Ted's Excellent Intentions

When good things are done by rich people, we tend to wonder why. Dallas Cowboys tycoon Jerry Jones, who says he has people highlight passages in books for him so that he doesn't have to read any, gave $1 million to the Library of Congress last Wednesday. Financier George Soros spent some $2 million last year toward making marijuana legal for medical use. Now comes leveraged-buyout mogul Ted Forstmann, who together with Wal-Mart heir John Walton is spending $100 million to give 40,000 scholarships to disadvantaged children who want an alternative to public school. This week the Children's Scholarship Fund will announce that it has been besieged with applications for the $600 to $1,600 annual stipends, even though strapped parents will have to come up with an average of $1,000 themselves. And that's not the only success Forstmann has scored on this front. Last year's smaller program, for 1,000 students in Washington, produced enough heartwarming success stories of kids now thriving to fill a season of Touched by an Angel.

So what's wrong with this picture? Nothing, as far as it goes. Sending hundreds of disadvantaged kids to superior schools is better than building another mansion in Aspen. And throwing money at a problem, contrary to popular wisdom, generally does help solve it. As Forstmann strides into the room like the Master of the Universe he is (he has made a fortune buying up Gulfstream Aerospace, Dr Pepper and General Instrument, among others), I'm prepared to give the attention due a dealmaker bringing his can-do attitude to social problems. Remember the appeal of Ross Perot's tinkering under the hood of government? "You get mediocrity in a monopoly when the worst teacher is treated like the best," says Forstmann. "Introducing competition will shock the education establishment and make parents more responsible. It will weed out the bad schools in favor of the good ones."

Forstmann is investing in education because it's where he believes he can get the most "leverage" for his investment. For example, he points out that his top $1,600 stipend goes a long way toward the average Catholic school tuition, which is roughly $2,000 to $5,000 annually. I agree with Forstmann on the magic of Sister Mary William and company. If I'd gone to my neighborhood school instead of the parish school, it's doubtful I would have gone to college on scholarship or have the life I now do, the result of diagramming hundreds of sentences and writing countless essays under boot-camp conditions. But there's a difference: no one thought non-Catholic taxpayers should subsidize that choice or that money should be taken away from the public schools.

Which is what these scholarships, once they stop coming out of Forstmann's pocket, will ultimately do. For then they will be vouchers, which set off alarms because they involve tinkering with what Jefferson envisioned as the "gratis" common school, the one institution that could make good on the Constitution's promise of equality. According to a 1997 Gallup poll, most Americans are happy with public schools. Few parents in Greenwich, Conn., would take their child out of its fine public schools for a voucher of $1,600. But in inner-city Hartford, many parents would sensibly embrace them, which would leave the public schools there in even worse shape. And where will those parents clutching vouchers go? Not to Andover, which costs more than $20,000 annually. Not to the suburbs, where many may resent vouchers as busing by other means. Poor parents could be fighting to get into too few existing schools and end up in cobbled-together, strip-mall operations of dubious quality. But Forstmann says, "Public schools will get better as they are forced to compete. Keep politics out of the equation, and resistance to alternatives will melt away."

That's like saying take other passengers off commercial airliners, and we'll all be flying around in roomy comfort like Forstmann on his Gulfstream. Politics is at the heart of the debate over who gets what and who pays for it--whether a free nonsectarian school is one of the gifts of being born in America.

Unlike the ferociously certain Forstmann, I end up in the mushy middle. I don't want to keep any kid from getting out of a bad school now, but I am worried that we won't be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again if we try the wrong experiment. Forstmann, who has a history of good works, is doing good here by playing out the idea that the poor shouldn't be a captive audience for bad schools. Forstmann has demonstrated the demand side. Perhaps, as a Master of the Universe, he'll move on to the supply side next and save us all from storefront McSchools, which are sure to follow the money. Or better yet, he could just keep the scholarships flowing. That's the best way to keep politics out of it.