School Choice v. Local Control—Oil and Water!
Republican Presidential candidates claim to be for choice, including vouchers, charters and opportunity scholarships, and they also claim to be for local control of schools.
But school choice and local control are like oil and water. You must choose one or the other.
For example, Brandon Wright, in “Donald Trump Quotes about Education” from The Thomas B. Fordham Institute quotes Donald Trump as saying:
And we’ve got to bring on the competition—open the schoolhouse doors and let parents choose the best school for their children. Education reformers call this school choice, charter schools, vouchers, even opportunity scholarships. I call it competition—the American way….
And then Trump says:
Education has to be local.
Likewise, Jeb Bush, in a Washington Post Op Ed from March, praises choice by saying:
In 1991, Minnesota led the way on creating charter schools. When I was governor, Florida began grading schools on an A-to-F scale in 1999 and offered dramatic school-choice options to parents. Now, 16 states grade their schools, 19 have choice programs and all but eight have charter school laws.
But he also starts out in the same Op Ed:
Given all the challenges facing education reform, we need to remember who really should make the decisions about what happens in our schools: state and local authorities and, most important, parents.
But choice and local control do not mix.
Local control
Local control means citizens own their schools. They pay taxes for them and they can individually, or collectively, question what is taught. They can hash out problematic School Choice v. Local Control—Oil and Water!: