Vouchers Create a Split Between “Ed Reform” Conservatives: Accountability Bean-Counters and the Religious Right
The New Republic has an interesting analysis of Louisiana’s experiment in privatization of public schools: Ed Kilgore argues in “How the GOP’s New Education Policy Embraces the Market and Abandons Objective Standards” that vouchers pander to parents as the ultimate source of “accountability.” But this emphasis on parents’ subjective evaluation of a school’s worth (private = religious = my religion = better) flies in the face of technocratic, data-driven assessments that use student standardized test scores as the basis of “stack ranking” teachers and deeming schools failures.
Kilgore says:
Kilgore says:
Now it may be objected that it’s possible to construct a voucher system less cavalier about school quality than Louisiana’s, and that a Romney Administration Department of Education would do a better job of “vetting” schools. But the conflict between no-strings voucher systems and those based on objective standards is not one of competence, but of philosophy. And moreover, even if a Republican Congress and White House (or states following their lead) were willing to partially