And the potential catastrophic effects of expanding private-school choice that Berkshire and Schneider warn against are simply not borne out in the data. A rigorous longitudinal analysis of Florida’s tax credit scholarship program tracked outcomes for public school students as participants in the private-school choice program increased seven-fold. What consequences have arisen from 16 years of expanded private-school choice in the Sunshine State? Lower rates of suspensions and absences and higher test scores in reading and math for students who remained in public schools.
The thing is, there are many great public schools in this country. The kids who attend them won the life lottery by being born to a family with the means to move to a town or neighborhood that offers such schools—or their parents found a back door by navigating an open-enrollment policy or a magnet school lottery. These students are safe and happy and learning rigorous academic material and essential social skills and developing the character values that will make them great citizens. But we can’t pretend this is a uniform experience. So maybe it’s okay to consider tweaking the public education system to better serve the unlucky ones. After all, what kind of society coerces people into staying in an assigned public school and mandating attendance for 180 days a year, when a family is certain their child would be better served elsewhere but simply can’t afford to leave? Berkshire and Schneider talk a lot about schools as community institutions, but they forget that the power of a community is derived from its members’ choice to be there.
Berkshire and Schneider think they can—and should—bend the behemoth that is the public education system to suit their will. In doing so, they are making the same mistake as the culture warriors they disdain. They assume their values are superior and that their preferences, if enacted, will ensure the system finally attains a universal set of admirable goals that have been perpetually out of reach for millions of students.
The authors acknowledge that the existing system has flaws—for example, that it prompts parents to flee to affluent suburbs where they fight to preserve school district boundaries and claim “educational larceny” if outsiders attempt to cross those lines. But problems such as this won’t be resolved by rolling back school choice policies. We must be forward-looking and ask ourselves which approach offers the greatest chance of success now, and for the most kids. What type of system offers the greatest incentive for self-correction? Which approach is least likely to be captured by special interests? Which approach incentivizes innovation?
Many of the objections to school choice that Berkshire and Schneider hold have potential policy solutions. And it has been demonstrated that an educational marketplace can actually foster private schools that actively support diverse families, such as the Pride School of Atlanta, which closed in 2018 when private scholarship money ran out. Furthermore, advocates who are concerned that public funds for private education are insufficient and amount to little more than a subsidy for wealthy parents who can already afford private school can push for needs-based funding that provides more support to families living in poverty.
Like it or not, several red states are already moving toward a mixed-delivery model that creates a marketplace of both public and private providers. In Florida, for example, home-schooled students can use education savings account funds to buy honors biology and American history classes from their public school district, while Utah families can dip into their ESA money to access both core and elective courses in their local district. And in Arizona, students can take career and technical education courses offered by the local school district and pay the tuition with ESA funds. Over the coming years, we’ll have a lot to learn from the different approaches being tried across the country.
Innovations in school choice need not compromise our societal commitment to educating all students. That’s an important shared value. Government has a useful and necessary role to play in funding and regulating education, but there’s room for more flexibility in its delivery. We don’t have to make a binary choice between the status quo, in which schools are both publicly funded and operated, versus a free-for-all in which bad actors can set up for-profit institutions overnight to hoodwink gullible and vulnerable families. Principled regulation can support and sustain an effective and equitable school choice marketplace. Forward-thinking governors already recognize that it’s possible and even desirable to expand choice options without undermining the traditional public school system.
Americans have always been divided on the purpose of education and who should get to decide how it’s delivered. Disagreement is unavoidable in a diverse society. Continuing to fight the public-education culture wars will result only in winners and losers. A true display of tolerance is not to impose your conception of “good” on all children but to allow people with different values than yours to seek out their own “good” schools.
