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This article was downloaded by: [Simon Fraser University]On: 17 November 2014, At: 09:09Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Journal of School Choice: InternationalResearch and ReformPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wjsc20
School Choice: Go Market or Go HomeNeal McCluskeyPublished online: 05 Sep 2014.
To cite this article: Neal McCluskey (2014) School Choice: Go Market or Go Home, Journal of SchoolChoice: International Research and Reform, 8:3, 542-544, DOI: 10.1080/15582159.2014.942199
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15582159.2014.942199
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Journal of School Choice, 8:542–544, 2014Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1558-2159 print/1558-2167 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15582159.2014.942199
School Choice: Go Market or Go Home
Book under review:
John Merrifield. (2002). School Choices: True and False. Oakland, CA:The Independent Institute, 96 pp.
Before I write anything else, let me make clear that I didn’t choose JohnMerrifield’s School Choices: True and False as the book that most influ-enced me in order to suck up to Mr. Merrifield, the esteemed Editor ofthe Journal of School Choice. If I’d wanted to curry favor with someoneof influence I’d have gone for the gusto by declaring George Soros’ TheNew Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What ItMeans, or any scribblings by Warren Buffett, as my life changer. No, I pickedSchool Choices because that stick-slim, 96-page volume finally cementedmy conviction that only a full, free market in education—not tiny private-school choice programs, or quasiprivate charter schools—could deliver theeducational transformation we need.
To put this into personal context, when I first picked up School Choicesin 2002, I was more or less a newby policy analyst at the Center for EducationReform (CER). CER was and is a terrific organization that fights hard forcharter schools, vouchers, and reforms of the traditional public school systemsuch as standards and testing. And for a long time I accepted that choicecould only come slowly, and we had to try to make the public schoolswork.
Over time, however, I became increasingly convinced that top-downpublic school reforms such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) would have fewif any positive effects (and I was quite convinced that NCLB was unconsti-tutional), and I also grew disillusioned with tiny, hobbled, choice programs,be they ever so welcome to people previously without choice. None of thesethings did I expect to create transformative change.
School Choices: True and False was the final nail in the coffin of anyhopes I had that pushing incremental choice or system-tweaking reformswould be useful, and with only about 70 pages of text it did so in little overan hour. After reading the book, I was fully convinced that small voucherprograms, receiving a fraction of public school per-pupil funding, wouldnever create systemic change. I was convinced that charter schools would
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never be allowed to grow fast and free enough to create the real competi-tive pressures needed to force all schools to either get better, or go out ofbusiness. Most important, at least as those who have had conversations withProfessor Merrifield know quite well, I accepted that having schools chargeprices is essential. As Merrifield writes on page 42:
Price change is not an optional part of the market mechanism. It isthe market mechanism. Price movement regulates market participation,including how many businesses participate in each market, how theyspecialize, and how they change over time. For example, higher pricesare often necessary to motivate as well as pay for research, development,and the costly early stages of a product’s life cycle.
Alas, as Merrifield makes quite clear in the book, failing to explain whywe need a true, free market in education, and selling hopelessly hamstrungchoice as transformative, is a recipe for failure. And it was a recipe by whichreformers had been cooking for far too long.
Rereading School Choices recently, and participating way too much inthe national debate over the Common Core, I was struck by Merrifield’semphasis on something that gets far too little mention in the anti-Coreendeavor: the need to have school specialization to deal with children whoare all unique individuals. “Specialization and the selectivity that must accom-pany it are not discrimination,” he writes on page 59. “We need a diverseschool system with at least one great choice for every child, not a one-size-fits-all system that imagines that every child learns the same way.” That’sabsolutely right, and the only way to get education tailored to the greatly var-ied needs and abilities of all children is to do the exact opposite of nationalstandardization—it is free-market education.
School Choices is not without a few things with which I disagree.Merrifield, for instance, writes that he is “not convinced that a refundabletax credit or fully funded voucher risks any more regulation of the privatesector than exists now or will exist in the near future” (p. 65). Seeing choiceprograms such as Milwaukee’s bring heavier regulation on private schools,I am convinced that vouchers do indeed carry a greater risk of regulationthan doing nothing. The tradeoff between regulation and choice expansionmay be worth making—and Merrifield may have changed his thinking onthis since publishing the book in 2002—but the risk is very real. Similarly,I have great reservations about saying, as Merrifield does, that “the govern-ment must determine the boundaries of its role . . . including standardizedtesting requirements and content” (p. 63). Obviously government will decidethese things, but as a policy prescription I would simply say “stay out of it!”
Despite these quibbles, this book finally convinced me that the reformmessage had to be, essentially, go free market, or go home. And it did it insuch a concise, clear manner, that for years I handed School Choices: True
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and False to new interns I’ve worked with to quickly inform them what Ithink is the key to meaningful education reform. Not surprisingly, I’ve oftenhad trouble getting the book back.
Neal McCluskey1
NOTE
1. Neal McCluskey is Associate Director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom andauthor of Feds in the Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises AmericanEducation.
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