The following op-ed outlines a strategy for unleashing market forces in education. It appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, 16 June 2007, and was written by Howard Rich, Chairman of the Parents in Charge Foundation.
School Choice Strategy
The flattened borders of the 21st century have made networking faster, global trade freer and competition more rigorous -- meaning the premium we place on educating future generations is higher than ever before. Yet the nation's monopolistic approach to education remains a millstone around our children's necks, with
The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman understood the central role school choice must play in revitalizing American education. "Empowering parents would generate a competitive education market, which would lead to a burst of innovation and improvement, as competition has done in so many other areas," he said in December 2005. "There's nothing that would do so much to ensure a skilled and educated work force."
By any objective measure, Friedman was right. The success of school choice as a method of empowering parents, raising student achievement and improving public education systems in those markets where it has been implemented is indisputable. The question now becomes how to achieve meaningful school choice for the benefit of all parents, not just a select few?
After this year's compelling school-choice victory in
Beyond the obvious quantitative benefits universal plans provide (i.e., more choices for a larger number of parents), consider the following lessons from experience:
* Scaling back choice plans does nothing to diminish institutional opposition. Too often, supporters of school choice assume that watering down legislation in their states will result in acquiescence from teachers unions and the education-industrial complex. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whether it is choice for one child or one million children, the education establishment will fight it tooth and nail. If anything, the rhetorical salvos launched against scaled-back proposals are even more incendiary, with bureaucratic apologists
falsely accusing school choice supporters of "sneak attacks" and "end- arounds" in addition to the predictable "anti-public education"
harangues.
Moreover, the introduction of "softer" choice bills is often perceived as a political retreat, emboldening opponents and unnecessarily muddying the clear policy and philosophical merits school choice enjoys. Anti-choice forces do not make distinctions nor will they ever stop attacking that freedom once it has been achieved. Even after
* Broader choice plans equal broader support. You don't have to take Grassroots 101 to know that successful coalitions are based on addition, not subtraction. Yet in many instances school choice supporters have been conditioned to believe that confining the parameters of parental choice will lead to a broader base of public support. The opposite is true. As employee stock options and personal savings accounts have shown, nothing motivates individuals quite like becoming personally invested in an issue.
Supporters of school choice cannot afford to leave a single ally on the sidelines -- for Christian school parents, home school parents, parents with special-needs children or parents who for whatever reason aren't satisfied with the public school they are zoned for, universal choice plans offer a much broader base of grassroots support than more narrowly-drawn proposals.
* Universal school choice plans can ultimately forge winnable political coalitions.
Like citizens, elected officials are much more inclined to support legislation when they are given a direct stake in it. All politicians respond to pressure in their own backyards, yet absent such pressure, they will invariably bend to the inflexible will of the education establishment.
In spite of enormous resistance,
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Markets and Education, Continued
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3 comments:
A big step in the right direction.
What needs to happen is the elimination of public schooling. This idea is of course unpopular with bureaucrats -- but children will benefit.
"...every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain." - Bastiat
Once again, Bastiat said it well. That's why we named the Society after him. He communicated complex ideas in a way just about anyone could understand. More than ever, it is important that business people understand the benefits of free markets, less they succumb to a culture that views markets with suspicion. Thank you for your comment and the apt passage from Bastiat.
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