For reasons that truly baffle me, this issue is remarkably contentious despite everyone seemingly wanting the same thing—successful schools. Okay, maybe it doesn’t baffle me because I know in fact that not everyone is on the same page here. Parents want good schools and not just for their own kids. Most all people outside of those with school-aged children want the same. But mutual aspirations do not necessarily imply common cause.
The most obvious difference is when different people have different ideas about the route to success. A less obvious difference would be when different people have different definitions of success. For the latter case there is a hopeful group and a hopeless group. This essay is meant for the hopeful ones—those who are willing and able to hear reasoned arguments and change their minds.
For the hopeless group I have nothing to offer. These are the vested interests who benefit from the status quo. I will pen another essay that, while fair in my estimation, will not be charitable to this group. Aside from an exercise in venting, I hope for it to shine a light on those working against our otherwise shared effort.
Back to the hopeful, this aims to reach those who may hold an ideological passion which they believe puts them on the other side from me. Although these positions are often deeply seated, all but the most stubbornly unwilling to release their bad premises will find reasons to reconsider.
The arguments I present in my method of targeted persuasion will make the case for school choice—funding parents/children allowing them to make their own choices regarding where and how to educate their children. This is predominantly from a position of practicality rather than principle. To be sure there is a principled position to support school choice, but as I’ve said before, the principled case is the harder one to win over for most people.1
While I have been planning this essay in this series for some time, it was the recent mea culpa reconsideration from Nikole Hannah-Jones in the New York Times Magazine that inspired writing it now.
Corey DeAngelis the NHJ summarizes the saga well:
Ten years ago, Hannah-Jones made a political show of refusing to send her child to the better schools she could easily have afforded. She knew the school she picked was struggling. She sent Najya into a highly segregated, high-poverty New York City government school to put her ideology into practice, and wrote an essay encouraging other families to follow. The system was supposed to improve because a famous journalist stayed put.
. . .
Things did not go as planned.
Hannah-Jones later discovered that her daughter thought she was acing math because nobody was grading the papers. “She thought she was correctly solving all her problems because her teacher was not checking her work,” Hannah-Jones wrote.
. . .
Parents should not place children in a failing government school system because of ideology, or as an attempt to score political points.
Assigning kids to segregated government schools based on their zip code does nothing to help them. It is not the job of families to fix broken schools. The school system is supposed to exist to meet the needs of students. Families do not exist to prop up a monopoly that failed them.
New York City public schools spend more than $40,000 per student per year. That fortune buys mostly failure. Najya’s failing public school spends more than $52,000 per student per year: far more than average private school tuition. Forty-three percent of New York City kids are stuck in schools where fewer than half of the students are proficient in math or reading, or both, even after New York State lowered the bar for passing.
. . .
That Hannah-Jones wanted to improve New York’s public schools is admirable. She would likely have done more for those schools — and surely done better for her child — by pulling her daughter out than by trapping her in them. Competition would have given those schools a reason to check the math homework, keep the teachers in the classroom, and treat Najya like a student instead of a symbol.
I fear I’ve already lost some before even making my case—particularly progressives. I also fear conservatives will miss hearing how their own opposition to what school choice fully means challenges their own sacred cows.
Here are my arguments for why school choice is the best method to achieve education success for children, families, and society. Simply by attaching directly to the child the money we already spend on education allowing the child’s parent to choose what approved school they would like to send their child, we can enable the success the market brings in all other aspects of our world to education. This so-called backpack funding is neither radical nor complicated. And it does not require the destruction of government-run schools. It simply allows parents the opportunity to choose.
Still, as always:
****DON’T READ THE MESSAGE NOT MEANT FOR YOU****
Progressives Only
Public school is an important, fundamental institution for a successful society. It requires open access for all to be considered truly public. To best accomplish its goals and to benefit both society and most importantly its customers, students and their parents, it needs to be offered in its best form possible as widely as possible. This as in all things requires accountability and good incentives. The solution is never one-size-fits-all or protected-monopoly control. Therefore, no single entity should control it—especially not the state.
The government has a horrible track record of favoring the haves over the have nots. It also is subject to mismanagement that ranges from petty squabbles and propaganda to thought control and anti-scientific dogma.
Wouldn’t you want an educationally-effective, cost-efficient school free from the whims of those pushing agendas? When policy is made at the top, be it the state or national level, the process is uglier than sausage making. One side comes to power and brings with it goals to score political points rather than to further the advancement of education. And this is true of both sides no matter how lofty the aspirations and intentions of either might presumably be.
Repeatedly the cracks grow wider where more and more children are left behind. The needs and capabilities of one child will be importantly different than those of others—especially at the extremes as compared to the average. Add to this that different families have different values for which they want education focused including what they do not want as part of their child’s education.
If the majority gets to decide, schools will tend toward religious practices in ways that may threaten minority rights. For some this is desired even with the potential for harm. Despite being fundamentally against our American values and constitutional limitations, the examples multiply yearly.
The typical objection to school choice includes fear that standards will not be upheld. But what standards are currently being met? And who is setting these standards? We must not confuse mythical ideals with harsh realities. Rather we must confront the world as it is and strive for attainable improvements through the best means possible.
We live in a world of school choice and preferential treatment for the select few. The upper middle class can move to the neighborhoods of their choice to make sure the “public” school for their children is a taxpayer-funded exclusionary zone. Rather than pay private tuition, they pay higher real estate prices and taxes which act as barriers to keep out those who cannot afford their luxury.
For the haves, this is not a problem. They either control the machine or can exit to another place where they can exert control.
For the have nots, they are left to struggle against forces that prevent success. This is not just in the inner-city schools where failures are more obvious. It is also in the places where school is relatively working for the majority but where minority opportunities are still quite constrained. In all of these schools there are many square pegs, children who deserve much better, floundering for a fit.
School choice gives options to these children and parents. It gives them voice they have lacked. It gives them options where few exist today. It frees them to pursue providers who either have not yet come to be or are currently out of their reach. It offers them hope through market power currently reserved for only the elite.
Conservatives Only
Public school is an important, fundamental institution for a successful society. To best accomplish its goals and to benefit both society and most importantly its customers, students and their parents, it needs to be offered in its best form possible as widely as possible. This as in all things requires accountability and good incentives. The solution is never one-size-fits-all or protected-monopoly control. Therefore, no single entity should control it—especially not the state.
The government has a horrible track record of mismanagement that ranges from petty squabbles and propaganda to thought control. Education departments from the state to the national level repeatedly create barriers between what children need and what they can achieve. This includes practices that are sterile at best and fully anti-religion and against personal/family morality and virtues at worst.
The separation of school and state necessarily threatens what most people want as a part of education—religious engagement. Though fundamentally healthy as a principle, the implication when we still seek education through the state is a bad bargain for children. It creates schools lacking love or direction beyond what a bureaucrat sets as the guideline. Wouldn’t you want an educationally effective, cost efficient school free from the whims of those pushing agendas?
For the haves, this is not a problem. They either control the machine or can exit to another place where they can exert control. Even though it is very inefficient, upper middle class families have school choice today. The limiting factors are our dysfunctional housing market and the fact that they generally are still having to choose among government-run schools.
For the have nots, they are left to struggle against forces that prevent success. This is not just in the inner-city schools where failures are more obvious. It is also in the places where school is relatively working for the majority but where opportunities are still constrained and the individual desires of families are left at the school house front door.
No parent nor their child should be forced to follow a doctrine that runs counter to their principles. A nation founded on freedom should embrace this virtue at every critical juncture. There are few areas where the importance of freedom of thought and freedom of practice is as important as it is in education.
School choice allows parents to move freely to find the best option for their child considering their individual needs and desires. It gives them voice they have lacked. It gives them options where few exist today. It frees them to pursue providers who either have not yet come to be or are currently out of their reach. It offers them hope through market power currently reserved for only the elite.
Substacks mentioned:
It is not lost on me that many libertarians themselves find the school choice solution unpalatable from the standpoint that the state should have no role whatsoever in education and that the school choice compromise is a step too far. I am sympathetic to this principled position. However, as a directionalist rather than a destinationalist, I am more than willing to make this compromise.