The voucher canard.

Last November, the Supreme Court let stand a Wisconsin school voucher program that allowed students to pay for private school tuition with public monies. The seemingly never-ending battle over the future of education appeared to have taken another turn.

Just a few weeks before the Court's action - or more accurately, inaction, since the justices simply decided to let an existing program continue - I attended a parent-teachers night at an urban high school that enrolls the kind of students often argued about in the voucher education debate.

Instead of the horror stories one hears about such places, this particular school is an obvious success story. Interested parents waited on long lines to speak to polite and helpful teachers. The scene was a picture of parental and professional concern about education.

This is despite the fact that the school is located in the heart of an urban area with a reputation for toughness and occasional crime. It has an overwhelmingly minority student body - 82 percent - a factor often cited as an excuse by leaders of failing schools.

But this school is, by all objective standards, an overwhelming success. Ninety-eight percent of graduates go to college; there is a 95-percent daily attendance rate; and the combined average SAT score is 1,144, a figure that would make better-financed suburban schools proud. I would bet that even the intelligent readers of this journal, if they care to remember back that far, would probably average less than that SAT score.

Given the nature of this magazine, the punch line of this anecdote would tend to point toward one direction: that this is a Catholic school. But it's not. The school is Brooklyn Technical High School, a New York City public institution, operated by the same Board of Education often cited as a moribund, bungling bureaucracy in countless newspaper and television news reports which have become staples of New York City journalism. So what's the secret of this success story? The answer is both simple and complex.

One, the school offers a challenging curriculum, including basic requirements in mathematics and science. By graduation, students have to pass biology, chemistry and physics, foreign language, four years of English, and social studies, among other requirements.

But the other factor may be even more important. The student body at Brooklyn Tech is equipped to handle a challenging curriculum. Although a public school, Brooklyn Tech is selective; only those who score near the top of a citywide entrance examination taken by eighth graders gain admission. The entrance exam is an annual New York City ritual. Tens of thousands of students line up for blocks around Stuyvesant High School in lower Manhattan in the cold to compete in the entrance examination for the city's three high schools which require it for admission. Those schools - Brooklyn Tech and the even more selective Stuyvesant and Bronx Science - have stellar academic reputations.

It is quite a scene. Vans from Korean churches and other immigrant community groups from throughout the city drop off their youthful passengers, who have completed tutoring programs to prep for the exam. It is no adolescent lark. The tension on the faces of the eighth graders is palpable. The students know the exam is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to escape from the clutches of neighborhood public high schools with meager reputations. Ultimately, the success of those three high schools is largely the result of the selectivity of the admission process. The same, it needs to be said, is true for the success of many Catholic high schools.

This recognition comes from someone who has gladly sent his children at various times to Catholic schools in appreciation for the moral and religious truths promulgated there. Still, I'm more than a bit uneasy about the kind of gloating that takes place about the problems of public schools in some Catholic education circles and in those sectors which trumpet vouchers as the cure-all for what ails education. Selectivity - whether that be by formal exam, the extended effort which tuition costs put on parents, or even the inclination to sign a child up for a voucher program - is a large part of what makes successful Catholic and public high schools.

I'm not saying this is evil or untoward. It is, in fact, quite natural. No responsible parents would do otherwise for their children. I'm glad that the Supreme Court is willing to let the Wisconsin voucher program continue. But the big issue in education is really about what to do with those children who don't pass selective exams or have parents with the inclination or ability to pay tuition. It's those children who are the most at risk of failure. It's hard to gauge if voucher programs will ever reach them in the numbers necessary to make a real impact on this country's education crisis.

Despite the privatization mania, public schools are here to stay. The question is whether they will become backwaters for the forgotten or places where all parents can be proud to send their children.

Peter Feuerherd is a frequent Commonweal contributor.