February 11, 2012
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Spring 1996 Vol. 5 No. 1
Educational Freedom Intiative
Sidebar for Interview with Milton Friedman
The Educational Freedom Initiative (EFI), which was filed on August 14, 1995, proposes The Educational Freedom Amendment to the California Constitution. Petitions are being circulated for signatures through March 21, 1996, with the target date for qualifying the initiative of November 5, 1996, Election Day. The initiative would do the following:
- Provide scholarships in return for parents not using a government service.
- Provide scholarships of sufficient size to draw new investors to all
neighborhoods.
• Kindergarten $1,000 per school year • First grade $1,500 per school year • Second grade $2,250 per school year • Grades 3–12 $3,500 per school year - Use the GI Bill disbursement method: The parent, not the school, is the scholarship recipient.
- Provide for savings accrued to parents during lower-cost primary grade years to be saved and applied to higher-cost secondary school tuition. (This induces education entrepreneurs to charge tuitions covering the cost and a reasonable profit.)
- Include by specific references those portions of the Education Code with which private schools currently comply, thereby refuting misconceptions that there are no “standards” for private schools.
- Provide protection for private schools in that it requires a supermajority for any state regulation of private schools.
- Use step-wise phase-in mechanism to ensure fiscal neutrality: The lower cost to educate K–2 students is reflected in reduced scholarships for those grades. (This allows the system to issue scholarships to kindergartners who were never in public school and thus do not, in a formal sense, represent “savings.”)
- Ensure widespread knowledge of an accurate savings figure, calculated and published annually by the state controller.
- Provide a mechanism to ensure that students get the maximum scholarships possible consistent with fiscal neutrality.
- Provide funds to cover those costs not reduced (fixed costs) when public school pupils transfer to private schools.
The above information is excerpted from “Brief Summary of the Educational Freedom Initiative.” Complete copies of the EFI are available from the Hoover Institution. Send inquiries and requests to Dr. Milton Friedman, c/o The Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA 94305, or to EFI, P.O. Box 611660, San Jose, CA 95161-1660.