David Brooks focuses again on health care in today’s New York Times, and his observations have huge implications for public education. Here are his key points:
Democrats tend to be skeptical that dispersed consumers can get enough information to make smart decisions … Democrats generally seek to concentrate decision-making and cost-control power in the hands of centralized experts … Republicans at their best are skeptical about top-down decision-making … Democrats have much greater faith in centralized expertise ... Republicans ... have much greater faith in the decentralized discovery process of the market … This basic debate will define the identities of the two parties for decades … In the age of the Internet and open-source technology, the Democrats are mad to define themselves as the party of top-down centralized planning.
I am a lifelong Democrat and the Florida coordinator for Democrats for Education Reform, but I agree with Brooks’ critique. Certainly in public education, continuing to centralize power in the hands of school boards and state legislatures is mad because doing so disempowers teachers and parents and ultimately undermines student achievement.
A story today on Stateline.org shortchanges much of the Democratic support that has rallied behind proposals for school vouchers and tax credit scholarships in several states. But a greater lapse may be the characterization of who has historically supported private-learning options.
Much of that is understandable, given that Republicans have been the most vocal in advocating for greater choice and marketplace competition in public education, particularly in the decade-long timeframe relevant to Stateline’s analysis. But the increasing Democratic support particularly for tax credit scholarships more closely reflects the reality of the voucher movement in the 1960s and 70s.
While it was economist Milton Friedman who introduced the idea for school vouchers in his 1955 essay, “The Role of Government in Education,” the voucher movement got a jumpstart soon afterward from liberal intellectuals and activists and Democratic lawmakers, particularly from Harvard social scientist Christopher Jencks, Berkeley law professor John Coons and Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. (more…)
