Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal took the stage at a center-left think tank to promote school choice and competition as a bipartisan, “consensus issue.”
“Equal opportunity in education should not be a conservative or liberal position; it should be an American position,” said Jindal, who chairs the Republican Governors Association. Since Republicans lost key November elections, Jindal has stepped forward as a party leader and is frequently named a 2016 presidential contender.
His December Washington DC remarks keynoted the release of a Brookings Institution index ranking more than 100 large U.S. districts by amount of choice and competition. The state-run New Orleans Recovery School District ranked No. 1, and it was the only district to receive an A.
In 2012 Jindal led Louisiana, one of the worst-performing states academically, into a choice-oriented system based on reforms that had doubled student achievement in New Orleans in five years.
National Model
Louisiana now has the nation’s largest voucher program, numerous charter school authorizers, and an innovative “course choice” program that allows students to take state-financed individual classes such as welding and Chinese for credit outside their assigned schools. Teachers unions have challenged several of these provisions in court.
“I hope what we did in Louisiana can be done across the country,” Jindal said.
Brookings education director Grover Whitehurst introduced and seconded Jindal’s bold support for giving parents the keys to their children’s education.
“Introducing choice and competition into K-12 education is a path that has not been taken—except by a few places in the country—and we think it is promising,” he said.
Dearth of Choices
The lack of choice has caused U.S. education to deteriorate, Whitehurst said, creating low high school graduation rates and mediocre academic performance compared to the rest of the world despite the highest education spending outside Luxembourg.
He said policymakers have three choices: Ignore school performance, implement “top-down accountability” like No Child Left Behind, or take a third and optimal option.
“Think about how the rest of our economy works, and think about a system of K-12 education much like our [higher education] system,” he suggested. “People shop for schools, make choices, and schools prosper or fail depending on their ability to retain and attract students.”
The Brookings study notes approximately half the nation’s parents have chosen their child’s school by considering districts when buying a house, paying private tuition, or homeschooling. However, it concludes, “many more parents wish to exercise choice than are currently able to do so.”
Whitehurst envisioned a system where “schools that are unpopular wither like the restaurant where no one wants to eat.”
Competition Index
“The Education Choice and Competition Index,” uses four metrics to evaluate school systems: amount of choice, availability of information, ease of choosing a school, and whether public funds follow individual students. The best systems, Whitehurst said, let families “shop to the top.”
Whitehurst identified four reasons to support school choice. First, “parents overwhelmingly want it.” Second, equity: only wealthy families can currently afford better schools. Third and fourth, “the research is clear” that competition improves school performance and prompts innovation.
Unequal Public Education
Jindal skewered the “nostalgic” view that U.S. education is fair and equal.
“It is completely dishonest to pretend today that America provides equal opportunity in education,” he said. “If you’re a low-income parent residing in an urban area in America, your child probably attends a failing school. You have no options.”
He and Whitehurst agreed choice-based education is far better for children than top-down accountability schemes popular with Republicans and Democrats alike. That model produces “cookie-cutter schools” that are at best “good enough” but not excellent, Whitehurst said.
“Why wouldn’t we give [students] the choice with their parents’ own tax dollars to pick the better school next door? These kids don’t have time to lose,” Jindal said.
Learn more:
“The Education Choice and Competition Index,” Brookings Institution, December 2012: http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2012-ecci.
Bobby Jindal on Education: Quotes from Brookings Event
- America does not provide equal opportunity in education.
- Stop paying teachers on how long they have been breathing.
- There’s no such thing as a quality monopoly. Let providers compete and get out of the way.
- Equal opportunity in education made real by school choice should be a consensus issue.
- Going forward, the states that are going to be successful are the states with the most educated, skilled, productive populations. Governors should have all the motivation they need to improve their education systems.
- Education reform is hard. We should be inviting anyone who can get it done to the table.
- Let parents vote with their feet without having to sell their house to pay for private school.
- To oppose school choice is to choose an old, antiquated centralized approach that has no relevance to the modern age. To oppose school choice is to put the needs of adults and the status quo above the needs of children. To oppose school choice is to oppose equal opportunity for poor and disadvantaged children.
- Parents make decisions for their kids every day, and they make decisions better than bureaucrats in Baton Rouge and Washington DC. The best advocate for a scholarship and choice program is not me, it’s a mom working two jobs asking, ‘Why is it ok for your kids to get a great education but not mine?’