Need to rebrand "progressives"

George Will:

IN today's political taxonomy, "progressives" are rebranded liberals dodging the damage they did to their old label. Perhaps their most injurious idea - injurious to themselves and public schools - was the forced busing of (mostly other people's) children to engineer "racial balance" in public schools. Soon, liberals will need a third label if people notice what "progressives" are up to in Utah.

There, teachers unions, whose idea of progress is preservation of the status quo, are waging an expensive and meretricious campaign to overturn the right of parents to choose among competing schools, public and private, for the best education for their children.

Utahans next week will decide by referendum whether to retain or jettison the nation's broadest school-choice program.

Passed last February, the Parent Choice in Education Act would make a voucher available to any public-school child who transfers to a private school, and to current private-school children from low-income families. Opponents of school choice reflexively rushed to force a referendum on the new law, which is suspended pending the vote.

The vouchers would vary in value from $500 to $3,000, depending on household income. The teachers unions' usual argument against school-choice programs is that they drain money from public education. But the vouchers are funded by general revenues, not the two sources of public-school funds. Every Utah voucher increases funds available for public education. Here's how:

Utah spends more than $7,500 per public-school pupil ($3,000 more than the average private-school tuition). The average voucher will be for less than $2,000. So every voucher used will save Utah taxpayers an average of $5,500. Because the vouchers are paid from general revenues, the departed pupil's $7,500 stays in the public-school system.

...

By September the National Education Association, the megalobbyist for the public-education near-monopoly, had already spent $1.5 million to support repeal of the voucher program. The Wall Street Journal reports that the NEA has approved expenditures of up to $3 million. Teachers unions in Maine, Colorado, Arizona and Wyoming had also contributed to the fight against choice.

Intellectually bankrupt but flush with cash, the teachers unions continue to push their threadbare arguments, undeterred by the fact that Utah's vouchers will increase per-pupil spending and will lower class sizes in public schools. Why the perverse perseverance? Two large, banal reasons: fear of competition and desire for the maximum number of dues-paying public-school teachers.

...

If public schools put out a better product, they would not be having so much trouble with competition. Yet that competition will make them better if it is allowed to develop. Competing ideas in education will give a better demonstration of what works and what does not. Instead of competing for dollars they should be competing for who can do the best job of educating children. The ones who do that best will get the dollars.