Let's Not Do Away with Public Education

It's hard to know where to start on conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg's recent column arguing that the U.S. ought to "do away with" public schools. Goldberg comes to this conclusion based on the Washington Post's recent series focusing on the horrible state of the District of Columbia Public Schools--which is sort of like concluding we should abolish the U.S. military because of the Abu Ghraib scandal.

There's no disputing that DCPS is a horrible mess, and that too many other school districts nationally are doing a grave injustice to the poor and minority kids they're failing serve. But it's hard to see where Goldberg's proposed solution would help.

Goldberg quotes Milton Friedman saying government is bad at providing services but good at cutting checks. But another thing government has been good at is ensuring that every child had a school to attend--an important achievement that could be lost in a purely market system. Obviously, that's not enough if the schools suck, but there's no reason to believe imploding the public schools would generate huge quality improvements.

The biggest problem in education today is an insufficient supply of good schools--public or private--particularly in high-minority, low-income communities. Simply cutting parents a check isn't going to fix that. We need a dramatic expansion of the supply of high-quality schools serving disadvantaged youngsters. Market mechanisms, combined with charity, can do (and are doing) some of that, but the woes of for-profit education management companies, combined with the inherent limits on the number of altruistic school founders, suggest there are serious limitations to what a purely market strategy can accomplish without a more aggressive public role.

In casting the debate as a choice between "greater funding" and "blow the whole thing up" Goldberg betrays a woeful ignorance about today's education policy landscape. What about the standards movement, which has for the first time given parents and the public meaningful information about student and school performance and focused educators on the goal of improving student performance? What about successful school turnaround efforts in San Diego, Sacramento, and elsewhere? What about Teach for America, the New Teacher Project, and other programs that aim to bring a much needed dose of new talent into the education system? What about performance pay, career ladders, and other efforts to make teachers truly accountable professionals and link teachers incentives more closely to actual public goals for schools? What about the charter school movement, which in barely 15 years has created nearly 4,000 new PUBLIC schools nationally, including, yes, too many bad ones, but also including some incredible successes--such as the KIPP and Achievement First networks--and expanded real choice for parents? Goldberg needs to take a look at Education Sector's website.

Yes, there are too many bad schools in the U.S. And, yes, too many reform efforts have failed. But imploding the current system, simply sending poor parents out to fend for themselves with a check and a wish good luck, would be just as great an abdication of public responsibility as anything in the current system.