A free market approach to CA’s public school system

The California Policy Center’s Edward Ring asserts in Fox & Hounds Daily that pouring more money into teachers unions' billfolds will not help students succeed. Instead, revitalizing CA’s underperforming schools could involve a wholly new model:  giving parents vouchers and the freedom to choose where to send their children, whether to public, private, or micro-schools. This competition encourages schools to offer the best education, Ring points out.

The solution is equally obvious: Public schools need to experience competition. Parents need to be able to choose from an assortment of accredited K-12 schools; public, public charter, virtual, parochial, private, homeschool, and micro-schools.

To implement school choice, education advocates need to stop trying to push whatever baby step their consultants and donors claim is politically possible, and do what is right. They need to demand school vouchers that parents can redeem at whatever school they wish. Voters have had enough. They’re ready to vote for vouchers.

The biggest barrier to vouchers are the teachers’ unions, whose state and local chapters combined collect nearly a half-billion in dues each year. These unions use hefty portions of that money to buy politicians and lobbyists, impacting legislation that protects their monopolies.

But they are not doing this “for the children.” The do not hold the moral high ground. They oppose school choice because as a monopoly they can perpetually acquire more members, more dues, and more power. And the parallel moral dimension, at least for the leadership of these teachers’ unions, is they can use their control over the public schools to indoctrinate California’s children.

This article originally appeared in Fox & Hounds Daily. Read the whole thing here.

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