(March 6) A boffo early response to the LA GATOR education program is a reminder that the biggest advantage of school choice programs is, yes, the ability to choose. Choice is a good in itself, even before the social scientists tally test scores and graduation rates.
The LA GATOR (Giving All True Opportunity to Rise) program creates scholarship accounts that eligible students can use for tuition or other education-related expenses such as textbooks, computers, supplies, tutoring and uniforms. They can be used for private schools or for individual offerings at public schools, or for costs relating to home-schooling.
LA GATOR replaces an existing state voucher program that has drawn spirited criticism amid unimpressive results on standardized testing. Proponents of choice, though, say the old program was badly designed, with far too many restrictions and stultifying regulations. They say LA GATOR, by contrast, will be open to more participants, at more schools, for more purposes. Erin Bendily of The Pelican Institute think tank wrote on the group’s website that it is “a very different program than the old voucher system.” She said participating schools must meet significant standards, but they won’t need to show as much “deference to top-down, heavy-handed pressure from the state to conform to the public-school model.”
Even the old program made most parents considerably happier than they were with their children’s previously assigned schools. Bendily wrote that more than 93% of families in the voucher program reported they were either “satisfied” or “very satisfied.”
Parents may be considering factors such as a school’s safety or disciplinary rules, its perceived “school spirit,” its values or educational emphases or any number of other concerns. And that’s the point. Parents, not central bureaucrats or designers of arbitrary district lines, should be presumed to know what is best, in toto, for their children — and either way, parents should have the right to choose. The Supreme Court in Meyer v. Nebraska in 1923 rightly recognized what the case summary called “the right of parents to control the upbringing of their child as they see fit.” In a free society, the ability to make essential choices free from overweening state control is a central, bedrock value…. [The full column is here.]
