Reason Magazine: Catherine Manu-Ward Interviewing Campbell Brown on Education Reform

Source:The New Democrat

I agree with Campbell Brown that pubic teacher tenure is wrong, needs to go out of style and disappear like disco and acid wash jeans. And I’ve even with her on school choice and I’ll explain both of my positions later. But where I differ with Campbell is on school choice and how to do that. We completely agree on tenure, but at least as far as I’m concern tax dollars for education should be for public education. That is really the first and only responsibility for government when it comes to education. Which is the schools that we all as taxpayers pay for and since that is the case we have a responsibility to make those schools as good as possible especially for kids from low-income single-parent families.

If private schools want to set up their own school voucher programs and recruit kids from low-income families to go to their schools and people want to contribute to those private programs, by all means. And I would probably be one of those contributors, but it wouldn’t be because government said I had to, but because I made the choice to do that with my own money. Now what I am in favor with to go along with eliminating teacher tenure, is public school choice. The idea that someone has to go to a certain public school simply because of where they live is crazy, unproductive and bad for the economy. Because it means if you are from a low-income family and unless you perhaps won a private school voucher, you’re destined to go to a bad school.