School Choice: What are They Afraid Of?

Libertarian ABC journalist John Stossel is still getting grief for his documentary “Stupid in America,” a critique of the public school monopoly. So he’s taking his liberal critics on one by one.

Yes, he says, you can skew survey results to show that public schools do better than private schools. The National School Boards Association

claims "America's public schools outperform private schools when variables ... are controlled."

OK. Except that the study they used showed that private schools outperformed public schools.

When studying education performance, it is far more accurate to compare schools using random assignment -- using kids assigned schools by lottery so that those attending public and private schools come from the same population. Eight such random-assignment studies have been done. All eight find that private school students did better.

But the problem is that the bribed apologists for the government education monopoly just don’t get it. They say that

"Public schools were created to provide a 'public good': education for all, regardless of a family's ability to pay ... By contrast, under a voucher system that gives public dollars to completely unmonitored private schools, there is no such right to expect or demand accountability for student performance or how tax dollars are spent." They don't get it. Competition brings accountability. Private schools may be "unmonitored" by bureaucrats, but... [p]arents' desire for a good education for their children is a much more powerful check on schools than any politician's law or union rule.

The problem is to persuade the American people of this truth. Because while the American people are confident that they can be the best judge of their childrens’ education they are not sure about other people.

Anyway, why do these folk protest so much?

If public schools are good, they have nothing to fear from school choice. Students and parents will choose them.

Of course, on the other hand if public schools are overgrown government monopolies that don’t deliver good service, then that’s different. Then the public schools advocates are right to be afraid.