Same Old, Same Old on School Choice

A pair of recent editorials demonstrate that when it comes to school choice, all that's old is new again. At Slate, David Kirp glowingly reviews three books by anti-choice authors. Though he would have us believe that these books contain shocking new revelations, his description of them merely rehashes stale fallacies. For example, Kirp stubbornly insists that the failure of public schools is overblown. He quotes school choice apostate Diane Ravitch's claim that "scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the nation’s report card, have never been higher." It's a dubious claim at best: 17-year olds scored about the same in reading in 2012 as they did in 1971, and while they did improve in math since the 70s, scores are down from their early-90s peak. Meanwhile, education spending has increased unwaveringly since that time. So while the public education system may not be at an all-time low in terms of test performance (which Kirp places no stock in anyway), it is perfectly clear that we are getting less and less bang for our buck. Another of Kirp's claims - that charter schools abuse their freedom by using outdated methods - is bitterly ironic considering the public education model that Kirp is defending stems from nineteenth century Prussia.

Of course, Kirp isn't the only one to traffic in school choice cliches. Over at the National Review, the editors lambast the Obama administration for opposing school choice in Louisiana. This, they argue, forces poor black children to keep attending subpar public schools. While the larger point has merit, the NRO folks neglect to mention that "different" doesn't equate to "better." Thus, while children may escape from unsafe or underperforming schools, they may enter, on a taxpayer's dime, schools that teach them that humans and dinosaurs co-existed or that Thomas Jefferson may have been the antichrist.

Viewed in this light, school choice becomes less a matter of trading a "worse" school for a "better" one but rather exchanging one set of problems for another. Still, it's a decision that people should be empowered to make.