Because Minnesota was the first state to allow charter schools, that and other forms of public school choice enacted early on in the state may have dampened its taste for vouchers, says a new report from the Center of the American Experiment. But kids–and especially the poor and minorities–would still benefit from vouchers, argues the report author, Mitch Pearlstein. He is founder and president of the center and author of, among other things, From Family Collapse to America’s Decline: The Educational, Economic, and Social Costs of Family Fragmentation. He joins the podcast to discuss the need to cultivate voucher supporters on all sides of the political aisle, the contributions of family breakdown to massive achievement gaps, and why Minnesotans should not think that good schools for some means good schools for all.
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Joy Pullmann is a research fellow on education policy for The Heartland Institute and managing editor of The Federalist, a web magazine on politics, policy, and culture.
