My friend Maurice Clements, a Republican state representative from Nampa, had one major ambition for his time in the Legislature: loosen the government’s grip on education. In 1976, Maurice proposed legislation that said students who opt out of the public school would receive a voucher that they could take anywhere — private school or home school.
He wanted “to curtail the continued existence of the insufferable and stifling monopoly which public education has become” and promote/offer “a broad range of choices in educational approaches and programs.”
But Maurice couldn’t get the Legislature to take a crack at his proposal. Both the House Education Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee rejected even introducing the legislation. Frustrated, Maurice decided his time was better spent elsewhere than in Boise. He quit the Legislature before even completing his second term.
In a column in the Idaho Free Press, Clements wrote of his disappointment in how government was being used to promote certain interests in order to help secure the next election, rather than secure the general liberty of the masses:
"A politician is delegated with the power to pass laws that are hopefully just. This seems like an obvious statement with little room for misunderstanding, yet this is where the confusion begins. What is justice? My definition of justice is the use of laws to defend the life, liberty and property of the individual. If I were to ask if you thought it just for one person to steal another person’s paycheck by threat of force, you would, I’m sure, agree that this would be wrong, no matter what the reason for the theft. I must use the same logic when confronted with a government which steals from an individual, even though legally and gives this money either to an another individual or group."
Maurice’s exit commentary did not mention the failure to win consideration of his education proposals, but it weighed on him heavily that the GOP-controlled Legislature couldn’t even entertain the idea of an education system not dominated by government interests. In the private sector, Maurice continued to do battle against some of the forces behind the public school monopoly, notably the labor unions.
Over the years, legislators have come and gone and so, too, proposals for school choice, to no effect. In the early 2000s, a school choice proposal passed the Idaho House of Representatives before dying a quiet death without a hearing in the Senate. A decade later, another proposal made it through the House and failed in a Senate hearing. A couple of years ago, a school choice measure made it to the Senate floor and failed.
And then, finally, this year, House Bill 93, an education tax credit, made it to the governor’s desk, and was signed into law. A lot of people have emailed or texted me to thank me for my role over the years in support of school choice, culminating in this event. I accept this victory, although it violates several key principles of mine and will prove problematic in its administration.
But on the other hand, the law does free students from the government’s failed education monopoly, which has been the primary objective for half a century. This Legislature has poured money hand over fist into the education system, with almost nothing to show for it. Large numbers of students can’t read at grade level, and most importantly, they graduate from the government school system without the knowledge in reading, writing, math, and history, to be prepared for the world that awaits them.
Short of repealing the state constitution’s requirement that the state maintain an education system, this may be the best we can have for now. I’d rather have something than nothing, and I’m guessing that Maurice would feel the same.
Maurice died in 2016, so when people mention the names of the folks who brought about this victory, such as it is, I hope they’ll remember Maurice, the OG champion of education freedom in Idaho. He started it all, and he deserves credit for that.
