No Matter Who Gets Credit for the Original Idea, School Vouchers Have Yet to Shake a Racist History
The history of school vouchers in American K12 education is rooted in racism.
This fact is indisputable.
Economist Milton Friedman, known as “the father of school choice,” is the name most commonly connected to the use of vouchers in K12 education. His 1955 paper, “The Role of Government in Education,” is the text often cited as central to Friedman’s views on school choice in the form of vouchers. An excerpt:
In terms of effects, the denationalization of education would widen the range of choice available to parents. …Let the subsidy be made available to parents regardless where they send their children–provided only that it be to schools that satisfy specified minimum standards–and a wide variety of schools will spring up to meet the demand. Parents could express their views about schools directly, by withdrawing their children from one school and sending them to another….
Friedman was not the first economist/scholar to promote the school voucher concept; Thomas Paine did so in 1791, and John Stuart Mill did so in 1859.However, Friedman’s writings were the ones that coincided with the America’s Civil Rights movement– a time when many in southern, white America were keen on devising ways to thwart racial integration of public schools. Thus, it was Friedman’s school voucher writings that were newly publicized a time when many southern governors and other politicians were seeking creative circumvention for public school desegregation.
As I detail in my book, School Choice: The End of Public Education?, school voucher choice was put into practice to expressly to evade the 1954 Supreme CONTINUE READING: No Matter Who Gets Credit for the Original Idea, School Vouchers Have Yet to Shake a Racist History | deutsch29
Amazon.com: School Choice: The End of Public Education? (9780807757253): Mercedes K. Schneider, Karen GJ Lewis: Books - https://www.amazon.com/School-Choice-End-Public-Education/dp/080775725X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1462599048&sr=1-3
