'School choice' is as much a marketing slogan as it is a policy solution
There's one sure way to fix education, and it really isn't so complicated
A Rube Goldberg machine is a complex device used to accomplish a simple task. An example would be a gadget of gears, knobs, levers, and pullies to bring about the cracking of an egg.
If we’re really honest about proposals for “school choice,” be they vouchers, tax credits, or scholarships, they’re all really Rube Goldberg add-ons of a Rube Goldberg machine that is the government education system.
The existing government system extracts money from people in the form of taxes in order to fund a network of education agencies, oversight boards, school districts, classrooms, unions, and administrators. It takes a dozen or so years — from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade — to realize the contraption is as expensive as it is a failure.
Government, being what it is, recognizes the machinery is getting jammed, and so adds to the complication by creating taskforces, focus groups, stakeholder meetings and so on to study the problem and offer options to fix the places that have gone haywire.
Years go by. Technocrats and politicians navel gaze, move knobs, resize pullies, and pontificate. Ultimately they opt to throw more money at the problem while generations of schoolkids emerge from the system unprepared to greet the world with the knowledge and skills needed for success because of a lack of mastery in reading, writing, math, and history.
So, then lawmakers in the various states propose and/or add on more machinery intended to keep the unreliable machinery in place but return some of the public’s stolen money in some form or other so that kids can attend a different school. We call this “school choice.” They ignore the complexity of taking money from parents merely to return it to them later because the end result is less dependence on the part of the contraption that often fails.
But why not go to the heart of the matter? If we know that government-run education doesn’t work — and we have 50 states and almost two hundred years of history to prove this true — why the complication? Because every state in the country has a mandate to run an education system, and that mandate is wrapped up in their state constitutions. And rather than debate the sensibility of a constitutional mandate for government to provide education, politicians twist themselves in knots to keep existing system in place — you might reasonably ask why — while offering something else.
In truth “school choice” is a much a marketing slogan as it is a solution. Proponents are not quite convinced that the public is ready to vote to eliminate compulsory state-run education systems from their constitutions. Moreover, they don’t want to do battle with the powerful monied forces behind Education, Inc. School choice is the supposed middle ground.
I’ve been a proponent of school choice for a long time, but if I’m to be very honest, I’ve backed school choice only because no one really wants to talk about the best solution of them all which is ending the government’s involvement in education. Rather than keep kids trapped in the broken system, school choice offers willing participants another option, and that might better than nothing.
But let’s not pretend that a voucher, tax credit, scholarship, or any other vehicle that one might conceive isn’t an expansion of government. It is exactly that. We choose that option because the risk of doing nothing is equally bad. Yet we should not ignore the real danger that this expansion of government could also weaken or even destroy market-driven education alternatives — as witnessed in the ongoing debate over legislation to create a school choice program — that the government will merely expand its influence into the private education sector by setting accreditation, teacher certification, and curricula standards.
Additionally, parents who take advantage of a school choice program might find themselves being required to submit receipts to the state, answer invasive questionnaires and surveys, and be forced to justify their education selections.
“School choice” is complicated machinery intended to answer an easy question. What do we really need to do to see kids succeed? We need to tell parents the truth about the failure of the government’s education system. Get the government and politicians completely out of the education business. Eliminate the constitutional mandate that government fund and run schools. Give people their money back in the form of lower or eliminated taxes. Allow the marketplace of education and the students it serves to thrive.