Grading School Choice

Ross Douthat comments, in this piece, about the must-see movie, "Waiting for Superman" and also about the much-commented-upon essay by Frederick Hess, "Does School Choice 'Work'".  Check it out.

I am, I confess, a big fan of choice-in-education.  (Ed.:  No kidding?)  However, as Douthat writes, (and as I argued here, and as Joseph Viteritti has been insisting for years),

school choice advocates need to make a case for greater competition that doesn’t depend on test scores alone. Maybe charter schools, merit pay and vouchers won’t instantly turn every American child into a test-acing dynamo. But if they “only” create a more cost-effective system that makes parents and students happier with their schools — well, that would be no small feat, and well worth fighting for.

As I wrote, in the linked-to-above piece:

I am confident that giving parents the ability to exercise meaningfully their moral and constitutional right to educate their children as they see fit will, in fact, improve public education—i.e., the education of the public—and, more specifically, offer new opportunities to disadvantaged children. But am I sure about this? Can we be sure? Should we wait until we are sure? No, no, and no. . . . 

For some choice supporters, every up-tick in fourth-graders’ reading scores is a vindication of the power of market competition; likewise, for some opponents, every experiment that fails to achieve dramatic gains over the status quo exposes the hubris of the boosters of choice and competition.  As I have already mentioned, those who contend that school choice would reduce, not increase racial segregation; that choice would improve, not threaten, the lot of low-income and center-city students; that a choice-based education system would result, on balance, in a better educated citizenry; and that students whose parents are permitted to choose their schools will, for the most part, be as, if not more, tolerant, respectful, decent, and public-minded as today’s government-educated children appear to me to have the better of the argument. But, in Viteritti’s words, “not everyone would agree. Nor will they ever[.]”  I agree. There is no point to waiting, and no justification for waiting, for the data to demonstrate to everyone’s satisfaction the need for, and soundness of, choice-based reform. After all, I suspect that opposition to choice owes less to worries about holes in the research than to a cluster of concerns about the job security of union members and public employees, the place of religious education and discourse in a liberal society, and the moral and civic balkanization thought to be associated with the privatization of education. And so, what if we were to resign ourselves to the fact that the numbers, data, models, and statistics will always be difficult for reasonable, well meaning people to decipher? In other words, as Professor Viteritti puts it, why not “call it a draw.”  Instead of bickering about the meaning and significance of the information we have managed to glean from those few school-choice experiments that have managed to survive the gauntlet of litigation and regulation, why not ask whether good reasons exist, in the face of widespread demand by deserving parents, for refusing to embrace choice? Instead of saddling reformers with the burden of demonstrating, with Aristotelian rigor, the efficiency and effectiveness of choice, why not flip the question around—Why not? Parents want choice—why should they not have it?