Thursday, June 08, 2006

All The Reasons Why Charter Schools And Vouchers Are Not The End Of Civilization

Clark Baker at Edspresso discusses all the arguments he has heard raised against charter schools and vouchers and articulates his responses to them. My favorite passage:

Restaurants that poison their guests are closed and reckless airlines are grounded. Since California's taxpayers have wasted billions of dollars and harmed millions of children throughout the past thirty years, shouldn't public school bureaucrats expect something more than increasing revenues? Vouchers and charters don't threaten public education, they hold substandard public schools accountable.

It is unconscionable that so many children are so poorly educated and yet we cannot ask for reform of the public education system without encountering accusations that we seek to destroy public education. At this point, the government-run public education system can barely justify its own existence, yet because of its pervasive political connections it can fight back against almost any meaningful reform. It is an irony lost on many, I think, that the promise that government intervention holds out, that citizens will have control of the institutions that shape their lives, should prove to be so bitter a falsehood. Government intervention entrenches sclerotic bureaucracies and intransigent workforces such that no reform is possible.

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