one of the great objections against the idea of full and free school choice in which we fund kids rather than systems and where the families themselves may spend that money on any education they select fully free from any government limitation, requirement, or certification is that “they might make bad choices and wind up not learning anything.”
i find this objection deeply unpersuasive not only because the competition for students would breed levels of school competence never before seen in america and it would rapidly get really, really hard to even make a bad choice as there wouldn’t be any on the men, but also because of one simple fact: it’s gotta be better than this.
these are americans schooled for ~14 years in the public academy.
this is the bar we are using for comparison.
are we really going to produce worse than this?
because that’s the real question, isn’t it?
pretending that the current output is in any way acceptable and not a grotesque failure for a shocking number of children and then honing in on fear over conjectured corner cases if we let people make their own choices is argument by false premise and unsubstantiated assumption.
that is not a valid basis for assertion.
worse, it sidesteps the idea of accountability to the customer in favor of monopoly as though THAT has ever assured quality.
those kids in the video above as educational output is what we’re competing with.
these are the kids schools are failing as things stand.
can anyone argue with a straight face that choice could possibly do worse?
but if we allow school choice, some kids might get bad educations!