Race, public opinion, and school choice

In the sidebar, I have posted two of my publications dealing with school choice. The first, Racial Segregation in American Churches and its Implications for School Vouchers, analyzes the impact that the segregated state of Christianity in America might have on any widespread implementation of school vouchers. Basically, I suggest that, to the extent voucher money is made available with few strings attached, churches that have not established their own schools will have the incentive to do so, allowing more students the opportunity to select a school that is affiliated with the church they attend. In a relatively recent survey, 90% of whites said that their congregations had few or no blacks, and 73% of blacks said that their congregations had few or no whites. In light of these statistics, I wonder whether aligning educational affiliation more closely with religious affiliation is necessarily a good thing, at least in terms of racial diversity. Catholic schools in the inner city have been at the forefront of integrating student bodies, I realize, but up until now they have been competing primarily against failing public schools, not against an array of start-up schools operated by Protestant churches. (Tom Berg argues that my concern is somewhat misplaced in his article, Race Relations and Modern Church-State Relations, 43 B.C. L. Rev. 1009 (2002).)

The second piece, Public Opinion and the Culture Wars: The Case of School Vouchers, reviews a recent book by one of the school voucher pioneers, Terry Moe, and applauds what I view as his middle-ground approach to school choice. He favors vouchers on a limited basis for financially needy students. Moe crafts his policy recommendations based in significant part on public opinion data, and I posit that such an approach may hold promise for some of our more polarized "culture war" debates.

I welcome comments/feedback on either piece.

Rob