundation: "Over the past forty years, Congress has helped create a vast patronage network of organizations that enjoy tax-preferred status, receive federal funds, and engage in legislative or political advocacy."