http://www.nationalreview.com/article/369444/we-need-school-choice-now-jeb-bush By Jeb Bush Consumer choice created the most innovative and powerful economy in the world. Choice makes computers cheaper, images sharper, cars safer, and services faster. Choice rewards success and weeds out stagnation, inefficiency, and failure. This is why school choice is critical to the education-reform movement, and why National School Choice Week, which began this Sunday, January 26, is more than just a proclamation. It is a call to action for one of our most cherished principles. How is it that parents have a say over every aspect of their children’s lives, yet often must delegate the critical decision of where they go to school to political boards and government bureaucracies? This has created an education monopoly that spurns accountability, views innovation as a threat, and prioritizes the job security of employees over the learning of children. The result is hardly surprising: America has become a global leader in education spending and a global laggard in academic achievement. Last year we learned that Vietnamese 15-year-olds outperformed American teenagers in math and science on the Program for International Student Assessment. That is not a wake-up call. It is a five-alarm fire. The Ma Bell model of public education has failed. Parents want better options. That is why more than 6,000 charter schools are serving about 2.3 million students. More than a half-million children are on waiting lists. In our urban centers, there is a glut of space in schools that parents don’t want and a dire shortage of space in schools they do want. And there’s a reason for that. The children who benefit most from choice are disadvantaged students who are losing out in traditional public schools.
School vouchers are a better option. The public school system is shit. Inefficient, corrupt and just horrible in general. Privatization is the answer. Taking a few black and mexican kids and bussing them out to the suburbs isn't going to solve the problems
I find it interesting that he's going to campaign for president on pretty big issues that democratic party constituencies aren't happy with. The message also has the tinge of economic freedom to it, so it appeals to both sides. But not barfo.
The problem with school choice is that athletes and scholars will be "recruited" and inner city schools will become vacant (or nearly so). School districts will have a student population unrealistic to their fundings as well. It's a great sound bite, but as a practical matter I'm not so sure it works.
It clearly works. Competition would drive schools to excel or the students go elsewhere. If the students flee the bad schools for a better one, that school will have the money to add classrooms and teachers, etc. They recruit athletes in private schools, so I don't see the issue. Why wouldn't the athlete choose the school that suits his ultimate needs the best? Like one that historically gets athletes into college programs.
