Customer Reviews

Break These Chains: The Battle for School Choice

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The flyleaf of the book features the following quote by Polly Williams: "We've got to break these chains before the system turns our children into slaves." If you haven't heard of her, Polly Williams is the African American mother and state legislator in Milwaukee that took on the failing urban public school system and has succeeded in improving the lives of her children, constituents, and maybe all of America. The school district in Milwaukee mandated where kids were allowed to go to school, and many were forced to be bused across town. Many parents applied, appealed, and reapplied to stay in their own neighborhoods, but were refused. Schools in their neighborhoods were poor, but bussing provided no advantage. "They sold us desegragation as a panacea, a placebo," Mikel Holt, the editor of the local newspaper declared. "For fifteen years we've been on a bus ride to nowhere." Daniel McGroarty describes just how bad the situation was--one student secretly took a hidden video camera into the urban school and recorded teachers reading magazines during class, students throwing spit wads, playing dice games and bragging about flunking, among other problems. But he also tells what can be done. Polly Williams wanted her children to attend the private school near to her home, and saw no reason that she shouldn't be able to somehow, even though she could not afford tuition. She formed a parents group, got articles published in the newspaper, began lobbying the legislature, and before she knew it she was arguing before the State legislature as an elected member of that body. She had to battle entrenched groups, supposedly advocates for the disadvantaged, who did everything they could to stop her from succeeding, for their own self-serving reasons. But she managed to join with conservatives and business people who wanted to see her improve education in Milwaukee, and got a limited voucher program started her district. The program started out with a proposal for 3,000 students to attend private schools. I read recently that it has now been expanded for 15,000 students. Scores are up, parents are much happier, and the Milwaukee program promises to be a successful model for choice programs all over the country. If this program can bring substantial improvements, in spite of its limited nature and many restrictions placed on it by the establishment, then there's real hope for solving education problems and lifting people out of poverty. It cannot be done by continually trying the same old reforms in the same old system though, like Grey Davis is trying to do in California. Citizens have to take hold, start having parent's meetings in their basements, and start pressuring legislators. Daniel MacGroarty tells us how Polly Williams and her friends did exactly that. I also recommend "School Choice:Why you Need It, How You Get It", by David Harmer, the author and promoter of Prop 174, the School Choice Initiative in California.