BEST SCHOOLS FOR CHILDREN STILL THE GOAL.

Byline: Michael Warder Local View

THE United States Supreme Court heard arguments recently for and against school vouchers in the Cleveland school system.

The Ohio State Supreme Court ruled in December of 2000 that such publicly funded vouchers violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution, since parents might choose to send their children to a religious school. The Supreme Court agreed to review the Ohio decision.

An overturning of the Ohio court will not usher in the one true path to America's educational utopia. Nor would such a ruling set the public schools on the course of ultimate extinction.

By the same token, a ruling against the Cleveland plan likely will not stop the choice movement.

Whatever the decision, the forces on each side of this decision have too much at stake to give up. The parents, teachers, school administrators and union officials represent powerful forces with rights, obligations and interests that will simply not go away.

Perhaps a better way to view the implication of the forthcoming decision is to think of it as allowing or disallowing some alternative education models, in states that wish, at a time when our K-12 public system is performing poorly.

Of course, by most reasonable measures there are some good public schools. But these are islands in a dismal sea of failure. Nationally, for instance, 68 percent of fourth-graders in public schools are not ``proficient'' in reading. In California, 85 percent of fourth-graders are not proficient. The public schools of Los Angeles County rank 57th out of 58 in the state.

These types of statistics, when combined with parental concerns for their children's safety, the time spent daily by some on long school bus rides, the growing problem of overcrowding, and the concern over the moral content of education, will not allow parents to stop trying other options.

About 10 percent of our nation's 50 million children attend private schools. Some go to the more expensive, upper crust variety, while others attend the surprisingly less expensive urban religious schools often subsidized by a church, temple or mosque.

In the last decade other options have emerged. About 2 percent of parents home school their children, and that number is growing. Further, about 1 percent of our children now attend charter schools, which have grown rapidly in the last 10 years.

In addition, several different states now allow parents and also corporations to take state tax credits toward scholarships for children to attend private schools. However the Supreme Court decides the Cleveland case, it is likely these options will grow.

About 20,000 children now participate in slightly different public school voucher programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Florida.

These different responses to a poor public education are part of the reason why public schools strive harder and smarter to improve.

Nonetheless, for the last decade there has not been much improvement, even as spending in public education has increased.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District there is some good news.

Last fall, for instance, it was reported that first-graders in the LAUSD scored above the national average in reading and spelling for the first time in decades. It was a jump of 20 percentile points from two years ago. Good. Still, if the national reading levels are so poor, there is a long way to go. And what about the other 11 grades?

Further, even if the average performance level increases in the LAUSD, there are 800 schools. A performance increase in the average could well be the result of improvements in a smaller number of schools while others languish year after year. Many of the parents who send their children to these particularly low-performing schools will continue to look for options.

In the meantime, across America close to 100,000 children from low- income families now receive partial tuition scholarships so their children can attend schools chosen by the parents. Foundations, corporations and individuals fund the scholarships. The staggering fact here is that their average household income of recipients is about $21,500 and the average scholarship is about $1,200. The parents pay, on average, another $1,200 on the tuition.

These last statistics are an indicator that many parents, even parents on the edge of survival, will sacrifice much to seek educational options until the public schools improve.

Perhaps the strongest moral imperative of parents is the nurturing and education of their children. Parents such as these cannot wait for what seems the distant endgame of public school reform.