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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/369444/we-need-school-choice-now-jeb-bush
By Jeb Bush
Consumer choice created the most innovative and powerful economy in the world. Choice makes computers cheaper, images sharper, cars safer, and services faster.
Choice rewards success and weeds out stagnation, inefficiency, and failure.
This is why school choice is critical to the education-reform movement, and why National School Choice Week, which began this Sunday, January 26, is more than just a proclamation. It is a call to action for one of our most cherished principles.
How is it that parents have a say over every aspect of their children’s lives, yet often must delegate the critical decision of where they go to school to political boards and government bureaucracies? This has created an education monopoly that spurns accountability, views innovation as a threat, and prioritizes the job security of employees over the learning of children.
The result is hardly surprising: America has become a global leader in education spending and a global laggard in academic achievement. Last year we learned that Vietnamese 15-year-olds outperformed American teenagers in math and science on the Program for International Student Assessment.
That is not a wake-up call. It is a five-alarm fire.
The Ma Bell model of public education has failed.
Parents want better options. That is why more than 6,000 charter schools are serving about 2.3 million students. More than a half-million children are on waiting lists. In our urban centers, there is a glut of space in schools that parents don’t want and a dire shortage of space in schools they do want.
And there’s a reason for that. The children who benefit most from choice are disadvantaged students who are losing out in traditional public schools.
By Jeb Bush
Consumer choice created the most innovative and powerful economy in the world. Choice makes computers cheaper, images sharper, cars safer, and services faster.
Choice rewards success and weeds out stagnation, inefficiency, and failure.
This is why school choice is critical to the education-reform movement, and why National School Choice Week, which began this Sunday, January 26, is more than just a proclamation. It is a call to action for one of our most cherished principles.
How is it that parents have a say over every aspect of their children’s lives, yet often must delegate the critical decision of where they go to school to political boards and government bureaucracies? This has created an education monopoly that spurns accountability, views innovation as a threat, and prioritizes the job security of employees over the learning of children.
The result is hardly surprising: America has become a global leader in education spending and a global laggard in academic achievement. Last year we learned that Vietnamese 15-year-olds outperformed American teenagers in math and science on the Program for International Student Assessment.
That is not a wake-up call. It is a five-alarm fire.
The Ma Bell model of public education has failed.
Parents want better options. That is why more than 6,000 charter schools are serving about 2.3 million students. More than a half-million children are on waiting lists. In our urban centers, there is a glut of space in schools that parents don’t want and a dire shortage of space in schools they do want.
And there’s a reason for that. The children who benefit most from choice are disadvantaged students who are losing out in traditional public schools.
