Shifting educational priority
Editor, Former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos compared choosing a school to picking an Uber, Lyft or taxi. But what if there was no Uber, Lift or taxi service anywhere close to where you live?
DeVos asserted that private school choice and competition would be “good for everyone” and “in all settings.” This is based on the assumption that free-market economics works for education for the public good as well as for each child. That assumption has been shown by the experiences of other states to be untrue.
What those experiences show is as the degree competition arises, it gets misdirected so that private schools compete to select (poach) the “best-fit” students, and to provide the best marketing and customer service, not necessarily the best instruction and education.
This shifts the competitive process away from the core elements of education — instruction, curriculum, management, and normative values — toward the “zero-sum game” of student selection (“school’s” choice).
As our state leaders contemplate the creation of a marketplace for “universal private school vouchers” they would be wise to consider what has made similar programs in other states struggle, fail and/or be rejected by their voters.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has said, “Many Texas schools are striving to be great, and are great, and most are good. Unfortunately, no matter their effort, some schools struggle to meet the unique educational needs that some students require.”
If the above is true, then it sounds like an argument for using our precious tax dollars to fix the ones that are not good, rather than diverting billions of taxpayer dollars each year to private schools that will require the children in most of our Texas counties to try and get an Uber, Lyft or taxi to transport them back and forth to a private school somewhere else.
— Richard Caldwell Boerne resident
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