Education in America

The major problem with politicians and education in America and everywhere is that political leaders never seem to accept that great teaching and great schools never have and never will depend on their wisdom, or the lack thereof.

Democrats' K-12 views differ, subtly

McCain emphasizes school choice, accountability, but lacks specifics

The argument on this matter is simple, as far as I am concerned, at this point. If you are interested in what I think are the best arguments on improving schools, I highly recommend Terry Moe's and John Chubb's Politics, Markets, and America's Schools - Rick Cochran does a nice review of the essential arguments of the book - and Milton Friedman's writings on the matter. Paul Peterson, of Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance and Christopher Jencks, of Harvard's Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy, are two liberal scholars who first persuaded me of the benefits of school choice for children and families in poverty. But Terry Moe and John Chubb and Milton Friedman make the best arguments for school choice and education markets, I believe.

There is no single dynamic enterprise in America, other than law enforcement and military defense, which are natural and necessary monopolies of force as a function of governance, which has its core operations and outcomes controlled by the Federal government and is successful. Any other enterprise would consider such a proposal laughable and ludicrous. In America, it is law.

The most successful form of education in the United States and, quite likely, the world, is American higher education. And as Friedman wisely observes, what makes universities and higher education so successful in the United States is their freedom, their independence, and the healthier versions of competition in its ranks which run on and provide much of the fodder for a marketplace of ideas in America and in the world.

American public education, especially special education rather an as exception, is, as Moe and Chubb argue, one long string of unintended consequences from well-meaning people who can never seem to get straight that it is the fact that government protects us, all of us, including children, from our failures and the failures of the multiply-governed bureaucracies in public education that account for its larger failures of American children.

American public education is power and good intentions overwhelming better ideas and better choices in its most poignant form.

If we really care about children and not leaving them behind and not just about our pious notions of how to do that codified into law, this No Child Left Behind Act needs to be repealed, not improved.

The future of education reform efforts is, as Milton Friedman believed up until his death and was the legacy he cherished most, in giving parents, students, teachers, administrators, and others the freedom to choose which schools they will attend, how they will organize those schools, and, more importantly and fundamentally, whether education matters to them and whether they are willing to take it seriously to improve their and all of our lives.

The fact that many people are skeptical of school choice and markets as the best means to improve education for all students, given that many of the people most in need of stronger educations are those experiencing the most problems in the market, is understandable. It is also quite independent of the plain fact and much evidence that school choice and educational markets - in the form of universal voucher systems, private school scholarships, means-tested voucher programs, failing schools, failing students voucher programs, special needs voucher programs, pre-kindergarten voucher programs, town tuitioning programs, tax-credit scholarship programs, personal tax credits and deductions, charter schools, public school choice, and magnet schools - offer stronger opportunities for children to have better quality educations.

The most fundamental choice at stake is whether children and parents will take seriously education and intelligence as a smarter and more effective means of succeeding in the larger marketplace and in their own lives and contributing to the lives of others or whether they will fail to do so.

School choice makes it more likely that kids and parents will choose to take education and the intelligent learning it offers more seriously in their lives.

And that is something that the Federal Government, state governments, nor local school districts - nor schools, administrators, teachers, or parents, for that matter - could ever mandate if they wanted to.

Schools, as Friedman observed, are the most basic institution for anyone to make choices about and within. And taking education and intelligent thought seriously is the most basic commitment that a person can make in their lives. It is best facilitated, as any liberal education is best facilitated, by making choices within the marketplace of ideas and about its role in our lives.

If we take liberal values seriously, which are the foundation of a quality liberal education, we must take the liberty that is the core of those liberal values seriously, as well.

And no Federal mandate could ever replace that.