In today’s commentary, JLF President John Hood explores the issue of giving parents more choices when it comes to educating their children. Progressives scream at their top of their lungs against empowering parents, but their rhetoric against it belies facts about the value of competition and allowing parents to choose what’s best for their childrens’ needs.
Educational competition is already standard practice in other developed countries, including many that outperform America in educational achievement.
In fact, there’s actually nothing extraordinary even in the American context about the idea of using a mixture of government and private providers to deliver public services. Think about what happens every day right here in North Carolina. We spend tax dollars to send four-year-olds to church-run preschools and child-care centers. We spend tax dollars to subsidize the tuition or student loans of high-school graduates attending private colleges and universities. We spend Medicare and Medicaid dollars to purchase medical services, devices, and drugs from private hospitals, clinics, physician practices, and pharmacies.
Few politicians or activists would suggest that all preschools and colleges should be run by governments, or that all physicians, nurses, and pharmacists should be government employees. Yet when school-choice proponents describe a similar vision for public education, a vision in which tax dollars flow to the public or private provider of choice, many politicians and activists start screaming at the top of their lungs.
