Let a Thousand Choices Bloom

Debating the future of education reform.

From the December 2005 issue

(Page 2 of 6)

Biggest obstacle: The greatest barrier to reform is that, when it comes to education, Americans have lost sight of the distinction between means and ends. Our state-run school system is no longer recognized as just one possible tool for pursuing universal education; it has come to be misperceived as an ultimate goal in and of itself. The term "public education" has come to refer to both the institution of public schooling and the ideals that the institution is meant to advance.

In George Orwell's 1984, the state deliberately circumscribes its citizens' vocabulary to impede dissenting thought. The conflation of educational means and ends in modern America produces a similar result. Many Americans can no longer even imagine a world in which education is delivered other than via a government monopoly. And criticisms of state schooling are often misconstrued or misrepresented as attacks on the idea of universal access to good schools.

Those with a vested interest in the status quo are so effective in scuttling reforms because they leverage this equivocation between means and ends. If it can be eradicated, or even mitigated, it will dramatically advance the cause of educational excellence.

Marshall Fritz

Fritz is president of the Alliance for the Separation of School & State.

Most necessary reform: None. "Reform" implies the government is still involved. We need to transform America's collectivist approach to education into free-market education. This means ending not only compulsory funding but compulsory attendance and content. We must separate schools from the state.

Biggest obstacle: Tax-funded school vouchers are the biggest obstacle to improving education. They will again trick parents into believing school improvement is just around the corner. They could delay return to a genuine free market by a generation or more. Vouchers replace today's monopoly with a "monopsony" (single buyer). Schools will have only one customer to serve--and it's not you. Follow the money.

As Douglas Dewey once asked, "How is moving from 88 percent of the school population in dependency to nearly 100 percent a good first step toward zero percent? What possibly could motivate edu-welfare parents to demand a lower and lower voucher?"

The cost of vouchers is exorbitant: converting virtually all of today's 27,000 independent schools into "public school look-alikes" whose competition will be merely grubbing for government bucks.

Educational tax credits are merely covert mutations of the entitlement cancer. Experience shows they can be sold only with deceit, e.g., "You're getting your own money back" and "It's a voluntary contribution to a scholarship fund." And charter schools are simply privately owned lapdog schools on a slightly longer government leash. A dog on a long leash is still a dog on a leash.

Embrace full choice. Start with your own children. Remove them from school-by-government. You'll not be paying twice for education: You'll pay taxes for the state to harm other people's children, but you'll pay only once for education--your children's.

Williamson Evers

Evers is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Most necessary reform: I'm less interested in the label put on a reform and more interested in getting the framework for evaluation right. Education reformers should take seriously the rights and interests of parents, schoolchildren, and taxpayers. But priority has to go to the framework of liberty.

For example, students have a right to drop out of school, because such a right is among our human liberties. We would advise a student to stay in school. Indeed, we know that finishing school and delaying marriage and babies is excellent advice for avoiding poverty. But in a framework of liberty, dropping out is allowed, even if it isn't advisable. Similarly, American society is pluralistic and hetero-geneous. Any reform should take into account that pluralism. Although schools tend to converge on a common core of content, different students will have different additional needs.