“Why we need choice”
For the first time, the issue of school choice is making its way into debates and headlines in a presidential campaign.
While Senator Obama has taken the side of the teachers unions with his opposition to choice, Senator McCain has embraced the issue of school choice, saying in one debate that ”we have to give the same choice,” to children that “Senator Obama and Mrs. Obama had and Cindy and I had.”
In the New York Times, Lance T. Izumi, a senior fellow in California studies and the senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, considers the positions of Senator McCain and Senator Obama in this article, “Why we need choice,” from October 22.
He writes:
So whose view is better public policy? Mr. Obama, the utilitarian, or Mr. McCain, the rights crusader? In Professor Viteritti’s opinion, “choice constitutes good public policy because it is fair, not because its effects are measurable by academicians who would not dream of sharing the decision about where to send their own children to school.” Indeed, parents who make the choice not to send their children to public schools do so for a wide variety of reasons not limited simply to concerns about academic performance and future job prospects.
This summer, I attended a large gathering of liberal/progressive home-schoolers. When I asked parents why they decided to home-school their children, I got many different answers. Some said that they were worried about the violence and bullying in their public schools. Others said that they disliked the standardization of many public schools and the testing and other curriculum requirements that they felt hindered their children’s learning. Unlike Mr. Obama’s narrow measure of choice, these people chose home-schooling for the equity reason that it was their right and it was in the best interests of their individual child.
Shouldn’t we put the power of education in the hands of families and not the government? You can read the rest of the article online here.
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
