We at the JLF like school choice. We think that the more choice there is the better-educated students will become, the more competition there will be, and the better the public schools will perform. But what do we mean by school choice? While we often suggest that parents don?t have educational choices, this is clearly not true. A parent getting ready to send their child to school in the Raleigh area, for example, can send him or her to public school, with a host of options including magnet schools, charter schools, etc, they could home school, or they could send their child to any one of dozens of private secular and religious schools that dot the landscape. Even outside of the diverse public school environment of Wake County, parents with only one public school available can choose to home school or send their kids to private Christian schools, which even rural counties seem to have to some degree. Also, if they are willing to bear the extra cost of driving to a more populated county they can take advantage of other private alternatives or Charter schools.
The fact is that there are probably very few parents that are not making a choice. Even parents who are sending their kids to the only public school available to them are choosing, for what ever reason, not to home school or send there kids to a private school. In other words, they do face choices and they are choosing the one that they prefer. The question is not whether we have choices other than the public school but are the benefits associated with those choices worth the cost. Just because we exercise the public school option it doesn?t mean we are not exercising choice. We might lament that the number of choices available to those living in rural counties are more limited, but clearly this is true for most things, including grocerty stores, restaurants, clothing stores, etc. In fact, living in a rural county is part of a lifestyle choice that implicitly accepts these limited other choices.
Unfortunately, it appears that what many of my conservative and libertarian friends consider to be ?school choice? is something quite different from what I describe here. With advocacy of government provided vouchers, the conservative complaint seems to be that there aren?t enough government funded choices. Under the current system, the government funds the government school option. If you want your kids to have an education funded partly by your taxes but also in part by the taxes of others, including those with no children or children in private sector alternatives, then you can send them to the government schools. If you feel that this tuition-free option does not provide the quality that you are looking for you are free to pursue a private sector alternative?but not to pursue a private sector alternative for free.
The good thing about this system of choice is that the private sector stays private. Government vouchers, as opposed to privately funded vouchers like the Children’s Scholarship Fund, breach the wall of separation between what is clearly private and clearly socialist. And while conservatives often talk about how a voucher system might improve socialist education, they rarely make reference to the damage it would likely do to private schools. Government money will be the bridge across which government controls travel. Once private schools become accustomed to the infusion of taxpayer money they will find it difficult to say no to the curriculum, teacher certification, diversity, and other requirements that will follow. Especially because these requirements will come one at a time. At the margin the mandates will not be such a big deal when compared to the totality of voucher money that would be lost if the school did not go along. The question is, will there really be school choice when the private schools are reduced to being carbon copies of the government schools? It is interesting to see many conservatives praise colleges like Hillsdale and Grove City for being principled in turning down government subsidies because of the regulatory strings that are attached, while essentially advocating that private primary and secondary schools be brought into this same system and culture.
I suggest an alternative to school choice. I suggest that conservatives and libertarians advocate educational freedom. Parents should be allowed to use their own resources to have their children educated any way they choose, and in any setting they choose, free of government controls. If the parents approve then that?s all the approval needed. This means freeing up the private sector not throwing government money at it. For example, while home schooling is allowed, if a half dozen parents in a neighborhood wanted to pool their resources and hire teachers to come teach their kids in their church hall, in one of their living rooms, or in their neighborhood recreation center, it would be illegal under current NC law. It would also be illegal for a retired elementary teacher to operate a small school of 8 or 10 children out of her home, even if all the parents approve of the curriculum and the accommodations. These educational options and any other arrangements that parents and educational providers might mutually approve of should be free to flourish. This is what educational freedom would be all about, and as is the case with freedom in general, it will generate more genuine choices than we can imagine. Ingenuity and entrepreneurship would prevail.
