Jay P. Greene's Blog

Over at Flypaper, Mike Petrilli found the opening paragraph of my WSJ op-ed unpersuasive:

“On education policy, appeasement is about as ineffective as it is in foreign affairs. Many proponents of school choice, especially Democrats, have tried to appease teachers unions by limiting their support to charter schools while opposing private school vouchers. They hope that by sacrificing vouchers, the unions will spare charter schools from political destruction.”

Has Mike become a fan of appeasement and declared that he has reached “education reform in our time”?  No, but he believes that his anti-voucher/pro-charter beltway buddies are principled in holding their views:

“I challenge Jay to name one person he knows who supports charter schools but opposes vouchers because he or she hopes to appease the unions. I hang out with a lot of these folks and it’s clear to me that most of them oppose vouchers either because of queasiness over church/state issues or because they don’t want public funds going to schools that don’t face any public transparency or accountability requirements. ”

Of course, there is no way to prove who’s right about this because it involves knowing people’s motivations.  If people are willing to let vouchers die because they are eager to protect charters, they won’t exactly go around telling people (or even themselves) that their views are based more on political calculation than principle.  They’ll invent reasons for their views, like being uneasy about church/state issues or having concerns about accountability, even if those are not their true motivations.

So why do I believe that the anti-voucher/pro-charter view is largely a political calculation rather than a principled position?  Well, because most people who hold this view are not consistent in their principles.  If church/state issues are the problem for the anti-voucher/pro-charter crowd, why don’t they oppose Pell Grants or the Day Care Tuition Tax Credit, both of which are vouchers that include religious schools?  If their objection is principled, then we would expect them to be consistent in applying that principle.

And if their objection is the lack of public transparency and accountability, why don’t they advocate for whatever regulations on vouchers they believe are necessary and desirable?  It is simply untrue to say that current voucher programs “don’t face any public transparency or accountability requirements.”  And if people thought even more regulations would be beneficial, the principled position would be to support vouchers with those regulations.  After all, there is nothing magical about the word “public” that makes schools accountable or transparent, so whatever regulations people prefer could be imposed on vouchers as easily as on district or charter schools. 

Of course, I think much of that regulation is unnecessary for accountability and undesirable for schools whether they are district, charter, or voucher schools, but there is nothing in principle that makes one type of school more impervious to accountability regulation than another.  A principled position for believers in choice and competition would be to support charters and vouchers and advocate for a particular regulatory regime, regardless of whether it applied to charters or vouchers.

So if the objections to vouchers among some charter supports are not based on principles, it is reasonable to suspect that they are based on political calculations.  We’ve already rehearsed this argument in an earlier post and I’m too polite to name names, but if you think hard it won’t be a challenge to come up with a the names of a bunch of people.

(edited for typos)