Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Sol Stern and School Choice   [Ramesh Ponnuru]

The Manhattan Institute’s City Journal ran an article by Sol Stern, “School Choice Isn’t Enough.” His argument: Vouchers have helped the kids who have used them to leave failing public schools, but they have largely failed to spur those schools to improve. Stern continues to support school choice, but he thinks education reformers should devote more effort to curricular reform. If we want our kids to be more literate, for example, it is more important to encourage phonics than charter schools. We should be, in Stern’s words, “instructionists” rather than (or more than) “incentivists.”

Other conservative education reformers, including full-throated supporters of school choice, wrote letters in response to Stern, and he has replied to them. While neither Stern nor his critics avoid rhetorical excesses, the discussion is constructive. This educated layman cannot adjudicate the debate between Stern and Jay Greene about whether the former has underestimated how much vouchers have improved public schools. With respect to the other contested issues, I thought each side scored some points.

02/19 06:00 PMShare