The Choice Channel

“Hardly anyone disputes the contention that the modern public school is seriously flawed. Test scores continue to be poor while metal detectors are found in the more violent schools. Welfare-state liberals argue that schools in poor areas need more money to place them on an equal footing with their richer counterparts. Conservatives usually reply that the solution is a voucher system that would break the government monopoly on education by restoring choice and control to parents. But virtually all participants on both sides of the debate concede the nobility of the original reformers; in their view, the ‘good intentions’ of such school champions as Horace Mann and John Dewey led to ‘unintended consequences.’” (07/98)