Dr. Kevin G. Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at University of Colorado&ndashBoulder, vigorously critiques the efforts of free-market think tanks to market bad education policy. Welner also provides a profound philosophical reason to oppose vouchers and other free-market-oriented reforms in our public school system:
...[E]ducational opportunities should be among the most precious public goods. While public education does provide an important private benefit to children and their families, it also lies at the center of our societal well-being. Educational opportunities should therefore never be distributed by market forces, because markets exist to create inequalities—they thrive by creating "winners" and "losers." These forces are already at play in the housing market, and school reform should attenuate the resulting inequities, not exacerbate them, as we see happening with unconstrained school choice [Kevin G. Welner, "Free-Market Think Tanks and the Marketing of Education Policy," Dissent, Spring 2011].
When Welner talks about "winners and losers," he's not talking about kids getting A's and F's. He's talking about schools and neighborhoods succeeding or failing. A free-market approach to public schools assumes and welcomes the idea that some schools (most likely those whose constituents have more money and policy savvy) would out-compete others for teachers and resources, leaving some kids and families and communities behind.
Reformers appeal to the urgency of confronting "failing schools," but the logic of their argument leads inevitably to students' dependence upon parents who know how to maneuver within the system to gain private advantage. This is an abandonment of the goal of a comprehensive public sector that provides equitable, universal opportunities. Such consequences are anathema to progressives when free-market ideas are applied to health care; there is no reason they should be welcome when applied to the education of the nation's children [Welner, 2011].
The free market is like my Volkswagen: it's great for lots of tasks, but it doesn't solve everything. It gets good mileage and zooms up hills like a trooper. But if you want to take everyone to the game, you're going to need something a little bigger... like a big yellow public school bus.
We need public education to develop all the country's talent, and give everybody a chance to succeed, regardless of where they were born or how poor their parents were. If we deny Americans equal access to public education, we're not just hurting those people, we're hurting the country. Think of all the talented people--scientists, doctors, soldiers, businessmen, teachers, etc.--who would get wasted if we abandoned public education and let "the market" decide.
Just imagine if your favorite pro baseball team only scouted prospects in rich neighborhoods, while the other teams all scouted every neighborhood in the country. Sure, your team will still find some good talent, but how much are they missing--and how big an advantage are the other teams getting? Now imagine that those other teams have names like China, India, Japan, and Germany, and imagine what abandoning public education would do to our economy and national security.
The following tweet by @DianeRavitch, a education historian who supported NCLB until she saw its effects makes the same point.
"A public school is a public service, like firehouse, not a shoe store. Should be good one in every neighborhood."
(Added some spelling edits to get it out of tweetspeak.)
GOP mythology is dangerous when applied to the real world.
In colonial days, the first thing every village/town did was build a meeting house and a school; in pioneer days, the first thing every village/town did was build a school. Free public education for every child was seen as mandatory to good citizenship. It still is. Period.