Occupy School Choice?
by Frederick M. Hess • May 23, 2012 at 7:54 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
Last week, I had an exchange with the Fordham Institute's "school choice czar" Adam Emerson, in which I argued that Emerson showed an unfortunate disregard for the legitimate concerns of parents and taxpayers in Zachary, Louisiana, in upbraiding them for not opening their schools to the state's new voucher program. I didn't mean to pick on Emerson in particular. I fear that too often even putatively "conservative" advocates for school choice slip into self-righteous rhetoric that dismisses or denigrates the concerns of middle-class or suburban households.
Indeed, the most telling reaction to the back-and-forth was over at the Daily Kos, a prominent progressive website, where plthomasEdD wrote, "Hess doesn't see a problem with families putting themselves and their children first, including protecting their home values." The peculiar thing was that he saw this stance as some kind of slip, deeming the column "valuable not for his intended messages, but for what [Hess] reveals about