School Choice Disempowers (Almost) Everybody
The standard argument for school choice is that it will empower all sorts of folks, but it's just not so. In fact, modern school choice is designed to deliberately strip power from all sorts of public education stakeholders.
Unions
Let's start with the most obvious--one big dream of choiceniks is to finally break the damned teachers unions. You can see in pieces like the one I discussed yesterday just how badly some conservatives want to make teachers unions go away; for some hard righty folks, the entire public school system is just a scam set up to generate revenue for the unions, which in turn function simply as a fund-raising arm of the Democratic Party.
The charter dream model has been built around the fully-empowered visionary CEO, who should be free to do whatever his vision tells him needs to be done without government regulations or union contracts limiting his options. For charteristas, freedom to hire and fire at will, to extend the work day and work year as far as they wish, and to set work conditions as they wish are all an essential part. They want to "empower" teachers to obey whatever orders the boss wants to implement.
Vouchers of course move us into the world of CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: School Choice Disempowers (Almost) Everybody