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One of the charges by opponents of school choice is that it is a right-wing, far-right and/or conservative conspiracy to destroy the public schools. Whether that is the result of ignorance, or a deliberate distortion you may decide for yourself, but it certainly is inaccurate. Here are some of the "conspirators":

"I favor the creation of a tax system where parents would be able to receive a tax credit when their children attend approved private schools." Hubert Humphrey, 1968, quoted by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in Educational Choice: A Catalyst for School Reform, a Report of the Task Force on Education of the City club of Chicago, August , 1989

A coalition of minority leaders and parents is seeking to have Congress create a voucher program for 2,000 low-income students in Washington, D.C. Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., head of King for America, and a leader of the coalition has said "An ocean of choice lifts all boats. We need not rescue just a handful of children; we can save them all." The Wall Street Journal, June 12, 1997

"To my knowledge, ours is the only industrial democracy in the world that does not routinely provide aid to nonpublic schools as part of its educational system. This is a problem unique to the United States. That fact alone says something, I think...In the late 1960s, educational vouchers were generally regarded as a progressive proposal. All liberal faculty members would wish to be associated with it...But within the space of a decade this proposal has somehow been transformed into a ‘bastion of white privilege and exclusivity.'...I do not think that the prospect of change in this area is enhanced by the abandonment of pluralism and choice as liberal ideas and liberal values. If that happens it will present immense problems for a person such as myself who was deeply involved in this issue long before it was either conservative or liberal. And if it prevails only as a conservative cause, it will have been a great failure of American liberalism not to have seen the essentially liberal nature of this pluralist proposition." Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), "What the Congress Can Do When the Court is Wrong," Edward McGlynn Gaffney, Jr., Ed., Private Schools and the Public Good, Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1981

Moynihan was co-sponsor of a bi-partisan bill in the early 1970s which would have provided support for parental choice, with tax credits or tuition payments to private schools. It almost passed. Moynihan said the reason it lost was because opponents distrusted educational pluralism and supported the monopoly of the public school bureaucracies and who hid these views behind real or imagined constitutional questions. Educational Choice, August 1989

In Detroit last year, mostly black members of the clergy joined with parents and community leaders to form the Detroit Partnership for Parental Choice which is backing a state constitutional amendment to be placed on the ballot next year. Anita Nelam, a group spokeswoman, said "I don't know about the Christian right, but I am an African-American progressive Democrat, and I support school choice." Education Week, June 24, 1998

"The more I hear about the voucher idea, the better I like it...The current public school monopoly is just another example of how we take away from poor people opportunities to make their own choices and help themselves escape from poverty." Columnist Clarence Page, August 2, 1987

"I support using vouchers and seeing where it takes us...now's the time to take risks to see if we can improve America's schools. Let parents make a choice about whether they want their children going to a public school or some competing educational opportunity." Colin Powell, quoted in an interview published in NEA Today, April 1997, the official publication of the National Education Association.

"I'm stymied and stunned oftentimes by members of the political world, specifically some of our national leaders in my party - Kennedy, Cuomo, et al - who never sent their children to the public schools of Boston or New York but came out foursquare against vouchers. People that have an opportunity to write a check have a voucher in their pocket. What they don't want are children whose parents you have meet today, children who are in the classrooms in this school, children who are in this neighborhood and this inner city, no one want s them to have a checkbook. Ladies and gentlemen you are the checkbook to opportunity. Come with me to Common Pleas Court and watch these children going to jail, one after another...Absent an education we have them for life. There's a social consequence to inaction in education and we've been paying it for too many generations. This is one program. Not the panacea. Not the cure. But it is one the legislature absolutely must learn from." Ohio State Senator Patrick Sweeney (D-23, Cleveland), testifying before an Ohio House Education Committee hearing at HOPE Central Academy (a school created specifically to accept students funded by the Cleveland Scholarship and Tuition Program), April, 1997

"We've got to stop having a knee-jerk opposition to school vouchers and charter schools...For all the African- American officials that have come out against vouchers, you will never find my name..." Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 13, 1994

"Education is a people issue. It really doesn't matter whose in the White House, or the state house, or courthouse, or city hall. It doesn't matter who controls all those houses. It matters who controls our house. Parents have got to be in control of their own houses and their own children. Parents make those decisions and then all those other houses respond and respect what parents what for their children." Wisconsin State Rep. Annette "Polly" Williams, (D-Milwaukee, and twice chairman of the Wisconsin Jesse Jackson for President committee) sponsor of the state law creating the voucher program in Milwaukee. Educational Choice, a videotape produced by CEO America, San Antonio, Texas, 1992

"A survey of 2,732 teachers by the National Center for Education Information shows...53% say schools would be better if students could attend the school of their choice." USA TODAY, August 28, 1990

A survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC, which specializes in racial issues, found African-Americans are more pessimistic about public education than whites. Their support of vouchers increased 19% in one year, from 1996 to 1997, and reached 86.5% among those 26-35 years old. The New York Times, January 5, 1998