School Choice in Georgia

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, an op-ed that debate on school choice is nation-wide, and that experiments (although limited) are spreading.

This one is written by Gerard Robinson who is president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options.

Among the points he makes is one particularly salient one:

Fallacy: Parents, particularly poor parents, are incapable of making good decisions in an educational marketplace.

This claim is unconvincing on two fronts. First, the same poor parent who is smart enough to use a Section 8 voucher to find a suitable place to live or is smart enough to use a food stamp voucher in a grocery store will not suddenly become stupid when it comes to shopping for his child’s education. Yes, choosing between schools is different from choosing between apples, but parents know a rotten school and a rotten apple when they see it. Parents whom I’ve met in Milwaukee and Washington, D.C. —- two cities with scholarship programs —- are savvier than voucher opponents give them credit for. In fact, the role of parents in the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Program that kicked off here last year represents one example of active parent participation in the education marketplace.

Interestingly, in pretty much any other context the notion that poor people, and especially black poor people are too dumb to make decent choices would be howlingly politically incorrect.

But the guardians of political correctness happen to be in bed with the teacher’s union, and to have a huge stake in a public school monopoly which they want to use to indoctrinate kids into their social agenda.

So if the notion “dumb poor blacks” is necessary to oppose vouchers, “dumb poor blacks” it is.

The Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Program, by the way, is yet another case of the slow, incremental but steady advance of school choice.