In less than three years universal school choice policies have been adopted by 14 states, all Republican leaning. Given the growing desire of education reformers to make similar progress in America’s more liberal bastions, the recently formed Blue State Action Coalition asked Andy Rotherham, co-founder of Bellwether Education, to host an April 2 webinar on “How to Talk to Democrats about School Choice.” Joining him were two people who have had a lot of experience trying to work with the Left on improving America’s K-12 schools: Ashley Berner, Associate Professor of Education at Johns Hopkins University, and Chris Cerf, former New Jersey Commissioner of Education.
Here is a summary of the tips they offered school choice believers trying to engage a political liberal on the subject:
Do not start off by talking about the right of every family to choose its child’s school.
As much as this idea appeals to conservatives and libertarians, political liberals have a longstanding and sincere fear of turning K-12 education into an unregulated marketplace. Instead, begin with the one thing everyone left and right can agree on. As Cerf described it, “We want all children to graduate from high school having mastered, at minimum, the foundational skills necessary for a successful and fulfilling life.”
It’s hard to argue that the $900 million America currently spends each year on primary and secondary education is achieving anything close to this goal, and from there you can make a persuasive case for choice based on measurable outcomes. In other words, if your position is that providing families with a range of educational options, both public and private, has been shown to improve student learning while also equalizing opportunity, it is difficult for a Democrat to keep a closed mind on the policy.
Should the person you’re speaking with proudly declare “I believe in public education” or “I believe a single district school which brings everyone together is a good thing,” say that’s fine, but such sentiments are personal values, not facts about how to improve the quality of K-12 education. If the one thing all taxpayers can agree on is that every child must be academically prepared for the kind of world they will inherit, we must do what has been objectively documented to accomplish that.
Note that the current debate over school choice is not about whether every state should have it, but about what kind of choice is best.
The problem in 36 states is that most families are still forced to pick the school their child will attend by buying or renting a home in the town district that particular school serves. And given that residences in districts with better schools tend to be more expensive, poor and middle-income families have far fewer educational options for their children than the wealthy do. In Rotherham’s words, Americans “actually have a lot of school choice… it’s just reverse means tested.”
No one imagines there is any system in which the children of the wealthy don’t have some educational advantage -- if nothing else, they get to travel more and have access to more cultural activities. But by providing all families with more schooling options regardless of income, state governments can get a lot closer than they currently are to giving every student the minimum skills he or she will need to become a successful adult.
Remind Democrats that the goal of empowering minority parents with the option to take their kids out of low-performing public schools has long been a progressive priority.
As Berner pointed out, prominent Democrat civil rights leaders like Marquette University professor Howard Fuller and Boston University’s Charles Glenn have fought for this right ever since the 1960s. Indeed, Martin Luther King III himself has often spoken in support of school choice, arguing that it aligns with his father’s desire to create better educational options for families of limited means. More recently, trade union officials in both New York and Illinois have backed tax credits for private education.
You could add Rotherham’s observation that school choice is the only issue where conservative and progressive positions seem inexplicably inverted. An alien from Mars studying Earth, he said, would be hard pressed to explain why it is the Democrats who are denying an education benefit to less fortunate families while the Republicans are saying “give money to the poor and let them do whatever they want with it.”
Let Democrats know that school choice is far more common in other countries.
“One of the most persuasive ways to talk about school choice,” Berner has found, is to let people know that the “rigid zero-sum distinction” many Americans make between government funding only public schools and giving to private as well is largely unknown in other parts of the world. As she herself noted, “80 percent of the countries that UNESCO works with don’t talk about public verses private” with the Netherlands alone “funding 36 different kinds of schools. [Indeed], if you were to walk around with a microphone asking people in Belgium what school choice is, they wouldn’t know what you are talking about.”
Note that people in other nations know what former American Sociological Association president James Coleman documented decades ago: that kids who attend a school with a distinctive mission -- be it religious, academic, or artistic -- tend to have superior educational outcomes. What this means is that a country that simultaneously supports classical schools, diocesan schools, yeshivas, and variously themed academies is doing something equally good for the students in each of them. Governments outside the U.S. happily support multiple academic missions because they know that the collective effect is a healthy one.
Point out that one of the things America has done exceptionally well over the last century is to develop successful public-private partnerships.
This has happened in areas as diverse as national defense, hospital construction, pharmaceutical development, and emergency services. There is no reason to think such collaboration would be any less successful in K-12 education, with government funding both public and private school venues.
Should a Democrat you meet express his or her fear that public funds could end up subsidizing something like a madrasa run by Islamic terrorists, simply remark on the unfortunate political tendency in our country to extrapolate from the most unlikely or horrible possibility. Then add that advocating violence or political insurrection have long been illegal in the U.S. and will continue to be, no matter how schools are financed.
Finally, say that the Democrat Party has a lot more to gain by joining the discussion on how to create a more pluralistic school system than by continuing to defend the status quo.
Point out that school choice includes a lot more than private school vouchers and the education savings accounts [ESAs] which have become so popular in Republican-leaning states. As Cerf noted, “It includes open enrollment… where you are not consigned to your neighborhood school. And it can [also] mean interdistrict choice -- opening up seats in schools for kids who come from another part of the state.”
Virginia alone has developed an impressive variety of educational alternatives in recent years: so-called “lab school” partnerships between public districts and local universities, rural programs focused on Amazon Web credentialling, high schools in Norfolk which teach modern shipbuilding, and other high schools which take advantage of Wallops Island rocket launches to offer an aerospace curriculum.
Given that Democrats seem to have a big political problem these days, it makes no sense for them to sit back and let Republicans be the only ones offering American families more and better schooling options. For, while it is true that their party is struggling on a number of fronts, K-12 education is clearly an area where Democrats have lost considerable ground and where they cannot afford to be seen as unmovable.
In Cerf’s words, “It’d be much better to be a productive member of the discussion and to remember that there are many progressive values that are indeed served by choice.”
Dr. Andrews is president of the Kids’ Scholarship Fund (www.ksfct.org). His latest book is Living Spiritually in the Material World (Fidelis Books).
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