I’m lucky, because my wise and wonderful parents, though not rich, bought a little house in one of the nation’s best school districts, and made sure we went out of our jurisdiction to go to the best high school. I, therefore, have only seen nasty, illiterate, violent schools through the eyes of a teacher. What I am saying is, public schools are not inherently bad. Like all bloated bureaucracies, the organizations can do well if quality, dedicated people act meaningfully in spite of the prescribed programs. In fact, I was blessed to get my teacher certification with some radical profs who emphasized the need to be willing to die by the sword of bureaucracy for the sake of helping the children. Yes, the students loved me, but, like a shock jock, I followed the lead of my profs and often ran afoul of protocols for the sake of education. Actually, I scored 100% on one teacher evaluation performed by an ancient nun. She loved my wacky stunts and repeated one of my bad jokes among the other nuns. What was I talking about?
Oh, yeah. There was a meeting in Asheville yesterday where people debated the state’s creation of vouchers by another name. One concern was accountability. The first time this particular mindset hit me, I must admit I was very confused. I did not realize that calls for regulation were part of that big, progressive agenda to grow government. As far as I am concerned, the market can sort things out. If we let people have school choice, we will see what happened with Detroit vouchers. The scary school failures had to lobby government to end the program because they lost all their clientele. It didn’t happen because Art Pope and the Koch brothers were orchestrating their puppets from their thrones in an underground cave, either. It happened as thousands of minds chose and acted in healthy ways. Imagine that.
Besides that, this is one of those issues that is too big for two paragraphs. Its success is more a factor of the actors than the stage set.
