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GOP Leader to Speak on School Choice

Jeanne Allen
National Journal
January 7, 2014

Choice is post-partisan! House Majority Leader Cantor’s efforts to highlight positive data on school choice and be a federal voice for school choice is commendable. While school choice proponents nationwide are in the majority, there is no nationwide membership organization for school choice that has the clout of, let’s say the teachers’ union, to win him friends and influence in high places. It’s a lonely endeavor to be for school choice in Washington, because Washington is about power and money, and doesn’t often recognize the realities of the quiet foot soldiers who want and need options and whose valiant efforts are often thwarted by confused and politically charged opponents.

Yes, Cantor is right that those who oppose charters and school choice not only will lose but have been losing the battle for 20-plus years. The status quo has been a powerful force in reducing the level of choice that could otherwise be adopted, or by pushing for overly regulatory rollbacks and fostering the proliferation of bad data. Nonetheless, all but a few states offer substantial choices to some number of students that didn’t exist two decades ago. Altogether such programs reach an estimated 4 million students and adults, with great diversity. The issue of freedom for parents, particularly the poor, is so powerful, that it has united people who are otherwise at polar opposites on many issues.

The all too familiar arguments of opponents are tired and worn and they are the same ones they used unsuccessfully three decades ago. I know. I and numerous others have rebutted them time and time again. In fact, I authored “Nine Lies about School Choice” some years ago and the arguments against choice that are highlighted in this week’s question are eerily similar to those then. For example, the notion that school choice would balkanize anyone is a joke, though I would say that perhaps the education establishment should feel balkanized as their torch for the status quo flickers and fades. That school choice is or ever was a partisan issue is simply not worth addressing, considering a history of school reform demonstrates the bi-partisan nature that has secured it’s implementation in every state where it exists.

Parents want power and they want options as CER’s data shows and its experience over its history also underscores. There would be no movement in standards, teacher quality, content or even pre-K had the pressures of school choice not been present these many years. The Obama Administration might finally want to take a look at that history before they challenge or attempt to kill another school choice program. Then again, it doesn’t matter if they do. No administration has or will ever stop the advances of people who have smelled success and want more of it.