Education Next – Jason Bedrick and Lindsey M. Burke
“As we celebrate National School Choice Week, education-reform advocates would be wise to reflect on purpose of school choice as articulated by Milton Friedman, the father of the modern school choice movement. Friedman first proposed the concept of school vouchers in 1955, arguing that by introducing consumer choice into education, vouchers could help create a competitive marketplace. “Vouchers are not an end in themselves,” Friedman wrote in 1995; “they are a means to make a transition from a government to a market system.” Friedman was likely even more innovative than education-reform advocates realize, because he saw that a real education market would create its own path, pushed along by market forces. Noting in 2003 that “there’s no reason to expect that the future market will have the shape or form that our present market has,” Friedman wondered: “How do we know how education will develop? Why is it sensible for a child to get all his or her schooling in one brick building?” Instead, Friedman proposed granting students “partial vouchers”: “Why not let them spend part of a voucher for math in one place and English or science somewhere else?…Why can’t a student take some lessons at home, especially now, with the availability of the Internet?”.”(more)