In theory, annual awards should not be bestowed until the end of the year. But I already violated that rule when writing about “2022’s Tweet of the Year” last month (in my defense, anything that mocks Oxfam deserves favorable attention).
Given my weakness for premature proclamations, I may as well do it again.
Being a big fan of school choice, you can understand why this bit of whining and grousing from the National Education Association is my “Feel-Good Tweet of the Year.”
Oh, dear, the union bosses are upset that children are getting more options to escape government schools. My cheeks are wet with crocodile tears! So much schadenfreude.
By the way, I agree with part of the tweet. The union bosses at the NEA are correct that school choice is spreading.
Most notably, there was a huge victory for choice last year in West Virginia. But there’s also been progress in many other states.
But I can’t resist correcting two other parts of the tweet.
- First, choice doesn’t “divert funding for public education into private hands.” Instead, it returns funding to private hands, where the money can then be used to get the best possible education for kids. Incidentally, that could mean government schools (researchers have that quality increases when government schools have to compete for students).
- Second, it’s not voucher proponents that have been “steadily working to undermine public education.” Instead, the NEA should look in the mirror. It’s the union bosses and their political allies who have made government schools less attractive. They’ve been given record amounts of money and produced dismal educational outcomes.
P.S. As always, I can’t resist reminding people that there are successful systems of school choice in Canada, Sweden, Chile, and the Netherlands. In other words, it’s not a crazy idea being pushed by American libertarians.
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Image credit: Gage Skidmore | CC BY-SA 2.0.
