The educational reason is simple: Today’s limited, overregulated schoolchoice programs are better than the status quo, but they’re not nearly good enough. A large body of evidence shows that choice programs improve outcomes both for the students who use them and for students who remain in public
school programs represent less of a break from the government monopoly system because the government still owns the schools, nonetheless the programs are designed to accommodate entrepreneurs. Supporting the creation of new schools is the whole point. Contrast that with existing private-
equal rights and freedom for diverse beliefs. Neither of these pillars is consistent with a government school monopoly, nor with the educational oligopoly of limited school choice. A monopoly or oligopoly exists by stamping out the rights of challengers in order to protect the privileges
schools. But the size of the difference is usually modest. Our moribund, 19th-century educational system will never get the revolutionary change it needs from these programs. The change we really need can only come from educational entrepreneurs who create whole new ways of designing and running schools. We have plenty of these entrepreneurs, but most of them are in the charter-school sector, where they operate under too many constraints to truly reinvent education. The reason these entrepreneurs are running charter schools rather than private choice schools points to the need for universal choice. Admittedly, one reason is because many of these entrepreneurs are refugees from the government monopoly system. In some cases, they haven’t fully freed themselves from that system’s ideology. They sometimes view private school choice as illegitimate. Much more important, however, is program design. While charter
school choice programs, most of which are very poorly designed to support entrepreneurs. Low voucher amounts, student eligibility restrictions, and burdensome regulations in most private choice programs make it almost impossible to start a new private school on the expectation that it will draw students through the program. In many cases, newly created schools are forbidden to participate at all, or must overcome enormous obstacles to do so. As a result, many private choice programs effectively support only a choice among existing private schools. Don’t get me wrong; these programs are good and they improve education. If you were only allowed to eat at one restaurant for years on end, and then suddenly one day you were allowed to choose from among six, you would rejoice in that improvement. But you would still wish you could eat at any restaurant you wanted. That brings us to the civic reason why school choice should be universal. Two of the great pillars of our country are
of the powerful. When educational entrepreneurs are denied the right to start new schools on equal terms with dominant providers, all of us lose. A society where the education of children is controlled by the few is a society that doesn’t respect equal rights. And the education of our children is at the very heart of how we all live out our most central beliefs about life and the universe. Our country can never fully live up to its commitment to freedom for diversity until we undo the monopolization of education. Part of the reason we created the government school monopoly in the 19th century was bigotry and a childish fear of religious diversity. It’s long past time we, as a nation, grew up. Let’s leave those fears behind us, in the nursery of our national history. The march continues. We will keep fighting until every family has school choice. Families need it, schools need it, and our country needs it.
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