Title: Blocking the Exits: Libertarian Opposition to School Vouchers Is an Attack on Freedom
Abstract: What do many thoughtful, committed libertarians and Sandra Feldman of the American Federation of Teachers union have in common? Almost nothing--except their opposition to school choice. Answering the concerns of these libertarians is essential to defeating the reactionary likes of Feldman and realizing the potential of school choice. School vouchers empower parents to spend their public education funds in public, private, or religious schools. The cause of choice unites conservatives, most libertarians, and growing numbers of centrists and even liberals. It brings together disparate reformers because all at once it expands parental autonomy, increases competition, promotes educational equity, and addresses the greatest challenge facing America today: ensuring educational opportunities for low-income children in the inner cities. Some libertarians fear, however, that school vouchers will not expand freedom, but will instead turn the private schools that serve roughly 11 percent of America's youngsters into clones of failed government schools. That price, they argue, is too high, even for the sake of expanding the private sector in education and improving opportunities for millions of youngsters who desperately need them. I wish the school-choice naysayers could have shared my experiences with the public-school monopoly and the choice alternative. My original career aspiration was classroom teaching; remarkably, upon my graduation from college, the New Jersey education cartel conferred upon me lifetime teacher certification. But my experiences as a student teacher left me convinced that our system of public K-12 education desperately needed fundamental change. I concluded, first, that parents, not bureaucrats, should control essential education decisions; and second, that a system of parental choice should replace the command-and-control system of public education in America. For a long time school choice held only academic interest for me, but I became downright militant about the issue in 1990, when I had the honor of defending the constitutionality of the nation's first school-choice program, in Milwaukee. I walked the hallways of the schools that 1,000 economically disadvantaged children were able to attend for the first time. I talked to their parents, most of whom were themselves poorly educated yet keenly understood that this was a chance--perhaps the only chance--for their children to have a better life. And I saw the beaming faces of children--beacons of pride, self-discipline, and hope. That's when school choice became a matter of heart and soul as well as mind. The nation's second school-choice program, launched in Cleveland in 1995, had an equally profound effect on me. It has permanently etched the figure one in 14 in my memory. You see, children in the Cleveland Public Schools have a one-in-14 chance of graduating on schedule with senior-level proficiency. They also have a one-in-14 chance, each year, of being victimized by crime in their school. When a school district can offer its children no greater chance of learning the skills they need to become responsible citizens than of being victimized by crime during the school day, we are in serious jeopardy. The Specter of Regulation I do not mean to diminish the ever-present specter of government regulation of private schools. When it was enacted in 1990, Milwaukee's school-choice program was not only challenged in court, but also sentenced to death by bureaucratic strangulation. The education establishment insisted that private schools meet all state and federal regulations applicable to public schools. Not surprisingly, every single private school refused to participate under those conditions. We fought these regulations in court even as we were defending the program's constitutionality. The regulatory threat from federal school-choice proposals is even more ominous. For example, when some members of Congress proposed parental-choice legislation for the District of Columbia last year, we found ourselves battling to head off all manner of federal regulations on participating private schools. …
Publication Year: 1998
Publication Date: 1998-05-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 5
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