It's about power

Published February 14, 2014

by John Hood, John Locke Foundation and NC SPIN panelist, February 14, 2014.

Why does the Left oppose school choice?

It can’t be because they oppose tax dollar going to private, even faith-based institutions. For decades, state and federal subsidies have flowed to private colleges and universities, including sectarian institutions. For decades, Medicare and Medicaid dollars have flowed to Catholic hospitals. For decades, federal block grants and social-service dollars have flowed to private agencies and nonprofits, including those with religious affiliations.

Here in North Carolina, liberals love to sing the praises of Smart Start, the signature program of former Gov. Jim Hunt, and North Carolina Pre-K, the signature program of former Gov. Mike Easley. Both preschool programs fund private institutions, without substantial objection by the Left. In fact, during the initial legislative debate in the mid-1990s about creating Smart Start, conservatives expressed concern that the new program would unfairly exclude church-run day care centers, thus using government subsidies to bias the market. Hunt addressed the concern by ensuring that, yes, church-run centers would be full participants in Smart Start without having to give up their principles. Famously, Smart Start recipients would assured that if they want to sing “Jesus Loves Me” in their classes, that would be just fine with the state.

In other words, the objection that North Carolina’s new opportunity-scholarship program breaches a necessary wall between government funding of services and private provision of those services is incoherent.

So is the argument that North Carolina taxpayers who don’t agree with the curriculum or teaching methods of private schools shouldn’t be compelled to fund them. Is that really a policy they would apply consistently to other programs and institutions?

I, for one, am appalled at some of the propaganda and garbage I am compelled to fund at state-run colleges and universities. When I was an undergraduate at UNC-Chapel Hill in the 1980s, I had a number of excellent, fair-minded professors whose personal views differed from mine but who didn’t let that interfere with their responsibilities as educators. But I also had several professors of the stereotypical sort — those who attempted to use their power in the classroom to indoctrinate their students with Marxist ideology, Keynesian claptrap, and radical social theories of varying levels of ludicrousness.

This problem hasn’t gotten any better since the 1980s. As best I can judge from talk to today’s campus generation, the problem has gotten worse.

If liberals think North Carolina shouldn’t compel taxpayers to fund a K-12 voucher program because it might finance the teaching of content they find objectionable, would they accept the same argument as a justification for defunding the UNC system, or least for imposing restrictions on what UNC professors are allowed to teach? Of course not. That’s why their second objection to school choice, that it may subsidize instructional content some find objectionable, is also incoherent.

What is the real reason why modern leftists oppose school choice? Because they take their lead on the issue from teacher unions, who see the expansion of chartered public schools, private schools, and other educational options as a competitive threat. Keep in mind that most teachers do not belong to the North Carolina Association of Educators or similar organizations. Very few charter school teachers do. No private school teachers do, as far as I know. And even most teachers in district-run public schools are not NCAE members.

The concepts of differentiation and competition run counter to the union mentality. But they are critical to the way virtually all other professions function. Attorneys compete with other attorneys and receive compensation that varies by practice, location, and performance. Physicians and nurses compete with other providers, either as independent practices or as members of hospital networks. Engineers compete with other engineers for jobs, contracts, and pay.

Even in the public sector, competition is usually welcomed. We typically want sole-source contracts to be rare exceptions, not the rule. We take great pains to encourage multiple bidders for performing public services.

Providing a spectrum of educational choices — district-run public schools, charter schools, private schools, and other options — is a commonsense policy with plenty of precedent in America and around the world. That the Left opposes it is disappointing, but hardly puzzling.

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February 14, 2014 at 9:46 am
Richard Bunce says:

Giving relatively low wealth parents the resources to seek out alternative education systems for their children as many relatively high wealth parents already do including many elected officials and government school teachers who are opposed to means tested education vouchers is simply the right thing to do. Government school system bureaucrats, administrators, teachers need to worry a lot less about vouchers and pay and a lot more about the fact that the majority of government school system students are not proficient at basic skills. We reward accomplishments but only after something is accomplished and the government school systems and the government education industrial complex that controls them has failed to perform their assigned task.

February 14, 2014 at 9:51 am
Rip Arrowood says:

It's not about "Providing a spectrum of educational choices."

It's about providing a spectrum of opportunities for private individuals to soak the taxpayers of NC for a service the state already provides.

You want to send your kids to a Charter?

Do it on your own dime.

February 14, 2014 at 11:41 am
Richard Bunce says:

No, it's about the near monopoly (unless you are relatively wealthy like an elected official, education bureaucrat, or many government school teachers who do send their children to alternate education systems) of the failed governments school systems where the majority of their students are not proficient at basic skills.

February 15, 2014 at 9:56 am
Rip Arrowood says:

Can you provide some numbers of the "relatively wealthy like an elected official, education bureaucrat, or many government school teachers who do send their children to alternate education systems"?

Do you deny this information from your beloved ALEC?

http://www.alec.org/publications/report-card-on-american-education/

NC is always average or above...our state can do better and should do better. Cutting education budgets seems a little counter-productive to fixing the problem "of the failed governments school systems where the majority of their students are not proficient at basic skills."

Don't you think?

February 15, 2014 at 11:42 am
Richard Bunce says:

Plenty of information out there on relatively wealthy sending their children to alternate education systems including elected officials, education bureaucrats, and government school teachers. Who said anything about ALEC? I know that is the lefts favorite whipping boy but I don't bother with their screeds either. Finally you of course fall into the lefts favored hole that government spending more money on something, anything, will make it better while the private sector doing so in greedy, racist, disenfranchising, and immoral. You would be happy if NC spent as much per pupil as DC with the same dismal result as DC as long as the government education industrial complex funding was maintained. Do you actually think that paying the current government school systems bureaucrats/administrators/teachers more will produce any different result?

February 17, 2014 at 9:08 am
Rip Arrowood says:

If there's plenty of info out there, it should be easy for you to post a link...just as I did regarding the alleged failures of NC Public education.

February 14, 2014 at 10:45 am
Bill Worley says:

Using the teachers union as your villain is nothing more than a paper lion argument John. Especially here in North Carolina where the NCEA has absolutely no power whatsoever.

We have a duty to provide an education to all students in North Carolina, one that is equal in access and quality. K-12 schools are not equivalent to businesses, despite your great desire to treat them as such. If customers take their business to the new store in town, and the old store closes as a result, everyone just shops at the new store. If education dollars siphoned from already struggling public schools go to new charter/private schools and the old school dies, where do those students get educated?

Charters began with the premise that they would be experimental models for different approaches to education - approaches which, when proven successful, would be incorporated into existing public schools to make their outcomes better. Where is this happening? Where in fact are we even seeing a proven record of new ideas that could be adopted in our existing public schools?

They aren't there. And part of the reason they aren't there is that charters and privates are not even being held to the same standards as public schools, nor are they being required to address the same populations and needs. As a result they have become nothing more than publicly paid for private schools where the lucky few can isolate their children from the undesirables. It's publicly sanctioned socio-economic segregation - at the expense of our constitutionally mandated public school system.

When you are at the poverty level, with little money for food or transportation, you cannot choose to send your child to the new charter school across town that doesn't offer transportation or lunch. When your child requires educational services that the new charter school is not required to provide, you cannot choose to send your child there.

And when enough able and involved parents and families abandon their local schools for the safety and isolation of the new charter school, their old school sinks further, making it even harder for those that remain to reclaim precious ground, meaning those who leave carry responsibility for those left behind.

Charter and private schools are the 21st century equivalent to the "separate but equal" policies of the 50's and 60's. And they are no less evil and destructive now than back then.

February 14, 2014 at 11:42 am
Richard Bunce says:

February 14, 2014 at 7:23 pm
Norm Kelly says:

Since someone has already brought up the State Constitution, let's get the facts, the details. Does the Constitution say that we MUST provide PUBLIC education to every child? Does the Constitution say that we MUST provide education to every child? I spend enough time here; I don't have enough time to read the state Constitution and it's amendments to know what the wording is.

If we MUST provide an education, why is there such hostile response to charter, private, choice? Claiming that John is using the NCAE as a villain or paper lion is simply unfounded. It is the NCAE that opposes any sort of choice or competition. It doesn't really matter how small the group of members in NCAE. It seems the politicians think the NCAE is strong enough to matter. The politicians DON'T think the NCAE is a paper tiger. There exists strong opposition to school competition. And it comes from the left. But like John points out, their argument is bogus. This is what actually defines a paper tiger, Bill. The paper tiger is what the union and too many politicians, mostly DemocRATs, are throwing up as objections to school choice.

The question has been raised about why the options/methods used in charter schools aren't being examined and adopted into the public schools. If these options used by charters actually make education better, more successful, then why aren't these plans being examined and adopted by public schools? The obvious answer is that public schools do NOT believe anyone besides themselves are capable of educating kids; the public school sector are snobs. The people who run/control public schools refuse to recognize that ANY kid coming out of a charter school can properly be defined as having an education. Wake County Board of Ed is an outrageous example of everything that is WRONG with education. It starts with school assignment, goes into funding, follows on to school building location, and on and on and on. What could possibly improve WCBoE? Competition. Threat of their product leaving the system and getting educated elsewhere. Remember, the first step taken by DemocRATs when they took control of the WCBoE was to take parental choice away from parentals. This is the first clue that administrators don't believe parents know what's best, BoE members DO know what's best, and no one is allowed to take control away from the Demons on the BoE. No one.

Choice IS the answer.