Breaking the Education Truce

Andrew Wolf:

Quite a debate among advocates of school choice has been ignited by Sol Stern's article on school choice in the current number of City Journal.

Mr. Stern is a longtime advocate of school choice, whose book "Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice" is a bible to many in the voucher movement.

Now Mr. Stern, in "School Choice Isn't Enough," suggests that for choice to work, close attention must be paid to how and what children are taught in the classroom. Without such attention, Mr. Stern argues, the choice movement is doomed and may already be failing, as evidenced by results in Milwaukee, the largest venue where a voucher system exists, and in New York City where a grab-bag of incentivist proposals has been put in place by Mayor Bloomberg.

Mr. Stern contrasts these results with those in Massachusetts, where choice has not taken hold but where a tough curriculum, a testing regimen for both students and teachers, and rigorous academic standards have been put into place.

On the recently released NAEP tests, Massachusetts topped the list on fourth and eighth grade math and fourth and eighth grade reading. This has been peripherally touched on in the presidential campaign, as Mitt Romney raises these impressive results on the campaign trail. Pitted against Mr. Stern and his fellow "instructionists" is another Manhattan Institute heavyweight, Senior Fellow Jay Greene of the University of Arkansas. Mr. Greene, the pure incentivist, has lashed out at Mr. Stern in a reply just posted on the City Journal Web site.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at February 6, 2008 12:01 AM
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