Jonathan Chait
Hillary Clinton’s campaign for presidency has begun and the pro– and con– sides of school choice using her campaign announcement video to advance their arguments.
Jonathan Chait delivers a real gut punch to his fellow liberals who oppose charter schools or remain romantically attached to a neighborhood-based system of school assignment.
Traditional, neighborhood-based schools are limited to local residents and pay their teachers based on length of service. Charter schools are open to students regardless of what property their parents can afford, and (generally) have non-unionized teachers with more flexible, merit-based pay scales. Unions care a great deal about preserving traditional tenure systems, so they lionize the neighborhood-based system that comes alongside it. But it’s a very strange value system for the left to embrace.
I’ll give Chait a pass on the voucher issue for now because he’s has done a consistently good job highlighting the inherent unfairness of neighborhood public school zones. Read the entire piece here.
Grade: Satisfactory
School Pride
Opponents of school choice often rehash the same old talking points, so it is refreshing to see unique criticisms, no matter how silly.
Teacher Jay Bullock argues in a recent On Milwaukee column that the higher mobility rate brought on by school choice, specifically citing vouchers, has lowered “student pride” in their schools — so much so that his school struggles to sell yearbooks, letterman jackets and class rings. The horror.
I’m not surprised that yearbook sales were higher back when students were conscripted into school attendance (as was the case for both Bullock and myself).
He concludes: “Because if [Milwaukee Public Schools] is banking on a strong alumni program to help its high schools, something needs to change in schools now to create those loyal graduates. As long as this city remains a marketplace, I fear that kind of school pride is never coming back.”
Jason Bedrick of the Cato Institute provides the best response, “You know what really kills school pride? When the school is so bad that parents and students would flee if given the chance.”
Grade: Needs Improvement
Lauri Lee
While Bullock could at least get points for creativity, the same cannot be said for Lauri Lee, an independent consultant and former public and private school educator, who repeats some familiar talking points claiming school vouchers don’t help students and don’t improve struggling public schools.
Lee argues against school choice because a “strong public school system benefits all of us, regardless of whether we have children attending the public schools – and our taxes should support those schools.” In fact, she quotes some fallacies by author John Green, who once argued in favor of paying taxes for public schools because he doesn’t like “living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.”
Lee, like so many other school choice critics, seems to forget that education can occur in public schools, private schools, charter schools or virtual schools. The results of this education, not a specific set of institutions, are the reason why we pay taxes. What matters is that the public gets educated. As we’ve said over and over again, there’s little evidence that vouchers hurt this aim, and a good deal of it that shows they can help.
Grade: Needs Improvement.
