The fight over mandated contraceptive services has lessons for school choice

yes Adam Emerson / February 9, 2012

The struggles between the Catholic Church and the Obama Administration go beyond the recent fight over mandated contraceptive services, and each scrap reveals the fault lines that inevitably surface when Washington tries to tinker with the complex machinery that administers our health, education, and social services.  

His attempt to find common ground with adult interests in public education has led Obama to policy positions that oppose school vouchers.

President Obama has historically understood that it’s the diversity of our communities that strengthens the greater good, but as New York Times columnist David Brooks noted this week, Obama has governed with a “technocratic rationalism” in his presidency that strives for uniformity and common effort. Thus, his attempt to engender comprehensive healthcare has roiled Catholic hospitals and social agencies that must support health insurance coverage that violates a fundamental doctrine of faith. And his attempt to find common ground with adult interests in public education has led Obama to policy positions that oppose school vouchers in general and the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship in particular.

Let’s leave aside the polarizing nature of voucher programs for a moment and consider a report released this week from our friends at the Hoover Institution that ably recognizes the fault lines and appreciates what Washington does well, and what it does not. The Koret Task Force on K-12 Education has called for a redefined federal role in education, one “founded on two principles that have served the nation exceedingly well for our entire history: federalism and choice.” Embracing neither the top-down requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act nor the devolution of absolute authority to states and school districts, the task force has turned to the organizing principle of choice and a system that offers lots of quality education options.

This calls on the federal government to employ its strongest attributes, namely its ability to gather data and information on school performance for families to consider when making the choice, and it calls for “backpack” funding that follows the child and is weighted to compensate for the higher costs that come with the education of high-need students.

Elaborating further, the task force report states:

“One great virtue of a ‘competitve’ system—a choice system offering lots of alternatives—is that, even if no schools actually respond to the competition, the schools that are providing a higher quality education will still have an advantage, the bad schools will lose students and money, and students will have options that prevent them from being trapped in schools that are not serving them.”

A model like this might be a heavy lift politically, but it does recognize that there is, to use Brooks’ phrase, “a think ecosystem of positive influences” that would have the ultimate effect of matching children with more options than they currently have—public or private.

It enhances the charter school sector while demanding more transparency from private providers than our current slate of voucher or tax credit scholarship programs currently provide. But in return, it weaves private and parochial schools into the fold of our social fabric. Obama’s modus operandi until now has been to favor giving parents the power to “vote with their feet” while promulgating rules and policies that keep the universe of choices discreet and focused on a common cause.

The federal government and its executive branch—no matter the party—have a long history of providing support and aid to Catholic social agencies that carry out a secular mission. While that support has existed to varying degrees, and perhaps has crumbled in the current administration, these agencies have always been accountable for their services. Now that the contraception mandate has tightened the tension between government and faith in the public square, it has helped to illuminate other examples of Washington’s tendency to dampen diversity with good intentions.

Category: Charters & Choice