A long, slow revolution

But couldn't the decision be a sea change, the kind of thing that would even change the minds of Democrats in California?

I wouldn't go that far; definitely it is a sea change. I think the legitimacy issue is a big one. People are going to view vouchers in a different way from here on out. But in a political system where there are so many veto points in any legislative process, it's easy to block. So if a group has a lot of power, as the teachers unions do, they find it very easy to block. Almost all the time, they can block these proposals from becoming law.

Also, in initiative campaigns, most Americans are not very familiar with vouchers. They're basically positively inclined when vouchers are explained to them but they're not very familiar with the issue, and as a result, during an initiative campaign, the unions can spend millions of dollars on media blitzes that convince people that vouchers could undermine the public schools. This makes people uncertain, and they vote no. The unions hold a lot of cards here.

It sounds like you think that the Supreme Court decision won't actually have much of an effect.

No, I don't think that. I just think it's going to be a slow process. I think the unions are going to lose in the long run. We're going to have lots of voucher programs over the long haul. But in the short term, the unions, because of their huge power advantage, are going to defeat almost all proposals.

What do you mean by "the long run"? At what point will the unions start to really lose on this issue?

They've already lost in Milwaukee, in Cleveland, a couple times in Florida. They will have other losses in the immediate future, the next couple years. And these things accumulate. So when I look ahead, I'm thinking 10, 20, 30 or 40 years. It's just going to take time for them to lose their grip on this.

How will these programs look when they're first enacted? Will they be state- or citywide, or more targeted?

In the beginning, they'll all be targeted.

Toward whom?

The poor -- low-income minority parents who live in cities, and who are stuck right now with the worst schools.

How broad will the mandate for these people be? Do you think there will be any limits on religion, and how much money will parents likely get in voucher form?

Voucher programs can be designed in a variety of different ways. They tend to get stereotyped by the critics, but the fact is that almost everything is a variable. So, the size of the voucher: That can vary. It can be $1,000, it can be $10,000. In a state like New Jersey, they're spending $11,000 a kid. You can give people $11,000 vouchers. In Milwaukee, the vouchers are $5,000 but the public schools are spending $10,000 a kid.

You can have rules that the private schools have to abide by. They can have to have, say, random admissions. You can have rules for curriculum, for teacher qualifications, for student testing. These again are all variables. Some states or districts might want to have these things, and others might not want to have them. Also there will be tax credit arrangements as well. These things will probably involve giving tax credits to businesses, and the money will go into a private foundation and the private foundation will give out vouchers. In those cases, you might not have a system which rules so much as private scholarships that allow kids to go to school on money that would otherwise have gone to the government but never did.

So I think, through a variety of means -- not just voucher systems -- we're going to have much more choice, with a lot more kids going private. And in the beginning, all of them will be poor.

So what's the endgame? Are public schools destined for oblivion?

No, what we'll end up with is a mixed system. Think about the Postal Service. They carry packages, but so does UPS and Federal Express. We can send our packages through the Postal Service, or through UPS or Federal Express -- it's up to us. So the Postal Service is big but it's not as big as it would be -- right? -- if it weren't for UPS and Federal Express. They siphon off some of the business, a lot of the business actually. And it's not written in concrete or stone how big the Postal Service ought to be, or what percentage of the packages it ought to carry. I think that's the way it will be with the school system. A lot of people 20 to 30 years from now will still want to send their kids to regular public schools. But a lot more people will want to send their children to private schools on vouchers, or to charter schools. It will be mixed system that's partly a governmental system and partly a choice-driven system that relies on markets.

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