Following on from my piece yesterday, here are a few more examples of progressive ideas from the Right.
School Choice. For most of the last 50 years, the only public
schools
that competed for students were magnet schools. These were largely the creation of the federal courts, and their primary purpose was to draw white students from the suburbs back to center-city school systems. Since they had to compete with other schools, they had to be good. And just about everyone agrees they are good. So why can’t every school be a magnet school? The answer: teachers unions. If schools had to compete for students, bad teachers would lose their jobs. Bad schools would be forced to close. Because the
Democratic Party
is so dependent on teacher union support, you will be hard-pressed to find a Democratic politician anywhere who supports absolute school choice.
The
private voucher movement
was spurred by a right-of-center think tank and a few wealthy donors. In time, it blossomed into a lifesaver for thousands of low-income, mainly minority children who got the opportunity to escape bad schools and go to better ones. From there, it spread to the public sector, where
New York City’s charter schools
, for example, have produced striking gains for low-income minority students. Today, there are
27 public voucher programs
in 16 states and the District of Columbia.
Unfortunately, schools participating in voucher programs are hampered by a requirement to admit students based…
