My colleagues and friends, Mike McShane and Rick Hess, have co-authored a book on their conservative vision for public education. Getting Education Right: A Conservative Vision for Improving Early Childhood, K-12, and College has lots of smart ideas and sensible prescriptions for how to better educate our children.
But one takeaway for me, as someone who has been in the field of education reform for decades, is that we need to stop apologizing and giving up ground because our work happens outside of the circled wagons of the education establishment. The fact is that partnering with parents instead of hiding things from them, giving parents access to the childcare setting of their choice instead of creating universal, government-managed pre-K programs, and letting parents decide where each of their children will attend school aren’t really reforms—they’re just common sense. And most people agree.
Take school choice, for example. It’s no longer a radical idea that must be wrangled with and heavily negotiated by state legislatures. Public opinion surveys repeatedly find that very few people are opposed to the idea, regardless of the type of program.
Teachers unions may have loud voices and large platforms, but that doesn’t mean that we have to set common sense aside. The idea that parents can be trusted should no longer be up for debate.
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