[Dean's World] Dean: School Choice in Minneapolis

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Posted by Dean:
School Choice in Minneapolis
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1141318141.shtml


   For years it's been the same: opponents of school choice claim that if
   you allow parents freedom of choice in where to send their kids to
   school, the public schools will deteriorate even worse and the overall
   education experience for kids will get worse. This has never been
   true; study after study after study on charter schools and other
   choice-based programs have shown that. The worst the opponents of free
   choice have ever been able to offer is that the choice-based systems
   often don't make dramatic improvements, i.e. the improvements are
   often only marginal or negligible. Meanwhile when backed against a
   wall they are forced to admit that none of their doomsday scenarios
   has ever come to fruition, despite the school choice movement's
   continuing growth.

   Meanwhile, while some choice-based systems show only marginal
   improvements, others show substantial improvements for students and
   parents. Today's Wall Street Journal examines one of the better
   examples: [1]Minneapolis and the rising Black Flight syndrome it's
   causing.

   Give parents the freedom to leave a failed and deplorable system that
   hasn't managed to reform itself despite decades of excuse-making and
   massive funding increases--and whaddya know? Parents opt out, and the
   existing system either reforms to make itself more attractive to
   parents, or perishes.

   One of the many reasons I walked away from the political left many
   years ago was that I realized how illiberal and reactionary and
   closed-minded and control-oriented so many of them were. School choice
   was probably the tipping point for me. Freedom of choice is heresy to
   most of the left if that free choice involves anything but the pelvis.

References

   1. http://www.opinionjournal.com/cc/?id=110008032