- A
Primer on Educational Choice
by Quentin L. Quade
What Is Educational Choice?
Educational choice refers to parents' rights to choose their child's educational environment without financial penalty. Educational choice is a funding policy, not another teaching or schooling reform. Any rational schooling method can be pursued under educational choice.
Though such choice can take different forms — vouchers, certificates, tax credits, for example — its essence is simple: it enables parents to allocate educational tax dollars to the educational provider they think best for their child. While well-to-do Americans already have choice by private means, all Americans, especially the poor, would directly benefit from educational choice funding.
This contrasts with the current educational finance monopoly, in which
state and public school bureaucracies assign all tax funds without parental
choice. Under educational finance monopoly, parents' rights do not
match their responsibilities.
Why Is Educational Choice Getting So Much Attention?
Locally and nationally there is increasing, many-sided concern over the state of American education. From crisis in the inner cities, to general academic underachievement, to ethical relativism, to remoteness from parental control, to burgeoning bureaucracies and bloated budgets with corresponding tax burdens, educational problems confront us. And there is a growing perception that these problems reflect the monopoly financing environment out of which they have come. That monopoly artificially protects the public schools from normal competition and comparison, thus encouraging bad habits; and it endangers independent schools cut off from normal funding. Thus, public schools suffer in terms of educational quality, and independent schools suffer, often unto death, from underfinancing.
And, just as the vices of monopoly funding are becoming clearer, so is the ability of choice to break the monopoly and help rid us of its vices. By permitting parents to allocate tax dollars, choice would end the monopoly of assignment. In the same motion, it would re-establish parental control, and it would introduce comparison and competition, the normal human stimuli which encourage excellent performance and cost restraint.
Add to these facts the truth that choice has no downside risk, since
any good educational
idea can be explored under it — indeed, more easily than under monopoly
conditions — and it is easy to see why it is gathering such attention.
After all, it is simply "nature taking its course" in education.
Parents, free to choose without financial penalty, will choose schools,
public or private, which they judge best for their children, and a natural
variety of educational options and models will arise reflecting America's
pluralism.
But If It Is So Good, And So Natural, Why Do Some People Say Such Bad Things About It?
Those who most strongly oppose educational choice and parental freedom typically say they do so because it will "siphon dollars from public schools." This is a seriously mistaken notion based on several fundamental errors. First, those concerned that dollars will be siphoned from public schools may have slipped into the error of believing that public schools have a right to be served as if they were an end in themselves. Actually, they should serve the good ends of education and be judged by how well they do. They have no claim to a given amount of money. Second, educational choice as such says nothing about the amount of money society will spend on education nor on public schools as one educational provider. It has to do with how such money will be spent. Third, choice would encourage the public schools to be better educational providers, and to get more bang for the buck, by ending the monopolistic vacuum they are now in and introducing comparison and competition. Public schools are not the enemy of educational choice. Educational finance monopoly is the enemy.
Thus, opposition to educational choice cannot rightly come from concern for public schools. More likely, the vehemence of that opposition reflects the fact that most of it comes from persons and organizations whose monetary welfare is directly tied to the current finance monopoly. Such vested interests as educational unions and local and state bureaucracies can hardly be expected to welcome a policy change that would end their monopoly advantage and put them in a competitive and comparative environment. This should surprise no one. These are not personal failures or faults. They are the results of the faulty structure spawned by educational finance monopoly.
But Wouldn't Such a Change Be a Radical Departure?
Educational choice without financial penalty is neither new nor radical. Americans experienced it long ago, and more currently in such splendid programs as the GI Bill and college tuition grant programs. Moreover, parents in advanced societies all around the world, from Holland to Australia, have choice available and relish it. It is the natural way for parents to provide the kind of environment they want for their children.
It is not parental freedom that needs to justify itself, but any policy that limits it. It is the current finance monopoly that is radical, and contrary to all American tradition, and there is no objective reason to sustain it. Parental involvement with schools is widely known to encourage educational excellence. Parental choice of school establishes a moral bond between parent and school, and is the definitive form of commitment.
Parents' Choice vs Finance Monopoly
Americans never consciously chose the destructive educational funding method
that now exists, nor the bitter fruit it has yielded in poor educational
performance and ethical breakdown. Those traits evolved absent-mindedly
in the vacuum that monopoly inevitably creates. But once established,
the monopoly takes on a life of its own, as those who benefit from it strive
to sustain it. Recognizing that the system is now neither accountable
nor responsive to the persons it should serve, America's parents can reclaim
their control over education — can once again match their rights with their
responsibilities — by replacing finance monopoly with educational choice.
|
The Blum Center grants full permission for all of its documents to be copied, in part or in whole, to extend the reach of the Center's messages and information. We appreciate it when our readers keep us apprised of state and national developments in the area of school choice, particularly legislative developments. Any Blum Center documents not available on our web page may be obtained by contacting us by telephone, fax, or mail. Virgil C. Blum Center for Parental Freedom in Education |
 |