This approach helps explain why choice advocates — inclined to approach choice-based reform not as a regulatory question, but as one of justice and rights — have spent so much less time considering the dynamics of deregulation than have pro-market reformers in sectors like transportation, telecommunications, and cable television. Because education reformers have approached choice not as a matter of political economy but as a moral crusade, they have favored grand, sweeping claims over empirical reality.
I think that this has a lot of explanatory power for the postive treatment that charter schools are getting in the press and among pundits. Mark has written about this extensively on this blog.
I think breaking apart the moral and the policy dimensions would be a positive development. The issues with under-servicing of some groups are broad but there is a risk that alternatives could make things worse.
My first thought when I heard about the school choice movement was, "have you thought this out?" It soon became obvious the answer no.
ReplyDeleteThis doesn't mean that school choice is a bad idea but its advocates are nowhere near working the details out.