Along with that, we see in California, for example, an approval of a measure to lower the vote threshold to pass local school bonds. Now that sounds like a technicality, perhaps, to many people, but it's a very important decision. Because as it stood previously, the state regulations made it very difficult for a community to pass a levy to raise money to support their schools. Now local communities are able to pass a levy to raise local funds, and they can raise local property taxes now when they need to.

There was one other decision made in California that I found interesting. Along with the other two propositions, there was also a decision to require treatment for low level drug offenders, instead of sending them to prison. To some people, that may appear to be a completely separate issue, but I see it as closely related to the vouchers issue for the following reason: It is no secret to anybody in California or the rest of the United States that a vastly disproportionate number of the young men who are sent to jail for low-level drug offenses are black and Hispanic.

Many of us have noticed that in the past 10 years there has been a lot of political support for two developments: One was tightening the budgets of the public schools. The other was putting more money into the prison system.

These two policies together, along with the fashionable policy called "zero tolerance," have made it tougher and tougher for schools to provide the resources to keep inner-city kids in school and educate them in small classes with good, well-paid teachers. And at the same time, it has made it much more likely that they would be ejected from school for small discipline infractions -- like rudeness, even. These are small things that we never would have been tossed out of school for in the past.

And then if these children were involved in minor drug offenses, they would end up in prison soon after. (I don't mean to imply that drugs is the reason they are most often thrown out of school.)

These policies have had the net effect of sending a message to low-income communities, especially black and Hispanic communities. This message is: We're not going to spend much money on your schools, but we're going to get tougher on you. We're going to give you more exams. We're going to have stricter rules about "appropriate behavior," so we can throw you out more easily. Then if you're out in the street, and you fall into petty drug crimes, we're going to put you away for a long time. We're not going to give you therapy. We're not going to educate you and we're not going to help you recover from the illness of drug addiction. We're going to spend less on your school, and more on your prisons.

These kids don't behave as we stipulate. These kids don't live up to the gospel according to William Bennett. Then we have prison cells waiting for them.

The three outcomes I'm referring to in California [vouchers, school bonds and drug treatment] seem to me to represent a very hopeful, and from my point of view, beneficial new trend. Who knows if that trend will carry to the rest of the nation? I do know that there are people in New York state who are also looking seriously at the very long mandatory prison sentences for low-level drug offenses. I suspect that New York will follow the pattern of California in that respect.

I do know that there is a great deal of public sentiment in New York state right now to put a lot more money in the public schools. And there is very little support for vouchers in New York. I know that Hillary Clinton is passionately against vouchers, and very much in favor of greater investment in urban education, in education for kids across the board.

If you can read anything into these referenda and electoral victories in states like California, Michigan and New York, I would read into it: a diminution of the severe punitive tone of public policy towards inner-city kids, a diminution in the mean-spirited tone that's prevailed ever since the mid-1980s. And a greater willingness to support public education and rely less on retrograde punitive approaches.

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